Young Chefs

Here are the youngest Barnhart chefs in the Hancock household. They're posing with their latest creations - lunch today. :) It was a pretty tasty lunch, if I do say so myself.


Ella made a heart-shaped pizza.

Elisabeth made a rectangle pizza.



Peter made a circle pizza.
And I made a regular, much larger pizza to share with anyone who needed a little more (and to have leftovers for tomorrow). No photo documentation there, but there's about 3/4 of it cooling off in our "extra" cold storage. Hope everyone has tasty meals like this at their own places.

The sourest of sourdoughs

Some of you may remember (especially if your name is Steve) that Steve started a sourdough culture a couple years ago, which I was lucky enough to receive a bit of. Well, that sourdough starter gifted me with many fine sourdough pancakes, some pizza dough, and a rather lackluster loaf of bread before eventually going on to die and become the most horrible smelling thing in my entire house (honestly, I almost vomited when I eventually got rid of it). So the lesson is if you don't feed your sourdough starter, but instead leave it on the kitchen counter when you go away for a week, it will figure out how to get even with you.

Earlier this fall I followed Steve's technique for starting a sourdough culture and used some apple peels, flour, and water to get one going. After about a month of feeding it and making sure it's happy (I sing it to sleep every night before tucking it into the fridge), I thought it was ready to go into a loaf of bread.

I've been intrigued by the no-knead sourdough recipes that are popping up everywhere, and I ended up using this one (mostly because it's simple and he has a very informative video on the process of making this bread).

After one failed attempt (which I did not photograph for obvious reasons), here are a couple photos of my first successful loaf of sourdough bread made from a sourdough starter. It may be a little hard to tell from the pictures, but I'm pleased to report that the crust is nice and tough, and the bread itself is very chewy and airy. It's got a bit of a sourdough tang, though it's not too sour (you can fault me for the misleading post title). All around, a pretty enjoyable loaf of bread.

I've read that refrigerating the bread overnight (after letting it rise for 5 to 8 hours) also results in a pretty good bread. So I'll give that a shot next time.