elainegrey | (no subject)

A pottery tray covered with an array of purple popcorn ears

My 2021 harvest from my selected purple popcorn! Progress! Everything was purple toned this year. I still lost some whole ears to mold, tops of ears to worms, but it wasn't too bad. Growing later in the year worked and not rushing to get a crop in. Can imagine planting more with sweet potatoes. The sweet potato failure this year i blame on the rabbits. Fie. And, i say failure, but i won't really know until i harvest. The vines haven't been crazy rampant.

Monday went pretty well personally, meh at home. I got things done according to my to do list; less so at work. A little overwhelmed by minutiae plus a "yam" (ie: something that has become unpleasant to an outsized amount.) I am spending lots of time on to do list management: i hope it's productive and not creating more to keep up with (record) than i need to. Today, Tuesday seemed about the same. A significant yard thing was mowing the steep banks up by the road and eradicating the stilt grass. I'm not sure that any wildflower plants survived under the blanket from last fall's seeding. I'll see about scattering seeds from the "meadow."

In the evening i started a new sourdough starter, Kitta Grau. I tried a 50-50 mix of water and rye, it seems far too stiff. Tonight i adjusted to 50-25-25 water, rye, previous starter. If that works, it will soon be essentially two parts water, on part rye. I guess rye flour's hydration properties are significantly different than wheat's.

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They look great!

Thanks!

Colourful!

Apparently corn kernel color is an easy attribute to select. It's been fun to see the colors change from year to year.

Beautiful corn!

And yeah, rye requires and soaks up fluid like nobody's business.

So i did add more water the second feeding, but finally started reading the rye baking book i've bought -- partly because of your comment. That book does have equal water to rye. "Thick paste," it describe. Well, the first batch was beyond paste, but i think the third feeding back to equal rye water portions has a decent texture. It also notes this is not so much starter as a sour-er.

Ah, I can believe that souring-not-starting thing. In my experience with rye flour its relationship with yeast is Curious and Obscure.

Have you worked with rye flour much? Please tell me your secrets!

I have no secrets, just a trail of attempts from mid 2019 well into 2020. I cam back from Sweden and Estonia with a delight in the dark dark rye, to the point of watching this ad over and over. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tzHpUWsXvGE So i found this recipe which was nearly incomprehensible https://estoniancuisine.com/2017/02/23/how-to-do-estonian-black-bread-leib/ and started trying. I made some horrible horrible loaves. I bought 25 lbs of rye flour (right before the pandemic). I sprouted rye to malt it and toasted it in the oven. I tried to keep notes. I made one loaf that pulled the nonstick coating off one of my loaf pans. I bought sunflower seeds and flax seeds. I left out mushy messes and tough bricks for raccoons and possums. I scoured the internet for recipes for no-wheat rye recipes. I invested in a pullman pan.

Eventually i bought The Rye Baker and let my culture Hans die and just stopped. I've got plenty of rye taking up space in the pantry, seeds, malted rye.... all just waiting for me to start over. So this time, i'm going to give it a go again with tested recipes from a cook book. Except i am already stuck with the flour i have and i am already saying to myself "oh, i'll just substitute my flour in that recipe" or "maybe i can just soak rye berries and blend them up instead of buying rye meal" or -- and i need to follow the blinking directions for a while.

You sound more systematic and determined than I have ever been. So I can't tell whether you like or do not like The Rye Baker?

It's been helpful to finally read and have a bunch of professionally written recipes all in one place. The author has a table of features for each recipe -- fraction of flour that is rye, what sort of leavening, and some other details, that will make it easy to skim through and find the ones that interest me.

But the starter is finally bubbling as of this morning! Yesterday and today i took the discard and made a simple flatbread by just adding enough additional flour to the discard. Yum.

Hurrah bubbles!

Also: I have now bought The Rye Baker.

The sweet potato failure this year i blame on the rabbits. Fie.

You need coyotes in your neighborhood. My neighbors around the corner were avid gardeners back in my suburban days, and they were always delighted when the coyotes rotated dens and ended up near us.

I think clearing the big fenced area for the dog (and cats and fruit trees) spooked the foxes that must have been keeping the rabbits under control. I hear coyotes periodically when i stand out in the dark before bed. They're just a little too interested in cats for me to enthuse about increased proximity. If the owls and hawks could pay a bit more attention, i'd be delighted.

Hurray for purple!