Baking on a Snowy Day

Snow fell in great fat flakes for most of the day yesterday. Because of that, it was a little too wet for spending much time outside. A few times, I ventured out just a few feet to take some pictures. You can see the snow falling in most of these.

By day's end, we had about 4 inches of accumulation.

Smitty is very suspicious of the snow. He really wanted to go outside, but he wasn't happy about that cold white stuff.

He stayed right next to the house.

The catio collected snow on the fencing.

Here's a Sadie's eye view.

In the end it seemed a better plan to sit on a lap for snuggles and pets.

As for me, I baked some cinnamon swirl bread.

In other bread-baking news, I checked the seed starter this morning. It had doubled in size and was bubbling away.

So I went ahead with Phase 4 of the seed culture. That meant discarding half and then adding another cup of flour mixed with half cup of water. I moved the tape to measure its progress and then covered it up again. When it doubles in size again, I'll be ready to use it to start the barm.

A few of you asked about discarding half of the culture and whether I couldn't save it for a second loaf. Here's my (weak) understanding of this. I'm working now on a "seed culture" which is the starter for the "barm". The barm, in turn, is the starter for the bread. The seed culture is simply cultivating the wild yeast (obtained literally from thin air). It takes four phases before the culture contains enough active yeast to create the starter for the bread, the barm. Once the seed culture is ready, I'll start making the barm, which should take an additional 2-3 days. Then, and only then, will I be ready to bake an actual loaf of bread.

When the barm is finished it will amount to about 6 cups. From that, I'll need just one cup to make one loaf of bread. The remainder of the barm can be fed and maintained indefinitely (if I want to go to the effort), and it can be used again and again to make more loaves of bread. In fact, I'll be using the same barm to make a second and third loaf of celebration bread. Given that I'm planning to make all of the loaves in the book, I probably will maintain it for at least a while so that it won't be necessary to go through this whole process again. The author of the book, Peter Reinhart, points out that there are some strains of starter being used in San Francisco sourdough breads that have been maintained in continuous use for over 150 years. Amazing!

So, if that makes sense, you can see that the seed culture I'm making now isn't really useful for baking anything by itself. It's simply the starter for the starter. Also, it's such a small amount of flour mixed with water that the waste is negligible.

Aside from baking bread, I didn't do much of anything yesterday, although I could have. It occurs to me that I'm dragging my feet a little getting started on quilting Gingerbread Square.

It's a big quilt and I've put so much work into it, I'm a little nervous about quilting it. Having come to that realization, I'm probably as ready as I'll ever be. Someone posted a picture on Facebook of some beautiful quilting on the same quilt, and so I'm going to take some cues from her. Also, I have some ideas of my own about it. There's no time like the present, right?

As for the present, this is what it looks like outside this morning.

The outdoor cat seems pretty happy about the snow, doesn't he? His dragonfly is covered in the white stuff, and it looks as if he has a snowy mustache of his own.

Mike is about to leave for work, and he'll call to tell me how the roads are. Matthew and I are supposed to meet up for lunch today, but it's questionable whether I can make it off the hill. Mike has snow tires...I don't. So, depending on the roads, I'll either run errands today or get a start on quilting.