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Nearly two years later and my apple trees are really looking like small trees, rather than sticks with a branch or three! They even handled my late pruning quite well this spring. The Pink Lady took to the training so well. It has a nice open shape. The Fuji, on the other hand, I should have paid closer attention after the initial training I guess. The branches all grew straight up, after the point where my ties were. I’ve staked some more branches, and the original branches further along. I’m working on opening the tree up and getting better lateral growth. We’ll see how it grows.
Both trees are having an easier time this year with leaf munching insects. I remembered to spray with insecticidal soap fairly early on. Unfortunately both trees are having problems with Cedar-Apple Rust. The Fuji is having a worse time of it than the Pink Lady which follows what this table of apple tree susceptibility to cedar-apple rust shows. I imagine the lack of air flow due to all the vertical growth on that tree doesn’t help. I’ll have to rake up the leaves when they fall, do better about spraying and work harder at my branch training.
Only 1-2 more years till my apple trees ought to start bearing!
Its been a good long while since I’ve posted anything. Life has been a little busy around here. I’ve been having too much fun to stop and find the time to write. Plus I’ve been trying to improve my sleep habits (which involves not being up until all hours playing on the computer). I think its working, kinda. sorta. maybe. Well, we’ll see. Anyway, things are finally settling down into a bit of a routine so I thought I’d stop in and say hi.
Hi!
Today I made bread. Technically I started yesterday. I’ve finally (over a year later) gotten around to trying out Cheap Like Me’s most excellent bread baking method. It’s not that I don’t like my existing favorite bread recipe. It’s quite tasty. Kneading is fun, now that I’ve got the hang of it. I even enjoy the time it takes, as it keeps me close to home on baking day and encourages me to finish up those little odds and ends of the zillion projects I always having going on. But if I want to eat my own bread more often, and keep up with my part-time job, my health and various and sundry other interests, I really can’t devote a whole day every week to baking (and it takes a whole day in my cool/cold kitchen). It’s just not practical for me.
I’ve looked through a variety of no-knead bread books. I didn’t like the use of sugar in the Kneadlessly Simple base recipe (I’m trying to cut down on my sugar intake to please my doctor and my body). I’ve had trouble with the method described in Artisan Bread in 5 Minutes a Day. For one thing, I’m a clutz. Slipping a gently shaped loaf of dough from its floured resting place onto a hot baking stone tends to result in dough landing on my floor or oven door at best. I also always seem to wind up with dough that is too wet or not quite cloaked right, in that my resting dough grows outwards, not up. My Bread perhaps comes closest to what I’d like to be able to do with bread. I appreciate the smaller amount of yeast used (both for cost and for health reasons), the book itself was a real interesting read and I’m curious about the baking concepts it describes, but I wasn’t sure about the extra dark crust. I still have too many childhood picky food issues that I’m working on. Dark crusts are one of ‘em. Its silly, I know. But I like a lighter, slightly softer crust.
Cheap Like Me’s method seems to take the recipe from Artisan Bread in 5 Minutes a Day and use some methods similar to My Bread’s. And dumping dough into a pot – that I can do without needing a major clean-up effort after (plus, her crust looked nicely browned but not quite so dark as the My Bread crusts, points out the stubborn child in me). I started yesterday mixing together the dough. Had to wait a while for my super cold filtered fridge water to come up to lukewarm temp, but otherwise it was the same easy mixing I’d experienced before with Artisan Bread in 5 Minutes a Day recipe. I let it rise and stuck it in the chest fridge after it leveled off.
This afternoon, while doing far too many other things, I decided to bake. I cloaked the bread, turned it out, floured it some more (because my dough is usually too wet) and shaped it as best I could (gently and quickly working in some of the flour). As always, while resting, my dough took on the shape of a Frisbee and I started to get sad. Flat bread is tasty, but not what I wanted. I preheated the oven with the dutch oven in it (belatedly wondering if I ought to have greased the pot, too late now) and tried to ignore my ever flattening dough. When the time came I dumped my dough in the pot (a set of oven mitts and pot holders, that thing is HOT!) set the timer and went back to making dinner, doing laundry and fixing up our bikes’ new home. By the time the bread’s first 30 minutes were up I’d made peace with my flat bread. It’s still bread after all, and still tasty. But when I took off the lid for the bread’s uncovered 20 minutes of baking – Surprise! Big bread! Tall bread! Bread you could use for a proper sandwich! Clearly, the dutch oven fixes all my little, not quite right, dough flaws.
I’ll definitely be making this bread again. Thanks Cheap!
