Apple Mead Sourdough

Tomorrow me and the wife are taking my mom out for breakfast for her birthday.  It was last week so I need to suck up.  I figured I would bring over some bread to go with breakfast.  Since I still have lots of mead and the last one turned out OK but needed some tweaking I decided to have another go at the mead sourdough bread.  This time I added some apples to it so that it would be nicer for breakfast.

Get some:
• 1 Cup of Sourdough Starter.  Since my goop is still not bubbling I added a cup of goop and a tsp of yeast.
• 4 Cups Flour.  I used white flour mixed with some whole wheat.
• 2 Cups Mead
• 1 Tsp of Baking Powder
• Pinch of Salt

Also get:
• 1/2 Cup of Sugar
• 2 Cups Mead
• 2 Tsp Cinnamon
• 1 Tsp Paprika
• Some Lemon Juice
• 2 Apples skinned and chopped into cubes. I used red ones.

Now:
• In a large bowl mix the flour, mead, starter, baking powder and salt.
• In a different bowl (I used a big beer stein myself) add the sugar, mead, cinnamon and paprika.
• Give the mix a good stir.
• Coat the apples in lemon juice.
• Add them to the stein.
• Put something on the apples so they stay covered in liquid and put them in the fridge.
• Cover the bread dough and put it into a warm oven.
• Walk away for 10 hours. I went to sleep.  I'm lazy.
• Knead the dough.  I added some more mead and flour since mine had dried out.
• Flatten the dough out into a long rectangle.
• Add the apples to the top of the dough. (strain them, keep the marinade)
• Roll the dough up around the apples.  Tuck the ends under and put it into an oiled and floured bread pan.
• Walk away for an hour and let it rise.
• Paint some of the apple marinade on top of the loaf.
• Slash the top a few times.  I forgot to do this and I got big tears along the sides.  Oops.
• Cook in a 350 oven for 45 minutes.
• Take out and let cool.
• Give to your mom because you are a suck up.

I haven't actually tried this yet since I'm giving it as a gift in the morning but it looks like it will be good and it smells delicious so give it a try.  I'd imagine you don't need mead.  Maybe a nice apple cider, or apple juice, or water.  Whatever.  I just have a metric ton of mead to get rid of.

Sourdough Mead Bread

So this morning I decided I would try that sourdough mead bread idea I had the other day while writing up the recipe for mead.  In the end I got a rather mild tasting sourdough with just a hint of mead flavor.  It didn't puff up like you would expect sourdoughs to do but that's probably because I cheated.  I ended up with a crumb that was basically the same consistency as white bread from the store.

Making Mead Sourdough Bread:
• I added about a cup of my Goop to a metal bowl.  Should you be lacking in goop feel free to use the sourdough starter sitting in the back of your fridge.
• I added about 3 cups of a brown/white flour mix.
• I added about a cup and a half of warm mead.  I didn't actually boil the alcohol off, I just warmed it up.
• I added about a tsp of yeast.
• I stirred the bajezus out of it.
• I put it into a warm oven for about 6 hours to hang out.
• I took it out of its nice warm oven.
• I kneaded it for about 10 minutes. It was the nicest feeling dough I've ever made.
• I put my blob of dough back into the oven.
• I waited about 2 hours.
• I beat it up some and put it into a bread pan.
• I waited about an hour.
• I took it out of the oven.
• I preheated my oven to 350.
• I painted on some mead to make my crust crispy.
• I sprinkled some 7 grain mix onto the crust.
• I put the bread into the now hot oven.
• I walked away for 45 minutes.
• I took it out and took a fancy picture.
• I put a quarter of my mead sourdough bread directly into my belly.
• I put a quarter of my mead sourdough bread directly into my wives belly. OK she did this part on her own.
• I gave half of my mead sourdough to my mom because mothers day is coming up.

Mead Bottling Day - Making Mead

G'day again. No update on the goop today. It's still goop in a jar beside my coffee pot. I fed it, I stirred it, it gets old. So today let's play with some mead.

It's my day off and I've been procrastinating on finishing my mead for a good month now so I figure today is as good a day as any. I made this particular mead (and recipe) for my friend Brian. Since I'm a few months behind my timeline I'm sure he'll be more than happy to take it off my hands once I finish bottling it.

Anyway, while I'm bottling my mead, here's how you can make your own. I know this is off topic, but hey, get used to it. Besides, mead and bread go great together. You can drink mead with bread or just dump the mead right into the goop (Boil off the alcohol and let it cool first). Mmmm.

In typical me fashion I have a recipe for this that I don't ever follow so here's a "best guess" as to what I threw into the mix based on remnants of ingredients I found leftover and what I kind of remember there being.

