• 2 2/3 cup acid whey (filtered from yogurt)
• 1 cup powdered milk
  
• 4 tbs unsalted butter
• 6 tbs Really Raw Honey (that shit's good)
• 3 heaping tbs cappings
  
• 2 pkts active dry yeast
• 2 lb 5 oz bread flour
• 1 cup flax seed meal
  
• 4 tsp salt
• 1 cup roasted, salted sunflower seeds
• 1 cup 5 grain mix
  

Heat the whey, butter, cappings, and dry milk in a small saucepan until the temp is 110 or 115 using an instant read thermometer. The powdered milk will eventually curdle after being dissolved, but that's okay. With bread, since there's so few ingredients, the taste of the individual pieces really comes through. The raw honey has a great strong taste - try it! Once the butter's melted and it's all still 110 degrees, whisk in the yeast to dissolve. Most recipes call for you to "proof" the yeast, but just getting it dissolved is good enough.

Add the flour, flax meal, and salt to a mixer and mix to combine. On a low speed, add the yeast/liquid mixture only as fast as the flour will absorb it. The dough should form a ball and pull away from the sides. Continue to knead for 5 minutes. It should remain sticky. Add the sunflower seeds and 5 grain mix and continue to knead until well blended.

Place the kneaded dough in an oiled bowl and allow to rise for one hour in a warm spot until it's doubled in size. If the dough is too sticky, oil your hands and the worksurface instead of using flour.

Remove the dough, divide it in two (i use a scale to try to get the two halves as close as possible) and puch it down into a size that will fit into a 5x9 bread pan. Place it into a buttered bread pan and allow to rise for another 30-45 minutes.

Put a sheet pan or pie pan with 2-3 cups of warm water in the bottom rack of a 350 degree oven. Brush the top of the bread with olive oil and place on the second rack. Cook until the internal temperature of the bread reaches 195 degrees using an instant read thermometer. This will be 60-70 minutes. Remove from the pan and place on a wire rack to cool. Don't forget to pull out the water pan before it boils dry. Wait for the bread to cool completely before slicing.

What to do with the endless supply of kefir once you get your grains cranking away? No choice but to make frozen yogurt. It'll also work with any other yogurt, but if you're going to buy it, best to buy some of the strained greek yogurt to save you the trouble... Unless of course, you want to strain your own and save the whey for my bread recipe.

• 4 c strained yogurt
• 0.5 c Really Raw Honey
• 180g granulated sugar
• 2 tsp lemon zest
• 3 tbs lemon juice
• 1 tbs grated ginger

You want to strain about 8 cups of yogurt, or enough to get about 4 cups of the thick stuff. Add the sugar, honey, zest, juice, and ginger and mix well. You can add more ginger if you want a little more bite. I think the next time, I would also add a tad more lemon. Put it all in the fridge to cool nicely. Then follow the directions for whatever ice cream maker you're using.

I've been making yogurt using the simplest methods out there. We like it thick, so I usually drain off some of the whey. (There is only one better use for a chemex coffee pot!) I usually use milk in my bread recipe, but I thought this might be a good opportunity to make use of the whey. I actually like yeasty bread better than sour dough, but Barb likes sourdough better. This was also a good compromise - having both the tartness of the whey and the flavor of the yeast. The recipe makes two loaves. It's based on an earlier recipe but uses a stand mixer instead of the food processor.

• 1 1/3 cup whole milk
• 1 1/3 cup acid whey (filtered from yogurt)
  
• 4 tbs unsalted butter
• 6 tbs Really Raw Honey (that shit's good)
• 2 pkts active dry yeast
• 2 lb 5 oz unbleached all-purpose flour
• 4 tsp salt

Heat the liquids in a small saucepan until the temp is 110 or 115 using an instant read thermometer. You will need 2 2/3 cups of liquid in all. Feel free to vary the ratio of whey to milk to taste. Also, I like the tase of the honey and am usually a little heavy handed with it. With bread, since there's so few ingredients, the taste of the individual pieces really comes through. The raw honey has a great strong taste - try it! Once the butter's melted and it's all still 110 degrees, whisk in the yeast to dissolve. Most recipes call for you to "proof" the yeast, but just getting it dissolved is good enough.

