It's beginning to look alot like Christmas

      This past week we travelled to Memphis and visited family and exchanged presents.  I came home to a Christmas party at work.  Today at church we had a wonderful sunday school and celebrated the last sunday of advent with the children's pagent.  After church, I baked cookies and listened to Christmas music.  Our tree is up and decorated.  Tommorrow I'm visiting my old workplace to bring them some Christmas cheer.  I just feel great, even though I'm not completely done with the shopping.  I think church, visiting with family and friends and the music are my favorite parts of Christmas. 

Bread making

  I remember trying to make bread in my 20's.  I guess I had some successes.  As a young mother I was given a sourdough bread starter.  I made bread with this for years.  It made wonderful bread and cinnamon rolls.  The problem was the recipe called for lots of sugar and oil.  I'd let the starter die for my own health benefit.  The bread was so good, but so not good for me.  For the last several years, I've been making bread with the same sourdough starter but somewhat modified.  I cut the oil way back and left out the sugar.  Then I started adding whole wheat flour.  Everything I did was just trial and error.  I found I couldn't use all whole wheat flour because it wouldn't rise well enough.  So my most recent challenge has been getting all whole wheat flour to work.  I happened to use freshly ground wheat flour from the health food store and it rose wonderfully.  So I took a bread making class and learned more about wheat mills and baking with freshly ground whole wheat flour. So I am currently shopping for a wheat mill. I've ordered some hard red and white wheat berries.   I love working with dough and baking. I have plans to branch out into crackers and rolls.   I've also made beer which some people call liquid bread. The whole science of nutrition is interesting to me but I'm really a baker at heart.  Bread and dough is this living thing that requires attention and responds differently each time you bake.  Oh and the smell is just wonderful when it bakes.