Experimentation

This morning my dad came to visit me, and he witnessed and aided my cooking experiments. My first endeavor was to create cheese with sour milk alone. This effort was unfortunately a miserable failure. I heated the milk just as I had seen it done in the cheese-making class, but without citric acid or rennet, my milk never properly curdled. I was a little disappointed, but as my later concoction turned out to be a success, I quickly forgot my setback with cheese.

I received my whole wheat pastry flour in the mail yesterday, made of soft winter wheat grown and milled at Frankferd Farms. I have been eager to use it, and I made delicious flatbread with it this morning. I used about 2 cups of wheat flour, less than a cup of water, about a quarter cup of my homemade butter, and a variety of fresh herbs and blended them together. It was fun to knead my bread dough!

After allowing it to sit for a little, I rolled it out and cooked it for less than 10 minutes at 450 degrees. It came out perfectly! It doesn't look like much but it tastes fantastic.

Next I'm going to try to make pasta, I can't wait!

My only other major kitchen endeavor today was to freeze 6 ears of corn. I used the same approach as last time, but after getting it all in the oven I started doing homework and lost track of time. Instead of cooking my corn for an hour, I left it in the oven for an hour and 45 minutes (woops!). Luckily only the top and bottom layers were "crisp" and all of the kernels were still usable.

I'm happy with what I accomplished today. The bread-making was extremely satisfying and I'm thrilled about having a new source of carbohydrates in my local diet.