70+% Easy Sourdough

I could have also titled this post PhD bread, since it was the first bread that I made since I started my PhD program. It was somewhat difficult adjusting to my new stone (an 18x18" piece of slate) and my new oven). I think my oven runs quite hot, which means it will be good for pizza, but I burnt the bottom of the bread. Other than that, the bread was delicious. I also made a set of English muffins. On the first day, I divided the dough into two parts after the initial set of stretch-and-folds to make one part English muffins and the other part a loaf of bread.

70+% Whole Wheat Easy Sourdough 

Ingredients

• 556 g whole wheat
• 240 g Unbleached King Arthur All Purpose Flour
• 400 g whole wheat starter
• 495 g water
• 23g salt

Method

For Bread

    Day 1

• Mix the sourdough starter, flours, and water in a bowl. Mix until it forms a homogenous dough.
• Let the bowl sit for a 30 minute autolyse period under plastic wrap or similar.
• Then mix in the amarnath, salt, and water. Mix a little and then let it sit for 5-10 minutes to allow the bread to soak up the water. 
• Knead the bread for 2-3 minutes. Then do a stretch-and-fold.
• Wait 10 minutes and do another stretch-and-fold.
• Wait 10 minutes and do another stretch-and-fold.
• Wait 10 minutes and do another stretch-and-fold. (so 4 times total)
• Cover the bowl for 45 minutes (at around 75 degrees F) and  do another stretch-and-fold.
• Cover the bowl for 45 minutes (at around 75 degrees F) and  do a final stretch-and-fold (2 times total)
• Cover the bowl for 20 minutes  (at around 75 degrees F) to finish the bulk fermentation.
• Preshape the ball lightly into round.
• Bench rest for 20 minutes. Cover them with something. If you live in a dry climate, make sure to cover them in an airtight fashion-- I usually turn large bowls over them. While they are resting, flour bannetons or similar shaping devices for the final proofing.
• Then shape the loaves into your desired shape and place them into bannetons.
• They need to proof for 1 hour and 45 minutes before they are placed in the refrigerator overnight.
• Make sure they go into the refrigerator for 16 hours or less.

    Day 2

• Preheat the oven to 475 degrees F about 30 minutes before you take the dough out of the refrigerator.
• Take them out of the refrigerator, score them, and immediately place them into the oven under steam.
• After 20-35 minutes under steam (depending upon how tightly the steam container closes. I would suggest trying about 25 minutes. It is done when it begins to be golden and the tips of the score marks are beginning to be brown.
• Cook for another 10-15 minutes or until the crust is a rich brown and the internal temperature reaches 210 degrees F.
• Cool for 45 minutes before eating.

The crumb on the bread was tighter than I might have wished

but the crumb on the English muffins was perfect

For English Muffins

    Day 1

• Mix the sourdough starter into the water and then add the flour.
• Mix until the dough forms a homogenous ball. You can do this either with a stand mixer or by hand.
• Cover the dough with plastic ad let it autolyse for half an hour
• Then add in the salt and the last 25 of water
• Knead until medium development (passes the windowpane test). Should take about 10 minutes by hand or about 3-4 minutes by machine.
• I found this wasn't sufficient, so I turned it a couple of times by hand and then put it in the refrigerator overnight to let the gluten develop the rest of the way on its own. 
• It sat in the refrigerator for 12 hours. I turned it 2-3 times in the refrigerator before I went to bed with an 45-60minutes in between each term.

    Day 2

• Take the dough out of the refrigerator and turn onto a lightly floured surface.
• Spread it out a little, then cover it and let it sit for 10 minutes.
• Then roll the dough out to about 1" thick.
• Sprinkle the dough with flour and spread the four over it gently with your hands
• Transfer the dough onto a floured cookie sheet, lightly flour the surface of the dough, and cover it with plastic
• Let it sit for about 2.5 hours at room temperature (around 76 degrees) under plastic wrap, bowls, or something else that will prevent a skin from forming.
• Heat up a griddle or a cast iron frying pan, lightly oiled with spray oil to about medium-low heat
• Cut muffins of the desired size. Squares, rectangles, or circles all work. If you don't mind ugly muffins, you can take the excess and push it lightly together. If you let it sit for about 5 minutes, this will make a delicious and perfectly adequate (although not aesthetically pleasing) muffin. Make sure that you dust a little flour on both sides of each muffin. Semolina is traditional, but you can use any flour.
• When the griddle is hot, place the muffins on it and cover with a metal lid. You do not need to oil the griddle, but you may if you wish.
• In about 3-9 minutes the muffins should be ready to flip over. They will puff up nicely and they will have a surface on top that is not crusty, but has a skin from the heat. Unfortunately, you have to judge this by your
• Let them brown on the other side before cooling and eating. You can eat them hot, but they will have more flavor if you let them cool. You may also toast them or let them cool and freeze them.

Enjoy!

Amazingly Delicious Cookies

In my last post, I mentioned that I had tasted some of Sue's food from her blog. It was these almond butter chocolate chip cookies. They are absolutely incredible. I recommend them most highly.

I will be posting more of my own food just as soon as I get back on my feet with my work.

Forthcoming

So classes recently started in my PhD program. The last little while has been a whirlwind of orientation, meeting new people, setting up all of the administrative things, and trying desperately to navigate a new public transportation system (which seems to me to make very little sense). In fact, things have been so crazy I missed 2 out of the three trains home on Friday due to inexperience and bad luck.

I did bake my first bread in my new oven as well as a set of English muffins with the same dough.  I will be posting that in the next few days. They were very simple but very delicious.

Also, I just wanted to say that I made some pumpernickel bread with Sue today (I will be posting that bread soon as well). It was a lot of fun and it tasted pretty good for a rye bread, although the loaves were really ugly. She brought over some of her baking for the blog for Servia and me to try. I won't spoil the surprise because she's posting it later this week, but I have to say that it was absolutely delicious. I will put up some sort of alert when she posts it.

