Friday, May 20, 2011

Rejuvenating Water Kefir (Tibi)

There must have been something in the air or water a few weeks ago because both my friend's and my tibi grains turned to applesauce. I brought some of my teensy ones out to her since she had tossed hers. I also brought coconut milk to help feed them. They seem to like the trace minerals in coconut milk, and the sugars. I recommended she use molasses and not agave because of the mineral needs of tibi. It's okay. My grains replenished splendidly! I've got plenty for her and her chickens again! They are even growing in the baggie I have them in in the fridge!

How did I accomplish this? At home I mixed half coconut milk and half filtered water, 1/3rd cup molasses and straining every 24 hours to try to get the grains plump again. They fed really well on that combo! I cut back on the coconut milk each time I strained the tibi. Coconut water came from Amazon last week so I have used half that and half filtered water with a third cup of the newly arrived coconut palm sugar and they are Dancing again!

I am bringing a bag of the palm sugar and some grains to Kathy tomorrow. While there I am going to pick up some more of her Italian Blend. That is some superb stuff!

Right now I have a quart of milk kefir separating on the shelf. I plan on getting some good cheesecloth and driving a hook into the cupboard to hang the cheese from while straining the whey. The kefir cheese or lebneh was a real hit when I mixed in chives and garlic with a little salt and pepper when my son Logan and his girlfriend Sarah were here.

I ordered a pound of broccoli sprouting seeds from sprout people.org today. For the sake of simplicity, I am sticking with just one kind of sprout and broccoli is the chosen one. It was pricey at nearly $40, but good quality is a must. I noticed a lot fewer unsprouted seeds in the Mumm's brassicca blend than in the ones I got with the kit from Burpee. I belong to the sproutpeople group and have picked up great hints in the realm of sprouting.

I need to concentrate on my garden, so am cutting back to just growing tibi grains for Kathy, her family and her chickens, keeping the milk kefir going, and just broccoli sprouts. The sprout seeds are big enough not to run out of the tray and are easy to chase down when dehulling the sprouts. All time saving and all so good for things! The chickens will have probiotic eggs, which I get from Kath, my family continues to enjoy sprouts with salads and sandwiches and I get to have the milk kefir. I truly do believe it is a miracle food in many ways. I need to get better at making lotion with it and coconut oil though! That is quite a mess in that cottage cheese container in the kitchen! Just this moment it came to me to blend the oil and kefir in that container inside a bowl of warm water. Baby Mads has some kind of rash on her back and sides, so I tried to make a mixture to soothe and relieve the itch. I don't know if it helped, but I will try with it blended better!

Off I go, to play with the lives growing in my kitchen!

Sunday, May 1, 2011

Sweet Roll Adventures/Coconut Milk Kefir Failure






Last night I decided to try something new in the bread machine. I have an abundance of kefir and kefir grains right now. I really like the benefits of soaking flours in kefir before using them for baking. The soaking and souring of the flour breaks down the phytic acid that prevents absorption of the nutrients in the flour. It also adds a leavening element that allows for less yeast or baking powder in the final product. I wanted to make sweet roll dough in the bread machine. I like slow SOLE, but I do work full-time and last night, the grandson seemed to get a 3rd and 4th and 5th wind of energy that needed attention. It is great to use the bread machine to make doughs as well as gigantic Pullman loaves of bread (yee gads, they are HUGE!)





M'love got me this Welbilt bread machine in 1999 from a store that has lots of overpriced leftover inventory, so I am sure it was at least 5 years old when I got it from the store.

This recipe isn't totally SOLE, but I used what I had and will include the desired substitutes in parentheses. My bread machine calls for yeast first and then flour and other dry ingredients then the liquids. I added the milk kefir right after the very cut back yeast, flour, flaxseed and wheat germ and gave that a stir to moisten and then added the rest of the ingredients.

Sweet "Soured Dough" Rolls

1 tsp yeast

4 c. of any flour and grain combination. This time I used 2 1/2 c. unbleached white Wheat Montana flour (in an attempt to redeem myself for using white flour, ) a cup combined of wheat germ and flaxseed and 1/2 c. coconut flour. (I need to replenish my supplies of brown rice flour, coconut flour and potato starch and Prairie Gold, almond meal , which would be used in combination to make the rolls a bit more gluten free if needed. Sift the gluten free flours and meals)

1 1/2 c. milk kefir (or cultured buttermilk, yogurt thinned with milk, any soured milk will do.)

