GFG's Ultimate Peanut Butter Cookies

This is a family favourite on our farm. I like them crispy for dunking in my afternoon coffee. This instantly brings me back to when I was a kid on Nana and Papa's farm where the same ritual was played out 40 years ago. Cindy and the kids like them a little more chewy and with Chocolate Chips. So, take your pick how you like your peanut butter cookie. Either way, they're pretty darn good.

1/2 cup butter - room temperature
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 cup brown sugar
1 egg
1 tsp vanilla
1/2 cup peanut butter - It has to be crunchy peanut butter or it's not a peanut butter cookie.
1-1/2 cup GFG Park or Red Fife flour
1 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp salt

1 - Cream the butter and sugars
2 - Add egg, vanilla and peanut butter and beat well
3 - In a separate bowl mix the dry ingredients
3 - Add dry to wet and mix until incorporated

Drop suitable spoon fulls of dough onto a cookie sheet and make a criss cross pattern with a fork. Again, if you don't do this...it's not a peanut butter cookie.

In the meantime, you will have pre-heated your oven to 400 degrees. Once the oven is ready, bake your cookies. This is the tricky part. The cookies go from chewy to crispy really quick. So if you like chewy cookies they will cook in about 8 mins. Once they just start to turn colour around the edges. Leave them to colour fully for another 2 minutes or so and they will be crunchy when they cool, ready for coffee.

New sourdough starter for a new year

One of the new projects that I decided to start this year was a sourdough. I've done sourdough in years past, but my baking projects never really seemed to ever work out. The bread was always tough and dense...I lost interest. 

However, over the past year, I have really hit my stride when it comes to bread baking. I would like to say that I read this or that classic bread baking book, that a glowing light descended from the heavens, and I suddenly learned how to bake bread. The truth is that I just kept at it and something clicked. I now know what the dough feels like when it is ready to go in the loaf pan or on the hearth. It turns out that it really isn't that hard. If you can remember back to when you learned to ride a bike, it is sort of like that. Seemingly impossible at first and then rather quickly you just do it without thinking. That is the best analogy that I have for my bread baking experience. 

There are some basic bits of knowledge that I can pass along though. 

Don't necessarily pay attention to any recipe. The fact that you didn't use exactly the right amount of yeast has very little to do with the door stop sitting on your cooling rack. Trust me. 

What I have found to be the biggest single factor in my successes is the hydration and gluten development in the dough. This is especially true when it comes to using our Entire Grain flour. In simplistic terms, you need to knead. And you need to knead more than you think. Leaving the dough to rest between kneading is a good trick too. I use our Kitchen Aid with the dough hook for 95% of my kneading. It works well and saves me sore arms and time. I leave that dough kneading for a good 10 minutes and I keep adding flour until I have a really stiff, dry dough. This stiff dough gives me the nicest, lightest bread. Whenever my dough has been too wet and floppy the bread turns out like a brick. Trust me.

This newest incarnation of sourdough on our farm actually got its start when a friend came over for dinner before Christmas and brought us a bottle of homemade hard Apple Cider. At the bottom of the bottle is the layer of yeasty type tailings that don't taste very good. When I was building my starter I used a couple Tblsp of Apple Cider, but not the cloudy yeast tailings. You can follow any sourdough starter you like. Googling "sourdough starter" will give you more results than you know what to do with. 

Apple Cider Starter - 1 month old

I think that people like to make things fancier than they need to be so I simply use equal parts of water and flour and a little of the cider. Keep the starter out at room temperature and wait till it starts bubbling. Once this happens, every day for about a week take out about half the starter and replace it with an equal amount of the flour water mix. There should be some critical mass with your starter. I use a jar that holds about 2.5 cups of starter. Once your starter is really humming along you can put it in the fridge and repeat the feeding process once every week and a half or so.

When you want to bake some bread, simply take a cup of starter and mix it in with your dough ingredients. When baking sourdough without adding commercial yeast it is important to note that the dough will take significantly longer to rise. Patience is the key to a good sourdough. I usually have to leave my bread proof for the whole day. Adding yeast...it proofs within an hour, maybe 2.

All in all, baking bread is pretty easy once you get the hang of it. Taking things a step further and playing around with sourdough is another bit of enjoyment too. Don't be afraid to give sourdough a try.

Gold Forest Products on the coast!

This past weekend was the launch of Gold Forest Grains products in Powell River, BC. Stella, the owner of Kelly's Specialty Shop in Powell River got hold of us through my Aunt Sonja who works at the store. Together, they placed an order for many of our products to be carried in their store. Additionally, they attended Powell River's farmers market last weekend and featured our grain products! Sales are going well there and on our next visit to BC's glorious coast, we will feel right at home after we stop in at Kelly's!

 

a great food blog

The Laughing Gastronome

I got tuned in to this blog through my friend Kevin's Blog. The particular post regarding pain a l’ancienne has me excited to try something new with my bread. I have not had the time to really sink my teeth into truly good bread building, but it is something that has always intrigued me. As always, it will be with our own fresh milled flour so I trust that I will have to adjust for the healthful benefits of a true "entire grain" flour. The extra germ and bran will be dealt with accordingly, possibly through sifting. I can then use the sifted germ/bran in my oatmeal or a nice batch of raisin bran muffins perhaps.

Anyways, I thought I would share a new blog discovery with you and thank Kevin for inspiring me to bake some bread again!

acanadianfoodie at it again!

A wonderful review from Valerie using our flours for her huge day of bread baking!

http://www.acanadianfoodie.com/2011/05/03/gold-forest-grains-flour-tasting-and-bread-baking-marathon-with-lequan-and-chan/

eat alberta

Slow Food Edmonton is hosting what appears to be a marvelous opportunity for folks to be able to resource local food more effectively. On April 30, 2011 there will be an event called Eat Alberta: A Celebration of Our Local Food Heroes.

Now you have the link, you can go ahead and give it a look. It will be a wonderful way for people to get to know where to source local food of all types including Yvan Chartrand of Treestone Bakery! Treestone Bakery has been a customer of Gold Forest Grains for three years now. We are very proud to supply Yvan's bakery with our local Hard Red Spring Wheat (Park variety).