nw2s

What to do with the endless supply of kefir once you get your grains cranking away? No choice but to make frozen yogurt. It’ll also work with any other yogurt, but if you’re going to buy it, best to buy some of the strained greek yogurt to save you the trouble… Unless of course, you want to strain your own and save the whey for my bread recipe.

• 4 c strained yogurt
• 0.5 c Really Raw Honey
• 180g granulated sugar
• 2 tsp lemon zest
• 3 tbs lemon juice
• 1 tbs grated ginger

You want to strain about 8 cups of yogurt, or enough to get about 4 cups of the thick stuff. Add the sugar, honey, zest, juice, and ginger and mix well. You can add more ginger if you want a little more bite. I think the next time, I would also add a tad more lemon. Put it all in the fridge to cool nicely. Then follow the directions for whatever ice cream maker you’re using.

Here’s a nice 10 mile loop around Cortland and then over to Mt Airy for a little hill climbing. One of the hills is really tough, but coming back on the other side is nice. Some great curvy hills. Edit: Here’s another 10 miler that avoids the horrible hill and runs past Croton Reservoir instead. Turns out the name of that
hill (I am not lying) is Torment Hill.

We got a surface in the office! I can’t really talk about the project I’m working on, but I will say that I’m determined to get some version of the satellite tracker on it – It offers a very interesting interaction model that could be a fun way to visualize and interact with orbits. 

One problem is that the SDK is under wraps so when you run into problems there’s really not much of a community to turn to. The MS Surface developer’s blog offers little in the way of hard examples, offering more of a list of cool stuff they’re working on and why this thing is going to be cool when the masses get a hold of them.

I’d love to offer up some more info, but am under an NDA! Here’s a little peek at our developer station until I can talk more.

I’ve been making yogurt using the simplest methods out there. We like it thick, so I usually drain off some of the whey. (There is only one better use for a chemex coffee pot!) I usually use milk in my bread recipe, but I thought this might be a good opportunity to make use of the whey. I actually like yeasty bread better than sour dough, but Barb likes sourdough better. This was also a good compromise – having both the tartness of the whey and the flavor of the yeast. The recipe makes two loaves. It’s based on an earlier recipe but uses a stand mixer instead of the food processor.

• 1 1/3 cup whole milk
• 1 1/3 cup acid whey (filtered from yogurt)
• 4 tbs unsalted butter
• 6 tbs Really Raw Honey (that shit’s good)
• 2 pkts active dry yeast
• 2 lb 5 oz unbleached all-purpose flour
• 4 tsp salt

Heat the liquids in a small saucepan until the temp is 110 or 115 using an instant read thermometer. You will need 2 2/3 cups of liquid in all. Feel free to vary the ratio of whey to milk to taste. Also, I like the tase of the honey and am usually a little heavy handed with it. With bread, since there’s so few ingredients, the taste of the individual pieces really comes through. The raw honey has a great strong taste – try it! Once the butter’s melted and it’s all still 110 degrees, whisk in the yeast to dissolve. Most recipes call for you to “proof” the yeast, but just getting it dissolved is good enough.

Add the flour and salt to a mixer and mix to combine. On a low speed, add the yeast/liquid mixture only as fast as the flour will absorb it. The dough should form a ball and pull away from the sides. Continue to knead for 5 minutes. It should remain sticky.

Place the kneaded dough in an oiled bowl and allow to rise for one hour in a warm spot until it’s doubled in size. If the dough is too sticky, oil your hands and the worksurface instead of using flour

Remove the dough, divide it in two (i use a scale to try to get the two halves as close as possible) and puch it down into a size that will fit into a 5×9 bread pan. Place it into a buttered bread pan and allow to rise for another 30-45 minutes.

Put a sheet pan or pie pan with 2-3 cups of warm water in the bottom rack of a 350 degree oven. Brush the top of the bread with olive oil and place on the second rack. Cook until the internal temperature of the bread reaches 195 degrees using an instant read thermometer. Remove from the pan and place on a wire rack to cool. Don’t forget to pull out the water pan before it boils dry. Wait for the bread to cool completely before slicing.