This month I made mustard from mustard seeds grown in the Proeftuin. The recipe follows further down the page. But first a bit of botany.

Flowers of Sinapis alba (white mustard) being worked by a bee. Lower on the stem you can see the seed pods developing. As the plant …

This is a list of experiments Ina and I have been conducting during the summer of 2020.

• deepen experience with baking bread with sourdough starter
  • different types of flour
• ferments
  • using sourdough starter for things other than bread
• drying
  • nettle
  • mint
  • leaves of horseradish (blad mierik)
• growing seedlings
• growing cutlings …

I have been making bread regularly since 2017. As I look through the photo's I have made over the years I notice quite a shift in how I do things now versus how I did them when I started out.

Notable changes:

• I started using more water in my dough …

This is a list of experiments Ina and I have been conducting in July and Augst of 2019. Some things I put under several headings as they contain elements of both.

• ferments
  • mirabel ferment
  • beet ferment
  • ketchup ferment
  • sugar ferment
  • whole tomato ferment
  • hot pepper and garlic ferment
  • getting to …

A few days ago a friend and I set out to do an experiment in distilling alcohol from a fermented sugar solution.

On 2019-04-13, I put the sugar ferment together as follows:

Yeast starter:

• 1l water
• 100g sugar
• 12g yeast nutrient (voedingszout)
• 5g yeast

Sugar solution:

• 2l water
• 2kg sugar …

When making bread, the recommendation is to place the dough in a warm spot to rise for about one hour. Since we hardly heat the house in winter (the thermostat is set at 12°C; the living room is a bit warmer still) this proved a bit of a challenge …