Moss Moment

There is almost no substance whatsoever to this post.

In the area where the bleeding hearts (planted) and jewel weed plants (volunteer) are, there's also some moss.  It's an area that never gets direct sun.  The winter has been drier than normal, but wet enough for the moss to flourish.  At this point, it's looking pretty lush.

The phone also takes pretty good macro pictures--not as good as my dedicated camera with a macro lens, but it's still not bad.

The bleeding hearts, however, are not looking lush.  As noted previously, they have declined with time and drought conditions, and at this point if I want them to stay I'll have to replant.  The jewel weed, also hit hard by drought a year and a half ago, is starting to bounce back.

Another Seal Failure with a Reusable Canning Lid

As I noted previously, I have had a higher seal failure rate with reusable lids than with single-use lids.  Also as noted, most of the failures have been slow to develop: the lid seals initially, then comes unsealed in storage days or months later. Ball, albeit with an unavoidable conflict of interest, points out that the vacuum strength can deteriorate 50% within a year.  That does match my experience. 

It has happened again.  I am no longer using reusable lids on new canning projects, but do still have some in storage.  A jar of peach preserves put up in July, 2016, was sealed from that time until sometime in the last month or so. I had checked it periodically and it was fine, but now it's not. Alas.

Turkey Red Wheat

I've long been intrigued by Turkey Red wheat.  It was the predominant variety grown in the mid- and southern plains during the dust bowl; seed stock from Russia brought to this country in the late 1800s also contained seeds of the Russian thistle, aka tumbleweed.  It's not common today but both wheat berries and flour are readily available if you look for them.

I got both flour and berries.  I used the flour a year ago and thought it was rather coarsely ground.  Now that I've ground some of my own, I think it's more just that Turkey red has a thicker hull, giving the flour a gritty, almost sandy texture.  It also takes less water to hydrate it than commercial red whole wheat flour (such as King Arthur).

My first loaf was my basic recipe of 2 cups white bread flour, 1 3/4 cups of whole wheat.  It turned out okay.  It didn't have a whole lot of spring to it, but it was certainly decent and had good flavor.

Next I tried a 100% whole wheat loaf, and I went all the way--nothing but whole wheat, water, sourdough starter, and a little salt.  No vital wheat gluten (VWG).  The loaf I got from that mix was definitely a little compact.

Shown below is the blended loaf on the left with the 100% loaf on the right.

 Cutting open the 100% loaf yielded this:

All in all it's okay. It may be harder to get a nice spring when using Turkey Red compared to a modern red wheat, or the results above may just be due to the random variation I see in the loaves I bake.  I'm nothing if not inconsistent.  The second blended loaf turned out like this--very nice:

Here's another 50% loaf (right) versus the 100% loaf (left).  The contrast is starker with this one because the 50% one rose well and had good oven spring.

I might try another 100% loaf with some VWG added in to see what happens, or I may stick with the basic de facto 50/50 combo.  Other things like pancakes and biscuits are probably in the offing, as well.