Flea market fun

Once every couple months there's a big weekend flea market at the Expo center and I cruised on down there this weekend. It was quite busy and most of the usual vendors were there, though I was sad to see the tool guys weren't since I'd planned to get more diamond drill bit sets (for only $2.00!) After running the gauntlet of avoidance between Dippin Dots, cotton candy, fudge, jerky, not to mention the flavored coffee and dip samples....
I finally settled on buying a handful of broken watches for the parts and a jar of delicious wildflower honey from the cutest little old guy.









It was fun sifting through the old watches, a really nice selection of colors and all solid heavy pieces.

Bread report

Last night I baked two loaves, using a simple recipe for basic white bread with honey and milk. It turned out fine but is quite heavy. In fact, "deadly weapon loaf" would not be an out-of-line moniker. Regardless, the bread is quite tasty when toasted and spread with butter and local honey (which is just divine on its own!)

After doing a little 'net research I believe multiple things may have contributed to the heaviness:
First, I probably used too much flour, even though I still used less than the recipe called for. Second, I didn't check the temp of the milk before dissolving the yeast, it was probably too warm. Third, I used my hand mixer to get things going, which probably wasn't a great idea and was *over*mixing. Fourth, I probably didn't knead long enough. Fifth, although the bread seemed to rise ok, it was pretty cool in the kitchen yesterday and I didn't really find a warm place to put it while rising.
If you have any input or suggestions, I'd love to hear them :-)

Anyway, I felt like a fine peasant chef while fussing with it and I love the crusty, rustic look of my little home baked loaves.
It will be fun to experiment further with this bread baking, maybe using different flour and buttermilk next time. I may even make a sourdough starter, although part of me shudders at the prospect of it living and breathing and lurking around my kitchen at night while I'm sleeping....

Gonna bake some bread

So my husband brought some local honey home from work and I've decided I want to bake some fresh, crusty, homemade bread to spread it on.... so I bought some yeast, fresh flour and sugar, I've got a couple loaf pans and the cooling racks.... now I'm trying to pick a recipe. Yeeesh!