Hard Work.

Hard work and the Reward. 
To spend time and energy to care for the garden is excellent and fun, and remember the reward is priceless.  I could tell you that the garden is looking good, the plants are growing well.  The summer roses are colourfull, they are all giving beautiful bloom.  The vegetable patch is doing well, tomatoes are starting to ripe.
Cleaning up is necessary, too many old pots also old buckets are sitting everywhere unsightly. Detail and details to be care for having a perfect place.
 Look at these pictures of rose bushes, just Joey, pink rose and dusky double rose are back to the flower, aren't they beautiful!

Amazing roses, the red rose is reaching to the roof, and the white is reaching the sky now, I don't know what I had done to make these roses grow that way.

Very proud of my roses, freshly cut to fill up my vase.  Red roses, variegated orange, just joey, champagne, seduction, dusky pink and white roses.  They made a lovely bouquet

 Cut Roses from the Garden

 The rose flowers please the gardener, what a big reward, working hard is nothing compare the enjoyment that she has.  As people say, this year is the year of the roses.  I think so too.

Cherry Tomato

Strand Romano Tomato

The tomatoes, I may have a few kgs in the harvest time, but right now I am so pleased to show you that the cherry tomato and the strand tomato romano is starting to ripe.

The First Tomato Harvest.

Romano Tomato

What could I say about the garden, my garden - our garden, I could say a lot.  It is a place where I could relax and work at the same time.  Hard work in the garden is never tiring, spend hours in a day at a time.  I do work hard in the garden, but my children say that is understatement mother!

The garden gives me so much pleasure, and the reward is priceless.

There are times on good days, we both not working in the garden but having our cuppa tea, we enjoy the fresh air and appreciate the beauty of the place.

Melanie keeps reminding me, mum, it is good to be in the garden not to garden but to enjoy.  She is right!

On a hot day is sad to see the flowers are suffering-drying out from the heat.  Dried flowers straight from the bushes, but the herbs are coping well.  True, the other day I saw this happening in our backyard.
Early in the morning, love to save these beautiful flowers and the fresh herbs by cutting them and put inside the house.  The roses are attractive in a large vase and adorn the front room beautifully.  And the fresh herbs are excellent for garnishes, and for herb butter to freeze to keep for wintertime.

Preparing the Herb Butter

Fresh Herbs for Garnishes

Yes, the reward of gardening are grand, lots of bonuses.  A challenging work that I love to do other gardening is the sourdough baking.  It is hard, but not really a hard job, only it takes the whole day or even days.  It never stops to amaze me that bread is made of flour, water, and salt only.  That is why it is my dream to bake a beautiful and delicious bread. A staple food for most of us.
So far, it has been fun but cannot achieve perfection just yet, but I determent to succeed.  Reading, research, and learning about sourdough bread since last year at least, putting into practice, again and again, is fascinating.
I am so keen on it, and others are noticing it.  Once upon a time;  my family was wondering  'what on earth she is doing at midnight?  It was the time that I had to check and to feed the starter, or could be making the leaven for ready baking the bread the next morning. The preparation has to be done accordingly in every step to create the perfect loaf.  However, it is all good, the family understands and support me totally.

The first baked for this year, sourdough bread a Batard, with apricot and nuts.

 Fruit and Nut Loaf - Batard

Freshly Sliced Batard with Nuts an Apricot

The Sourdough Baking.
I don't mind the long process of sourdough bread making, I understand the wet dough needs special treatment from the kneading to the baking, the kneading or pulling is so much fun though.  The baking has to be done very carefully, and precaution is vital because it involves the hot oven and the hot baking pot.
The preparation starts from the night before, the baking is the next day and could retard proving in the fridge, and the baking is on the following morning instead.  It takes a lot of hours here. One has to commit fully.  It is not hard work really, but more challenging task, but the reward is amazingly high.

Example:  The actual 'baking' sourdough bread.
The preparation of the dough has been done and ready for the baking, it is a standard 'Batard' loaf.

1. Baking the sourdough bread using Le Creuset Pot or Dutch Oven.
2. Heat the oven to 250 degrees C, place the Pot with the Lid in the oven, let it go for one hour to get the pot very hot.
3. Transfer the loaf to the hot Pot: carefully remove the pot from the oven and remove the lid.
   Tip the loaf into the pot, so the seam-side is down.  Score the top of the dough.  Cover the pot with the lid and place it in the oven to bake for 25 minutes. 
4. Remove the lid - after 25 minutes of baking, remove the lid from the pot to release any remaining steam.  At this point, the loaf should have 'sprung' up, have a dry surface, and be just beginning to show golden colour.
5. Place the pot back in the oven, Uncovered.
6. Bake another 22-25 minutes.  Continue baking until the crust is deeply browned.
7. When done, lift the loaf out of the pot using a spatula.  Transfer to a cooling rack to cool completely.

(dealing with a hot oven, holding a heavy hot pot during the baking process makes me nervous, that's the downfall of the method) There is no other way really, to bake for the best basic Country Loaf that I like, it is the only way.
The sourdough bread needs a hot oven and the hot pot to bake in.  The covered hot pot creates the steams to help the loaf to spring up and to make the scoring to spit beautifully)

Now, you know, only very keen and careful home bakers would do it.  As  I said, I don't mind, because the joy and the anticipation what the loaf will look and what it tastes will make all the hard work worthwhile.
The most interesting of baking this kind of bread, every baking day has a different result,  you have a different loaf every time. (Based on the same ingredients and recipe).  That made this baking very interesting, and I love it.

The last baking shown picture above, I was so pleased when I took the hot pot out, opened the lid and I saw the dough sprung up and the score spat well for the first 22 minutes.  After the baking time was over, proudly I was to pull the pot out with a good looking loaf.  Indeed it was.  Waiting for four hours until the bread was cool enough to cut was easy.  But the joy of cutting it and to find out how the crumb would look is so dear, and it was, the crumb was okay not the best (it's tight, not airy/fluffy and there was not enough network of holes), the crust was crusty and chewy.  No, it was not a disappointment, but it needs improvements.

The crumb not airy but soft enough
a little tight

Last year my variety of sourdough bread was shared among friends, some of them said that the bread was excellent and delicious-very favourable, but I did need them to tell me the truth, they were obviously very polite.  Around Christmas time I invited ladies friends to taste and to take some home, they were happy enough, I waited for constructive criticisms, but I did not have any. They did not help me.  But I keep on doing self-assessment, what should I do to improve.
Learn from mistakes is the best way to improve.

1. The kneading was not sufficient enough and forgot to use the folding method. Folding is not only less labour intensive, but it also gives the crumb of the finished bread a better structure and a more beautiful network of holes (which are a good thing in the artisan bread world!) as the expert said.

 2.  The flour used was not the best quality.  The ingredients were not appropriately weighted.  The sourdough starter was not strong enough, the leaven was not ready, it's too young? And a lot more.

This is the trouble, as I could not point out what the mistakes were, what I could do only keep on trying, every baking day has to be given a hundred and ten percent dedication and effort to achieve a good result.

Sourdough with other benefits.

Pizza using sourdough

Crusty and attractive edging,

Learn about the good bonuses.

The dough of sourdough is excellent for Pizza Baking.  It makes beautiful thin based pizza with a delicious crust.

I only get better, I won't be a weekend baker after all, but monthly baking this sourdough bread suits me well, what I must do is caring for my sourdough starter kindly and faithfully.

I have a good reward for this activity, a little nervous of the process, but fun baking it and happy eating it.  

I could say though, hard work and enjoy the reward!

Sourdough Bread Gallery.

Until Next Post
Thank You for Visiting
Susy