Kerry’s Garden

It has been a long time coming but the bottom layer of insulation is just about complete. Between school, not having enough beer bottles and the weather I hadn’t touched the oven in a number of weeks.

After finishing the foundation, I layed a 2×4 & 4×4 frame across the open foundation about 2/3 of the way up from the bottom. I had layed an extra row of bricks on each side to accept the wood frame. This left an open 15″ deep box. On top of this platform I placed a 1″ layer of the clay/wood shavings mix and starting laying the bottles so that they almost touch. I wasn’t able to get all of the bottles set as I ran out of clay. Everything I have read said that as long as I have enough insulation there shouldn’t be a problem with burn through. I’ve also seen a number of very old ovens built on wood platforms.

Once I get the rest of the clay/wood mix applied and the bottles in place I will let it dry before building the clay/sand pad that will accept the firebricks.

10 years ago I received my batch of Oregon Trail Sourdough Starter from Carl Griffith. The story goes that this starter had been in his family since the mid 1800s. The starter came as a dried product, something I hadn’t realized could be done to a sourdough starter till then. Following Carl’s directions the starter came to life in a jar on my kitchen counter. Within a couple of days I was eating my first loaf of mildly sour, very delicious homemade sourdough bread.

Never wanting to run out of this newly found treasure, I dried some of the starter, again following Carl’s directions. FF 10 years, and I still have dried and frozen starter waiting for activation. Not the original product of course, I replenish my dried starter every couple of years or when I think of it. How much of the population is Carl’s original and how much is local beasties I don’t know. I do know that I love the idea of growing something that, given the proper (very minimal) care, will be around long after I have passed on.

Historically I have raised my starter on commercial bread flour. Recently I have been trying to eat more whole grains and decided to see how my starter would do on whole wheat. So far so good. I pulled out about 1T of dried starter/flour mix from the freezer 3 or 4 days ago. I feed on a 24 hour schedule a ww flour/water mix. Last night after reading one of Peter Reinhart’s books I decided to add a little wheat malt I had in the cupboard. I’ve used the malt previously when activating my wine yeast and by the looks of the photo the 1/2 tsp I fed to the colony last night was well received. While I have yet to try a ww loaf with this starter, the taste so far is nice and sour but not overkill. I will start a sponge tonight and hope to try my first ww loaf this weekend.

I didn’t get much done yesterday but was at it this morning. I set two more rows of brick on the foundation for the mud oven. I should only need three more rows to be done with that part of it.

As I mentioned yesterday I had a wheat delivery. I decided to bag up the soft wheat this evening. I had purchased some mylar bags and O2 absorbers a while back as I knew this was coming soon. I ended up cutting the bags in half to hold 8 cups per bag. Plenty for our use here. As you can see I ended up with a helper about half way through. I like to go ahead and put the grains in the mylar bags for longer term storage. I only have to buy wheat every few years this way and with a 20+ year shelf life the way I store it, the grains that come out of the last bag are as good as the first. I will get the other bag put up later this week or next weekend.

Some time back I decided it was time to get a grain mill. The coffee grinder I picked up a few weeks ago is nice and will do some course grinds that a typical grain mill will not. It is very slow though and can only do very small amounts at a time. I knew this when I picked it up and am still happy with it. That being said, I still had my heart set on a ‘real’ grain mill.

I have been saving for a few months and had narrowed the candidates down to two. The WonderMill and the NutriMill. Both are about the same price ($250-$260 range) and do pretty much the same job. Both have great reviews but the NutriMill is larger and will grind more grain in one setting. I had pretty much decided on the WonderMill only because it was smaller. I knew I wouldn’t be grinding 5lbs in a setting and really didn’t need anything as large as the NutriMill. The plan was/is to grind as much as I need for a particular recipe, thereby having the freshest product.

Fast-forward to this morning. I was sitting at the computer going through email and decided to do a mill search on Craigslist. I have search for both mills previously and have come up empty handed. Not expecting anything I did the search and what do you know… a Nutrimill for sale and for only $100! An email and a phone call later and I am on the way up to pick up the mill. For less than half the price of a new unit I had to at least go look at it and try it out. Long story short, the photo above is the newly adopted mill sitting in my kitchen.

As I was writing this a friend of mine dropped off two bags of wheat I had ordered. 1 50lb bag of soft white and 1 50lb bag of hard white wheat. Jut in time. I have some mylar bags waiting…time to get to work.

Popcorn is notoriously hard to grind. Many grinders specifically forbid the use of popcorn in their units. Not having a grain mill yet I had never really tried grinding popcorn for fresh cornbread but was looking forward to it when I do finally break down and pick up the grinder I’ve had my eye on.

This past week I had stopped by the local Goodwill looking for goodies when I ran across a coffee grinder for a few dollars. I think I paid about 8 or 10 for it after the discount for that day. It is a Capresso Infinity Burr Grinder. It is the stainless model which sells for about $120 or so. It had never been taken out of the package that I could tell. Not bad for less than $10. It grinds from course to very fine (for Turkish coffee) and, since it had never been used it didn’t come with a coffee bean smell that I had half expected. I thought, why not try it on popcorn. What is the worst that can happen? I lose a few dollars.

First I ran some white wheat through as a test. I thought if it couldn’t handle the wheat, there was no way it could handle the popcorn. The wheat was ground into a consistency slightly finer than cream of wheat but coarser than flour. I ended up running the popcorn through twice. It did get hung up a couple of times but it was easy to take apart and clean. I looked for a recipe online and found a good sweet cornbread recipe on the All Recipes site. I used the flour and cornmeal I had just ground. It ended up taking a little more milk than the recipe called for. I let the corn soak up the milk for about 10 minutes before mixing in everything else. I baked it in a cast iron skillet in the oven. VERY good flavor but a little crumbly. I will probably add another egg next time. All in all I am very pleased with my grinder. I can see fresh cream of wheat and cornbread in my future.

I am notorious for planning more than I can possibly finish in a given amount of time. Since starting Grad School my spare time is almost non-existent and work on the oven has come to a halt. This long weekend would get me back on track I was sure.

The plan was to spend Sunday and Monday working on the oven. I had a wedding to go to on Saturday so that day was busy with other things. I ended up with company on Sunday which was not planned but was good. I hadn’t seen H. in a long time and it was nice to visit. I figured I could still get done what I had planned to today. I had already purchased the two angle irons and mortar that I needed and was up this morning bright and early when I realized it was raining. No problem. The radar showed that the storm should quickly pass. A couple of hours later than I had anticipated, I was out and ready to go. I got the half bag of mortar mixed and about half a dozen bricks in place when the rain resumed. I waited around about 20 minutes before I decided to call it a day. Oh well, perhaps next weekend.

Update: 5:00 pm

The rain passed and the sun came out. I decided to go back out and give it another try. I was able to get the other half of the mortar mixed and another row of brick set. The angle irons went in on this row along with the bricks to span the existing u shaped foundation.

A couple of days ago I was watering the potted items on the back patio. I noticed a young mantid on the thyme trying to escape the shower. I decided to move her to a safer place with some critters for her lunch. I walked around the garden and honestly could not find anything with any kind of great numbers of pests. After I set her down on a nearby plant, I realized at that moment how lucky I was.