1/2 c. sugar (it's poison, but I also discovered I am out of sucanat too, sigh and granddaughter is only 18 months so isn't able to have unpasteurized honey yet.)

1 tsp sea salt

1/2 c coconut oil, warmed slightly so it pours.

2 large beaten free range eggs (always add extra eggs when using coconut flour, it's dense. use 1 egg for every 1/4 c. coconut or almond flour)

I set the timer for 12 and 1/2 hours and went about the rest of my evening (this gave the flour a good 11 hr soak in the kefir.) JD had indigestion problems at about 5:00 this morning and had fallen asleep on the couch so the start up of the mixing was a weird sound to wake up to at almost 6:00! Sorry honey!

I slept in until 7:20 and the beeper was just going off as I walked into the kitchen to make my coffee.

There it was, a beauty of a dough ball! A perfect combo of dry to liquid and not a huge amount of stretch to the dough. I patted it out into a rectangle about 15 x 18 " and smeared the dough with soft butter leaving about an inch dry at the long far end. Then I sprinkled the butter with a combination of sugar, ground cinnamon and ground clove. (I would use sucanat and/or brown sugar normally, as much as you want, but I only used a 1/3rd of a cup of sugar since it was white {erg!})

Roll the dough into a cylinder, pinching the dry end into the dough. Cut into 12 pieces (I cut in half, then cut the halves in half and then each of those into thirds. Easier to get them to be even, somewhat)

I put them in a buttered 9 x 13" cake pan and let them rise on the preheating oven's range top until double. Let the oven preheat to 350 deg. and bake for 30 minutes.

While the rolls are in the oven separate an egg and start whipping with the fork the white until foamy, drizzle a third cup of honey into it as you continue to whip the white.

Take the rolls out after 30 min and after giving one more whip to mix, brush the rolls with the egg white and honey mixture. Pop them back in the oven for another 15 minutes, covering with foil the last 5-7 if they start getting dark. Lift up an inside roll to make sure they are baked and let cool for a minute on a rack.

Lightly slide a butter knife along the between the outside of the rolls and the pan to loosen the honey crust and rolls from the sides. Line a cookie sheet with foil and spray or brush with oil or butter. Put the cookie sheet foil side down on the pan of rolls, grab the roll pan and cookie sheet and tip over. Let sit for a minute and remove the pan.

Take a stick of butter out of the fridge and put on a plate. Let the rolls cool for 15 minutes and use the perfect cool butter and have it melt a little.

Yum!

What would I change about the recipe if I wanted it to be closer to SOLE? It is, with the exceptions of white flour of any kind and white sugar. Substitutions noted bring the recipe closer to SOLE and also low gluten if using brown rice flour and almond meal. Using low gluten flours and meals make the rolls more "cakey" and not as "bready."

I was able to load a photo to photobucket yesterday, but today it's telling me "no" so I will have to work on that and add them later. (Success on the photos!)

The coconut milk kefir didn't work out very well. I may have to add more grains to make it work, or let the grains adapt a bit before it all comes together in a thick bubbly coconut delight, or maybe not. I guess I will have to nurture the grains just like when I first got them going in milk after they had been frozen.

Today I joined all the jars of milk kefir in one jar and set it up on the milk kefir shelf to culture until tomorrow night. I am going to pour it into some cheesecloth and let it form cream cheese or lebneh, leban, whatever you call it! It will make a great little probiotic treat with herbs and fresh chives, maybe make some twice baked potatoes with the result! mmmmmm!

The coconut "stuff" needed some help. I decided to let it sit with more kefir grains today and see how it looks tomorrow. I have spare grains in the fridge in milk right now, and they are forming kefir! This group is busy. I don't get giant grains. I give the kefir a stir with the handle of a plastic cooking spoon before straining, so probably break off pieces. That's okay, those little pieces grow too, and I can do some "kefir-vangelizing" at the same time while sharing those little ones with friends and family.

I am going outside to work on the yard a bit this afternoon and then try to make something for supper!

Life grows and grows in my kitchen!