Equipment you need:
• Primary Fermentor (Big bucket that holds 6ish gallons and has a lid)
• 2 Secondary Fermentors with airlocks (Get "better bottles" from a wine making shop.)
• Siphon Hose (Don't use the same one you use to steal gas.)
• Big Spoon (Like 3 feet long, or anything you can stir a full bucket with)
• Wine Filter (Optional, but you can rent them cheap.)

You can always get the equipment on sale at your local wine making shop.  Usually they will sell you everything you need bundled together with a kit of wine at a super low price just so that you will keep coming back to buy more wine kits.  If it isn't on sale when you go, find a new wine shop.  The one you're at is an overpriced haven for hipsters and a den of evil.

Ingredients:
• 7 kg Bucket of Honey.  Go to a farmers market if you can.  Its cheaper and you want the tastiest honey you can find.  None of that crap from the plastic bear.  A good honey is the most important ingredient, spend some money and get the good stuff.  7 kg works out to about 1 1/2 large ice cream pails worth.  Don't have enough? Add some sugar.  Too much? have a sandwich with it and dump the rest in. You don't need to be exact here.  Just remember what you did for the next time so you can adjust it to your taste.
• 5 Gallons Warm Water (I use a water cooler jug, boil one pot and add it back)
• 1 Jug of Apple Juice (The kind without preservatives). 

Make sure the juice, the water and the honey fit into the bucket.  Remove some water if you need room.

• 1 to 500 Cinnamon Sticks
• Cloves (mine doesn't get cloves, I'm allergic, but they make it better)

And some cracked out chemicals:
• 25 Tsp Acid Blend (I bet there's math here, but really, they sell you a huge bag. You may as well use it all, how often do you need this stuff.)
• 1 1/4 Tsp Wine Tannin
• 5 Tsp Yeast Nutrient (I probably used more but this is based on some "Nick" math and the original recipe)
• 5 or 6 Campden Tablets (1 per gallon, crush em)
• Optional: Baggie of Wine Yeast (Ask the guy at the store what kind you want, he's smarter than me and yeast is a snooty business).  You can just let your mix ferment naturally without adding yeast but its riskier and with the time frame involved on mead I tend to like to guarantee success.  If you are feeling really brave, throw some sourdough starter in there and let me know what happens.
• Optional: 3 Tsp Bentonite (What is Bentonite? Dirt.)  Do NOT cheap out here and just use dirt.  Dirt experts make Bentonite and the stuff is dirt cheap anyway.  Stir it in at the start and it will help clear out some of the crud from your mix.  Try and leave all the Bentonite stuck to the bottom of your bucket when you syphon the first time.  As an added bonus you can eat your left over Bentonite. Yup, people do it.  Little bit o' dirt makes ya healthy they say.

All the cracked out chemical ingredients are like a dollar at your local wine making shop. Bring the recipe and look like a deer in headlights, they will hook you up after mocking you for even attempting to make mead.  As an added bonus most of these chemicals come in little vials and baggies.  When you get some water boiling and your mixture into your bucket it really helps add to that mad scientist/crazy witch motif when you've got random vials of stuff to throw in.  Make sure to laugh maniacally/cackle as you stir.

Right, now that you have all your ingredients and the guy at the wine store had ample time to mock you while you gazed in wonder at all the shiny toys you really need to buy we are ready to go. Technically what we are making is a mix between a cyser and metheglin, not actually mead. Well, unless you consider those mead. The Vikings will probably come to kill you for bastardizing their drink either way. Anyway, my brain says honey + water/booze = mead and no Vikings yet.

Instructions:
• You want your honey to be pourable so heat it if you have to.  I microwaved mine for like 10 minutes because I couldnt even get a knife in it to get it out of its bucket.  I'd imagine classier people probably do something with a double boiler.
• Mix everything except the yeast and the campden tablets into the warm water that's in your bucket.
• Wait for the mixture to cool to around room temperature.
• Add yeast (be sure it's not too hot when you do this, yeast goes retarded when it's hot and makes little retarded yeast babies. We care about the intelligence of our yeast.  Different yeast will have different "too hot" points, so ask when you are buying it.)
• Depending on what side of the fence you sit on, you can stir or not stir. Shakespeare doesn't care. I stir the yeast in.
• Put lid on bucket.
• Walk away for a week. If you have OCD you can stir the mix a few times a day.

Dump a bunch of goop into a bucket and stir it for a week, where have I heard these instructions before...

