Cinnamon Raisin Bagels with Golden Flax Seed

Cinnamon Raisin Bagels with Golden Flax Seed

What a delicious way to stay warm on a chilly day. We don't do cold well in Texas and in my drafty old house the best time spent is in the kitchen keeping the oven stoked up with the heavenly aromas of fresh baked bread. There is a few steps to making bagels, but it is really kind of hard to mess them up. The secret is always in the dough and I have a super recipe for it.

Makes 8 Bagels. Preheat oven to 425 degrees.

Ingredients

4 cups of unbleached bread flour
2 tbsp. raw local honey
1 1/2 tsp sea salt
2 tsp. active dry yeast
1 tbsp organic sunflower oil (sesame oil is great for sesame bagels)
1 1/2 cup warm water
1 1/2 tsp. cinnamon (omit if making plain bagels)
1 cup organic golden plump raisins (omit for plain bagels)
egg white to brush on for topping and your choice of seeds

Other variations: sesame, onion, garlic, herbs and so forth.

Directions

Mix all your dry ingredients together first with a wire whisk. For using the raisins, put them in a small bowl with the water. Place them in the microwave for a couple of minutes. This helps them become a little tender and creates a little raisin juice. Add the wet stuff to the dry ingredients. Mix until well combined with your dough hook. Turn the dough out on a floured surface and knead by hand for about 10 minutes until it's nice and smooth. Kneading is simply working the dough with your hands by rolling, folding and squeezing. It's a good little work out for you as well as the dough.

Knead dough nice and smooth

Next knead it out into sort of a fat snake, long enough to cut 8 fairly even pieces. After you cut your pieces cover them with a cotton towel and let them rest for about 10 to 20 minutes.

Cut into 8 pieces

After your cut pieces have rested it is time to make the bagel hole. The best way I've found to do this is to simply use your thumbs. Push them a little on one side in the middle and then the other. Then take your fingers and go around to kind of smooth the circle. Don't worry if it splits a bit. Just pinch it and smooth it. Have fun and enjoy because it will be beautiful and homemade. After you have the bagels shaped cover them with a towel and let them rest for 20 minutes.

Shape the bagels

Now is the time to make sure the oven is preheated at 425 degrees. Put a good size pot of water on the stove and get it boiling. You will need a jelly roll pan or cookie sheet lightly oiled. I use the wrong side of a couple of wooden spoons for turning the bagels in the water. Chop Sticks are always cool, but I have no clue where mine are. You also need a slotted spoon for taking the bagels out of the boiling water. Once your organized go ahead and whip up a little egg white with a small bit of water. Go ahead and select the seeds you want to use for topping. I put them in a small cup next to my egg white and brush. Once the bagels have finished resting go ahead and brush them lightly with the egg white. This will give you that glossy glow as well as help the seeds to stick to the tops. Sprinkle the seeds and very lightly press them on for good contact.

Brush with egg white and sprinkle on seeds

Drop a couple of bagels into the boiling water for one minute and then turn them on the other side for one more minute. Remove with slotted spoon and let water drain off. Arrange the bagels on the oiled baking sheet. Bake them in the oven for 10 minutes and turn them over for another 10 minutes. Remove them from the pan and let cool on wire rack.

Boil the bagels

Another version with Sesame seeds and Sesame oil

Stay Warm and Happy Gardening!!
Pammy

Texas Pecan Yeast Bread

Texas Pecan Yeast Bread

This bread makes wonderful toast and sandwiches with a lot of variations. It's really delicious with a little homemade jam or honey on top. You can add a bit of cinnamon and nice big organic golden raisins to sweeten it up a bit. I just happened to hit the mother load on pecans this season and love them in bread. You'll enjoy this recipe because it's a pretty basic one that can be altered in many ways by combining different grains, seeds and even home milled legumes. I also use different organic oils as well, such as Sunflower, Sesame, Olive and Canola. The trick is to not add in all your flour at the beginning so you can adjust for the added in grains and such. The dough should always be sticky but not to the point of sticking to your fingers where it can't be kneaded well. Makes 2 loaves. Preheat oven to 400 degrees.

Ingredients

1 1/2 cup warm water
1/2 cup dark brown sugar (can substitute with local raw honey or organic raw sugar)
1/3 cup unsalted butter (can substitute with an oil)
5 1/2 to 6 cups unbleached bread flour (can substitute one cup for fresh milled wheat, bran or legumes)
1 cup organic whole oats
1 cup finely crushed pecans
1 tsp. sea salt
4 tsp. active dry yeast
2 nice large eggs from the hen house or cage free

Directions

Take the water, brown sugar and butter and put in a small glass bowl for the microwave. Heat about a minute and stir, then heat one more minute. Leave it to stay warm in the microwave while you prepare the other ingredients. (Optional: if you want to add raisins let them heat in the microwave in this bowl. It helps them swell a bit and makes a little raisin juice that's yummy)

