Make at Home Krispy Kremes, More Sourdough Experiments, Curtain Rod Fixing And the Rest Of Our Week

 This week my kids really wanted some doughnuts.  Tim's isn't in our budget so I decided to try a Krispy Kreme doughnut recipe someone put together and it helped me make the best doughnuts I'd ever made,  they were light and fluffy,  done in the middle for the apple fritters made from the left over dough, they tasted really really nice and they didn't actually darken up my oil.

The only problem with the recipe was that the cooking time was a bit too long (at least for my stove) and I only used half the butter in the glaze then what was asked for because it really didn't need a whole 1/2 cup of butter.  This time around, I also discovered a better way to glaze all the donuts at once rather than a few seconds after each batch was done.  I simply put all the donuts in a large container,  poured all the glaze over them and folded the donuts into the glaze rather than drizzling the glaze over a few and letting the excess drip off.  

They were so good my kids want them again this week.

Getting ready for some fried goodness.

And I've been experimenting with making my sourdough, seeing where I can alter the approaches that I've been reading about to make up for equipment or time I don't have and still come out with the same bread I'm supposed to.  It's scary sometime...but I'm getting more confident about handling this awesome,  healthy food.

Experiment number 2 : Let's see if this refrigerated starter that got "tired" not even 3 hours after feeding will still rise great as a loaf. My last experiment rose 3x higher than it's original size. I've got to do this though my best friend needs 2 loaves by tomorrow...seriously crossing my fingers here.  "Please Lord, cause this starter to see it's being turned into dough,  as a prolific "feed" that will cause it to rise beautifully for my friend, regardless of how it's seemed to get tired so prematurely today, in Yeshua's name, Amen."

The bread did rise very nicely,  praise God.

In sourdough making,  I've got to admit,  handling the discard and trying to find something to do with it,  is a bit of a hassle I don't have the time for but wasting the discard just wouldn't be right.  So I figured out a solution... a very happy solution!  Here it is:

How To Keep Your Sourdough Healthy Without Discarding

1. Take out 1/2 the amount of sourdough starter you need and put it into your bread making bowl. I'm making 2 loaves,  so for me this means 1 cup and 2 tbsp of starter.

2. In the bread making bowl add 3/4 cup of flour and 1/2 cup of water (there's a bit more flour than it may seem to need - but that's to make up for the 'air' between the flour particles so the volume of the ingredients will be roughly the same as the starter you've just used)

3. Put this same addition amount in the starter and mix it up well to feed it it.

4. Cover and place your starter back in the fridge

5. Mix the flour, water and starter you put in your bread making bowl,  cover and let it activate in a warm place for 3 to 4 hours, then start your bread making process. 

Handling your sourdough and starter in this way will allow you to always have the amount you need totally without having to worry about discard.  If you have to make more starter for more loaves or to sell or give away,  just add the necessary amount of flour and water 12 hours before you want to start making the  extra products or starter that you need. 

Because,  you can't let sourdough take over your life,  no matter how good it may be.   

Now our electric bill this month was $548 and that was terrible and that's with me trying to do most of my laundry with cold water.  But a real fortunate thing happened today because I was having some suspicion about the washing machine's use of water temperatures.  I took a chance and tried washing the clothes in straight hot water to see what would happen and guess what?  The laundry was cold, lol.

I took a look behind the washer and seen that both the taps are blue so the fella that installed it didn't realize the mix up.  I look forward to seeing the reduced hydro bill in the month ahead.

I'm the "handyman" around here too,  or rather,  "handywoman" but with everything we've got going on,  somethings can take forever for me to get done,  like my little Ezra tried to go "tarzan" on the curtain in the bedroom.  It didn't hold up,  the bracket thing tore right out the wall.  About 6 weeks ago,  I tried using one of those Command strips to fix it in place only for him to pull it down again 2 weeks later.  

The problem is that the original person who put the curtain up didn't look for the wooden beam behind the dry wall so they could screw the brackets in place more securely instead of the whole thing hanging off of the drywall board. 

That's not too hard to fix though.  So today,  I finally got around to fixing it right,  I pulled out the drill, got a few good screws,  tapped the wall around the window to find the beams (drywall with only insulation  behind it will sound hollow but if there's a beam behind it,  it'll sound solid and that'll be where you put your screws).