Peppermint Ice Goat Milk Soap

I have a new soap on the curing rack right now.  Peppermint Ice is made with all the quality ingredients all Lora's Beauty soaps have; olive oil, cocoa butter, coconut oil, and goat milk.  Included in this one is a dash of Himalayan Pink Salt, Pink Brazilian Clay, and Peppermint Essential Oil.

This is one bar of soap that will wake you up in the morning and leave your skin tingling and fresh!

Pink Himalayan Salt is embedded in the bottom of each 5 oz bar.  This exotic salt is not only beautiful but is very nourishing to your skin, leaving it clean, smooth, and soft.

Pink Brazilian Clay tops the bar of soap.  It is wonderful at cleansing and detoxifying the skin.  This clay is all natural with no artificial dyes.

Peppermint Essential Oil provides an all natural scent that is not only refreshing to smell but will literally leave your skin tingling and brighter!

Peppermint Ice Goat Milk Soap available at Lora's Beauty soon!

Italian Bread

Another weekend and another bread making (and soap making) undertaking!  Man, my full-time day job is seriously getting in the way of my life!

This weekend I picked another recipe in my Christmas gift bread book.

I started with making my biga (bread starter) Saturday evening.  Sunday morning I used the biga and made dough for two Italian loafs.

After a couple hours of rising, you can see how nice the dough was.








I separated the dough into two pieces and formed a batard, a shape similar to a baguette but slightly shorter.

Another hour of rising and the dough is ready to bake.  I used my Emile Henry Rectangular Baking Stone, Black
again and steamed the oven by pouring a cup of steam in a hot cast iron pan and every 30 seconds opening the oven to spray water against the sides for 3 times.

I believe these loaves are my best yet!  I got the nice air pockets in them and they taste divine!

Homemade Pizza

I'm pretty open minded, but for as long as I can remember there are a few foods that I've always felt were better made at a restaurant and not homemade.  I've always put pizza in that camp, so I never really made homemade pizza.  I ate it, but it was made by someone else.

I then started buying those ready-made crusts, like Boboli.  I'd add cheese and pepperoni and call it pizza.  It was convenient.  A couple years ago I noticed the grocery store was actually selling pizza dough in the refrigerated section.  I bought that and added cheese and pepperoni.  It was an improvement over the ready-made crust.

After a year or more of buying the pizza dough, it dawned on me just how easy it would be to make it myself.  Problem is, I didn't want to have to wait for dough to rise when I wanted pizza.  You know the feeling I'm sure.  When you want pizza, you NEED pizza SOON!  That's when I decided to consult the internet and see if I could freeze pizza dough.  Much to my amazement (there is yeast in it and yeast is alive, afterall) you could!

Armed with my new found knowledge, I went to Amazon and purchased a dough hook for my Kitchen Aid mixer:



You can find the recipe I use here.  I usually double it and get three large sized pizzas.

I simply pull the dough out of the freezer the night before.  Once thawed,  gently pull the dough on the edge and turn it clockwise to shape it.

I've found this AirBake Nonstick Pizza Pan, 15.75 in

to work great for baking. 

Add your favorite toppings (pepperoni, of course) and bake at 420 degrees for about 22 minutes.

I'm still a huge fan of pizza made at a restaurant (preferably with a wood burning stove!) but this sure is a close second!

Yum!

Can I Reupholster? Kinda...

Another long weekend project wrapped up!  This one I started a while ago and what a pain in the, well you know.

As per usual, I didn't get a good before picture, but I have a picture and it has a back story!  I've had this dressing chair (is that a thing?) for 20 some years now.  It's original upholstery was in pretty bad shape so I had a slipcover made for it.  This worked good for many years but then I started reading blogs about how easy it was to reupholster furniture and I got the itch to try it myself.  I decided this chair would be the perfect piece to practice on, if it didn't work out, I still had a slipcover for it so no harm!

Funny thing happened as I started to take the old upholstery apart; my 21 year old son panicked!  "What are you doing to that chair?", he asked.  "You're not planning on selling it are you? (I was.)  "That was my timeout chair!"

And so it was!  In fact, that's the only before picture I have of the chair; with my son sitting in it in timeout!  I don't remember why he was in timeout but he doesn't look too distressed about it.  Isn't he just the cuuuutest ever!?
Needless to say, I won't be selling this piece.

