Bread and Roses

On the entrance arbor at the bottom of the steps that lead to our house I thought it would be nice to plant some climbing roses to add to the general fuddy-duddyness that is our 1920s bungalow. Our two climbing roses have survived neglect for many years now and put on a nice show for most of the year. While I’m sure there are many more worthy and interesting heirloom climbing roses one can hunt down we went with two boring varieties. One is an Ic...

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Picture Sundays: Bread Fail

Lest anyone think there’s just one DIY success after another here at the Root Simple compound, behold my failed attempt at a whole wheat pecan loaf. The very wet dough stuck to the banneton and got ripped off when I tried to transfer it to the dutch oven. I baked it anyways and it tasted alright, but it didn’t rise much in the oven. Speaking of failures, I need to blog this week about why I’m hopped up on Benadryl. Hint: it involves a freak summe...

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Whole Wheat Sourdough Starter Recipe

...e Kaplan’s book Good Bread is Back, which details the revival of sourdough bread making in France in the early 1990s. Kaplan notes that sourdough, “rises less than a dough made with baker’s yeast and also more slowly. Its crust is thicker. It keeps significantly longer. It has greater nutritional value, partly because it is richer in certain vitamins and enzymes that are by-products of lactic fermentation, and it contains less phytic acid, which b...

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Homegrown Evolution in Chicago

...ter with: nettlesting@yahoo.com Erik will lead an informal presentation on Urban Homesteading in Los Angeles – focusing on his and his wife’s homegrown systems of adventurous experimentation of chickens, growing, greywater, brewing and more – some successful, some not so much! Copies of The Urban Homestead will be for sale. Many thanks to Nancy Klehm for arranging these events! See her website Spontaneous Vegetation for more info on other events a...

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A Recipe for Injera

...ation by Sandor Ellix Katz. This is a life changing recipe book that every urban homesteader should own–so go out and buy a copy! So here’s how we made injera based on Katz’s recipe: Ingredients 2 cups sourdough starter (check out our post on an easy way to keep and maintain a sourdough starter) 5 cups lukewarm water 2 cups whole-wheat flour 2 cups teff flour (an Ethiopian grain available from Bob’s Red Mill at Whole Foods) 1 teaspoon salt 1 teasp...

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