Bread, bread and more bread and sourdough bread

I make bread quite often, but it never comes out quite right. It is fine, but not amazing. I have come to the conclusion that this is because the bread flour they sell in the supermarket here just isn't great. Possibly because it is a small supermarket, but I think more because France has such great bakeries there isn't much interest in homemade bread so they don't have the variety we have in the UK.

I had a sourdough starter a few years ago, but did not keep it up. I have brought some bread flour from the uk and started a new starter. On holiday last week I made quite a few bread products to get in to practice.

Here is the starter. It is going better than the previous one because I have realised I was starving the other one which was indicated by it forming a brown liquid on top. Outside the fridge they need approx a third of their weigh removing every day and replacing with 50% water 50% flour. If you keep it in the fridge you need to do this about one a week instead of every day. I am keeping this one in the fridge.

You can use other proportions of flour and water, but this 50:50 flour and water is called a 100% hydration starter which is what I have gone for as it makes calculations in recipes simple.

 These are sourdough English muffins. I think the dough was a little bit too wet.

But they came out pretty well. There are now plenty in the freezer for Doug to take out and toast for weekday lunches

Sourdough pizza

A really really dud loaf that spread out way too much when rising. Actually it tasted fine, but the shape was no good.

Crumb not too bad

So I got a proofing basket

The first loaf from this came out as the best loaf of bread EVER!
I used the no-knead and baking in a casserole dish method
The dough is 67% hydration

450g flour (strong white)
50g flour (strong white for the morning)
100g 100% hydration starter
320g water
5g salt (1 tsp)

Mix together the flour, liquid and starter (but not the final 50g of flour for the morning or the salt)
Leave to rise overnight
Add the final bit of flour and the salt and mix well
Put in the proofing basket as per any instructions you find on the internet - it goes with the smooth side at the bottom.

Tip out of the basket into the casserole dish, or on to whatever you are going to cook the loaf on and bake as normal.

Beautiful!

Spinning

Coo man (that's what we call the nice man who sold us the highlands) gave us some alpaca wool. I have set about washing it as all wool off animals that have been outdoors is FILTHY. I will then need to card it.

In the mean time I have been practicing my spinning on some wool I bought before we moved out here. The advice was don't try to learn to spin on wool you have cut and carded yourself because you will have done that a bit shonkily and then the next step will be hard too - so buy yourself some nice professionally prepared wool to start on. It is quite hard and what I have done so far has lumpy bits and skinny bits and is very uneven. I presume it is like knitting and if I just keep at it it will start getting better.

I have also washed some of our sheeps wool and hope to have a go at that too.

Pregnant cows

Buttercup has a nasty cut on one of her teats. Not sure how she got it, the most likely theory is that she managed to stand on it as she stood up. It happens apparently.

But more excitingly we think she is pregnant! This is exciting and a surprise because she was AIed on the 10th of Sept (Doug's birthday - we were taking the highland to the bull and Janet waited in for the AI man), but we saw her in heat a couple of times after she had been AIed - we thought..
This photo shows, not very clearly, what is called the milk vein, which is a big vein across each side of the belly which is feeding the udder as it fills out and then makes milk. The vein is across the white bit and has various crusty bits of dirt on it.

This is the vein on Bluebell who was inseminated twice and looks to have taken the 2nd time. This is a clearer picture, but in real life both cows veins look similar.

This is Bif (Rostbif is his full name), he is Buttercups 2015 calf. We hope to slaughter him soon

Bluebell close up

This is Bluebell from behind. Her udder is starting to fill in and the low bump on the right is a baby bump. On the left it is the rumen.

 Here you can see Buttercups udder looking big

 This is Buttercup with big udder and HUGE bump out the right (less huge than with Bif at this stage though!)

This is Islay who we hope is also pregnant. Highlands have smaller calves. It is probably 6 weeks till she is due so hopefully she is pregnant, but hard to say. We think maybe her teats look slightly bigger but hard to see with all the hair

Hainoa is the same. We hope she is pregnant, but hard to say we can see signs

We are so excited about Buttercup! Really really hoping the highlands are in the club too.

Holiday

I had a week off work at the end of May. Amongst other things we did a LOT of eating

Lasagne

Burgers

Mini pizza

Very delicious spicy bean and pork stew

We also went camping for a night. Rode the horses. Put together new cages for the rabbits. Had friends to dinner. Went out in town for dinner. And generally had a very nice relaxing time in the sun eating and drinking too much - but also doing some useful things like shearing the sheep, planting some things in the veg garden and strimming various things.

Rabbits - hurrah!

As mentioned previously, we treated the three most recent litters with Metoxyl. Thankfully this seems to have finally done the trick and they have all survived. We are so relieved as it is not only very sad to see them suffer and die, but it meant we were not getting many rabbits to eat. Well, technically a few have died, but that was because they escaped and the dog caught them.
They were small (one was 3 months which was a decent size and the other 2 only 4 weeks) but all were tasty and very tender bbqed on the pig.

This is probably one of the ones we ate, but it was a few weeks older than this when we ate it.

We now have 20 growing kits and the mums are pregnant again (or hopefully anyway as the mating looked successful). Soon we will have so many we don't know what to do with them!

We have bought new lawn cages now that the operation seems to be on track. They are gabions which are actually for filling with stones and building walls with.

They arrived flat packed

They came with all the pieces joined, we just needed to join all the upright edges and put in a slanting piece that you can kind of see here to hold grass/hay. I have also ordered little tarpolines to cover the top and one side. We hope that they can stay in them over the winter too. It is much easier to clean them out when they live on the ground like this as they just have to be moved to a new spot. They will still need to go in to the cages to give birth and raise the kits to weaning age (about 6 weeks)

We found that these will fit out through the holes. Which is quite surprising and how we came to have several to bbq as in the pictures above. We need to think again where they will live between weaning and about 2-3 months when their skulls get too big to fit through the squares.

Perfect weather, perfect ride

Lovely ride, perfect weather. Perfect horses.

The view

Doug and Daisy leading the way. 

We have tried thermal photos of Owen's feet as slight worry he has an abscess forming.

Bit inconclusive as the right one does seem to be slightly hotter but not much when we looked from lots of different angles.

Camping with the pig

We like going camping various places in the mountains. We go just for a night, partially because we cannot leave the animals longer than that and partially because it is quite tiring. We don't always go to bed as early as we should and yet wake up with the sunrise.

We need a lot of creature comforts with us

The tent is a pop up one. We have tried various sleeping bags. We have settled on a double one each! In the summer they are good to sleep on and in spring and autumn they are plenty cosy.

View from just above the campsite

This is our groovy new bbq called an ozpig. It is a mini portable wood burning stove that you can cook on. It is only slightly portable at around 20kg!

View in the morning on our way back down