However, it may be a few days before I post because I'm buried under all of the reading that I put off this weekend (oops). For now, check out Sue's microwavable chocolate cupcake recipe, which I'll probably succumb to making some night when I'm up late studying.

And They Say Philosophy Isn't Relevant Anymore

Apparently, two Russian men got into an argument about a week ago. It became so heated that on man shot the other repeatedly. You can read the basic facts here, and there is a wider discussion here.

At graduate orientation, two of my friends and I were taken to the university pub by a philosophy PhD first year (in logic) who bought us all beer. Apparently, this guy recently won $1000 in Vegas betting on the particular part of Kant about which the argument took place. I didn't even know one could bet on things like that. Anyway, I guess philosophy can make money after all.

Tartine, Revisited

This weekend, I was helping Egnatius move in to his new apartment. He's a lucky boy-- he's in a beautiful place with a great roommate, fabulous resources within walking distance (including a shop that sells locally-grown, organic, high-gluten, first clear flour in bulk for cheap-- I'm so jealous!), and has a magnificent coffee shop on campus.

Despite this, we dragged ourselves away from there to take a long journey to see some old friends of ours in SF. It was really nice to see them and they both have cool jobs in publishing. While we were there, we visited Tartine, which is the bakery that produced the book that made me a real bread baker and which I reviewed as a disappointment last time I visited.

Not so this time around.

The bread wasn't over-proofed (like it was last time), despite the heat of the day, so it was delicious. I don't have a picture of the loaves. We got a country loaf and a baguette, because that was all that was left when we arrived around 6:30pm. The bread didn't taste exactly like mine; the crust was slightly thinner (although it was still nice and crunchy) and the bread was fairly sour. I like the sourness, so I liked the country bread much better than the baguette, which I thought was a little too bland (although it had an even crunchier crust, which was nice).

If you haven't seen the video yet, the Tartine video is beautifully put together:
Now, I would, like they do in the video, recommend that everyone (who is not gluten-intolerant) try Tartine bread at least once. Even if you make it yourself. Actually, especially if you make it yourself.

Also, it looks as though Chad Robertson, founder of Tartine, has a new book coming out in November.

A Lesson to Be Learned

Much of the time, I am communication-o-phobic: I hate calling people, I often don't carry my phone with me or neglect to answer it, I'm not great at replying to emails (and especially bad about sending them to people whom I have not met), and I just generally avoid dealing with things. I try to be sociable and reasonable about modern communications, but it's not one of my skills.

However, today I considered posting this status on facebook: "I called to talk to the head of an office that deals with 28,000 students at my new university and he instantly recognized my name. Lesson to be learned: If you don't confirm that my paperwork is received, I will keep harassing you until you do."

I realized that that was dumb, so I refrained. It just shows that, when I have the impetus (in this case, making sure the money from my fellowship was going to cover my tuition), I can move mountains. The best part was that the head of the office laughed when I called-- he didn't seem annoyed that I was worried about my information. So, as of today, I'm trying to turn over a new leaf.

I'll post some more bread in the next few days-- my family and I just finished off the wonderful SFBI loaves and so we'll be needing more bread.

Downton Abbey: Season/Series 4 Trailer

Despite the rather disappointing end of last season, I'm still a Downton fan. So, I thought I'd share the trailer for the upcoming season. It still won't say when it's coming out in Britain, but it is coming out in the US on January 5th.
Enjoy!

SFBI Bread Follow up-- Delicious

SFBI Type 70 Bread

I decided to make the bread recipe that I posted. It was a thousand times easier than the Poilâne miche and absolutely delicious. I highly recommend it.

Lovely Crust

One thing to note, first clear flour (at least the King Arthur version and the Great River version) smells funny. I always end up second guessing myself and tasting it to make sure it hasn't gone rancid. Usually, the strange smell goes away when it's baked into bread. This time, it lingered a little, in the bread (although it doesn't smell bad-- just a slight odd hint), but the bread tastes incredible.

Slightly Lopsided Blunt Batard

Here's my scaled down version of the recipe. My only modification was to feed my starter with first clear flour instead of feeding it with bread flour. This meant that my dough was a little drier than the SFBI version. It was delicious and had a nice crumb anyway, but I might add a little more water next time.

SFBI Type 70 Bread

Makes 3 medium-large or 2 very large loaves

Ingredients

• 1024g first clear / type 70 / high extraction flour (I used Great River organic unbleached bread flour)-- divided: 204 to feed the starter, 1000 for the bread mix
• 1074g water (around 75 degrees F)-- divided: 204 to feed starter, 870 for bread mix. As a note, mine was a lot drier than the one in the video. You may add more water if you want a softer dough, or you may need to hold back water, depending upon the absorbancy of your flour.
• 42 g whole wheat starter (or white-- whatever you have lying around)
• 25 g salt

Method

Day 1: *if you have 450g of young, ripe sourdough starter, you can skip this step*

• Mix the starter with 204g flour and 204 g water until it is homogeneous
• Cover with plastic wrap and allow to rise until fully mature (should smell kind of like overripe fruit and a spoonful should float in water). This should take somewhere between 8-16 hours at room temperature, depending upon how fast your starter rises and how hot your room is. Mine took about 12 hours.

