Preparation

We leave tomorrow morning. I haven't packed yet, but I can do that before bedtime. I've got bread rising at the moment. I hope it turns out, as I don't really have time to try again tonight. I guess I could get up waaay early in the morning.

I was in experimentation mode tonight, which is why I don't know if it will turn out. I used Bette Hagman's Featherlight recipe, basically, but only the half the flour is her featherlight mix. The rest is a mixture of sorghum flour, my 4-flour white bean mix, and chopped buckwheat groats (allowed to soak for a while). Why? Because it sounded good.

A note on baking GF bread: the most important thing seems to be the water temperature. I can mix and match the flours, so long as about half of it is a base known to work well, and so long as I get enough liquid in it, the determining factor for how well it turns out seems to be water temperature. Here, Bette Hagman is no help. Her recipes all say "lukewarm - about 105 degrees Fahrenheit." This does NOT work well when you add the yeast with the dry ingredients. On the jar of yeast, it suggests 130 degrees when yeast is mixed with the dry ingredients. However, there is a further complication. More than half of the liquid in GF bread is NOT from water. There's eggs, oil, honey, lemon juice... All sitting nicely at room temperature waiting to mix with the warm water you pour in. I experimented with different temperatures for a while, and found that 160 degrees works nicely. Now, I think Bette Hagman tends not to have quite so much non-water (uses egg whites, not whole eggs; only 1 t of vinegar, not 1 T lemonjuice), and maybe it's less of an issue at sea level, but I find that I really need the higher temperature.

*sighs* Dad's still planning on going with us to Colorado. Mom's not happy about it, but she's not up to telling him off, either. No clue if I'll have internet access for a while. Maybe in Fort Collins tomorrow night, but it's pretty unlikely in Akron.