Add the flour and salt to a mixer and mix to combine. On a low speed, add the yeast/liquid mixture only as fast as the flour will absorb it. The dough should form a ball and pull away from the sides. Continue to knead for 5 minutes. It should remain sticky.

Place the kneaded dough in an oiled bowl and allow to rise for one hour in a warm spot until it's doubled in size. If the dough is too sticky, oil your hands and the worksurface instead of using flour.

Remove the dough, divide it in two (i use a scale to try to get the two halves as close as possible) and puch it down into a size that will fit into a 5x9 bread pan. Place it into a buttered bread pan and allow to rise for another 30-45 minutes.

Put a sheet pan or pie pan with 2-3 cups of warm water in the bottom rack of a 350 degree oven. Brush the top of the bread with olive oil and place on the second rack. Cook until the internal temperature of the bread reaches 195 degrees using an instant read thermometer. Remove from the pan and place on a wire rack to cool. Don't forget to pull out the water pan before it boils dry. Wait for the bread to cool completely before slicing.

This is a recipe from my great grandmonther - Gonnie is what she went by in the family, not that that was her name, just I think what her grandkids called her. I remember having these a lot when I was growing up, but oddly enough, I've never met anyone else who's ever had them. I'm thinking they must be an old-timey southern thing. This is a doubled recipe - feel free to cut it in half if two dozen cookies is enough for you.

Cookies:

• 3 sticks unsalted butter
• 300g white sugar
• 300g grated carrots
• 2 eggs
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
  
• zest of one orange
• 620g unbleached all purpose flour
• 1 tsp salt
• 4 tsp baking powder

Whisk together the flour, salt, and baking powder and set aside. Cream the butter and sugar. Combine the eggs, vanilla, and orange zest. Mix in a little at a time until incorporated. Mix in the grated carrots. I use the smaller size of the grater that otherwise never gets used. With the mixer on low, add flour a little at a time, allowing to incorporate before adding more. Once this is mostly combined, stop the mixer and continue by hand.

Spoon the cookies onto a cookie sheet lined with a silicone mat (or parchment paper). The dough is really sticky, so keep a the tips of your fingers wet to avoid sticking. If you're going to ice them, flatten them a little before putting in the oven. Bake in a 375 degree oven for about 11 minutes. Allow to cool completely before icing.

Icing:

If you have a recipe for a good cream cheese frosting, use it. The stuff I made this time was way too runny, so I'm going to have to try something else. Put it into a ziplock bag, snip a corner off, and pipe onto the cookies.

They're really hard to store after they've been iced, but they won't last long anyway.

I've been on a cake binge lately. Partly driven by the fact that I am trying to cut back on junk food and told myself that I had to make my own. Here's this weekend's recipe:

Tres Leches Cake

Cake:

• 6.75 oz cake flour
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 0.5 tsp salt
• 4 oz (1 stick) unsalted butter
• 8 oz white sugar
• 5 eggs
• 1.5 tsp vanilla

Grease and flour a 9x13 cake pan. Whisk together the flour, baking powder, and salt. Set aside. In a mixer, cream the butter and sugar. With the mixer on low, add the eggs allowing each one to incorporate before adding the next. Add the vanilla. Pour into the pan and bake at 350 until the internal temperature is 200F - about 20 minutes.

3 milks:

• 1 12 oz can evaporated milk
• 1 14 oz can sweetened condensed milk
• 1 c half and half

When the cake comes out of the oven, set aside and allow to cool completely. While waiting, whisk the three milks together. Prodigiously poke the cake full of holes with a chopstick or something to that effect. Pour the milks over the cake and allow to sit overnight in the fridge to ensure everything is soaked up.

Topping:

• 2 c heavy cream
• 6 oz white sugar
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 1 tsp unflavored gelatin

Place the whisk and mixing bowl in the freezer and allow to cool. Pour about half a cup of the cream into a metal measuring cup or small metal bowl. Sprinkle in the gelatin and allow to sit for a few minutes. Gently heat over a low flame until dissolved, being careful not to bring to a full boil. Pour the cream and gelatin into the mixer and begin to whisk while adding the sugar and vanilla. Whisk on medium-high until thick. You can 'ice' the cake with the whipped topping, but I prefer to allow the topping to set in the fridge for a few hours (or overnight with the rest of the cake) and serve the cake slices with a hefty dollop of cream on top.