Day 2:

• When the starter is ready, mix the flour and the salt in a large mixing bowl.
• Add the water and the starter to the dry ingredients. One of the cool things in the SFBI video was that the baker poured water into the starter to lift it up and make it easier to remove from it's container. I tried this and it worked well. I suggest it. I don't specify how much water because it is going to depend upon the size of your container.
• Mix the ingredients together by hand until it forms a homogeneous mixture. Scrape down the sides of the bowl or tub with a plastic pastry scraper and make sure the dough has picked up all excess flour and water.
• Let the mixture rest for five minutes to fully hydrate.
• Using your hand as a shovel, cut gently through the bread to increase gluten strength. I'm not sure how to describe this properly. See SFBI video.
• The dough will now begin the bulk fermentation. I bulk fermented my bread for 2h45 at 77 degrees F. The video calls for 1.5h at 81-82 degrees, but I think the starter is a faster-working starter than mine is. Calculate your time based on this formula: for every 17 degrees below desired temperature, double the time. Then guess based on the rapidity of your starter.
• For the first 45 minutes, you will stretch-and-fold the dough once every fifteen minutes (for a total of three times). By the end of this, your dough should be able to pass the windowpane test. If not, do a fourth stretch-and-fold.
• Take the dough out onto a and divide it into 2-3 loaves. Round the loaves so that you develop some surface tension (See SFBI video).
• Let the dough bench rest for 30 minutes.  Make sure you cover it with something so that it does not form a skin. I bench rest my dough under large overturned bowls, but other things work. If you use plastic wrap, you should probably oil it to keep from sticking. If you're in a particularly forgiving, fairly humid climate, you can probably just use a dishtowel.
• Then do a final shaping. The video suggests blunt batards. Fold the dough almost in half. Stretch out the two sides and fold them  across one another. Then roll the dough three times to complete the batard. Pinch any extra seams. I need some more practice with this shaping method, and my dough wasn't as pliable because it was drier, so my loaves came out a bit lopsided.
• Place the dough seam-side up in proofing baskets or in a couche and cover with plastic wrap or similar for 2 h (in his case 1 hour. Basically until an indent in the dough sticks.) If you can't bake your loaves simultaneously, remember to put your extra loaves in the refrigerator for the last half an hour of proofing and during the entirity of the baking process of the other loaf or loaves. This will ensure that your bread doesn't overproof while you're waiting to bake it.
• Preheat your oven half an hour before baking to 450 degrees F.
• Bake for 35-40 minutes under steam (I used an iron combo cooker and an overturned broth pot on a stone to create steam for my loaves). Then cook the last 10-15 minutes until the internal temperature reads 212 degrees F and the crust is lovely and brown.
• Let the bread cool for at least 30 minute before slicing, but the best flavor will develop around 1-3 hours out of the oven.

Two of my 3 loaves (the third one was in the oven baking)

I highly highly suggest this formula. You'll have to play around with the times a bit given your environment and your particular sourdough starter, but this bread is delicious.

High Extraction Bread from SFBI

I am a big fan of high extraction flour (also known as first clear). This flour is hard to come by in the United States (at least where I am). To turn whole wheat flour into white flour it is sifted twice to remove the bran and germ from the endosperm. White flour is 72-75%, meaning that only the starchy endosperm (the largest part of the wheat kernel) is retained. Extraction above that (retaining more than 75% of the grain) retains some of the germ and bran up to 100% extraction which is whole wheat flour. High extraction flour (at least the type I have) retains the germ but is sifted of most of the bran and it's about 82% extraction.

While I have used high extraction flour (which I could only find it to order) in many different breads, I've only made one entirely high extraction bread. It was not sufficiently proofed and it took an incredible amount of work. I've been looking for a slightly easier version of a similar bread.

Fortunately, SFBI posted a video and formula for just such a bread. I will be trying it out soon (although I'll be scaling down the recipe).

Portrait

Gimli and Gorgo

Servius and I gave Servia a camera for Christmas (which I may have mentioned before). She's been playing around with it a lot of different things, and, fortunately she's been taking most of the pictures of my bread. I just thought the above double portrait was very cute (especially since it's absolutely impossible to purposefully pose cats)

85% Durum Bread

Durum Bread-- mmm...delicious

I've been away from the blog for a little while. In fact, I was a way from my computer for quite a while because my migraines were so bad that I couldn't look at the screen. I'm heading out to the neurologist in a few weeks, but things have subsided for the moment so I'm back.

Today, I baked a loaf of durum bread. I've been salivating over it ever since I saw Cordruta's recipe. I had to make sure that I had both semolina and fancy durum flour in order to make it. I usually don't have much of the fancy durum, as I can only seem to find it at King Arthur and it's fairly expensive.

Delicious-- although the crumb is much more golden in person

Cordruta said that it was it was one of the best breads she ever made. I decided only to make one in order that I should not use up too much of the precious flour. This was a mistake-- the bread is unbelievably delicious. Maybe not my favorite ever, but one of the top few. I expected it to have a warm nutty flavor, but I was wrong. While the crust has a bit of durum's usual nuttiness, the flavor has sort of a slightly sweet, creamy flavor-- smooth and delicate. It is absolutely delicious. I highly recommend this bread to all bread bakers.

The bread came out a little flat and didn't show much oven spring. However, the crumb was gorgeous (see above and below). It wasn't nearly as yellow as Cordruta's, sadly (although it was noticeably more yellow than it turned out in the pictures).

Bread is a little flat, but has beautiful exterior color.

85% Durum Bread

Ingredients

• 140g whole wheat sourdough starter
• 225g fancy grind durum flour
• 170g semolina flour
• 280g water (separated into 260g + 20g water)
• 9g salt

Directions

Day 1:

• Mix the starter, flours, and 260g water until they form some sort of homogenous mixture
• Autolyse the dough for 30 minutes at room temperature (around 76 degrees)
• Mix the salt into the remaining 20g of water and gently incorporate this into the dough. Be very careful not to disrupt the gluten. Also, don't over-knead the dough-- it should develop nicely on its own over time. 
• Fold the edges of the dough into the center around 2-3 times. Be gentle with the dough.
• Let the dough rest for 3 hours, Make a set of turns (going once around the dough, folding the edges in) every half an hour for the first 2 hours.
• Turn the dough out onto a lightly floured surface, shape it, and put it int a banneton. Put it into the refrigerator overnight.

Day 2:

• Bring the bread out. I found that my loaf needed about 2 hours out after 12 hours in the refrigerator.
• Preheat the oven to 500 degrees F.
• Put the bread in and lower the heat to 490 degrees F for 30 minutes
• Remove the steam and reduce the temperature to 460 degrees F for the final 13 minutes.
• Let cool for at least 1 hour before slicing.

