This recipe is very easy and doesn’t require much of a time commitment.  It does require a Dutch oven with lid.







Ingredients:

3 cups bread flour
1 cup whole wheat flour
2 teaspoons dry active yeast
A teaspoon of kosher salt
12 ounces of beer or water
¼ to ½ cup pepitos or chunks of walnuts

Steps:

Mix all of the ingredients in a large bowl, until all of the pieces stick together.  I use a kitchen Aid blender with a dough hook.  In the Kitchen Aid, this takes about five minutes.

Once the dough is in a ball shape, I wash my hands without drying them,  then I mold the dough into a tight ball, kneading the dough as little or as much as needed to form the ball.

 Place the ball into a clean bowl with enough olive oil to coat the sides of the bowl. This keep the dough from sticking to the bowl, and may help to keep the dough from drying out.

I thoroughly moisten a kitchen towel  with warm tap water.  my favorite is a linen towel, terry cloth may stick to the dough.  Cover the bowl with the moist towel. I roll the dough in the bowl to evenly coat the ball with oil.

 Place the covered bowl of dough in a warm place and ignore it for several hours.  I place mine on top of the coffee maker that has a heated water reservoir, but I learned by trial and error that I need to place another pate under the bowl to keep the dough from overheating. 

By several hours, I mean between 5 and 16 hours. I often make the dough as my first activity of the say and bake the bread as my last activity of the evening. So, it is rising while am at work or away from home.

Once the dough has grown to something like double its original size, pull it out to of the bowl, knead it in your hands and fold it into a new ball, then set it aside. This step can be repeated multiple times.

Preheat the oven to 450° F and place the dutch oven in the oven while preheating . When the oven is hot, carefully remove the Dutch oven.  Place the bread in the  Dutch oven .  To keep the bread from splitting , use a sharp knife and slash a cross into the top of  the dough ball .   I like to sprinkle a second teaspoon of kosher salt on the top of the dough.  Replace the lid, place the doutch oven inth eoven and set a timer for 30 minutes.

After 30 minutes, take the lid off the dutch oven and reduce the temperature to 350°F.  bake the bread uncovers for about 20 more minutes.  The internal temperature of the bread should be about 180°F.

 Carefully Remove the bread from the dutch oven and place it on a rack to cool.  You may hear crackling noises from your loaf.  That is a good sound, the bread is cooling.  After about 20 minutes, slice a bit of the loaf and share it with whoever is in the house at the time.

Salsa.   I regularly enjoy eating the summers tomato bounty as salsa with corn chips. My home made salsa is not as sticky or creamy as commercial salsa, but the flavor is right from the garden.    Garlic, onion, sweet pepper join the tomatoes in the cooking pot usually along with a packet of salsa ingredients from Mrs. Wages or Ball brands. 
Click on the picture to order it through Amazon, if your local stores don’t carry them.

Diced Tomato.  We use the crudely chopped chunks of tomatoes in our soups, stews and chili recipes throughout the year.  The easiest method of preserving the summer goodness is to roughly chop the cleaned and cored tomatoes into a large bowl.  Mash them into pint jars, really pushing them down into the jars until they are juicing, then adding citric acid and processing the jars.  To get a little farther along in the preparation of the future meal, I also add onion and pepper crudely chopped to the bowl and mix them with the tomatoes before filling the pint jars.  I have started using citric acid instead of white vinegar to keep the acid level appropriate for safe canning. the result is a thicker product in the jar after processing.  I used Ball Jar Citric Acid.  Click on the picture to order it through Amazon, if you can not find it in your local stores.

New and sixth use of the tomato abundance

Ketchup.  I purchased some of the Mrs.Wages Ketchup mix that was on clearance a few years ago.  This past week I decided to try making the ketchup.  Julie is brand loyal to her off the shelf ketchup , but since I started enjoying balsamic vinegar ketchup, she  suggested that I use balsamic vinegar in place of the plain jane white distilled vinegar that the Mrs. Wages recipe calls for.   The result is delicious.  I have not opened a jar of  the hot water bath preserved ketchup, but tastes of the small amount left after canning make me think this is a good use of shelf space.

Wine is normally considered a grape based product, but why not use the fruit of other vines to create a tasty beverage?  Here is a recipe for making a small batch of tomato wine.

Marty’s Tomato Wine Recipe

1 Gallon recipe

1.       ½ gallon of red ripe tomatoes, wash, cut, mash in bowl, place in mesh bag. Place I crushed campden tablet, bag and juices into a container ( Tupperware bowl with the lid loose on a side) with loose lid overnight.

2.       After 24-36 hours.  Mash juices out of bag into a one gallon jug- the fermenter.

3.       Add 2 lbs sugar, one crushed campden tablet, 1/2 packet of dry wine yeast, the juice from the tomatoes, a sliced lemon and water to fill the jug to the shoulder.  Leave room at the top of the jug for foaming.  Put the airlock- bubbler in the rubber stopper, place on the jug with water or vodka in the bubbler.  Check the bubbler daily to make sure some foam has not clogged it.

4.       After all bubbling has stopped, empty the jug into a clean jug or the container used in step 1 along with a crushed campden tablet.  The goal is to leave as much sediment behind in the fermenter.  Try using a siphon tube to leave more of the sediment in the fermenter. 

5.       If you have more than one fermenter, you can just leave the wine in the clean second fermenter. Otherwise, clean the fermenter jug, rinse very well, and return the wine to the fermenter.

Pouring the wine from one container to the next leaving residue and sediment behind is decanting.  Siphoning the wine from one container to the next leaving the residue and sediment behind is racking.

Wine may be racked or decanted a number of times to aid in clearing the wine. 

Wait 2 months.  Smell and taste the wine after 2 months.  If the taste is acceptable then drink the wine.  Wine may be left in the fermenter jug with the bubbler or a screw top , keep the air out.     If it smells bad, do not give up!  The fermentation of the fruit is not always pleasant smelling.  Off odors often miraculously disappear as the wine ages. Wait a few weeks and check again.

The tomatoes have started arriving.  They are not overrunning us yet, but one ripe fruit  a day and I can see many green orbs are hiding in the plantings.  This year we have planted more than varieties than past years. As I started growing my own transplants from seed.  We have at least 25 plants of just paste tomatoes grown from seed.  I found the seed in a 35mm film canister in the refrigerator this past February. Julie saved the seeds several years ago.  I guess we should take stock of the items is in the fridge more often.  

The photograph above shows a Thorburn's Terra-Cotta fruit that was grown from seed.   This fruit has a deep orange color with green shoulders that are a slight challenge in determining if it is ripe.  The inside jell around the  seeds is green.   The flavor surprised me. I was expecting a sharp unripe flavor, but these fruits are mild and slightly sweet.  The fruits I have picked have been about 2 - 3 inches across, not quite sandwich sized, but very good chopped into a salad.

Garlic that was planted in October of 2016 was ready to be harvested this week.  These plants took up a space of about 10 x 10 feet in the garden.  That space will be made ready to have a crop of Fall lettuce planted.  That corner of the garden was the site of my original compost pile.  The ground is very crumbly and rich.