Beard on Bread

James Beard is, to me, the Gene Logsdon of cooking, freakishly knowledgeable in their fields, a bit cranky and quite no-nonsense.  I guess that when it comes to farming and cooking I don’t really have time to read someone’s opinion, I want the facts and just facts.  Both men just tell it like it is and this cookbook is no different.  If you want to know how to make good bread,  Beard On Bread is the book for you.  

The introduction begins thus;

Good bread is the most fundamentally satisfying of all foods; and good bread with fresh butter, the greatest of feasts.  However, unless we bake it ourselves, it is hard to come by a loaf of bread these days delicious enough to stir the senses.  We are offered spongy, plasticized, tasteless breads, presliced, doctored with nutrients and preservatives, and with about as much gastronomic importance as cotton wool.  Yet people everywhere seem to go on buying bready no matter how poor its quality, simply because it is unthinkable to live without it.  But there is no excuse for putting up with bad bread.

Well there!  Someone had to say it.  The trouble is that he said this in 1973 and commercial bread has only gotten worse.  So, here is a book that will teach you the basics of making bread and beyond. 

The first recipe, Basic White Bread has the basic recipe with several footnotes if you are beyond the fundamentals and want to be a bit adventurous. The way Beard put it; just learn this recipe because he isn’t going to keep going over the basics with each recipe.  

The book goes on to include some 100 recipes including Scottish Scones, Pain de Mie (Julia Child wouldn’t think of making sandwiches with anything else) Monkey Bread, rolls of all types and several European and Middle Eastern breads. 

There are some, such as Gene with Farming, Elizabeth Zimmerman for knitting, and Julia for anything French, in which you just do what they say.  You’ll never find a better way.  Working on my culinary degree taught me to memorize techniques and when they handed you a recipe that only included the name of the product and ingredients you could still turn out a great product, every time.  That’s the kind of book this is.  Beard teaches techniques for making great bread and assumes you will obey.



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Cast iron Cooking

Lately several of my friends have found themselves low in iron and it seems to manifest itself in sluggishness and loss of energy.   Iron is a trace mineral that supports growth and development in children, is involved in the production of hemoglobin, and helps to build resistance to disease. 

When aluminum and steel became all the rage in cookware it seems that cast iron quickly became a thing of the past and no self respecting housewife would be caught dead with one in her modern kitchen. Very quickly women from all walks of life began to suffer from severe iron deficiencies and the phenomenon occurred so rapidly that doctors everywhere began to search for answers.  When the cause was discovered, rather than dusting off the old cast iron pans, a new miracle drug came to the rescue, Carter’s Liver Pills!

So, scour yard sales for old skillets or make friends with your local cast iron restorer (one can be found at all flea markets) and get iron back on the menu. 

Caring for cast iron is easy if you understand a few key considerations.  First, you can not put cast iron in the dishwasher and soaking isn’t a good idea either but if you season it properly there is not much that will stick to the pan.  Second, cast iron warms up and cools down evenly but slowly so be careful not to burn yourself after cooking. 

Seasoning begins with a THIN coating of oil on the inside of the pan and placing it in a 300F oven for about an hour.  If your pans are rusted you can give them a good going over with steel wool to get rid of the rust and get the pan down to the cast iron.  It is much better to do several seasonings with thin coats of oil rather than putting on too much because it’s harder to get rid of than the rust – trust me!  When your pan looks black and satiny it’s ready to use.  Just add a bit of fat to the pan (I like to use duck fat) before cooking and wipe it out once it cools.

If you need to wash your pan just be sure to reseason it immediately after washing. 

Pots and Pans

Being somewhat of a collector of pots and pans, it seems that I have a different one for each and every occasion.  

From hand hammered copper pots from France to five cast iron pans I found nested in the trash outside a relative’s home, I just love cooking things.  I have owned most of my cookware for at least 15 years now and have only purchased two new items (a gorgeous Staub Dutch oven and a hand hammered copper soup pot from France both at 75% off) in the past 10 years. 

For obvious reasons, copper from France ranks up at the top but like most things French it is high maintenance (the pot will need retinning every five years or so) and there is so much they don’t tolerate; like anything acidy, (think tomatoes) and dishwashers.  Also, the copper needs to be polished regularly if you want to keep it shiny. 

Next in the collection is the All-Clad line-up.  These are hard to beat for great all-round pots and pans.  I have about eight different sizes and styles I love them all.  They are mid priced and you just can’t go wrong with this company.  TJ Maxx, Marshalls, and Tuesday Morning all sell All-Clad at huge discounts.