Seriously, this bread is amazing.

Absolutely wonderful open crumb structure

I highly recommend it.

This is just a cool picture of the scoring on the bread.

Cool picture

All photos by Servia.

English Muffins, Reprised: Oat and Barley Varieties

Today it is 103 degrees F. Seriously. Even with fans and a little bit of air conditioning. The last few days have been a hot spell, which has given me more of a chance to experiment with English Muffins.

Barley English Muffin

While English Muffins are traditionally made with recipes that include fat and sweetner, any dough that isn't too wet to hold a clear shape is fine for English Muffins. If you want the English Muffins to have characteristic nooks and crannies, as I've mentioned before, the best way is to make sure that you have a fairly dry dough that yields and open crumb, such as baguette dough.

English Muffins, 2 options

These, as before, are based upon Susan from Wild Yeast Blog's Norwich More Sourdough, but with a modification of the method and the grains. These are wonderful. The barley ones (option 2) especially, although the oat ones are great as well. I think I might try making some with spelt at some point.

Ingredients

Option 1:

Oat English Muffins

• 480g 100% Hydration whole wheat sourdough starter (red whole wheat)
• 300g bread flour
• 475g Red Whole Wheat Flour
• 180g Oat Flour
• 650g water
• 23g Salt

Option 2:

Barley English Muffins

• 480g 100% Hydration whole wheat sourdough starter (red whole wheat)
• 300g bread flour
• 475g White Whole Wheat Flour
• 180g barley flour
• 650g water
• 23g Salt

Method

Day 1:

• Mix the sourdough starter into 625g of the water and then add the flour.
• Mix until the dough forms a homogenous ball. You can do this either with a stand mixer or by hand.
• Cover the dough with plastic ad let it autolyse for half an hour
• Then add in the salt and the last 25g+ of water
• Knead until medium development (passes the windowpane test). Should take about 10 minutes by hand or about 3-4 minutes by machine.
• I found this wasn't sufficient, so I turned it a couple of times by hand and then put it in the refrigerator overnight to let the gluten develop the rest of the way on its own. 
• It sat in the refrigerator for 12 hours. I turned it 2-3 times in the refrigerator before I went to bed with an 45-60minutes in between each term.

Day 2:

• Take the dough out of the refrigerator and turn onto a lightly floured surface.
• Spread it out a little, then cover it and let it sit for 10 minutes.
• Then roll the dough out to about 1" thick.
• Sprinkle the dough with flour and spread the four over it gently with your hands
• Transfer the dough onto a floured cookie sheet, lightly flour the surface of the dough, and cover it with plastic
• Let it sit for about 2.5 hours at room temperature (around 76 degrees).
• Heat up a griddle or a cast iron frying pan, lightly oiled with spray oil to about medium-low heat
• Cut muffins of the desired size. Squares, rectangles, or circles all work. If you don't mind ugly muffins, you can take the excess and push it lightly together. If you let it sit for about 5 minutes, this will make a delicious and perfectly adequate (although not aesthetically pleasing) muffin. Make sure that you dust a little flour on both sides of each muffin. Semolina is traditional, but you can use any flour.
• When the griddle is hot, place the muffins on it and cover with a metal lid. You do not need to oil the griddle, but you may if you wish.
• In about 3-9 minutes the muffins should be ready to flip over. They will puff up nicely and they will have a surface on top that is not crusty, but has a skin from the heat. Unfortunately, you have to judge this by your
• Let them brown on the other side before cooling and eating. You can eat them hot, but they will have more flavor if you let them cool. You may also toast them.

These are delicious and won't heat up your kitchen. Keep in mind, this makes a LOT of English muffins. So, once they are fully cooled, place them in ziplock baggies and freeze them (except for the ones you will eat over the next 2-3 days).


I sent this into Yeast Spotting.

Serious Bakers, Serious Mistakes

Mistake Bread

Mistake bread

I think of myself as a pretty decent baker. I make a lot of bread, most of which is reasonably aesthetic (in a rustic sort of way) and pretty tasty. While I haven't made bread in a while (mostly making things like English Muffins more recently), I still figured that I would be able to make something decent.

I decided to make a version of my old favorite bread-- Bread Cetera's Pain de Compagne. I modified it by replacing the poolish with starter, but leaving the regular yeast in. I'm not sure what the problem was but the dough simply would not coalesce into, well, dough. It was a sticky mess. It also didn't rise quite as much as I had hoped.

As a last resort, I stuck the dough into a loaf pan and baked it at a low temperature. It did have some amount of oven spring, as you can see from the dome in the middle of the loaf. It also had a sort of sandwich-loaf-like texture, although it was a bit heavier (even though, oddly, the holes in it were a bit bigger). I didn't get a picture of the crumb--I forgot. It tasted reasonably decent with almond butter, but I'm still not sure what went wrong.

Maybe my commercial yeast is dying. Maybe my starter was too wet. Who knows what the problem was. I'll probably buy some new yeast and try it again when it's cool enough to use the oven. In the mean time, I think I'll make some more English muffins.

Dinosaurs Show their True Colors

Two articles came out recently in National Geographic that describe colors discovered by x-ray techniques of dinosaur fossils.

Archeopteryx, dinosaur that first solidified the genetic similarity between dinosaurs and birds, was not black as originally thought. It had a combination of black and white-- black on the outside of the feathers and white on the inside. Today's National Geographic article on the subject may be found here.

Depiction of Anchiornis huxleyi from National Geographic, 4 February 2010.

Scientists have been able to discern even more information-- a possible fully colored picture-- of the dinosaur Anchiornis huxleyi. According to National Geographic, it "looked something like a woodpecker the size of a chicken, with black-and-white spangled wings and a rusty red crown."

