The Marvels of Stone

Servia bought some stone over the last week or so. The stone is fantastic. I finally took advantage of some of it today because I made some bread that required vigorous kneading and could not be done in the Kitchen Aid. It is the Polaine Miche which is made out of very temperamental first clear flour so I am still crossing my fingers that it will bake well tomorrow morning. But for now, check out the stone.

Granite slab for kneading

 Since we have tile in the kitchen and a finished wooden kitchen table, kneading was not a very feasible option. With this gigantic granite slab, I can now knead without making a mess. This is awesome and I really like kneading by hand. However, the bread took 20 minutes to pass the window pane test instead of 12-15 so I got really tired.

Cheese Plates

 Seriva also bought some small bits of stone for cheese plates. Granite (left) and beautiful onyx (right) are wonderfully colorful and awesome cheese plates. They will also keep the cheeses fairly cool.

Slate baking slab

My cooking stones are actually quite small which limits the size of the pizzas that I can make. I have one cheap oven stone and one 12"x12" piece of marble that was my first baking stone. So, as a surprise, Servia bought a 16"x16" piece of slate so we can make bigger ones. I'm super excited, especially since Egnatius and a family friend and I are going to make fresh mozzarella to put on the pizza.

Miscellany

I haven't posted in quite a while. It's just been a rough quarter at school. I added an extra class to my schedule and it's been a lot of work. I thought I would post a couple of recent things.

Raclette: I have wanted to try Raclette since I saw it featured in Tartine Bread. Warmed cheese to spread on bread...yum. When Ignatius and I were at the grocery store getting ingredients for chicken picatta one night, I stumbled across some and couldn't resist trying it. Not having an open hearth, I took a heatproof bowl and heated the cheese over a pot of boiling water. I spread it on some fresh oat bread and it was delicious.

Raclette

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Oat Bread

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Delicious

I really enjoyed it, although Ignatius tells me that traditionally raclette is put on vegetables and things other than bread. Oh well.

Ignatius' Cheese: On the subject of cheese, Ignatius used a Roman recipe from Collamella (spelling?) to make some cheese. However, Ignatius got worried that the cheese might have been problematic so he tried it after four days instead of the proscribed two weeks. However, the cheese was delicious, especially melted on bread (like raclette, kind of) and it got better as it aged over a two weeks.

Roman Cheese

Oyster Mushrooms: A few months back, someone convinced Servia to buy one of those Grow-Your-Own-Oyster-Mushroom kits. Anyway, they were pretty cool and we made some lovely risotto. It was very cool watching them grow.

More Oat Bread: I have been experimenting with the wonderful Oat Bread I mentioned previously. Here is one example of the loaves. More bread coming soon.

Oat Bread

The Granite Slab: As we have tile counters, kneading is a bit of a problem. I tend to use the Kitchenaid or alternative kneading procedures (like Tartine's) to avoid problems. But Servia went out and bought a granite slab for kneading and pastry work. It's awesome.

Granite Slab

More to come!

Oat Bread: A Beautiful Experiment

I was intrigued by an item on Yeast Spotting about two weeks ago and so last weekend, the Oat Bread, so last weekend I made a batch. I added a little extra water. It was absolutely delicious. I highly recommend this bread.

Loaf 1

Loaf 2

Two Beautiful Loaves

Crumb of Loaf 1

The only changes I made was substituting whole wheat starter for rye starter and adding more water. I am making another batch of this bread this weekend. My Homeric Hymns professor rescued my bag and so I need to provide a token of appreciation. This bread, while having the nice hint of oat, is not a super healthy tasting bread (although it has both whole wheat and rolled oats) so I thought it would be universally appreciated. Maybe one of my favorite breads of all time. Delicious.

Bread: Back After a Short Respite

Spirally Loaf!

So I have been on a bit of a bread hiatus because of finals and then not being home much over spring break because I was catching up with friends. I am really sad that a lot of these people are going off to different places at the end of this year. But I will enjoy the time that is left. Anyway, I made up for it by making some loaves yesterday. I baked the first three this morning and will bake the last two this afternoon.

