First attempt at cinnamon rolls. They came out great, though it is probably hard to produce a cinnamon roll that doesn’t taste good.

the sponge (to raise overnight)
2 cups sourdough starter
3 cups flour
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
3 teaspoons baking powder
2 eggs (beaten)

the filling
3 teaspoons cinnamon
1/2 cup butter
1 cup sugar

the icing
1 cup powdered sugar
2 tablespoons butter
1 tablespoon milk
3/4 teaspoons vanilla

after proofing till doubled in size, baked for 25 mins @ 325F

and the best part

I started growing my own sourdough culture about a week ago. Just using some flour and pineapple juice for about 3 days was enough to make the wild yeast in the flour and the lactobacillus that is everywhere form a healthy symbiotic relationship. I learned this trick online, the pineapple juice keeps the pH low (2-3ish) during the first couple of days for the yeast until the lacto culture increases enough in size to produce enough lactic acid to do the job.

Finally on about day 5 or 6 the starter really started to take off and would reliably double in volume after every feeding. I started feeding it twice a day on day 5 and now that the starter is about a week old it seems the yeast cell count is up and ready to start doing some baking.

We started with a loaf of bread that turned out pretty good.

This morning it was sourdough english muffins.

I named the sourdough starter Gary. This is Gary about an hour after feeding:

Made the “sponge” (most of the dough) the night before. It doubled in volume overnight

Then this morning, finished the dough, rolled it out, and cut out the circles with the rim of a glass.

After an hour to proof, on to the griddle they go. About 6-7 minutes per side.

then on to the cooling rack

then turned out pretty good. Best part is that Ava really likes them.

We took a day trip to McMinnville to visit the the Evergreen Aviation & Space Museum. The main attraction here was the Hughes H-4 Hercules (aka the Spruce Goose). Just looking at the size of the hangar needed to house this plane was impressive.

This is inside the fuselage near the wing ribs. The pontoons and part of the hull were actually full of beach balls for flotation in the event of a water catastrophe to keep the aircraft from sinking.

Unfortunately one has to pay more than we wanted to see the flight deck so the view was kind of limited.

Ava playing in a Chadwick C-122S helicopter. This was an early ultralight helicopter that someone had donated. Only a few were ever built.

Annalise was tired and pretty grumpy so keeping her happy was a challenge for all of us. She did enjoy playing on the wood airplane toy though.

One of my favorite things was seeing one of the engines that powered the H-4 up close. The Pratt & Whitney R-4360 Wasp engine was a radial engine with 28 cylinders, producing 4000 horsepower. Keeping 8 of these running would be such a challenge. This is about as big as combustion engines got before turbojets gained popularity.

On the way back to “home” we stopped for dinner at Mo’s in Lincoln City per tradition.

After dinner we went outside of Mo’s to the beach, which is also a great area for clamming. We ended up getting about 25 of these butter clams which are a lot of fun to catch.

Outside of Mo’s in Lincoln City

Mo’s sits just inside the bay’s narrow inlet, here’s an aerial view of where we were clamming.