Bread . . .mmm!!!

A couple of people have asked for my bread recipe.  I thought I would just post it here for easy reference.  Keep in mind - Bread making is an art, not a science.  This is only a base to follow.  Temperatures in your house, humidity, flour type, etc all effect the bread.  Don't give up on first try.  I made bread every week for three months before I got right.  And I still have weeks were it's edible, but not great.  Happy Bread Baking!

               Medlin Homestead Bread

Ingredients

2 Cups of Warm Water

1 1/2 Tablespoons Yeast

Pinch of Sugar

5 1/2 Cups of Bread Flour

3 Cups of Whole Wheat Flour

1 Tablespoon Salt

4 Large Eggs

1/2 Cup Honey, Molasses, Sorghum, or Syrup

2/3 Cups of Oil (Olive, Vegetable, etc.)

Pour 1/2 cup of warm water in small bowl and add yeast and sugar - let set 10 minutes 

Prepare in mixing bowl 1 1/2 cups of bread flour, salt, eggs, oil, remaining 1 1/2 cups of water and your choice of honey, molasses, sorghum, or syrup.  Each of these will give your bread a slightly different taste and color.  ex. Molasses gives you a more rustic tasting darker bread, while honey will give you a sweet light bread.  Mix these ingredients with paddle. 

Switch to dough hook and slowly add remaining flour about a cup at at time.  The dough will begin to form and pull from the sides of the bowl.  Once the bowl is free of dough on the side, allow the dough hook to knead the dough for about 4 minutes.  

Gentle lift dough out of bowl and spray the bowl with non-stick spray.  Drop your dough back in and spray top lightly.  Cover with thin cloth and allow to rise for 2 to 2 1/2 hours in a warm place.  Dough should double in size.  Temperature and time of year will vary your rise time.

After dough has doubled, carefully punch down dough with your fist, cover and let rise for another 1 to 1 1/2 hours, again watching for it to double.

Turn the dough onto a lightly oiled surface. Use dough knife and divide into four equal parts.  Theses will be your loafs.  You may gently shape them how ever you wish.  Once shaped gently drop loaf onto work surface to allow any air bubbles in the bread to escape.

Place in greased baking pans.  Be sure to pinch and tuck the ends so the loaf will rise correctly.  Beat one egg with tablespoon of water and brush on top of loaves.  Allow them to rise for 45 minutes - about an inch over the pan. 

About 20 minutes before baking turn oven on 350 and move rack to middle of oven.  When rise if finished glaze again and sprinkle top if you desire with sesame seeds, poppy seeds, oat flakes, etc.

Bake for 40 to 45 minutes and immediately remove from pan and allow to cool on cooling racks.  This is when I rub my crust down with butter.  This is optional.  Slicing is easiest with an electric knife.  Bread can be frozen.  Slice first for easy thawing and double wrap for air tight freezing.  By making four loaves, I find you have a loaf to eat hot out of the oven with butter, a loaf for sandwiches early in the week, a loaf to freeze for later in the week, and a loaf for the neighbors.

Once you get the hang of it you can experiment with folding in lots of the goodies on the final rise, dry fruit and nuts, cinnamon and sugar, garlic and herbs.  This recipe can also be used to make buns just shape and mold before the final rise. 

You might be a mini-farmer . . .

You might be a mini-farmer . . . 

if you wait by the mail box for your seed packets to come.

if you realize the time it takes for highlight dye to sit on your hair, is just enough time to feed and water the animals.

if a horse is your lawn mower and fertilizer.

if you measure time by the sun coming up and down instead of the clock.

if your husband knows to be careful when coming up the driveway, because the chickens or the goats may be free-ranging.

if your children know the breeding habits of your goats and talk about them with strangers.

I am sure I will think of more . . . you may have some too.

A foo-foo dog in a redneck world.

     We have a very small Dachshund Hound, Gracie.  She was given to us many years ago, by a good friend.  She has been with us from our first house, to our big house and now to our country house.  One thing we have learned through all this, She prefers inside to outside most days.  She likes her pillows and tv.  When outside, she becomes so anxious by all the birds and squirrels on the property she almost goes into fits.  Yet, once inside she curls up in her pink princess blanket and enjoys watching our inside day go by.  She seems so out of place, compared to our chickens, goats, and horse.  She is a foo-foo dog in a redneck world.

   Kinda how we are supposed to be as Christians.  King James Version of the Bible says we are to be a peculiar people set apart for His kingdom.  As Christians we should be living a life that is so different from the world, that it doesn't take much for people to say - wow, they are out of place!

     I must admit, I am more of a redneck in a foo-foo world.  But I pray that I keep my eyes fixed on Him and become peculiar and set apart for His Kingdom.

     So here’s what I want you to do, God helping you: Take your everyday, ordinary life—your sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking-around life—and place it before God as an offering. Embracing what God does for you is the best thing you can do for him. Don’t become so well-adjusted to your culture that you fit into it without even thinking. Instead, fix your attention on God. You’ll be changed from the inside out. Readily recognize what he wants from you, and quickly respond to it.   Romans 12:1-2 (The Message)

Are you a rooster or a hen?