You will need the dough hook and mixing bowl for this part. First put in the one cup of oats. Next add 5 cups of flour (Remember, that you can substitute one of the 5 cups for another milled grain like wheat or legume) add salt and yeast. I use a hand wire whisk and whisk it all together, then place the bowl on the stand with the dough hook. (If your adding cinnamon or any other seeds or spices this is the place to do it.) Take your small bowl out of the microwave and test it to be sure it's not hotter than luke warm and the butter and sugar is stirred well and melted. Pour the wet mixture in with your dry ingredients. Mix about a minute with the dough hook on speed two and turn it back off. Add the two eggs and turn it back on the second speed. When the dough becomes well combined and begins to pull away from the hook, check it with your finger to see how sticky it is. I will usually add 1/4 more flour here and then test it again. If it still feels to sticky I will add one more 1/4 cup. Pour it out of the bowl and knead the dough for a minute or so to make sure everything is worked in well. Lightly oil another big bowl and put the dough in, turning the ball around in the bowl to lightly oil the whole thing. Cover with plastic wrap or a cotton towel and set it in a warm place to rise. Usually about an hour until it is double in bulk.

Next, pour the raised dough onto a lightly floured surface. Pat it out and divide the dough in half. Roll each half into a loaf and place in the slightly oiled loaf pans with the seam side down. Tuck under your ends a bit. I take a small bit of milk and brush the tops and pat on oats or seeds. Again, cover with plastic wrap or a towel in a warm place to allow to rise double in size. Bake for about 20 to 30 minutes on 400. You will know when the bread is done by tapping it on the bottom of the loaf. If it sounds a bit hallow it is complete. Cool on a wire rack.

This is another variation using Home Milled Brown Lentils and Golden Flax Seed

Happy Gardening!!
Pammy

Working The Everbearing Strawberry Patch

Strawberry runner showing 3 small roots

The sweetest strawberry you will ever taste in your life will come from a home grown garden. This year it seems that January is going to be the best time for me to share a few southern garden tips and what is going on in my strawberry patch. The best place to begin for someone just starting out, who wants to grow strawberries directly in the garden and not in pots, would be with a mother bed. The mother bed is for growing runners only. You will need these runners or offspring, especially if your only starting out with a few plants. It's important to keep all the flowers and berries picked off until well after June and July in order for the plants to produce plenty of runners. The runners will be your strawberry producing plants in the next season. If you don't want to wait for strawberries, then you would need to start your mother bed as well as order enough plant stock for berries. They say it takes at least 125 plants to feed a family of four for a year. That is with putting up preserves and fresh for the freezer. It's a good standard to go by in deciding how many you want to grow and how much space you have to grow them in. Also, your strawberry plants are only good for making berries for 3 years. So you will need to be able to replace them as well as replace plants that don't make it through the year.

My Favorite Everbearing Varieties for Texas are Sequioia and Quinault

There are many lessons I have learned since I began growing strawberries in my garden. Most advice you may find is for commercial growing. Home gardening is completely different, especially when your gardening organically. My adventures began about 4 years ago in the fall of the season while I was out picking up a few things at our local farmers market. It was an innocent day until I just happened to walk past the most tempting looking strawberries dangling from some little plants. Since I was alone and there was no one around to stop me, I headed to the counter with 5 of the little pots. I was feeling high hopes on the horizon with my sweet little purchase and couldn't wait to get home to plant them. I know that bad nematodes in your soil can be very troublesome to strawberries, so I chose a bed that I had planted with marigolds the previous season. Marigolds are a sure cure to getting rid of the bad nematodes. It's a garden friend to everything, so I always have them planted throughout the garden. After getting the strawberries planted the first thing on my agenda was to pluck all those pretty little flowers and berries off and get them mulched and watered in. Next, was to get the catalogs out and order some seeds for companions to my new strawberry plants. Borage and spinach were perfect as well as a little lettuce here and there. All of which can also be planted in the fall. Companion planting is fun and important to learn in an organic garden. Plants enjoy growing and benefit from certain other species and won't do well if planted with the wrong thing. Strawberries and Borage for instance actually help each other by enhancing the yields and flavor, aside from the fact that as Borage begins to bloom its little periwinkle star flowers honeybees begin to populate them in masses. As early spring emerges you will begin to see the little Borage sprouts. After all danger of frost I begin to plant a summer spinach directly in with the strawberry plants. The variety New Zealand will make a natural ground cover throughout the bed helping to keep the moisture in the ground. It takes the heat very well and really seems to help the everbearers to stay cooler through the long hot summer season.

