Shelby

Good to know. That hadn't occurred to me.

i wondered that too. I washed the containers but there must have been some kind of bad guy in the one that I missed.

Keep going. I think mine is going to work. I'll post a picture in a few hours and you can tell me what you think.

White bass last night

No, my self made starter blew up, blew out of the jar and then died on me lol. I shall try again. Yes, I think that sandwich bread would make good croutons--but not this time because we are enjoying the toast too much So, some good news and some bad news: My wheat starter is active! Very bubbly when I took the lid off this morning. So, I'm moving on to step 3 of the pineapple juice method Wheat: Bad news: My rye starter molded! What the heck???? Same conditions as the wheat version,so I don't know what happened. You can see the white fuzzy mold on the right side of the container here: So, I'm throwing that out. Sigh. At least the wheat one is doing good.

Made Ronnie's favorite last night. Chicken fried venison.

I won't lie. I WANT company here. I'm so far over my head. It's a learning curve. It's not fast and easy. I took the day off today and probably will tomorrow--gives us time to eat my experiments lol. BUT the bread tastes amazing. Better than homemade and not making your own flour. It's that good.

@rotuts I couldn't be more excited that you got a mill!

@Barrytm Thank you so much for all of the great advice. I definitely am jumping into the deep end of the pool......the good thing is that I don't know what I don't know lol. I have a wonderful scale and I definitely understand why weighing is better than measuring by cup amounts so I'll stick to recipes that go by weight for sure. I'm keeping notes, too. Plus, I am going to document it all here. And yes, I've yet to see anything but a perfect loaf of bread in all my looking around the internet. I'm definitely of the mind that it doesn't have to look perfect as long as it tastes good. First, I'll get the bad news out of the way. This happened: And then the next day it was extremely watery and did NOT smell good at all. So, it's back to square one. I'm going to start another today and use bottled water instead of my tap/well water and see if that makes a difference. My two pineapple guys are doing wonderful, though. I'm supposed to feed them today so I'll do that in a bit. Annnnnd, on to the bread. While I'm waiting for a starter to work, I decided to go ahead and bake using yeast and vital wheat gluten. I baked two different loaves yesterday. Just for fun I wanted to try making the No Knead Instant Pot bread using 100% Hard Red Winter Wheat berries (I've only used that kind so far in order to better be able to keep track of results). I've made this several times using AP flour and we like it. I followed the recipe exactly as written, using whey, except I added 2 T. of Vital Wheat Gluten. Here it is after the 3 hours in the IP Here it is after resting for the 30 mins before baking It looks and feels very much like the dough I've made using AP flour so I felt like this wasn't going to be a complete failure. Out of the oven This is a rustic bread and using the 100% made it even more so. We really liked the flavor. It's like bread, only better Next time I feel like I should add a bit more liquid/whey and reduce the baking time by 5 minutes. It didn't rise quite as much as it does using the AP flour so maybe those changes will help. The second loaf is a recipe I stumbled upon from Serious Eats for 100% whole wheat bread and it uses the cuisinart to mix the dough. It's a sandwich bread that you bake in a loaf pan. My feelings from the beginning were that the dough needed more flour, but I stuck to the recipe because I didn't trust myself. I still don't know if that was what was wrong (I weighed all the ingredients and followed the recipe exactly like it's written) but it didn't rise. Here is the dough after the autolyse and a run in the cuisinart After this, you let it double in size, which it did (forgot to take a picture) and then you're supposed to shape it and put it in a loaf pan. There was no shaping, more like pouring. Then you're supposed to let it rise until it's 2 1/2 inches above the pan in the center. That didn't happen. It sat there for 3 hours and barely got to the top of the lip. I was sure this would be a complete failure, but I went ahead and baked it in the Steam Girl (cuisinart steam oven) --figured the bread setting might help a bit. After baking: It looks like banana bread lol. Was very difficult to get out of the pan, even though I greased it. I have to say--I'm impressed. Even though it doesn't look pretty, this bread is good, ya'll. It's not heavy--you can see the holes. The flavor is so good. Again, it's like bread, only better. It made excellent toast this morning. So, all-in-all, I'm pleased. Yes, I have a lot of learning and experimenting to do, but, on my first two tries, I didn't make bread door-stops.

The gardening and farming for us has been quite challenging this year due to the massive flooding. Most of our field corn was wiped out and we have now re-planted. A lot of the garden--and the field corn seeds have had trouble sprouting. The ground was so flooded...and then the sun beat down and basically baked the top layer of soil to the point that it's so hard and crusty that the little plants are having trouble bursting through. So, we'll see what we end up with. Snapped some pictures this morning. We have 3 different gardens this year. One will have pumpkins and other odds and ends, one has the asparagus, a few tomato plants and a lot of red potatoes. All of the cucumbers I've planted have looked great for a few days and then they up and die. Arrrgh. I hate to think of summer without fresh cucumbers from the garden. Anyway, here are some pics of the main garden: Jalapeños and bells Radishes Red potatoes Red, yellow and white onions--the onions certainly loved all of the water we got Beans--lots of the seeds didn't sprout Some basil Mustard greens and collard greens okra Sweet corn-again lots didn't come up About 60 tomato plants Squash

Instant Pot potato salad, SV'd pork tenderloin and beans and garden veggies

Everyone's food looks so good. @liuzhou I'm always jealous of that insanely fresh shrimp that you get. Venison tostadas Minus the sour cream. As I was carrying it to the table, I dropped it. Broke the bowl . Hot wings and salad. Used the last of my brother-in-law's homemade sriracha. I'm hoping if I give the empty bottle back he'll get the hint and make me more this summer. Last night I had a craving for French dressing so I made some for salad along with spaghetti and venison meatballs.

Roasted chicken, mustard greens and scalloped potatoes

Ok. Using the pineapple juice method, I now have two more starters going: These little cans are perfect since you only use 1/4 of a cup per each. These both should be ready to use by next Wednesday.