1-8-10 *VIDEO INCLUDED*

Bread Making Video


PAUL KNEADING DOUGH
LARA TEACHING JEN TO MAKE BREAD












SUNRISE AT OUR CABIN AFTER SNOW FALL












It had been cold all week, but last night it was cold and snowy. We woke up early as usual and headed down the snow covered trail to the main house to learn how to make bread in Paul and Lara's mud oven. We didn't know we were embarking on a 10 hour adventure when we left our cabin at dawn.

The first step was to sprout the wheat grains, and to food process them which we did earlier this week. This morning we mixed our bread starter with oil, flour, honey, salt, and yeast. We then hand kneaded it for 20 total minutes, all four of us taking 5 minute shifts. While we waited for the dough to rise, about two hours, we added wood to the mud oven to try to get it up to 600 degrees Fahrenheit. Typically you can get the oven to that temperature rather quickly. The mud oven is normally hot in plenty of time so after the dough has risen, after you have shaped it into loaves, and after those loaves have risen for an additional hour, it's ready for baking. But due to the cold weather, and the fact that Paul and Aaron, whose responsibility was to split wood and make sure the oven reached the proper temperature, got involved in complex schematic electricity discussions, the oven took longer than usual to heat up. So during the down time, Jen sat in the main house living room cataloguing and categorizing books, and Aaron also helped Paul pick up a new energy efficient refrigerator from town. Instead of putting the bread in the oven to bake by noon, we didn't put it in until well after 4pm.

Jen and Lara spent a considerable amount of time together preparing the bread when Aaron was with Paul. It was the first time either of us have had more than a few minute conversation with Lara since we've arrived. Most of our time so far has been spent with Paul, and it was a nice change of pace, because we both like her. Not that we don't like Paul, but he's more our boss, and Lara is more of a warm loving mother. She gives us jams, buys us groceries, and even made us lunch today. Tomorrow there is promise of her making us waffles for breakfast.

Finally the mud oven was ready and we baked 12 loaves of bread. They got a little burned because it was challenging to monitor the oven's temperature since outside it was a bitter 15 degrees. But the bread tasted great, and we will enjoy our 4 loaves for the rest of our time here. Word is this bread gets better as it ages for the first three days, and can last over a week and a half without getting stale or moldy, so we're super excited to have lots of bread as we've been rationing our one small loaf of bread since we arrived.

By the by, our pocohicara is delicious. We cracked all the nuts last night, and let them simmer on our wood stove over night in water. Tonight, after returning from a full day of bread baking at the main house, we entered our "home sweet home" to a wonderful aroma of cooked hickory nuts. We completed the milk making process by straining the nuts out of the water/nut/shell mixture, and through a series of more complex steps, arrived at a piping hot, delicious, drink with a touch of maple syrup to warm our bellies this evening.