Altivo

This may seem irrational gibberish to readers who don't cook. But when it is bitter cold outside and chilly inside, baking bread and simmering soup always seems to make it warmer. Plus you get a good supper from it.

Actually, no soup today. But I did make a new kind of bread. We have many, many shelves full of cookbooks. Most of them have been skimmed more than once, but certainly also most of those recipes have never been prepared here. Triggered by some bananas that were past their prime, I went in search of a yeast bread into which I could put bananas. No difficulty finding many such recipes, but most of them were overly sweetened and had raisins or other fruit added. I was hoping for something lighter and eventually I found it.

( Banana and Aniseed Bread, recipe under cut )

We had the bread with our dinner salads and pronounced it a keeper. I'm eager to see how well it works as toast.

Somewhat colder today than yesterday. I went out to clean stalls and make up hay nets at about 2 pm, and had to interrupt that work after 30 minutes to come in and get warm again. Despite heavy mittens, my fingers were getting frostbitten. The temperature was about 13°F but the wind chill was probably below zero. I made tea and got warm, then went out to finish. That took another 45 minutes or so, plus the time to put the horses into their stalls and give them supper. Came back inside with painful fingertips and ears again, and that time I had switched to leather mittens lined with fleece and had a knit cap on over my ears. Woodstove is going again, after I cleaned out the ashes and got it started. Feels much better now.

Attempting to reconstruct an excellent bread recipe that we have somehow misplaced. This is a "no-knead" dough. It rises at room temperature overnight, is shaped with very light kneading and rises again, then is baked inside a closed container such as a cast iron Dutch oven. Very easy, though I recommend a scale to weigh flour rather than measuring it by volume.

Recipe and photo tomorrow if it succeeds.

We did get about a half inch of snow last night, which was within the predicted range. Warm enough today to turn everything slushy. Tomorrow evening though, another big storm is supposed to hit. Now they're up to a 12 inch prediction, which makes it start to sound like another overly dramatized dud.

No art today due to cold symptoms that caused me to sleep much of the afternoon, but maybe tomorrow (or the middle of the night if I now find I can't sleep.)