Teleidoscope

Wed, Dec 19, 2007

Dressed Tree, and Baking

Posted at 9:49 pm MST to Technology

I finally decorated my Christmas tree this evening. It is a small tree, so I only used two strings of lights and two tinsel garlands. I didn't put up all of the ornaments, but most of the special ones are up.

I may add some more of the ornaments by daylight tomorrow, or move some around to fill empty spots, but for tonight, lit mostly by its own lights, the tree looks fine except for the star on top. The tree is very fresh and the top is bendy and the star is heavy. I think I need some cable ties to strap the star to the top of the tree instead of trying to perch it up there. Another project for daylight...

I have been buying bread for the past couple of weeks (a sign that I have been over-stressed). I overstressed my sourdough starter to a skunky point where I decided it was best to discard it and order a fresh batch rather than trying to recover it to a point where it would rise well. People with families to bake for can keep starters going for years and years, but one person cannot (or should not) eat that much carbs. I can generally keep a culture going for three or four years, and this one was about that old.

I like the sourdough starter from King Arthur Flour's Baker's Catalog. I suspect that is partly because they are a New England company and I am a New Englander. I'm not really fond of west coast sourdoughs.

When I bake with whole wheat flour (I usually blend it with unbleached flour when baking bread), I use King Arthur White Whole Wheat. It has less tannin than the usual whole wheat flour made from red wheat and gives a smoother flavor. I don't mail-order flour. When Whole Foods opened in Boulder several years ago they carried the King Arthur flours, and these days even the big super market chains sometimes carry King Arthur unbleached, and sometimes their newer Organic varieties.. I usually need to shop at Whole Foods or Wild Oats to get King Arthur White Whole Wheat here, though some of the Boston area Stop & Shops carry it (King Arthur being a regional supplier for them.

The package including the new starter has not arrived yet, shipping being what it is at this time of year, so tonight I baked bread using packaged yeast. And I used only unbleached flour, no whole wheat. This was proper bread by Italian and French law: the ingredient list is: water, yeast, salt flour.

I forget how fast bread rises using packaged yeast instead of culture and without wholewheat flour weighing it down. (Setting it on a stool over a heat register helped, since I keep the house fairly cool. If I get a new stove I definitely want a proofing drawer.) It made a nice change to knead something so springy.

At least it demonstrated that my yeast was still alive: the jar was a bit beyond its use-by date, but the bread puffed up nicely.

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Good News, Bad News

Posted at 7:28 pm MST to Travel

The bad news is that my client will not be sending me all over the world. (I suspect somebody calculated what the travel expenses would add up to.)

The good news is that they have signed up for a 6-month contract beginning mid-January, and I will mostly be working from my living room couch again.

International travel would have been nice, but I wasn't looking forward to spending a ot of time in airports and on airplanes.

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