Sunny Looking Lemons and Sourdough Bread

For all you snow-bound garden bloggers, here's a shot of something cheerful and sunny looking:

Ripe Meyer Lemons

Meyer Lemon season is getting into full swing here. My tree produces ripe lemons year round but the bulk of the lemons ripen in the winter. Today I picked a dozen of them and made a batch of Meyer Lemon Curd. Thomas will probably be shocked to learn that I didn't have time to deal with the beautiful peels which are even now sitting in the compost bowl.

A Tree Full of Meyers

I had a request for some of the seeds from my Meyer Lemons from a woman who lives in a place where Meyer Lemon trees are not available, not in nurseries, not by mail order, not at all... At first I was skeptical, I didn't think that lemons would grow true to seed. But after some reading I found that there is a chance that a true copy of my plant might be had from some of its seeds. Some, not all, of the seeds might have an embryo (one citrus seed can have more than one embryo) that is asexually derived (apomictic), a clone of the parent plant. That's an oddity of citrus seeds. Perhaps other plants can produce seeds like this as well but I couldn't say. The major downside to growing citrus from seeds is that it can take years for the trees to bloom and produce fruit. In the meantime...

If you are a follower of Thomas's blog A Growing Tradition (you should be), then you will have seen his wonderful breads. To join in that fun I'm showing off some of my own bread baking efforts. First, my starter. Henrietta is a 100% hydration 50/50 white and whole wheat starter that I started about a year ago following a recipe I found on the LA Times website. I had been trying to get a good starter going for years, more years than I want to admit to, and this formula produced the best starter I've ever made. The bread from that article is fantastic also.

Henrietta

That's a shot of Henrietta at 12 hours after her last feeding. And below, next to her is the starter for a batch of whole wheat levain bread, 12 hours old and ready to be used to seed the final dough.

Henrietta's offspring

Henrietta's grandchildren

This was last week's bake, three loaves of whole wheat leavain breads. I have 2 linen lined baskets and one willow basket for making loaves this size. You can see what a pretty pattern the willow basket leaves on the surface of the loaf.

And this was today's loaf, only one loaf of a different formula whole wheat levain.

Stay warm! Have a nice hot bowl of soup and a chunk of good bread, that should do it.