The Great Manuscript Heist

Usually it's a bad thing when people steal precious documents. However, this time, it saved hundreds of precious manuscripts. During the political unrest in Timbucktu, Dr Abdel Kader Haidara masterminded a gigantic smuggling operation that saved these precious documents from being destroyed in a fire set by the rebels. Instead of thousands, only a few hundred manuscripts were incinerated. It's a pretty cool story.

Pleistocene Park

So remember in Jurassic Park how they thought if someone uncovered dinosaur DNA we'd be able to clone dinosaurs? According to Jack Horner, that doesn't work. In fact, they actually tried it because some dinosaur DNA was discovered. But nothing happened. Instead, as I described previously, Horner argues that the way to reconstruct dinosaurs is to "fix the chicken." So far, scientists have managed to produce a chicken with teeth (although I don't think they've been able to reactivate most of the other dormant genes).

However, a new possibility for cloning and restoring extinct life has just arrived. Dinosaurs are just too old-- all we have left are fossils. We have bones (rather than fossils-- fossils being rock deposits that slowly take the place of bones) from the Pleistocene Era (which includes the last ice age). And now, we have a lot more than that. Scientists have recently uncovered a frozen mammoth that still has blood in it's veins. This means that we can learn more than ever before about these creatures, but it also means that there is plenty of DNA. And, if scientists can re-germinate a plant from 32,000 years ago, then there's a good chance that they can grow a baby mammoth. Maybe in the next 50 years, they'll make a Pleistocene Park.

How to Procrastinate Like a Winner

As I've mentioned previously, I tutor a few different high school students. One of my students is a very talented artist. She sometimes sketches while we're talking and I've seen the oil paintings she does in art class-- they're really amazing. Since she's a primarily visual learner, she decided to make a visual study guide for her history final (instead of writing her English paper as she was supposed to). I'd never seen her comics before, because I've only seen her doodles (portraits) and her art projects from classes, but I think she has a promising comic style (the drawings are consistant and she's quite witty).

Just to give you a taste:

The rest of the comics can be viewed here.

Unfortunately, for the grand tradition of academic comics (such as the Introducing Series, etc), she wants to be a doctor. Maybe she'll write Introducing Bioethics.

Short Lecture on Epigenetics

I listened to this lecture on epigenetics the other day when I was cleaning my room. Although the language is a little technical in spots, it's pretty interesting to a lay observer.

Enjoy!

DIY Maddness

So remember when I said I'd gotten my annual spring DIY bug? Well, it's taken a sort of odd turn. I was originally looking at modifying/upcycling some clothing, but when I was wandering around Instructables, I started to notice some pretty cool stuff. Specifically I started to see some people making their own lingerie that actually looked totally professional (e.g. 1, 2, 3). And so I started wondering if I could do it.

For reference, I did take some sewing classes when I was about 8 years old, but I don't think I've touched a sweing machine since then. I mend things a lot by hand, and I've basted the odd thing onto clothing I already have for costumes, but lingerie construction is on a totally different level.

As I've said before, these days, you can learn anything on the internet. Seriously. I learned how to make bread on the internet. The wonderful thing about the global community is that people want to share knowledge-- often for free-- and help each other with projects. And it's just so cool. There is a certain part of me that wishes that I had been in high school or elementary school right now so that I could have soaked in all the new skills when the brain is most rapidly expanding and learning things most quickly. However, I still can (and do) learn a lot.

One of the reasons that learning this particular skill intrigued me is that I find it difficult to find comfortable lingerie even the expensive stuff is not consistently perfect. The reason, of course, is because women are all different shapes and there are a certain set of standard sizes. However, the problems with modern lingerie go far beyond that. At Victoria's secret, for example, both the band and the cup sizes vary between lines-- so PINK bras have smaller cups and a smaller with of the centerpiece between cups, although the same band size as what is supposedly the exact sames size in the Body collection. Also, the band size of the Incredible collection seems to be larger than that in the Body collection for a bra that's supposed to be the same size. This makes no sense. Furthermore, I have issues finding lingerie of the right size because my rib cage in the front is wider than the back so the centerpiece is often too small. As such, I decided to strike out on my own and see if I could make some.

I used Jenna's Instructable for pattern making and graded the size down. Grading, as I found out yesterday, is the term used for changing the size of a pattern piece to fit a different size person. According to a blog I read, grading has to be done proportionally, so I sketched a version of the pattern that was proportionally smaller than the one she had.

I also decided to follow her (and the other lingerie-makers') advice and deconstruct one of my own bras. I had one which I had stretched out back when I was heavier, but the cup size was still right. I used one of my other bras as a pattern to dart the sides so that it fit before I took the bra apart. However, the patterning was too complicated for a beginner like me. Instead, I borrowed the underwire, underwire casings, straps and fastenings from the bra and used Jenna's pattern to cut up an old t-shirt (I added approximated 1/4 inch seam allowances because her pattern doesn't seem to account for seam allowances).

Front of my prototype (basted together by hand)

Back

Close up of back

Unfortunately, you cannot tell whether lingerie fits until you put it together. I haven't hauled out my mother's old sewing machine yet (and honestly, I don't even remember how to thread a sewing machine, so I decided I would baste it together by hand and see if I were on the right track.

I realized a couple of things basting it together. First, it fit, and actually looked kind of decent, which was amazing. Second, I definitely need some kind of liner for the cups. The seams, even when ironed down, would be uncomfortable after a long day. Jenna doesn't provide for this in her pattern, so I'm going to have to figure out how to do it on my own. Third, as usual, to make it fit optimally, I'm going to have to increase the width of the center piece. But honestly, having even moderate success in the first attempt is an incredible achievement for someone who doesn't sew.

When It's Too Hot to Bake Bread: English Muffins

Almost Whole Grain English Muffins

So I ran out of my morning toast bread, but it's definitely too hot to bake around here. For this reason, I decided to make some English muffins. However, I didn't want to wait a full three days for my awesome oat recipe, so I decided to try something new.