      After building a coop from scrap material left on our property, I promptly filled it with hens.  I had decided a couple of things after all my research.  One - I didn't want to start with bittys.  I needed my chickens to start out semi-grown and healthy.  After I learned adult chicken care, then we would see about babies.  Two - I didn't want a rooster.  I had done lots of research on the pro's and con's of a  rooster.  I had decided, I could get all the eggs I needed without a rooster.  And my neighbor's would be happy.  So the hen house was filled with two layers, two soon to be layers, and three pullets (teenage chickens).
      Well, my pullets have grown up, they are adult chickens.  Guess what?. . . . I think I have a rooster!  They told me all three where hens, but it looks like a rooster, acts like a rooster, and yet after all my research on rooster telling - I still don't know.  Sounds crazy doesn't it.  One should be able to tell.  Really it's what on the inside that counts, because it's what's on the inside that will or will not produce an egg.  Looks, personality, characteristics, those are all surface thing.  Things that hens and roosters both can show.  But it's those internal things we can't see that determines, if I get eggs or not.

Got me to thinking - One may look "Godly" on the outside, but really it's what on the inside.  It is the condition of the heart that determines, if we bear good fruit or not.  And it is the fact that we bear good fruit that proves the condition of our heart.

This is Caroline.  She is most certainly a hen.  She is a consistent layer of beautiful eggs, and the self appointed keeper of the nest.  She works all day to keep the laying box clean and ready for all to lay eggs.

2/20/13 Update:  Enough time has passed for me to positively verify - I have a rooster!

When a goat won't be a goat. . .

We have a goat - her name is Charlotte Goat #1 (long story).  She has become very dear to us.  And perhaps we have babied her too much.  She came to us to be a supply of milk.  Well just like all mammals, she must first have a baby to produce milk.  This process has proven quite tricky.  After coming to us "with goat", and miscarrying.  Our only option was to find her a companion.  Jehoshaphat Goat #2 came to live on the homestead.  Charlotte was ticked, what was an old goat doing in her pen.  She had no idea she was a goat!  Well here we are two months later and still no baby in process.  Charlotte is completely put out at the idea of living with an old goat.  Jehoshaphat is tired of Charlotte not wanting to be a goat (if you know what I mean).  So, here we are . . . still no milk, but a couple of hilarious old goats.

Did you ever think that maybe we loose perspective of who we are?  God intended us to be a working part of the body of Christ, producing lots of fruit.  Yet somehow, we got it all of whack.  We spend our days scuffling with the very people we were intended to produce fruit with.  And here we are inside the four walls of our church chasing each other; mad because the other is not acting like we think they should.   So busy trying to be something we were not intended to be that no fruit is ever produced.  What would happen if each of us let God take control and we became the part of the body of Christ He intended us to be?  We would have so much fruit, the walls could hold them.  Wait isn't that how it is supposed be . . .

When it rains it pours. . .

Garden should have had it's final plow and potatoes should be in the ground.  But here I sit blogging, because . . . well, when it rains it pours.  

That statement has often been used to explain why we are stuck in a bad situation - life keeps overwhelming us with rain after rain.  We have so many good intentions; yet we find that we are inside huddled up waiting for the rain to stop.  God never intended for the rain, to bring doom and gloom.  It is meant to refresh, quench, and heal a dry and thirsty life.  How have we gotten it so out of whack?  Why do we dread the rain?  Why can we not see that God intended it for our good.  So we could huddle up inside his presence and pause while everything around us covered or even flooded with "healing rain".

Healing rain is coming down
It's coming nearer to this old town
Rich and poor, weak and strong
It's bringing mercy, it won't be long

Healing rain is coming down
It's coming closer to the lost and found
Tears of joy, and tears of shame
Are washed forever in Jesus' name

Healing rain, it comes with fire
So let it fall and take us higher
Healing rain, I'm not afraid
To be washed in Heaven's rain

Lift your heads, let us return
To the mercy seat where time began
And in your eyes, I see the pain
Come soak this dry heart with healing rain

And only You, the Son of man
Can take a leper and let him stand
So lift your hands, they can be held
By someone greater, the great I Am

Healing rain, it comes with fire
So let it fall and take us higher
Healing rain, I'm not afraid
To be washed in Heaven's rain

To be washed in Heaven's rain...

Healing rain is falling down
Healing rain is falling down
I'm not afraid
I'm not afraid...

words by Michael W. Smith

Homesteading Medlin Style

New Homestead = New Blog Address

Over a year ago, God put our priorities in check and rearranged our lives.  We sold our big house in the city and moved to a smaller house in the country.  We left our church of 450 in the city and moved to church of 75 a bit farther out.  We took a step back from the electronic age we all live in and can not avoid (here i am blogging about it) and got rid of cable tv and our kids became unplugged on school days.  We purged and purged and purged some more through all our material possessions.  And found that we really didn't need that much after all.  But most of all we decided that this little family of five (+God) was the most important thing happening right now.  Our God, our marriage, our kids nothing else mattered.  When we lined all that up the rest of this stuff just fell into place.  Why?  God told us too.  How?  Only with His help, it wasn't easy.

So the "Little House in Tomball" becomes the "Little Homestead in Hockley" . . . let's see if I can keep blogging through all this :).