The Old Guy's Garden Record

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Friday, February 13, 2026 - Vienna Bread

I finally modified our Grandma's Yeast Rolls recipe to make a good Vienna bread. The changes to the recipe were minor. I substituted milk for half of the water required and used about 1 1/2 times the suggested yeast. That's a heavy tablespoon and a half of yeast. And our yeast comes in a jar, so I’m not tearing open multiple yeast packages.

After the dough made its first rise, I worked in three tablespoons of melted butter along with more flour when kneading the dough. While the first rise of the dough took the usual two hours or so, the second rise as a long loaf only took about forty minutes. I attribute that to the extra yeast I used.

I corrected the problem I had last week when I made a very flat Vienna bread by simply using a long bread pan.

The bread was delicious.

Still in a cooking mood, I made a batch of chicken salad to go on some mini Hawaiian Rolls.

Wednesday, February 11, 2026

Our deep snow cover is finally melting off. We got into the upper fifties yesterday, and our extended outlook shows some above normal high temperatures. One local TV weatherperson keeps noting how dry things are, even with a foot of snow. I suspect the water table here is low, as our deep well is drawing more sediment than usual, making for more whole house water filter changes. The relatively dry weather may also impact our spring plantings.

Believe it or not, I haven't ordered any garden seed as yet. With the years creeping up on me, I don't know how much of a garden I'll be able to maintain this summer. I did, however, order some Daylen Trellis Netting that we use to grow our tall peas between a double trellis. Our tall peas are usually the first seed I put into the ground. Preparing the soil, pounding in T-posts, and planting may give me a good idea of how much gardening my not-so-gracefully aging body will tolerate.

Sunday, February 8, 2026

It's Super Bowl Sunday, so I'm getting ready to make our annual Super Bowl snack of Texas Nachos. With the game not kicking off until early evening, I had plenty of time to transplant thirty-two parsley plants into fourpacks.

The parsley plants are all supposed to be plain leaf varieties which are better for drying than the Moss Curled types.

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Tuesday, February 3, 2026

Well, Punxsutawney Phil saw his shadow yesterday, so we're in for six more weeks of winter. Actually, our extended weather forecast suggests that we'll eventually melt off our heavy snow cover in a week or so. But it will still remain cold.

Aghast at the price our local grocery was extracting for a loaf of Vienna bread, I tried my hand at it again yesterday. I've done so several times before, using online recipes that didn't quite satisfy.

This time around, I adapted our family recipe for Grandma's Yeast Rolls with a few modifications. For the usual cup of warm water, I used half water and half milk. And I almost doubled the amount of yeast recommended for yeast rolls or most of the online bread recipes. I probably used a bit less flour that Grandma's recipe calls for.

The bread was delicious, just what I wanted. But...the tight roll of dough I began baking spread across a cookie sheet instead of going up. I have a cure for that on order...a long bread baking pan (13x5" interior).

We still have about a foot of snow on the ground. I've run my truck up and down the driveway several times to open it up.

Contact Steve Wood, the at Senior Gardening