The Last Three Pints of Jam

By the time fall rolled around again I had well over a hundred new strawberry runners to dig up just from those 5 little tempting plants from the farmers market. No matter how I looked at it, I was not going to be able to fit that many into the possible spaces I might have available. I kept 75 of them and shared the rest with friends and family. I potted all the runners up into 3 & 4 inch pots in flats and many took special care having such tiny little roots. After pre-watering in my pots in flats I sit the rooted area on the top of the soil surface and placed a paperclip over the crown and give it a gentle nudge to give the root good contact. You can dab them in a little root hormone if you like for faster results, but I've not found a need for it here. You don't want to ever cover the crown with dirt or mulch because this will kill your plant. I have plenty of time throughout January to prepare the beds before very early spring. I want to begin putting my newly propagated plants in the garden before the end of Feburary. Be sure you don't choose areas in the garden for your new strawberry plants where you had Tomatoes, Peppers, Potatoes or Eggplants previously growing. You could cause your strawberries to get a disease called Verticillium Rot. You need a very well drained slightly sandy loam a little high on the acid side. Usually a PH of around 6 to 6.5 works well. Your beds also need to be rich in organic matter. A lot of composted pine needles mixed in your organic matter seems to help with the PH levels.


Next comes all the work. You must be very determined to have strawberries because it is a daily job to go through all your plants. Sometimes it requires twice a day along with all your other chores of putting up the harvest and tending to the rest of your garden. You must mulch with good quality hay or straw around each individual plant. You also need to be sure during your rounds to remove all dead leaves and debris from under and around your plants. Our biggest pest in the south for strawberries and cantelope are the pill or sow bugs. They are actually a beneficial insect for the organic gardener because the help break down all the organic matter. However in the cases of strawberries and cantelopes they will cling to the fruit and chew right through it. If you keep the plants clean and on the beds of straw they will still break through, but it really slows them down. While I do a sometimes twice daily harvest until around the middle of July, I usually fill a very large bowl a day, while maybe throwing out 5 to 10 berries out of that large bowl that sow bugs had gotten to. So I figure I'm getting a whole lot more berries than the bugs are and I'm chemical free. It also so happens that the large bowl of strawberries I harvest each day makes exactly 6 pints of jam!! It's January and we only have 3 precious pints left and will have to wait until March for more. I would say I need more space for more plants. Oh, it's so much fun and so rewarding!!

Happy Gardening!!
Pammy

Echinacea (Purple coneflower)

Echinacea in my 2010 Summer Garden

This is an excellent time to discuss Echinacea (E.Purpurea) while there is still time to divide and transplant it in Southeast Texas. I actually divided mine in October this fall. The temperatures were still a bit hot and humid, but I had plans for a new bed and couldn't make myself wait until November (the perfect month). They are so hardy here and took the move quit well. I had to make sure that I mulched them well and watered them in real good so they could adapt to the new bed. We are having such a mild December this year and it's looking quite mild so far going into January. It would be possible to divide many herbs and move them around now by simply digging up a clump and gently puling the roots apart into smaller clumps for transplanting. The important thing to remember in our area is the weather can change at any moment. It would be wise to keep up with all the current weather reports. I wouldn't try this if a hard freeze was on the horizon.

Echinacea in a Texas semi dormant stage in January

I originally started my Purple Coneflower from seed about 5 years ago. I purchased it from Wildseed Farms located in Fredericksburg Texas. An excellent source for wildflowers, natives, grasses and herbs. They sell organic grown seeds and non hybrids throughout the U.S. with well mapped advice for what grows best in your region. Most of the newer cultivars of hybrids will not grow true to its kind from seed, so I would purchase live plants instead of seed for those. Many of them will also cross pollinate so if you intend to save pure seed I wouldn't mix different varieties together. If your not worried about saving seed you will most likely end up with some very interesting flowers of all sorts. I soaked my seeds overnight in a little water before I planted them directly in the garden in mid November. The winter months will cause a natural stratification process for the seeds as they go through the chilly temperatures that are needed for a good germination rate. A vast majority of wildflowers and natives will be planted in the late fall here.

I am a first hand witness that Echinacea really brings on the butterflies and honey bees. A beautiful site to behold in the mist of summer. It is also an excellent companion plant to grow with Lavender, Yarrow, Coreopsis. and other native plants. They have similar growing requirements in that they love a well drained garden soil mix with equal parts of peat, sand and soil. Organic natural composting gives them all the nutrients they require. Our soil PH ranges on the acid side of around 6.5, which is good for these types of plants. Echinacea has a thick, long tap-root which makes it a good choice where water conservation is needed, especially in Southeast Texas where droughts are common.


The tap-root is also what is used for medicinal purposes. It's history comes from our Native American Tribes. It was used for all kinds of ailments such as colds, coughs and sore throats. It was also used to treat all types of infections similar to what modern science would treat with penicillin today. Even externally Echinacea is an antibacterial and antiseptic which can be used to treat wounds and skin infections. The Dakota Indians even used it to treat their horses. A lot of recent research study of the plant has been done in Europe proving it to be a vital herb in treating many health problems. I have listed some of its uses below.

Echinacea is best known for its immune enhancing ability, but has proven very effective in many other areas as well.

• Colds, coughs and flu and other upper respiratory conditions
• Enlarged lymph glands, sore throat
• Urinary tract infections
• Other minor infections
• May help combat herpes and candida
• Wounds, skin regeneration and skin infections (external use)
• Psoriasis, eczema and inflammatory skin conditions (external use)

Resource: http://www.herbs.org/greenpapers/echinacea.html

Happy Gardening!
Pammy