Goat Cheese and Lavender Pizza

I've been trying to make meals that correlate around what we're bringing in from the barn, the coop and the garden.

Right now that includes, early spring greens, garlic greens, perennial herbs, eggs, and lots of dairy.

Along with eating from the backyard, I've been attempting to switch all of our bread, pasta, etc. over to whole wheat or whole grains and our rice over to brown. I found this whole wheat flour, have you guys heard of it? Prairie Gold by Wheat Montana Farms and Bakery. I don't think it's organic, but it's GMO free, 100% whole grain, certified chemical free, and isn't "enhanced" nutritionally (100% Nutritional Value, nothing added or removed) The farm also believes in sustainable farming. I take all this with a grain of salt...but their claims seemed more promising than some of the other brands, and it was reasonably priced. (There's a more hearty version Bronze Chief.)

The Dough
I found a really nice/easy whole wheat pizza crust recipe here. I used honey instead of sugar, and extra virgin olive oil for my oil. I dumped all the ingredients in a bowl, kneaded it together a few times and left it out on the warm covered porch to rise.When it was done rising, I punched it down and rolled it very thin and placed it on a cornmeal sprinkled cookie sheet (I don't have a pizza pan).

This recipe made two pizza crusts the size shown here. I refrigerated the remaining dough for another time.

The Toppings
Pizza is one of those clean-out-the-fridge meals. Like fritattas, you have a base and then I pile left over veggies, herbs and cheese in eggs, or in this case, on a pizza crust and there's dinner.

For this pizza I used a jar of our spaghetti sauce from last year's heirloom tomatoes, peppers, herbs and onions. But if you have basil growing right now, a homemade pesto would be wonderful with goat cheese! Our basil is still sort of small.

Then I sprinkled a layer of our Double Cream Goat Cheese.

Some spring garlic greens, and some left over spinach and mushrooms that we had for dinner last night, (sauteed in goat butter with garlic greens and salt). For those of who who are finding Morels, that would be delicious! (Side note...for those of you finding Morels I am totally jealous! We are quite Morel free...) I also put our pickled jalapenos on Zach's half.

Then the sort-of weird ingredient...I like rosemary on pizza. But our rosemary plant is still puny and my plant from last year didn't make it through the winter. So I chopped up some lavender leaves and sprinkled those on. The flavor reminds me of an herb-y rosemary taste, but a little more floral.

I baked it in a 425 degree oven for 20 minutes. The goat cheese because it has that extra cream melted beautifully!

Double Cream Goat Cheese

Whew! It's been a busy week so far! But it's supposed to rain today and tomorrow so maybe I'll get a chance to get caught up on some inside work. Right now dairy and gardening have been consuming my life. (In a good way though) And I've been trying to revolve our meals around the spring abundance.

I'm so excited to share that I've finally perfected our goat cheese recipe. And it falls back to my standard cooking motto...when all else fails...add FAT! Or in this case cream. The goat cheeses I've made in the past were just sort of bleh! I mean...not terrible but nothing to write home about. They lacked that goat-y zing that makes goat cheese taste like goat cheese, and they were dry, especially after they'd been refrigerated...almost to the point of squeaky curds. 

I've been separating 2 or so gallons almost every other day into cream for butter and other products. So I decided to try a goat cheese with half cream, half whole milk. Lemme tell you! Whhooowheee! This is some good goat cheese! It's the first time I've made goat cheese that tastes better than something you'd buy at the store.

It's super creamy and because the milk was initially heated to 90 degrees to be separated, that warmth has brought out a delicious goat tang.

Making this goat cheese is just about as easy as it gets. I heated equal parts of goat cream (For more information about separating the cream from goats milk click here, Goat Butter)and whole milk to 180 degrees in a pot on the stove. Then I drizzled in enough apple cider vinegar to separate the curds. You don't need much. I just glug a little at a time until the curds separate. Then I pour it through a sieve lined with butter muslin to collect the curds. Let it sit until it dries out a bit and salt to taste with cheese salt add herbs, pepper whatever you like!

Grit Post: Goat Butter

I wrote a goat butter post a while back when we first got Esther in milk. This is an updated post I wrote for Grit. We've fine tunes the cream separator and now I use wooden paddles to knead the butter. Take a look at my new post Making Goat Butter.

Sour Cream

I made my first goat milk sour cream the other night. I am in love with the flavor and the process couldn't be easier! With Esther, Nan and Gretta all in milk we are getting 3/4 of a gallon in the morning milking. The kids get the evening milking in their bottle, so when they are weaned we'll have 1 1/2 to 2 gallons per day. Zach and I have been trying to get into a schedule to process the milk into our different dairy needs. We've taken a break from complicated-long process hard cheeses for a while and instead are concentrating on simple farm cheeses, mozzarella, soft cheeses or separating the cream for ice cream, sour cream and butter. Next on my list is cream cheese and yogurt. I tired yogurt about a year ago and it was a major fail! So I'd like to re-visit that.

But sour cream couldn't be easier. First we separated the whole milk into cream and skimmed milk. (Side note) I know some of you have inquired as to the manufacturer of our cream separator. I still haven't been able to find our exact model on line as we did before. But I just did a search on E-bay for "hand crank cream separator" and found several models comparable to ours between $75 to $100. I'll write a future post on how to operate and assemble the machine as the instructions for ours were in Ukrainian.  

Onward and out... Here is the complicated recipe. (not really)

1/4 cup store bought sour cream (I used the all natural brand from Kroger. The ingredient list was cultured sour cream, skim milk, enzymes. I didn't see an organic brand offered, or I would have used that.)
1 cup raw cream (You have to use raw with this recipe otherwise the cream will spoil before it sours)

I mixed the sour cream into the warm cream in a mason jar. I covered with a coffee filter and rubber band and let it set out overnight.That's it!

In the morning, it had formed a thick layer of sour cream and the cream had thickened significantly. I stirred it all together and set it in the fridge. When it was cold I tasted it and it is AMAZING! It's really tangy but slightly SWEET! Much more than the store bought. It's just really creamy and wonderful. I feel like it could have been a bit thicker, but I blame that on our house being cold all the time.

All. The. Time.

I'm wondering if the sour cream will get thicker as the warmer summer months come.

So to make my next batch, I will keep a 1/4 cup from this batch and add it to the cream from our next milking. It's like Friendship Dairy...

Another side note: I love these half gallon mason jars! But they're hard to find. Mason makes a full gallon too but the lid is more for decorative storage not actual canning. Anyhoo, they work great for storing milk! We got close to a half gallon of cream from almost 3 gallons of milk. The Nubians have a lot of fat in their milk, I would say twice the amount. But Esther (our Alpine) produces twice the milk, so it's a good combination.

Additional sources: Gnowfglins   

Afternoon With a Goat

I just wanted to let everyone know that we will be holding our second Afternoon With a Goat Workshop Sunday, May 19th from Noon to 3:00. If you live in the Fenton, Michigan area and are interesting in some hands on experience with dairy goats, then click here for more information.

CC Post: Remembering New Chicks

Chickens do wonderful things to people! Join me in my latest Community Chickens post "Remembering First Chicks" for a nostalgic trip to the feed store and down memory lane.

Grit Post: Birdhouse Gourds

Check out my latest Grit post all about Birdhouse Gourds!