• Siphon the mix into a secondary fermentor, try and splash it around some when it goes in. Splashing it all over helps to get rid of some of the carbonation.  Leave out the disgusting goop at the bottom when you are Siphoning.
• Stir the ever-loving crap out of it till your arms fall off and you want to cry.
• Put the airlock on and walk away.
• Wait three weeks.
• Siphon it into the other bottle. Stir the ever loving crap out of it. Attach the airlock and walk away.
• Wait three months.
• Add the crushed up campden tablets and stir them in until they are dissolved.
• "Rack" your mead. No no, put the ropes away. Just siphon your mix into the other bottle. Try not to splash it around and don't stir it.
• Rack it every three months or so.
• It's good to bottle when it turns clear. I've never seen it turn clear myself so I think this is a myth. But hey, all the recipes say so. Whatever, mine turns like the picture. Usually you are good to go after about a year. It's not going to mind if you wait a little longer.
• Optional Nick approved step. Since I primarily make this to laugh at my rampant alcoholic friends I usually dump in a bottle of everclear before I bottle it. Rum tastes nice too. If you aren't a rampant alcoholic feel free to skip this step, but hey, if you have some laying around.
• Siphon it into bottles so you can store it and drink it later. Or don't. I put mine into brown pop bottles for stylish redneck points. They sell them at every wine making store.
• Wait a few months after it gets bottled before you drink it.

Nicks Notes:
• Whenever you are making your own alcohol make sure everything is sterilized before you use it.  Every time, no exceptions.  This is extra true for mead.  Mead takes a year.  If you screw it up on the first day, it takes a year for you to know. A year.  Don't mess around here.  This isn't goop in a mason jar that you can throw out after a few days if it doesn't work.
• When you aren't playing with the mead keep it in cool dark place. Booze is like vampires really, the dissolving and turning into crap in the sun kind. Not the sparkly kind. Though sparkly booze is good too. OK, back on topic now.
• Don't drink it before its good and ready (like when you are siphoning it). It will knock you on your, err, duff and make you puke all over your floor. Trust me, I'm an idiot, we know these things.
• I think with everything together (including equipment and a wine kit) my start up costs for this project were right around $110. When you consider that you get 6 gallons of mead out of the deal and after the first time the equipment is free it turns out to be fairly affordable.
• When you go to bottle the last time it isn't a bad idea to rent a wine filter (or buy one if you are going to do this a few times). Depending how thick your mead is the filter can turn into a real mess though. I had to replace my pads three or four times the first time I made mead. The second batch all went through on one set of pads. Other people "cold filter" mead. I'm lazy and that looked like work.
• Once your mead is done you can freeze some and collect the liquid that doesn't freeze. It's a nice liqueur (and it has a snooty name too, but I don't remember it). It's crazy sweet and I don't personally like it, but, other people swear by the stuff. So give it a try. It's not like there's going to be a shortage of mead once you're done, you may as well play with some.
• You can of course replace the apple juice and spices with anything else that you want as long as there are no preservatives in it.  Or just leave them out entirely for purist mead.  Just remember that whatever juice you add is going to ferment so make sure you like ~fill in the blank~ cider if it's going into the bucket.  If you are just going to add cider be sure to boil off the alcohol so it doesn't kill your yeast.  Or just add the cider at the end (with the everclear).

Making the Goop

Somewhere half way through a Magic Bullet infomercial when I stopped being amazed at how damn well the things will juice vegetables I don’t own it struck me that maybe I could be doing something more productive with my time. Thus the Bread From Goop idea was born.

I’ve been reading online that people make these magic jars of goop called sourdough starters and thus save themselves the $2.50 that jars of yeast would otherwise cost them. I figured this I must have. Now due to the fact that I was reading about this a few weeks ago when my "Hey I should make bread" urges first struck I didn’t really remember too much about this magic goop but I figured how hard can goop be.

So here we go:

(My method for making sourdough starter may kill you....read somewhere else if you are a hippy....otherwise...you know...carry on)

I remembered that this goop was made by gold farmers or something and it struck me that people in Korea may not know about hygiene so I went with the non sterilized method here myself. For those of you who like life you may want to think about cleaning your equipment up some before you start. I figure some guy 5000 years ago probably didn’t worry about it when he was making bread, so I won’t either.

You're going to need:
• A large mason jar (Get a pickle jar or something if you are addicted to 10 dollar meals.)
• Some water
• Some flour like substance
• A mixy thing
• Some cheese cloth
• The outside lid part of your mason jar (or an elastic if you are a fan of the 10 dollar meals)

To Start:
• My jar was nice and clean from when I washed it a week ago and put it damp into my spice cupboard, but you may want to give yours a spit shine (especially if there is still pickles in it...pickles are bad here).
• Pour in your water (I used the water that was sitting in my tea pot from 2 days ago....). You want to put a cup or so into the jar.
• Pour in your flour.

