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Happy Consequences

Having kittens around means I have had to make a few changes.  Blogging and knitting have to take place when they sleep.  I saved a bit of yesterday's blog to show you what happens when a kitten walks across the keyboard of my laptop as I write:

Arne and Carlo2e4s are a pair of Norwegian knitters, designerl,mks and most importantly, textile artists creating self-patterning or 09oi7striping yarn.  ppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppDuring the two hours we spent together they taught how to purl in the Norwegian way, 52er4something that you too can learn by watching minutes 7-8 of this video.

 This is caused by just four paws.  They have disconnected the laptop from the internet and messed up other settings as they step on the F keys.

As for knitting, the circular needles and lace weight yarn are oh so intriguing.  So rather than fighting it I just stop knitting; it is simpler to knit when they are resting.  I am choosing when to pick my battles with them and trying to fight an instinct is silly.

Additionally last week I placed a request for flour on the grocery shopping list.  Lucky me, Paul loves to do all the grocery shopping so all I have to do is put what is needed on the list and poof, it shows up in the house.  But what he brought home was 10 kg (22 lbs) of both white and whole wheat flour.  It was on sale and he decided it was worth the investment.  That means there is lots of flour to use.

Putting these two consequences together I decided to take on learning about making bread and bread-like products.  Last week I made poppy seed bagel bites and fatayer.

Anna Olsen's Easy Poppyseed Bagel Bites - photo credit to foodnetwork.ca

Fatayer (spelled in many different ways) - photo credit Chef in Disguise
My bagel bites were not a complete success because I didn't realize I had traditional instead of instant yeast.  The flavors were right but the bread texture was off.  Paul and I decided they were a dessert, not a breakfast item so they will more than likely not be made again.  The fatayer stuffing made with spinach, pine nuts and spices was excellent.  Even the bread was good, but I didn't get the traditional triangle shape.  We enjoyed the four I made rather quickly.  They will indeed be made again.

Yesterday, when the kittens were awake I made whole wheat pita bread and very much to my complete surprise it was a great success.  This is the recipe I followed; it is another from Anna Olson.  (For my non-Canadian readers, Anna Olson, is a pastry chef from Ontario who has several cooking shows on Canada's Food Network and thus is well known here.)  I went with this recipe because it only makes six loaves, a number the two of us can manage.  Here's photos of the process which takes about two hours in total to complete.  (An hour and 40 minutes is time for the bread to rise, so there's plenty of time to play with kittens.)

First Rise

Second Rise
Doing their pita thing in the oven

Finished product
It seems so magical to me to be able to get reasonably successful pitas on the first try.  Paul is the target for this experiment; he generally eats one pita loaf each morning for breakfast so his comments will be taken seriously:
  • I believe I forgot salt so next time around it needs to be included
  • Paul wants more whole wheat flour and less white flour.  (BTW he was quite sure his grandmothers never used bread flour in their pitas and encouraged me to try the all purpose white.  From both our POVs the change did not cause a problem.)
  • Make more loaves and roll them to the same size causing them to be thinner
These changes will be very easy to accommodate, but will have to wait until next week when we need another set of loaves.  

So two chance things came together to lead to bread making.  Kittens and 20 kg or 44 lbs of flour can change one's life and in my case the changes led to happy consequences.  Tomorrow I am going to attempt bagels.  More on that later.  Time to wrap this up for today, I hear Mike and Mara (aka M&M) stirring.




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