The smallest collection within my collection is my emanelled cast iron Le Creuset and Staub Dutch ovens and pots.  I LOVE these pots and use them whenever a good one-pot meal is called for.  They are VERY heavy but NOTHING sticks to them.  You probably couldn’t burn a meal in one if you tried but you also couldn’t carry one using one hand.  Staub makes their Dutch ovens with little bumps on the bottoms of the lids for constant basting during cooking.  These Dutch Ovens are perfect for the No Knead bread recipes circulating on the internet but you must remove the handles from the older Le Cruesset pots before taking the temperature up to 500F.  I love to throw a chicken, duck or roast in with baby potatoes and carrots, Fines Herbes, butter, a bit of wine and salt and pepper.  It never comes out wrong. 

At the bottom of the group are my cast iron pans, griddle and cornbread pan.  Even though these are the cheapest of all my skillets they are the ones that stay on the stove for easy access. The overused phrase “lasts a lifetime” is for once, no exaggeration.  Here is an item that was passed down from generation to generation, and for good reason.  These pans warm up evenly but very slowly.  They also cool down slowly so be careful not to get burned. 

I try to tell myself that I have to buy all of these different lines just to test them out so I can rate them for my customers but the truth is that I for the past 22 years I have cooked almost every meal from scratch and having the right tools for the right job really helps.  Truly though I couldn’t pick a favorite one to save my life, they all have their uses in the kitchen.  It helps me to know that I won’t have to ever buy another pot, pan or skillet and that someday Rhayna will have a wonderful collection that was well loved and lovingly used. 

Great Pyrenees: Meet Neive!

By now, most of our customers know that I am infatuated with Great Pyrenees breed of dogs.  We have bred these loveable canines for 18 years and we have placed many wonderful pups as guard dogs, livestock protectors, child minders, and just regular ole members of the family.  Pyrs are great all-round dogs; big, loveable and very protective. 

Before we even moved our chickens to our new farm we saw the hawks circling and seemed as if the buzz in the sky was that we had chickens and loads of them.  We new immediately that we needed another Pyr to stay with the chickens or we would be feeding hawks throughout the summer until not a chicken was left.  Enter Neive!  She is five months old and smart as a whip.  You will be able to see her working whenever you come out to visit the farm.

Sheep Milk: An Experiment

This is the year that I will finally milk my own sheep. After three trips to Italy seeking out all the sheep’s milk products I could find, it is finally time to make my own sheep’s milk quark, cheese and yogurt.

All things sheep are healthier than their counterparts from cows or goats.The meat and milk of sheep is highly nutritious, richer in vitamins A, B, and E, calcium, phosphorus, potassium, and magnesium than cow's milk. It contains a higher proportion of short- and medium-chain fatty acids, which have recognized health benefits.

Sheep milk can be as high as 12 percent fat and when you take a look at a new born lamb you can see that it is composed of loads of skin, bones and cuteness but not much fat so that 12 percent fat comes in handy. Here is Paschal – born on in the early hours of Pascha in our kitchen getting an extra boost of sheep colostrum. He is the perfect example of the waif sheep model.

According to many researchers, sheep milk has more conjugated linoleic acid (CLA) than the milk from pigs, horses, goats, cattle, and humans. CLA is a cancer-fighting, fat-reducing fat. Remember the – eat fat – lose fat – paradox. The fat globules in sheep milk are smaller than the fat globules in cow's milk, making sheep milk more easily digested. What we really love about sheep milk is that it tastes like melted ice cream and the yogurt is naturally thick and sweet. This year will be our experimental year with sheep milk and we hope to have it available for sale by next spring.

Did You Know? Sheep's Milk

Spring time brings lambs, and these little guys are born scrawny!  A newborn lamb is little more than bone and skin, which makes it especially important that they find their mother and nurse right away.

Because the newborn sheep are so thin, it's perfect that their mothers produce milk that is twice as high in fat and protein as cow milk.  The little lambs need the nourishment!

Another interesting fact about sheep's milk is that it's unique composition makes it much more productive to make cheese from sheep's milk than from cow's milk.  You may have sampled some delicious sheep's milk cheese, and if not, you should try it!

Stop by and visit our new little lambs, and check out the Farm Shop for healthy and nutritious foods for YOUR little ones!

For more information on sheep's milk check out Sheep 101.