Good bread, bad bread.

We've been fighting a bit of a stomach bug, so we decided to take it easy this weekend. We watched a lot of movies and hung out on the couches. When we couldn't stand it anymore, we put on our shoes and went to check out a new park. We've driven past it a few times and it always looked nice.

Welcome to Lillie Park!

Turns out Lillie Park is composed of three parks, the north, south, and east parks. We spent some time in the north park, but when we tried to explore the trails we were attacked by mosquitoes. Rumor has it they've been particularly bad this year. We'll be better prepared next time. What we did see, though, was really nice!

In other news, Jake is in his last week of summer school! Class finishes this week and he has a few more Summer Institute events at the beginning of next week. Then, a break until real school starts in September.

As for me, I've been experimenting with baking gluten free bread. I've finally nailed growing the yeast and get a nice foamy mix every time.

It's alive!

My first trial, a recipe for gluten free challah (which you can find here), was spectacular! I'll use less sugar next time, but it actually came out like bread and tastes like challah. It even toasts perfectly!

I made a pattern on the top so it came out looking a little braided.

Look at that! Perfectly risen.

My second attempt, gluten free pita, was a pretty big flop. The recipe I followed said to allow the dough to rise for 2-3 hours, and I think that might have been the problem. The dough dried out and the pockets didn't expand in the oven. I ended up with hard, flat bread and had to dump most of it.

Oh well, you win some, you lose some. Next I'll try a recipe using my new garfava flour. I'll let you know how it turns out.