For the flour I went with:
• 3 Tbs of bleached white flour
• 3 Tbs of whole wheat flour
• 3 Tbs of rye flour
• 3 Tbs of barley flour
• 3 Tbs of 7 grain mix
• 3 Tbs of whole oats
• I'd imagine if you can make bread with it you can throw it in the goop. I got a nice pancakey substance that smelled a lot like a barn.

Now:
• Stir your sourdough starter till its goop (I read someplace that goop doesn’t like metal so I used some wood chop sticks)
• Put your cheese cloth over your jar
• Put your outside lid dealy on to secure the cloth (Or ... elastic...twine...hair....whatever)
• Now this next part is going to take a lot of TV. Stir your goop every 12 hours or whenever you decide "Hey, I wanna stir me some goop". Feed your goop every 24 hours or whenever you decide "Hey, I wanna feed me some goop".

Feeding the goop:
• Throw half of it into your neighbor’s yard.
• Follow original goop recipe again into the same jar.

As I’m writing this I just got done the stir your goop every 12 hours stage so we'll see if I'm alive in a few weeks. I'll keep ya posted. Or maybe this blog will just end here. I guess then you'll know.

Lets Start With Some Homemade Bread

Its 6:30 Sunday morning and I just got off work. My wife is coming home after a weekend with her parents and bringing the mother in-law with her. I figure, lets make some bread. So I start with my basic bread recipe.  You can pretty much make any bread you want with this as the base.  It won't be artisan bread to the snooty but it works for me and it tastes good.

Get some:
• Water
• Flour
• Yeast
• Something to spice up your bread
• A big metal bowl, a sifter, a whisk and 3 hours on a Sunday morning with nothing better to do since there is crap on TV.

In your bowl:
• Add water. I'd guess 3 cups. I just fill a plastic liquid measuring cup with warm water. The markings came off in the dishwasher so it's anyones guess.
• Add yeast. I just shake some out of the jar, I'd imagine its a teaspoon or two.
• Stir, or don't.
• Go watch some TV till there’s some commercials.
• Add some flour. I just fill my sifter, I'd guess its about 4 cups. This morning I'm going with bleached white flour. Sift it all in to the bowl while whisking it. Now I usually plop in a cup or so of something else to make it less boring. Today, some 7 whole grain mix from the bulk barn.
• Turn your oven on for a minute or so, turn it off, then put your bowl in there.
• Go watch some TV. An hour or so of the cooking network will do you.
• Kneed the dough into something that resembles bread dough. I use my hands because I hate cleaning bread machines.
• I add flour as I go while I kneed it because I don’t really like to measure and I generally don’t care that much. You want to end up with something that’s just a little bit too sticky for your liking.
• Rip it in half

To one half I added: 1 Tsp of Montreal steak spice 1Tsp of Tandoori spice 1 Tsp of paprika 1 Tsp of garlic powder 1 Tsp of onion powder 1 Tsp of salt

The other half got: 1 pinch of salt

• Flatten your half ball of dough out and add the spices on top. Roll it up and kneed it some more. I read somewhere that you want to let the dough ferment then add the spices after. I’ve never noticed a difference but this morning I’m feeling fancy and I want 2 different loaves of bread. Add seasoning to the flour at the start if you want.
• Kneed the bread for 10 to 15 minutes then put it in your oven. I have a ceramic pizza stone in my oven full time that I plop it on.
• Go watch another slap chop infomercial. This morning it was Magic Bullet. I suppose the type of infomercial isn't that important.
• Take your dough out and punch it around some. It was saying bad things about your mom after all.
• Punch the halves into a flat sheet then roll them up into a tube shape. Tuck your ends under and pinch them in. Put them into 2 oiled and floured bread molds.
• Put the dough back into your oven. Turn it on for another minute if its cooled down because you are an idiot and left it open while you were working.
• By this time you may get some sub par cooking show like 10 dollar meals. Yes! An episode or 2 and you are good to go.
• You can paint a coating on to your bread at this point if you like. Egg white will make it nice and brown. Oil is a good choice. If you want a nice hard French crust paint on some ice water. Whatever turns your crank, I've even gone with vodka. Today I went with olive oil. I also cut some nice fancy slits into the top of my bread so that it was nice and photogenic for its cameo.
• Turn the oven on at 350. Let the oven heat first if you want crunchier bread otherwise be lazy and just leave the bread in there while it heats for a softer crust. I preheat my oven because all the snooty folk seem to go that way.
• Another 40 minutes of cooking network and I had myself some nice looking bread shaped things.
• Pop the loaves out of their mould and on to a cooling rack.
• Go to sleep and let the wife and her mom figure out if it’s edible in a few hours when they get home.
• When I woke up they were still alive so I had some.

Mmmmmmmmm