A few years ago, I decided to try my hand at making cheese. This is something that I really did just on a whim, because it sounded sort of interesting. What I found out then is that it’s a time-consuming process and the feedback is nowhere near instant. To make a good hard cheese you…
Sourdough Bread
My wife grew up in the San Francisco bay area, so she’s always had a thing for sourdough bread – especially the “extra-sour” varieties. Unfortunately here in rural Minnesota it’s hard to get anything resembling real bread at all, let alone a true sourdough. So about ten years ago, I started experimenting with sourdough. I…
Winemaking
Well, today was one of THOSE days. You know the kind… fortunately there’s a little light at the end of the tunnel, and I’m enjoying a nice glass of wine. Winemaking really can be quite simple if you want it to be, and this is about the simplest wine I know of. You need a…
Strawberry Cream Cheese Pie
It’s May, and strawberry season is just getting started. Today strawberries were $1.88 per pound at our grocery store, and I couldn’t resist. Here’s a pie recipe that I’ve been making for years because it’s just really tasty. The cool cream cheese combines well with the fresh strawberries, and the cooked topping makes this a…
Garlic Aioli
My kids are really into baked potatoes. Well, actually, mashed potatoes is what they like, but baked potatoes are fine because they’re easy to mash. Actually, I’m not so sure they even like the potato part. Like me, they seem to prefer all the stuff that one traditionally puts onto the baked potato. Sour cream,…
Bagels
Ok, so I don’t live in NYC, or anywhere near there. I’ve never had a “real” New York bagel. However, I can sure tell you that those things you get in the plastic bag at the grocery store in the refrigerator section that are called bagels, aren’t. I’ve tried several times to produce a good…
Slow Rise Spent Grain Bread
My previous post described a quick bread recipe using some spent grains leftover from beer brewing. Here’s a slightly more involved recipe for a slow-rise bread that also incorporates spent grains. I’ve been doing a lot of slower rise yeast breads over the past few years. The concepts that Jim Lahey pioneered with his no-knead…
Baking with Spent Grains
I’ve been doing some beer brewing recently – in the past I’ve had ok luck using malt extracts, both dry or liquid. But this Christmas I got a partial-mash kit as a gift, so I thought I’d give it a try. Pretty simple to do, but in the end I wound up with about 4…