Taking all the tacks and staples out was the real pain in the butt.  Once that was completed, the reupholstering of it really wasn't that hard.  There are plenty of videos out there to walk you through it if you're interested because, alas, I didn't get many (none) pictures of it.

I did get some after photos though!

I painted the legs with Miss Mustard Seed Milk Paint (Shutter Gray)

I purchased Navy Blue Bull Denim Fabric - by the Yard

for the fabric and Wrights 183 9001-29A Cotton Piping, 50-Yard, 1/4-Inch, Naturalto use as the piping.

Not too bad for a first time, in my opinion.  Like I said though, I still have the slipcover!

Dutch Oven Homemade Bread

I made more homemade bread this weekend.  This time I baked it in a dutch oven.  Without further ado,  here's where you can get the recipe:

http://cooking.nytimes.com/recipes/11376-no-knead-bread

And here are the pictures!

Baking it in the dutch oven creates a wonderful crisp and golden brown crust.

Inside, the bread is airy and delicious!
Add a little butter and....heaven.

Homemade Bread, yummmm

Thanks to my wonderful son, I received this for Christmas:


Since I had the weekend off, I naturally decided to make some bread!  I spent about an hour reading the book and felt I was well prepared to try my hand at making Ciabatta bread.  Bread-making is a lot like soap-making; it requires patience.  The end product is not produced within minutes, or even hours.

In this case I began by  making a poolish starter (pictured), a wet sponge-like dough that ferments for at least a day.

Using a starter for bread-making creates better flavor and texture. A biga is anther type of starter; it is not as wet as the poolish.

The next day, I made the bread dough and added the poolish to the dough.  This dough needed a couple more hours to rise then I created a cloche with a large white dishtowel and allowed the dough to rise again for at least an hour.

Baking the bread was quite the experience.  I purchased this Emile Henry Rectangular Baking Stone, Black

I heated the stone, a cast iron pan, and the oven to 500 degrees and placed the dough on the stone.  Immediately after doing this I added hot water to the cast iron pan which created a steam in the oven.  Apparently, professional baking ovens have a push button that will send steam into the oven!  

I closed the oven door and every 30 seconds I would open the door and spray water against the back and sides of the oven to create more steam.  This was repeated 3 times, then I lowered the oven temperature to  450 degrees and the bread was allowed to bake for 20 minutes.

The finished product was not bad for a first time but room for improvement.  The bread crust was crisp, not too tough, and the flavor was very good! Needless to say, I'll be baking more bread very soon!

Beeswax Candles

A year or so ago, a friend at work gave me a giant block of beeswax for my soap making.  I haven't used beeswax in soap before and still haven't, although I am going to try it soon.  Regardless, the amount of beeswax he gave me was WAY more than I'd use in soap so I figured I'd make candles with it.  How hard could that be, really?  You just melt the wax put a wick in and let it dry....

Well, it was a MESS, and a slight disaster.  The candles never really burned well; they'd create this pit as they burned then burn themselves out.  All in all, it was a failure.

Not to be deterred I decided to give it another go and remelt the wax.  This time I did a little research and discovered I used too flimsy of a wick.  Beeswax is slow burning and therefore you need a sturdier wick.

I purchased these CandleScience 50 Piece Natural Candle Wick, Medium
with a wick clip on the bottom from Amazon.  I set my containers on a paper towel, cut a hole in a piece of masking tape that I taped to the top, and slipped the wick though the tape.  This secured the wick as I poured the wax into the container.

I also learned, as I was researching my previous failure, that beeswax burns really hot and can sometimes crack the container it's in.  Blending the wax with a 'cooler' oil helps keep the temperature down.  Because of this I added one cup of coconut oil to a pound of wax as it was melting.

*Helpful Hint*  Do not melt the wax in any container you plan to keep.  You will NOT be able to clean the container.  I find it's easier to use an old coffee can, or in this case metal cookie can, as a double boiler,

Before I poured the wax into the containers, I added a little grapefruit fragrance oil for a nice natural scent that would complement the scent of the beeswax. 

With just these couple of changes, I'm happy to report, my candles now burn steadily, without pits, and smell fresh, not overpowering.