My coffee grinder died today. In fact, it had begun to slowly deteriorate the past couple of weeks. It served me well... I had used it every single day for the past two years. It's a beautiful KitchenAid A-9 - one of the new models. I have to say that I expected a good 5 years out of it.

When these grinders act up, they are very irritating. The motor is a direct drive 200W model that spins a tad too fast. There's no auger, so there is nothing really to help break up the whole beans before they reach the burrs. When the beans have trouble getting down into the burrs (maybe they're afraid?) the motor just spins faster and faster and spews the last of the ground coffee all over the counter.

I opened it up to try to figure out what might be causing this, and to be honest I can't really tell. I guessed that something might have loosened up (bearings perhaps?) causing the burrs to vibrate and not allowing the beans to flow in. Turns out there's not even any bearings! The rotating burrs rest on a plate with a fair amount of play, so while the burrs can be replaced, that's not any guarantee they will remain lined up.

Reluctantly, I started to seal the think back up... The motor is held to the cast alloy body with two tapered screws. Disaster! I stripped the soft alloy and now the motor won't mount up at all.

It's unfortunate, really, that something as over-engineered as this has such weak points. Little things like this are what make the difference between professional gear and pseudo-industrial-looking home gear. My favorite grinder to date is the Zassenhaus Grain Mill, but it's a little labor intensive for morning brew.

I found a larger KitchenAid Pro Line on clearance for $150. It's got gear reduction and an auger, so opefully won't grind itself into oblivion. If it does, my next choice would be a Rancilio Rancho (at a whopping $300)
Well, wish me luck. I guess I could just go back to the $20 blade grinders!

We got a new food processor and I decided to take advantage and start making some bread. I'd rather use a mixer with a dough hook, but there's a lot on the wish list right now.

Anyway, I wanted to share. The recipes from Cook's Illustrated are great, but I'm never one to leave well enough alone. I've made two versions of the bread - one white and one brownish with grains and seeds. Here's the recipe:

White

• 1 1/3 cup whole milk
• 2 tbs unsalted butter
• 3 tbs Really Raw Honey (that shit's good)
• 1 packet active dry yeast
• 1lb 2 1/2 oz unbleached all-purpose flour
• 2 tsp salt

Wheat

• 1 1/3 cup whole milk
• 2 tbs unsalted butter
• 3 tbs Really Raw Honey
  
• 1 packet active dry yeast
• 12 oz unbleached all-purpose flour
• 8 oz graham flour
  
• 1/2 cup sunflower seeds
• 1/2 cup mixed grains
  
• 2 tsp salt

The process is the same for both.

Heat the liquids in a small saucepan until the temp is 110 or 115 using an instant read thermometer. I like the tase of the honey and am usually a little heavy handed with it. With bread, since there's so few ingredients, the taste of the individual pieces really comes through. The raw honey has a great strong taste - try it! Once the butter's melted and it's all still 110 degrees, whisk in the yeast to dissolve. Most recipes call for you to "proof" the yeast, but just getting it dissolved is good enough.

[The following assumes you're using a food processor - if you're not, I'm sure any other method will work just as well]
Add the flour and salt to the processor - but not the seeds or grains. Pulsing the processor, add the yeast/liquid mixture only as fast as the flour will absorb it. The dough should form a ball and pull away from the sides - if not, sprinkle in some flour until it does.

Remove the dough ball and knead for about 3 minutes. The dough will be a little sticky, but try not to add too much flour. Knead in the grains and seeds at this point if you are adding them. Place the kneaded dough in an oiled bowl and allow to rise for 1-2 hours in a warm spot until it's doubled in size.

Remove the dough and puch it down into a size that will fit into a 5x9 bread pan. Place it into a buttered bread pan and allow to rise for another 30-45 minutes.

Put a sheet pan or pie pan with 2-3 cups of warm water in the bottom rack of a 350 degree oven. Brush the top of the bread with olive oil and place on the second rack. Cook until the internal temperature of the bread reaches 195 degrees using an instant read thermometer. Remove from the pan and place on a wire rack to cool. Don't forget to pull out the water pan before it boils dry. Wait for the bread to cool completely before slicing.