Weekend update, 20-21 January

Food:
I was so pleased with the success of last weekend's sourdough loaf that I decided to try again. Twice. Once midweek, and once on the weekend, with different flour substitutions each time.

The first batch had 1 cup sorghum flour, 1 cup cassava flour, 3/4 cup arrowroot starch, and a bit of millet flour left over from another recipe. The second batch used sugar in place of honey, and about 1/2 cup each of millet, sorghum, cassava, and brown rice flour, with 3/4 cup of arrowroot starch again.

Arrowroot starch is supposed to behave similarly to tapioca, but less gummy/binding and more crunchy. The original recipe was, if anything, a little bit too stiff, which is why I swapped in arrowroot for tapioca starch. And because I'd never used it before, and wanted to see how it turned out. Millet flour also bakes up quite crunchy, and the loaf does indeed have a very crunchy crust, with a soft, very moist interior. I swapped in the cassava flour (made from the same stuff as tapioca starch) because it's tasty, and to make up for the loss of the sticky tapioca starch.

Gluten free waffles!

Both batches came out much closer in flavor to an ordinary sourdough white bread, although the first batch had a little more sweetness than I would have liked, hence the substitution of sugar for honey and reducing the quantity of sorghum flour in the second batch.

Also, I made waffles. Just because I could. At some point, I will write up my universal pancake/waffle recipe.

Garden:
It was raining most of the weekend, so not much happened. Steve planted a bunch of garlic during a brief dry spell. We rolled the compost a bit, but it's a bit smelly so something clearly isn't right. I tore up some more paper and cardboard and added it to the roller. I also started updating our seed inventory for the current year.

Decorative seam treatment on smokkr.

Crafts:
I stitched a few more rounds on my naalbinding mitts, and a few inches of decorative seam treatments on my Viking smokkr. I've run out of dark blue embroidery floss though, so I'll need to stop by a craft shop this week.

House:
During the heaviest rains this weekend, I noticed that we had water dripping from our conservatory ceiling. Luckily, we basically just use our conservatory as a greenhouse, so there are very few things in it that could be damaged by a bit of water. But it does mean that we need to find somebody to come and do some repairs. Bleh.