I've been experimenting with oat flour. I know you can't add much to a bread recipe before it compromises the gluten structure, but I wanted to also make the bread as oaty as possible. I'm still working on figuring out the best way to do this. These muffins were not stunningly oaty (I think because most of the flour was whole wheat and it overshadowed a lot of the oat flavor), but they did have a little bit of an oaty taste and they held together pretty well at about 15% oat flour.

English Muffin Crumb

These are not as open and beautiful as my last set, but that may be because I didn't get the gluten structure developed enough last night. However, I might recommend using a little bit more water.

I also had to cheat on the recipe a bit because I forgot to start it until late last night. I'll give my actual version and advice. Adapted from Susan at Wild Yeast's amazing Norwich More Sourdough.

Oaty Mostly Whole Grain Sourdough English Muffins

Ingredients

• 480g Whole Wheat Sourdough Starter (100% hydration)
• 400g First Clear Flour
• 375g Whole Wheat Flour
• 180g Whole Oat flour
• 625g Water adding a little bit more than this, say 650ish might make the crumb more open.
• 23g salt 

Method

Day 1:

• Mix the sourdough starter into 600g of the water and then add the flour.
• Mix until the dough forms a homogenous ball. You can do this either with a stand mixer or by hand.
• Cover the dough with plastic ad let it autolyse for half an hour
• Then add in the salt and the last 25g+ of water
• Knead until medium development (passes the windowpane test). Should take about 10 minutes by hand or about 3-4 minutes by machine.
• If you don't have time (like I didn't) to wait another few hours, put it in the refridgerator immediately (covered in plastic wrap). Or, follow alternative below

Day 1 alternative ending:

• Let is sit for 2.5 hours at room temperature (about 72-75 degrees), folding at 45 min, 1.5 hours, and 2h 15 min.
• Turn the dough out onto a floured surface and spread it a little bit. Cover it and let it sit for 10 minutes.
• Then roll the dough out to about 1" thick.
• Transfer the dough onto a floured cookie sheet, lightly flour the surface of the dough, and cover it with plastic
• Let it sit for an hour and a half at room temperature before transferring it into the refrigerator

Day 2:

Alternative method:

• If you used the alternative method: take the dough out of the refrigerator right before you plan to bake (although no more than 16 hours after you put it in).
• Heat up a griddle or a cast iron frying pan, lightly oiled with spray oil to about medium-low heat
• Cut muffins of the desired size. Squares, rectangles, or circles all work. If you don't mind ugly muffins, you can take the excess and push it lightly together. If you let it sit for about 5 minutes, this will make a delicious and perfectly adequate (although not aesthetically pleasing) muffin.
• When the griddle is hot, place the muffins on it and cover with a metal lid.
• In about 3 minutes, the muffins should be ready to flip over. They will puff up nicely.
• Let them brown on the other side before cooling and eating.

My method:

• Take the dough out of the refrigerator and turn onto a lightly floured surface.
• Spread it out a little, then cover it and let it sit for 10 minutes.
• Then roll the dough out to about 1" thick.
• Transfer the dough onto a floured cookie sheet, lightly flour the surface of the dough, and cover it with plastic
• Let it sit for about 2.5 hours at room temperature.
• Heat up a griddle or a cast iron frying pan, lightly oiled with spray oil to about medium-low heat
• Cut muffins of the desired size. Squares, rectangles, or circles all work. If you don't mind ugly muffins, you can take the excess and push it lightly together. If you let it sit for about 5 minutes, this will make a delicious and perfectly adequate (although not aesthetically pleasing) muffin.
• When the griddle is hot, place the muffins on it and cover with a metal lid.
• In about 3 minutes, the muffins should be ready to flip over. They will puff up nicely.
• Let them brown on the other side before cooling and eating.

These are delicious and won't heat up your kitchen. Keep in mind, this makes a LOT of English muffins. I mean a LOT. So, once they are fully cooled, place them in ziplock baggies and freeze them (except for the ones you will eat over the next 2-3 days).

For reference, if you pick any rustic dough that is not too loose, you can make English muffins just by following the day 2 instructions under "my method."

Upcycling Part II

Remember I mentioned upcycling in a recent post? Well, thinking about upcycling, I remembered a good friend friend of mine had started a site selling recycled cashmere thread called The Cashmere Goat. As she says in her about page, she is able to give new life warm and soft cashmere, which I think is pretty cool. Also, the colors of the yarn are beautiful. Check it out.

OED calls for Meanderings of Memory

Apparently, 51 words in the OED owe hail either first or early on from a book called Meanderings of Memory, which seems to have fallen out of existence. While this may happen all the time in classics, it's far less common in the history of English literature.

The OED has put out a public appeal for copies of the book, which is only cited once elsewhere-- in a collector's catalog. I hope someone finds it.

Up-Cycling

Some people get the useful inclination to clean things when it's Spring. I, unfortunately, always have the desire to make things when it's spring. I have had a couple of useful endeavors-- for example, learning to make bread was one of my "let's make things" moments in the Spring. However, most of the time I don't accomplish anything and just make more mess.

This spring, I got the "re-purposing" bug-- also know as "up-cycling." I haven't done anything with it yet, but I plan for this (see video below or here) to be my next project.

She made that dress out of t-shirts. Isn't that awesome?

Anyone have any cool up-cylcling project ideas? I'm also going to have an apartment to decorate in the fall,s o I'm looking for a couple of cool things.

Periodic Table of Spices

See the website.

Servia sent this to me and I thought it was really cool. Someone is designing a periodic table of spices. The board is magnetic and the spices have clear caps so you can see in. I totally want one for my apartment this fall! Check it out here.

edX: Friend or Foe?

A few years ago, when I wasn't in school, I talked a lot about different forms of self-education platforms (when i wasn't talking about bread). Over the years I've had a lot of fun listening to lectures on iTunes U and sometimes doing the reading along with the courses. One can learn a lot from these classes. However, I find that I sometimes fail to listen to the whole thing or fail to do it on a regular schedule. Part of the reasoning is that a lot of the courses don't have access to readings (or put syllabi and other information on other websites) and almost none of them allow access to exam materials, etc.

