Wheat Bread

Lily and I both felt like something was a little off on Tuesday and then we realized that neither of us  had made any sourdough, haha, yeah that's it! I made up for that yesterday morning. We were almost out of flour, but I got a 25 lb bag of flour from my parents on Monday. The paper bag didn't have a label on it of expiration, so but I figured it was probably expired, as most things are in our parents' homes. The question is how expired - a year or two? or a decade or two? Hmm. I opened it up and saw that it had clumps and it smelled old. Yeah, we don't want to use this. 

I went into the basement where we have like 20 big canisters of wheat. I brought some up and got out the mill and I milled some whole wheat flour, yay. I decided to try out fresh whole wheat sourdough today! I milled over 1/2 of a bucket plus a #10 can. 

I've got two loaves proofing before lunch, and I was thinking this is gonna be great! This is as fresh as it gets! I was hoping I didn't need to change anything for whole wheat sourdough cause I didn't research rules before I started. I did Lily's recipe for a smaller loaf and Olivia Rose's recipe for a big loaf for dinner tonight (I did Olivia's recipe, but prepped it Lily's way). 

Cooked these two loaves of wheat bread for dinner last night that were both amazing. The first one got cut into right away but then was left out and uneaten. I told my self it was cause the wheat makes you feel more full than the white sourdough, so yay they were satisfied. Saved the other one for after Corey got home. 

Corey said it was excellent. The children, however, have let me know that they don't like the wheat as much. Well, that's sad to hear, cause I when the kids were cleaning up the kitchen last night (which I appreciated), Abi emptied the whole thing of old flour into the flour bin. That last bit we had at the bottom in there is officially contaminated now, so unfortunately, we are OUT of white flour. Corey told me to wait on going to Costco. Sooo, what do we do? This morning I decided to just try out the white expired stuff, to see if the kids notice anything and if they like it more than the wheat. I made dough for 4 loaves this morning, let it sit, tried to mix it but it did not stretch well at all. Proofed kinda ok? But had a texture like the whole wheat in how it kinda wouldn't stick/gum together. I cooked it at 4pm, Natalie was anxiously waiting. But after it came out, she said "This smells weird..." followed with a cut into the loaf, another whiff, and then a final statement of judgement: "This smells like a bean bag." and she left. Loaf 2 was cooking while Natalie passed that judgement, so there are 2 done but I just going to toss them both and the 2 proofing loaves. Too bad that flour was bad! I need to go to the store cause we are out of our current staples (flour, potatoes, oranges, pink lady apples, bananas, tomatoes, granola) and about out of most other things. But times like this are good, cause it makes us use things we don't use when there are other options: tuna, quinoa, rice, prunes, walnuts, raisins, and wheat flour! I'll get some wheat dough going to night for breakfast tomorrow. Here is one of the recipes I currently use fo ra large 1000 gram loaf - the Olivia Rose recipe:

• 250g sourdough starter
• 725g water and then mix everything
• 25g salt and then mix everything
• 1000g flour and then mix well until shaggy dough forms

Cover bowl for 30 min and set on counter

#1 stretch/fold around 8 times. Cover wait 30 min

#2 stretch/fold around 4-6 times. Cover wait 30 min

#3 stretch/fold using coil folds around 4-6 times. Cover and place in warm area for 2hr until dough doubles in size

Remove dough from bowl and split into two equal parts for two loaves

Stretch dough out and using a tri-fold method fold the dough then roll up into ball

Use push-pulls to build dough surface tension and then let sit on counter for 20 minutes

Place dough into a floured banneton seam side up. Cover and place into fridge for 2hr to proof

Pre-heat oven to 500 with dutch oven inside oven pre-heating as well.

Pull bread out of fridge to do minor design scoring

Put bread on parchment paper and into dutch oven, optionally an ice cube can go in dutch oven but outside the paper

Bake for 7 minutes and then do major center score cut. You can remove dutch oven lid or replace it depending on your desired finish.  Aim for 200-210 internal temperature of the bread, exact cooking times vary per individual ovens so remember yours after you make the first loaves.

What else... I did some insurance stuff yesterday. We were above the max income for medicaid, but the kids were all approved for CHIP, so that's good that they have insurance. I got a ton of paper work in the mail from them, cause they sent me the stuff individually for each child, rather than one thing for our  whole family so yeah I got 3 packets for each of the 8 children so I had 24 packets of stuff to go through and respond to. CHIP gave us dental too, so I'm going to set up those appointments for everybody. It will be Peter's first time going to the dentist. The rest of them haven't been since July 2020. I still need to figure something out for me and Corey, but in the meantime we have decided to not get sick or have any health emergencies. 

Corey's working hard. Last night he worked until 9pm and I assume it will be the same tonight. He says he is "so so close on the technology" and that he is trying to get to this next very very big milestone, and then the next step after that is to demo it in a user interface. I asked him to explain what the milestone is in very dumbed down English: "Basically computing and validating accuracy for everything. The next step would be like actually showing it with a visualization like an actual format they can see, but the data looks like it’s solid and I've proved/am proving it with lots of help. I've got one more thing I might try to calculate... I might call it a night, but I’m gonna try and see if we can figure it out but we’re super close. Part of it is ChatGPT keeps asking me 'Would you like this new suggestion?' and as long as I understand it, it usually works out so I’m feeling very bullish on where we’re at. So one thing I didn’t know is that you could do triangulation with three views or four or five views and that’s more accurate, not just with two views so I decided to turn that on and that’s appears to be working which I'm thrilled about. God bless the men and women that figured all this math out." 

Also Kat did some Starfall and watched a bit of strawberry shortcake yesterday and today. Her friend Scarlett came over to play today at 12:30. Abi was here so Corey and I went climbing at 1. I've been trying to blog, stretch, and read. I took a cat nap at 1 yesterday and then went on a walk to Sunrise Point. 

Walking around the dimple dell, I was thinking it would be so cool to turn the historic Muir-Poulson home into a little Granite Museum and have all the stuff that they present at the 4th of July on permanent display there. I also wish I could renovate the old Historic Granite Chapel into a reception hall, that would be fun. Fun to dream. It's almost 6pm now and Abi took the little kids to the library. I'm going to go figure out something else for dinner since the musty bread was a bust.