Three Loaves: Norwich More-Sourdough

The first three were Susan from Wild Yeast's Norwich More-Sourdough with some modifications:

• I used about 75% whole wheat sourdough starter (just using what I had around)
• I substituted course-ground whole wheat for the course-ground rye
• I added about 50g water (up to 610g) and then splashed in a little extra when the Kitchen Aid didn't seem to like the stiff dough, so maybe up to 640g all together.
• I added in 40g of wheat germ and 10g oat bran
• I also readjusted the timing, because the temperature in my kitchen is 70 degrees F instead of 76 degrees F.
• I added one extra stretch-and-fold during the bulk fermentation

This set of loaves is magically delicious. Maybe it's just because I haven't had homemade bread in two weeks. Feast your eyes. More to come...

Spirally loaf (Loaf #1)

Loaf #2

Loaf #2

Crumb of Loaf #1, tight but not bad.

Loaf #3 (scoring experiment)

I am hosting my next bread lesson this Saturday. I think we are going to make spelt ciabatta, pumpernickel, and croissants. Yum!

The Hunger Games

Unlike everyone else, I had my last final on Monday so my spring break was cut a little bit short. However, I managed to put the break to good use and spend a lot of time hanging out out with friends and not getting any sleep. Unfortunately, I caught a cold from my insane lifestyle for the past few days which involved lots of friends and wine and visiting a couple of museums and even a spa. Classes start again on Tuesday. In the meantime, I promised one of my tutoring students that I would read the The Hunger Games because she was shocked and appalled that I had not yet read it.

I decided I didn't want to buy the book so I check out the ability to borrow a book from Amazon that is one of the new feature of Amazon prime. It actually works really well with novels and I think that I am going to really enjoy this capacity during the summer. I just borrowed the second book.

In general, I don't think the The Hunger Games is particularly fantastic. It kept me awake and reading while I've been sick, but it's neither particularly well written or particularly gripping. It surprises me that it is such a hit, because it does not have the magical world of Harry Potter or anything. But maybe the second installment will prove more fascinating...

The Beauty of Words

All week I've been trying to remember the term for the literary device that uses an extended metaphor that combines two different ideas into a single idea. The term, of course, is metaphysical conceit, the device used so expertly by the poet John Donne. No matter how many times I hear it, the words just don't seem to stick in my head. It drives me crazy.

The same thing seems to be true of Aeschylean vocabulary. No matter how many times I look at it, it just falls through the ever-widening cracks in my brain. Finals commence...

The Things I Didn't Know About St. Patrick's Day

So I went to a really lovely St. Patrick's Day party yesterday hosted by my friend from Dublin. It was a fantastic way to blow off steam and take a break from studying for finals. While at the party, I realized that, despite being part Irish, I had a lot of misconceptions. Here are but a few of them:

1. Irish (the language) can in fact function, despite lacking both a participle and an infinitive. They basically have really crazy syntax with what is essentially a gerund. Super cool.
2. Black and Tans are not only not an Irish tradition, but they are actually offensive. I don't know whether the drink or the paramilitary group came first, but apparently a paramilitary group sent to put down the Irish Independence movement was named the Black and Tans for their khaki uniforms. I just assumed because Deco mentions drinking black and tans in The Commitments that they were an Irish drink, but he was supposed to be a generally offensive character. Nike made a similar mistake when they released a St. Patrick's day shoe called the Black and Tan. Oops.
3. Spotted Dog is not Irish. In fact, it is much sweeter than traditional Irish soda bread, although it is made in a similar manner.
4. One I already knew, but though I would add anyway is that the Irish don't drink Irish Car Bombs, a drink made with whiskey, Guinness, and Irish Cream. For obvious reasons, the name is offensive. So Cerinthus renamed it a Warp Spasm, which is a famous translation of an Old Irish word for battle frenzy (I think).

Anyway, I have to get back to work, but I thought I would share some of this. Have a lovely Sunday, everyone!

eBooks and Price Fixing

I haven't had much time to write because I am trying to get through all of my work at the end of the quarter. Over break I will try to do a bunch of updates.

Sitting in Latin class today, I notice a bunch of people following along with the secondary sources on their kindles and ipads. For any class with secondary sources in PDF form, it's more cost-effective for students to buy an e-reader than to print out the articles.

On that note, I thought I would re-post something I saw today on Kindle World Blog, which is an article about the justice department reprimanding Apple and some of the large publishers for price fixing. This should be interesting...