The other day, I read this article in the New York Times about a new educational group known as edΧ. Harvard and MIT started the program called edX for designed online learning. One of the major features of edX is the new ability for the software to read and grade essay and short answer questions as well as True/False and multiple choice. This feature was the main feature of the New York Times article, which made it seem as though professors were going to use this to free up time. As someone who will spend much of the next 6 years TAing, the idea of machine grading seemed to put my job at stake as well as being pedagogically problematic. However, looking at the edX website, it seems that the software is designed primarily for allowing students access to classes for free online, unlike current systems where classes are either free (with no ability to test or receive credit) or expensive (taken through the universities). While online classes can be great, a noted classicist who runs one of the biggest online classical databases told me that she taught an experimental online mythology class last year that had troubling results. Half the class enrolled online while half enrolled for an in-person class. While the students who were there in person had an average grade of a B+, the online class had a C average. While this is just one instance, I can imagine that there would be a greater disconnect for students doing online learning.

edX seems to be endeavoring to fix some of these problems. Those student motivated enough to use resources like iTunes U have the ability to test themselves on the material they learn which may promote greater retention. Furthermore, students have the ability to rewrite and gain additional feedback making testing about improvement as well as assessment. Since no institution could afford to make these classes free if they were graded by humans, the grading software can provide the ability for free learning. Students earning a passing grade will get a certificate, although obviously these won't count for much in the academic world, at least it will provide a small sense of achievement and a record of classes completed.

No Salt

Ever forgotten the salt in bread? It doesn't taste very good, to be quite honest. Even though I put the salt out on the counter (mis en place), I forgot to add it to the bread when I was supposed to. Oops.

Anyway, I'm trying to come up with some good ways to deal with the bread. If I put a whole tonnage of brie or salted butter, it's ok, but I don't want to get any wider. So, I'm trying to come up with things to bake with it. Thoughts, anyone?

I figured if I put some salt in the oil, we could make some croutons, but two loaves makes a lot of croutons. Comment or email me if you think of anything.

The Awesomeness of NASA

I've been fascinated by astronomy since I was a little girl. I always admired NASA because it did incredible things-- although I never wanted to work there because I like theoretical rather than engineering problems. But NASA is amazing, and not just for astronomy. The type of development that they do for materials that work in space has a real world impact. A recent New York Times article spelled out some of their recent work.

I just thought, since the political world continually talks about slashing spending, I would just post this article as a reminder of some of the things NASA has done recently.

Bad Days

Flowers from the Garden

I had a whole week of bad days last week. It was rough and long. But I got through it. So when my mom had a bad day on Monday, I wanted to help. So Servius and I decided to cheer her up. We made chicken picatta and picked flours from the garden. It seemed like all our purple flowers were in bloom so we made a bouquet out of only purple flowers. We had to eat on the porch because our cats have not yet learned to stay away from flowers, but it was a lovely night-- until I practically fainted, but that is another story...

Pumpkin Seed Bread (a work in progress)

Pumpkin Seed Bread

When I was in Ireland, Egnatius' father brought home some bread. Usually, I'm not a big fan of sandwich bread, but this bread was fantastic. Really fantastic. It was some kind of multigrain or whole grain bread with pumpkin seeds. However, I couldn't figure out what was in it.

Scrolling though Yeast Spotting, I discovered this bread which looked exactly like it. So, I thought, why not try it?

Pumpkin Seed Spelt Sandwich Bread

Ingredients

• 250 g whole wheat 100% starter
• 200 g water + a little bit extra for adjustments and soaking the grains (maybe 50g extra?)
• 300 g fresh ground spelt flour
• 50 g bread flour
• 1 tablespoon flax seeds
• 1 tablespoon amarneth
• 4 tablespoons pumpkin seeds (mine were dry roasted, but you can do either)
• 6 g salt
• 1 tablespoon honey
• 2 tablespoons olive oil

Directions

• Place all ingredients except salt, oil and honey in the bowl of the mixer. Mix for a minute low, cover and let stand 15 minutes. 
• Repeat a minute of mixing and 15-minute rest. I would do this by hand, because my mixer didn't like the dough for some reason.
• Add salt and honey and mix on low speed (or mix by hand), when they are integrated add oil, a tablespoon at a time, or five minutes when we got a soft dough up a little speed and knead for another minute. 
• Remove the dough and place it in a bowl, cover and leave for two hours doing slightly folded table in the same bowl every half hour, a total of three sets of folds. 
• Remove the dough to a lightly floured surface and spread with the palms of your hands into a rectangle, roll a way that is somewhat shorter than the mold that will be used. 
• Grease the mold slightly and place the bread inside, paint the surface with water and place a handful of pumpkin seeds over lightly pressing them to make them stick to the wet dough, and cover.
• Place it in the refrigerator overnight.
• In the morning, let it sit out for about half an hour while the oven heats up.
• Bake in preheated oven at 390 ° F, and bake five minutes and lower the temperature to 350 ° -375° F, bake half an hour in total, first 15 minutes under steam.

Bread

The bread still needs a lot of work. If anyone has ideas, I'd love to hear them. While the final proofing was certainly sufficient, I think that the bulk fermentation didn't quite work. Furthermore, I think that I'm still not quite getting the best results out of my home-ground flour. Supposedly adding diastatic malt powder will help. However, I'm up for any ideas.

Also, I think my pumpkin seeds were a bit old so they weren't quite as flavorful as I might have hoped.  I also cooked it way too hot because I wasn't paying proper attention and I didn't steam it properly.

The original version was much lighter and arier, but that might have been because she used white spelt and vital wheat gluten. I think this bread has potential, but I need to do some experimentation.

