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Welcome to the Nourishing Hearthfire Blog. This is where all our in-depth articles, step-by-step tutorials, seasonal recipes, and honest homesteading stories live.
Whether you’re diving into natural cheesemaking with raw milk and heirloom cultures, baking perfect whole grain sourdough loaves, mastering lacto-fermentation and food preservation, cooking nourishing meals from your garden and pantry, or learning the full spectrum of self-sufficiency skills – you’ll find it here.
Every post is written for real homesteaders and off-grid families who want practical, no-nonsense advice that actually works in a busy, self-reliant life. No fluff, no shortcuts, no nonsense – just time-tested methods, beautiful real-food results, and the quiet satisfaction that comes from doing it yourself.
Browse the latest posts, search by topic, or dive deep into any of our main categories.
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How to Scale Cheesemaking Recipes Up or Down: Rennet, Culture, and More
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How to scale cheesemaking recipes up or down I make a lot of cheese. At the time of writing this, I’ve stopped putting ‘make cheese’ in my planner on the days I’ll be making it, because I’m making it every day! At some point in the season this will slow down (sadly), but for now, my head, heart, and stomach are full of cheese and very happy. One thing that does change from day to day is the amount of…
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Easy Leftover Vegetable or Meat Pasties (Savoury Hand Pies Recipe)
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Why make these versatile pasties (or savoury hand pies)? Pasties are a great way to take whatever vegetables, meat, and cheese that need using and turn it into a tasty meal. (Stir fry is another good way to do this). Flexible recipes like this are great to have on hand if you have a few bits and pieces from the garden to use up, if you’re trying to rely on as much homegrown food as possible and want to work…
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Magic Overnight Sourdough Pizza Dough Recipe with Fresh Milled Flour
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The magic of this sourdough pizza dough recipe What makes this sourdough pizza crust magic is its flexibility. You can make this same dough, and depending on your schedule, there are three different timelines you can work with: The flavour of this dough is also what makes it magic… If you rest it overnight in the fridge, it develops the most delicious sourdough flavour that goes so well with many kinds of pizza toppings. The overnight ferment also helps to…
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Cooking year-round on a wood cookstove: the dream, the reality, and the practicalities of relying on our own firewood and being off the gas grid
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The dream and the reality of living with a wood cookstove or slow combustion stove For many years I dreamed of a life with a wood-fired cooking stove slowly humming in the background, ready at all hours to make a cup of tea. Relying on our own firewood has made the reality of wood-fired cooking a bit different, but it is just as lovely, in its own way. Most off-grid people I’ve met here in Tasmania don’t use their combustion…
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100% Whole Grain Fresh Milled Flour Sourdough Bread for Beginners: A Step-by-Step Guide
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100% Whole Grain Fresh Milled Flour Sourdough for Beginners Whole Grain Fresh Milled Flour Sourdough Bread Recipe for Beginners If you’ve never made any whole grain fresh milled flour sourdough bread (or any bread at all) before, this recipe is exactly where you can start. With a simple mix of just four ingredients – fresh milled flour, water, salt, and sourdough starter, this is a basic, frugal, lean bread dough. It’s the kind of everyday bread you can feel good…
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Easy 100% Whole Grain Sourdough Cinnamon Raisin Bread (honey-sweetened, and works with fresh milled flour & ancient grains)
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The Art of Making Sweet Whole Grain Sourdough Treats that Actually Taste Good When you’re making a sweet whole grain sourdough loaf or other treat, you don’t want there to be overwhelming sourness or an assertive red wheat flavour. For best results, make sure that your starter has not overfermented (it’s even fine to use it slightly underripe), and avoid using red wheat. This recipe uses 25% pre-fermented flour and a minimal fermentation time, which gives the health benefits of…
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Natural Cheesemaking: How to Make and Use Your Own Cheese Cultures
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What is a Cheese Culture? A cheese culture (or starter culture) is helpful bacteria that convert the lactose in milk into lactic acid. This process can also be called acidification, ripening, or just plain ‘culturing’. Some of these cultures are already present in raw milk, but for more faster and more reliable culturing, we will usually add something to the milk to ensure it develops the best kinds of flavours. In industrial cheesemaking, these cultures come in packets from a…
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Sourdough Timelines: Same Day vs Overnight vs Pre-Ferment (Levain) Schedules for Any Kitchen
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If you’re new to sourdough, you may be wondering which baking timeline makes the best bread. The answer is “it depends”. It depends on your schedule, your goals, your lifestyle, and the temperatures in your kitchen. At the end of the day, baking needs to fit in with your life, not the other way around. In this post I’ll discuss all the different considerations that go into different sourdough timelines, and why I use different schedules at different times of…
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How to Make Mozzarella Cheese at Home Without Citric Acid or Microwaves (Easy Vinegar Method)
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The difference between fast mozzarella and traditional mozzarella In this recipe I’ll be talking about fast mozzarella, which is a simple way to make stretchy and delicious pizza cheese at home. Traditional mozzarella is even more delicious, but involves slowly culturing the cheese until it reaches the right acidity, and the timeframe for this can be a bit slow and tricky to work with. With fast mozzarella, the milk is acidified by adding some kind of acid (vinegar, in the…
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How to Make a Sourdough Starter from Scratch with Fresh Milled Flour (100% Whole Grain)
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Here is my tried and tested method for creating a sourdough starter from scratch which is perfect for sourdough beginners, and for anyone interested in whole grain fresh milled flour. You can use fresh milled flour from your own grain mill, or organic 100% whole grain flour of any kind. For the best chances of success, choose whole grain rye flour for making your first sourdough starter from scratch – if you don’t like rye bread, once your starter is…
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Blog reflections and future directions
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The history of this blog I started The Nourishing Hearthfire ten years ago. Our youngest child at the time had started eating solid foods, we were in the process of buying land after what seemed like a lifetime of dreaming about it, and a whole new world was opening up for us. I had many ideas and photos, a stash of recipes and posts drafted up, with the idea of creating a place of my own on the internet to…
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Introducing my Floury Friday email list, plus a free sourdough discard eBook for you
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The last three times that I’ve finished writing a book, I’ve been really motivated towards my writing my next one, sometimes concurrently putting the finishing touches on the last book while excitedly mapping out and researching the next one. This time it’s a bit different. I have some possible ideas for new books, but nothing that is really shouting out to me as something I need to work on right away. At the same time, I feel like I want…
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Recent Posts
- How to Scale Cheesemaking Recipes Up or Down: Rennet, Culture, and More
- Easy Leftover Vegetable or Meat Pasties (Savoury Hand Pies Recipe)
- Magic Overnight Sourdough Pizza Dough Recipe with Fresh Milled Flour
- Cooking year-round on a wood cookstove: the dream, the reality, and the practicalities of relying on our own firewood and being off the gas grid
- 100% Whole Grain Fresh Milled Flour Sourdough Bread for Beginners: A Step-by-Step Guide
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