Michigan Thread - all are welcome!

[snowflake]

Snowing again. Pretty hard. Still beautiful though.

I'm spending the day working on the traditional stollen bread. It's probably the hardest recipe I've ever made but the the taste and texture is so worth it, I make it every year despite my cursing and swearing at it. It's meant for an industrial bakery mixer and I don't have one, nor do I ever plan on getting one. So I have to mix it/pound it by hand and it takes a lot of arm strength. Still not as hard as wrestling sheep but perhaps the equivalent in the baking world.

that sounds interesting, I have an old bread machine looks like a lg. bucket and has a metal arm that you turn and that kneads the bread. only make bread this time of yr, tastes sooooo good,
DH only wants pumpernickel and DS and DGS want soft bread, home made doesn't qualify, so I eat most of what I make and I can't eat like that yr round

I would be very very big, (I have no self control)

snowing here to but very light and just a dusting last night.
Back to my baking, have a great day

 

[RaZ]

I'm spending the day working on the traditional stollen bread. It's probably the hardest recipe I've ever made but the the taste and texture is so worth it, I make it every year despite my cursing and swearing at it. It's meant for an industrial bakery mixer and I don't have one, nor do I ever plan on getting one. So I have to mix it/pound it by hand and it takes a lot of arm strength. Still not as hard as wrestling sheep but perhaps the equivalent in the baking world.

What is stollen bread?
My sourdough starter failed so I want to try again. I used rye flour as suggested on the King Arthur Flour site but I think I'll try whole wheat this time.
I would love to have a nice KitchenAid mixer with the fancy attachments. A boy and his toys, eh?

 

[Our Roost]

snowflake, In response to freezing fresh corn. Quite simple yet time consuming. I generally take a scrap board and drive a spike nail up through the bottom to start with. I shuck and peel corn, then boil water in a big culdron pot. About 3 minutes once the ears are in the boiling water. And a touch of salt. Then I let cool and push a cob on nail to secure. Cut corn off cob from top to bottom and repeat until you have enough to fill a one quart freezer bag.
You can freeze whole ears with ends cut off and shucked. Same process as above but you dont cut the kernels off the cob. The only problem with this is they can get mushy and not be as tasty as fresh off the cob corn.

 

[preciouskitty]

What is stollen bread?
My sourdough starter failed so I want to try again. I used rye flour as suggested on the King Arthur Flour site but I think I'll try whole wheat this time. 
I would love to have a nice KitchenAid mixer with the fancy attachments.  A boy and his toys, eh? 

I have the KitchenAid Professional series. It is truly the "Tim Allen" of kitchen tools. Had the regular for 10 years prior (& sold it to a friend who has been using it for 5 years now). Totally worth the investment...by asking for attachments as XMAS presents over the years have the whole shebang! Once you buy one, your done. Mom just got my sis & BIL one for XMAS (not the professional series).

I use it all the time, sits right on the counter. The meat grinder rocks, especially when DH gets a wile turkey

And making bread or homemade pasta a snap with the kneading hook...

I, too, have been wondering what "stollen" bread is ... Suppose I could google...but, what fun would that be?

 

[iamfivewire]

Yes - the kitchenaid mixers are awesome!
we used to have cable tv w/ phone & internet bundle - almost cost as much when we wanted to drop the phone + basic cable to have internet only. there were only a few shows we'd watch anyways that we couldnt get elsewhere. We have internet from a different company now & catch up on shows/movies thru netflix, hulu, or amazon. also most tv shows have websites that you can stream shows right off of the website. if we had a better signal for cell phone(a 1/2 mile south & we'd be fine) we would not have a landline - got the straighttalk home phone box @ $15/month for phone service. i put up a digital tv antenna to pull in the stations the "old fashioned way" - getting all the Lansing area stations just fine, & interestingly enough, also getting some of the Flint stations too.

 

[ladyrsanti]

What is stollen bread?
My sourdough starter failed so I want to try again. I used rye flour as suggested on the King Arthur Flour site but I think I'll try whole wheat this time.
I would love to have a nice KitchenAid mixer with the fancy attachments. A boy and his toys, eh?

Stollen bread is a sweet bread. If you get it commercially, like at Frankenmuth, it has candied fruit in it and a frosting on top but I find it rather unpleasant. Mine has rum soaked cherries, pineapple and raisins, candied lemon and orange peel plus almonds and pecans. It's brushed with butter and dusted with powdered sugar. I could try my bread machine for the mixing part but given the strange technique of mixing a very firm sponge with a dry crumbly dough, it's a long shot.


Dunno about the starter. I've never used anything but white flour for sourdough but I've only used a purchased starter too - bought it off the internet several years ago and still going strong. I have too many fermenting things in my kitchen to get reliable yeasties from the air, what with the kefir, vinegar, buttermilk and wine going almost all the time. I have to keep those in the far corners of the kitchen as it is, to avoid cross contamination.

 

[preciouskitty]

if we had a better signal for cell phone(a 1/2 mile south & we'd be fine) we would not have a landline - got the straighttalk home phone box @ $15/month for phone service. 

I have the exact same issue with my cell phone; at home, yuck, at end of driveway, peachy!! For my personal phone I have Sprint which I didn't want to get rid of cuz I have a great plan with unlimited data, texts,,etc. (& they are the only carrier I have been with, now going on ~25yrs). BUT, virtually ZERO signal in my house. When they were trying to convince me to go to a smartphone, told them my issue & that I might actually switch carriers (my work phone is AT&T & gets great signal). The Sprint guy mentioned the Airave, which, short story, is a basically a mini cell tower that hooks into your internet. Sprint provided unit for free. I now get 5 bars In the house. Don't have a land line. Of course if internet goes out, I'm hosed, but have work cell for backup/emergencies (personal works, just not reliably). And, as I mentioned earlier today, my internet provider rocks (hmm, forgot, Airave is another thing plugged into Internet...).

My cost killer is DirecTV..& I don't even have premium stations. I am planning on calling them to see if they can cut a deal or I am gonna do like a lot of you have mentioned ..streaming, Amazon Prime, etc....

 

[SillyChicken]

My DH and I got repeaters from our cell phone carriers (my company provided mine).. DH got one from AT & T for 50$ at the store (negotiated down the price). We were able to drop our land line after we got them set up. Cell battery is lasting a lot longer now too.

 

[lbrykowski2011]

Onto chicken stuff. Birds seem ok with the cold; snow, not so much. They cracked me up yesterday when I got home from work. Usually when DH is home & they have the opportunity to free range, they run to meet me at my car. Yesterday, they all were crammed at the open door, teetering on the edge WANTING to meet me, but looking at the white stuff like it was some sort of pariah!

Mine did the same yesterday. It was cold, but the sun out made it feel better. The big coop door was open and they all sat on the edge not wanting to touch the snow. Finally my Delaware, Roo and 1 EE stepped out for an hr or so, still wouldn't go more than about 2ft from the coop. Maybe towards the end of the wk.

 

[lbrykowski2011]

Love my kitchen aide. We got the meat grinder attachment 2 yrs ago so we could process our own deer meat and this weekend were making smoked and fresh, jalapeno n cheddar sausage. My fav . We do our corn in a bundt pan, u put the ear in the center, slide off the kernels and they fall right into the pan, blanch for 3mins, ice water for 3 mins and yummy all winter. Well , we only have 1 bag left, so not all winter, but good while it lasted and not messy.