Overnight Challah, the Results

Challah Braid with Flax Seeds

Who caught the error in yesterday's post? Anyone? Well, I didn't and so things went a little differently then I'd planned.

Braided dough in a ring

Let me illustrate the problem. This was the original ingredient list (before modification) for Peter Reinhart's Challah in Artisan Breads Every Day:

• 510g lukewarm water (about 95 degrees F)
• 1.5 tablespoons of yeast (14g)
• 8-10 egg yokes (170g)
• 5 tablespoons vegetable oil (71g)
• 4.5 tablespoons honey (85g)
• 964g unbleached bread flour
• 19g salt

1.5 tablespoons (14g) is an awful lot of yeast. I'm not sure what Reinhart had in mind for this bread, but I made the bread around 6pm and by about midnight the dough had tripled in size (I was using a half batch and I used less than half of the yeast he asked for-- 0.5tbsp + a small pinch) and was on the verge of collapse. To keep this in perspective, 1.5 tablespoons is the same amount it takes for my old version of challah to raise the bread in 2.5 hours at around 70-72 degrees, which means that the same amount of rising should happen in about 6 -7hours (in my refrigerator which is slightly too warm because it is very old). To be fair, I did also have a bit of sourdough in the dough, but it was primarily for flavoring and usually the sourdough is inhibited by such a large amount of instant yeast. Something obviously went wrong, but I'm not sure what it was.

Servia's traditional braided Challah

So, around 1am, I decided to shape the dough. I was going to stay up and wait for it, but I was too tired, so I put it back in the refrigerator overnight and crossed my fingers that it didn't overproof.

Close up on braiding

Fortunately, when I came down this morning, all seemed to be well. The bread cooked nicely, although the one that was steamed lost its egg sheen during the steaming.

Crumb shot 1

Crumb Shot 2

It doesn't have the same open crumb structure as Reinhart's. Maybe I should have let it rise longer? Who knows. Maybe I'll experiment again sometime. However,  it's not as easy to experiment with challah because it's highly caloric and Servius doesn't like it (i.e. experimentation entails weight gain). However, maybe I'll try it again at some point.

Braiding Close-Up

The Challah tastes amazing. The sourdough didn't taste sour at all, but did definitely add some richness to the flavor.

Overnight Challah

In general, I'm not a huge fan of enriched doughs, but I do love Challah. When I was a kid, most of my friends were Jewish so I went to about 52 barmitzvahs and batmitzvahs over the course of 2.5 years. While I enjoyed parts of the ceremonies, I often looked forward to grabbing a piece of challah afterward.

Challah also was one of the first breads that I made back in my early days of bread baking at school. It was the first no-knead bread I ever baked. Most importantly, it was the first successful bread that I made upon returning home after graduation after a series of incredibly disappointing failures. Mostly out of nostalgia, I have always used this recipe, which was the first one I found. However, I decided to try Peter Reinhart's recipe from Artisan Breads Every Day. Except I couldn't help myself-- I had to modify the recipe (quite substantially).

Challah from Artisan Breads Every Day (significantly adapted)
Makes 1 large loaf or 2 small loaves

Ingredients

• 130g lukewarm water (about 95 degrees F)
• 1/2 tablespoon + a pinch dry active yeast (approximately 5g)
• 4-5 egg yokes (85g) Instead, I used 2 egg yokes and 1 egg. However, had I read the recipe notes, I should have realized that I needed to reduce the amount of water. I didn't so I ended up incorporating a lot more flour. If you want to use whole eggs, reduce the water by about 28g per egg. So in reality, I should have used 2 egg yokes and 2 eggs with 74g water
• 2.5 tablespoons vegetable oil (35g)
• 2.25 tablespoons honey (43g)
• 357g bread flour
• 250g white sourdough starter, 100% hydration
• 1.25 teaspoons salt (9.5g)
• 1 egg white and 2 tablespoons water for egg wash

Directions
Day 1:

• Combine the dry active yeast and the water in a mixing bowl and stir with a whisk to dissolve.
• Add egg yokes (or eggs or both), oil, and honey. Stir to break up the egg yokes.
• Add in the sourdough starter, the flour, and the salt and then mix. In a mixer, mix for about 2 minutes on the lowest speed. By hand, mix with a dough whisk or a wooden spoon for a minuter or two until you form a course, shaggy dough.
• Let the dough rest for 5 minutes.
• If using a mixer, switch to a dough hook for about 4 minutes on medium-low speed. Or, mix by hand or with a wooden spoon for about 4 minutes. Make sure your hands or the spoon are wet.
• Turn the dough onto a very lightly floured surface and knead for 1-2 minutes, or until it passes the windowpane test. Incorporate as much flour as needed to make the dough tacky but not sticky.
• Then, let the dough sit out for about half an hour. It should rise just a little bit. Then put it in the refrigerator overnight or for up to 2 days.

Day 2

•  Remove the dough for the refrigerator 2h10 before baking.
• Transfer the dough onto a lightly floured work surface and cut it into the desired number of pieces. Challah loaves are traditionally braided so if you are making 2 small loaves, divide the dough into 6 equal pieces. 
• Roll the pieces into ropes. The length depends on your own aesthetic, although you want all of the pieces to be the same length. Consider that the bread will increase about 1.5-2 times in size, so don't roll your ropes too thin or too thick.
• Braid the loaves. Braid out from the middle toward each side. This will ensure the proper tapering of your loaves.
• Let the loaves rise, covered, for 2 hours.
• Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F (300 degrees F convection) about 15 minutes before the bread is ready to go in the oven.
• Brush the loaves with egg wash and sprinkle seeds if desired. You can then either load them onto a pan or a peel to be baked on a stone.
• Bake for 35-50 minutes, until the internal temperature is 190 degrees F and the bottom sounds hollow when thumped. If you want, you can steam for the first 20 minutes, but it's probably unnecessary. I will steam one and not steam the other so I can demonstrate the difference.

I haven't finished this project. The loaves will come out of the oven tomorrow so I will post pictures then.