The Greening of Gavin

TGoG 114 – Sustainable Living with Gürkan Yeniçeri

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This week we catch up with Gürkan Yeniçeri, a fellow sustainable living practitioner who lives in Canberra, ACT.  For those of you who listen to the Little Green Cheese podcast, you would have heard his cheese making story during episode LGC 04.

Gürkan Yeniçeri

Gürkan Yeniçeri

Gürkan and I talk about so many different sustainable living subjects during the show that I am going to timestamp them incase you want to skip ahead to a particular section;

  • Introduction [0:01]
  • Bee Keeping [2:49]
  • Mead and Cider [4:07]
  • Making Chutney [8:40]
  • Why Gürkan lives sustainably [9:31]
  • Classes at Canberra Environment Centre [11:09]
  • No-knead Bread Making [13:45]
  • Backyard Aquaponics [17:09]
  • Cheesemaking at home [30:43]
  • Outro [32:40]

He has done so much with the space he has at hand.

Please thank Gürkan for joining me on the show and sharing all his amazing achievements.

You can find him at;

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Ben Bakes Bread

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With my dinner tonight (homemade Minestrone Soup), I had a couple of slices of bread.  Bread made by my son Ben.

Ben Bakes Bread

Ben with his bread

It was absolutely delicious.  There is nothing quite as nice as a fresh loaf spread with real butter.  You can see that the lad is very pleased with himself.  His old Dad is also as proud as punch as is Mum.

Kim taught him how to make the dough using the bread maker, which I don’t think is cheating at all, especially if it is powered by electricity that we have generated with our very own solar PV system!

He said the making bread was easy once he knew how, and loved the taste of the herbs.

So for those who are after the recipe, here it is.

Ben’s Bread

Ingredients

  • 330ml Skimmed Milk
  • 1 Egg yolk
  • 1½ Tablespoons Olive Oil
  • 1 teaspoon Salt
  • 1½ Tablespoons Sugar
  • 3½ cups Bread Flour
  • 1 teaspoon Bread Improver
  • 2 Tablespoons dried Italian herbs (less if you like)
  • 2¼ teaspoons Dried Yeast

Method

  1. Add into bread maker in order of listing and set on the Dough setting.
  2. Once kneaded in the machine, shape dough into a loaf shape and make about 6 diagonal shallow cuts in the dough.
  3. Place on well-greased baking tray and bake at 180°C for 20 to 25 minutes.  You will know it’s cooked when it sounds hollow when you knock on the bottom of the loaf, and it is brown on top.
  4. Cool on a baking rack, serve sliced with butter!

Kim and I are so proud!  His first loaf of yummy bread and we know exactly what is in it.

We won’t be able to keep him out of the kitchen now.

The Staff of Life

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Bread in its many forms is a staple food in many countries, and fills the bellies of many billions of people each day.  We have been making our own bread for many years, and just love the taste of freshly baked bread either in our bread-maker or from the oven.  I am also looking forward to cooking a few loaves in my cob oven now that the weather is getting cooler again.

My apricot jam and Kim’s wholemeal loaf

Now imagine our dismay when our old bread-maker machine died the other week.  We had kept it going since 1998 when I first bought it for Kim as a present.  It was a bit like the energizer bunny, it just kept working.  The seal in the bottom of the pan was stuffed, so we just used it to make dough in the end and baked the bread in the oven.  It lasted for 14 happy bread making years and many a loaf was made in it.

So what can one do, besides do everything by hand, which Kim cannot manage, and I don’t have the time, except to go and find another bread-maker machine.  We did look for second hand, however we were a bit dubious about buying a clapped out appliance, I decided to buy a brand new machine, in the hope that it lasts as long as the old one.  Here it is.

It has a long pan, instead of the tall type that we had in the old model.

It also makes a very decent loaf of bread.  Kim made this sundried tomato loaf, which was delicious and didn’t last very long!

We are impressed, and even I am now making bread again.  I use a pre-made multi-grain bread-mix which is the same cost as normal bakers flour and is made within our local zone.  I can make a loaf for $1.30, and the equivelent size and type cost over $5.00 in the supermarket or bakery.  The purchase will pay itself off with the savings in just under six months, then after that it is very cheap bread.

We have used it to make the dough for our home made pizza’s the other night, and I have baked 2 loaves of multi-grain in as many days.  In fact I have a few loaves that I am going to make tomorrow that should last us at least a week.

Who else makes their own bread?  It doesn’t have to be in a bread maker either.  Let me know, I would love to hear about your daily loaf.