« Oatmeal

I’ve been making bread every week for a few months now. Here is what has become my go-to method for doing so.

Ingredients

• 4c warm water
• 3c flour
• 1.5 - 2c whole flour
• 1c rolled oats
• 1tbl spoon instant yeast
• 1/2tbl spoon salt
• 2tbl spoon honey

Method

• Activate yeast in 4c warm water
• Once the yeast is active, add flours, oats, salt and honey. Combine
• Put everything into a stand mixer and allow to mix for 20 minutes, the dough will be very wet
• After the dough has been mixed, pour into a large, lidded container and allow to rise for 2 hours
• Every 15 to 20 minutes during the rise give it a 4 edge fold (where you fold the edges of the dough gently on top of itself)
• After the 2 hours have passed, the dough should have about doubled in size
• Pour dough out onto a well floured surface and split into 2 halves
• Give each half a 4 edge fold to form a tight, wet, ball
• Place each half into a smaller container for the final rise — I use low, oblong bowls because I don’t have fancy rising baskets
• Allow each dough to rise for an hour or so
• During this final rise pre-heat the oven to 425f/220c
• While the oven is coming to heat, leave the pans that you’ll bake the bread on in the oven. The goal is to get these pans as close to oven temp as possible before putting dough on them
• Once the rise is complete and the oven is to heat pull out the hot pans, loosely flour (I usually use a bit of cornmeal) and turn dough out onto the hot pans
• Place in oven and allow to bake for 15 minutes
• After 15 minutes rotate breads
• Allow to bake for an additional 15 minutes (for a total of 30 minutes bake time)
• After 30 minutes, remove from oven and allow to cool on a rack of some sort
• After 15 - 20 minutes of cooling the bread is ready to eat!

To spice things up a bit, I often throw in pumpkin kernels. They’re high in protein and lend a nice texture to the bread.

Assorted links from this week. I’ve also been reading a book on Epicurean Philosophy called The Swerve. It has been enjoyable and interesting so far. Also, weirdly apt reading for this day and age, perhaps?

Venusian Habitable Climate Scenarios: Modeling Venus Through Time and Applications to Slowly Rotating Venus‐Like Exoplanets

Evaluating several snapshots in time over the past 4+ billion years, we show that Venus could have sustained liquid water and moderate temperatures for most of this period.

Venus was shockingly habitable until fairly recently…geologically speaking.

Horseradish history

More recent appreciation of horseradish is believed to have originated in Central Europe, the area also linked to the most widely held theory of how horseradish was named. In German, it’s called “meerrettich” (sea radish) because it grows by the sea. Many believe the English mispronounced the German word “meer” and began calling it “mareradish.” Eventually it became known as horseradish. The word “horse” (as applied in “horseradish”) is believed to denote large size and coarseness. “Radish” comes from the Latin radix meaning root.

My 2nd fav. part of a Passover meal.

PicoWars - Advanced Wars DeMake

Advanced Wars was totally my jam on the GBA. This Pico8 demake totally captures the essence of the game. I’ve had a lot of fun playing with it, and combing through the code over the last week.

Also, demakes are a cool scene.

Sourdough Bread

We ran out of flour a few weeks ago, but I am very excited to get back to baking. We placed a bulk order a few weeks ago and it should be ready soon! I’ve got big plans for sourdough baking.

Read-Eval-Print-λove

I am completely smitten by the few issues of this news letter. Lisp and forth!?

This week I’ve also been working my way back through Practical Common Lisp. If you are at all interested in lisp, I highly recommend this one!

Why is CSS so hard

Tbh, I’m adding this piece here mostly because I feel like it doesn’t answer the question it posses — it draws attention to some of CSS’ many weird edges, but doesn’t really get to the root of why it is so…let’s go with “weird” in place of hard, maybe?

Facebook reportedly had evidence that its algorithms were dividing people, but top executives killed or weakened proposed solutions

Ya’ll…Facebook is real garbage. Total garbage. Completely and absolutely garbage.

Deep Space Nine: The Trek spinoff that saved the day by staying put

The show’s unique ability to look back on human history from “the future” offers a perspective that other pandemic-centered movies and shows available now simply can’t broach. DS9’s challenge: can we employ smart decision-making today to ensure that we’ll make it to tomorrow?

I’ve been making a lot of bagels lately.

Here’s my basic recipe for doing so; it is more of a starting place than a strict recipe. Sometimes I use some sourdough starter…I’ve been experimenting with the exact quantities of sourdough starter to normal yeasted dough.

Dough

• 1 tbl instant yeast
• 4 c flour
• 2 tea salt
• 1 tbl brown sugar / maple syrup
• 1 1/3 c warm water

Bath

• 2 quarts water
• 2 tbl brown sugar
• 1 tbl molasses (if you can get your hands on malt, that is gnarly)

How

• Activate yeast by soaking in warm sugar water
• Make dough by combining all ingredients
• Knead dough for 10 mins (15 mins if by mixer)
• Let dough double in size, ~ 1.5 - 2 hours
• Divide risen dough into 12 equal pieces
• Make each piece into a long snake, and then make bagel shaped by pinching the ends together
• Let rest for ~ 30 mins
• Preheat oven to 425 f / 220 c
• Bring bath to boil
• Boil each bagel 2 mins (I usually do ~ 6 bagels at a time)
• Remove from bath and place directly on to baking sheet (if you have a silicone mat, I’ve found those helpful to reduce sticking)
• Top with whatever seasonings you wish (if you do this fast enough after the boil there is no need to egg wash/milk wash the bagels — I do this to keep them vegan)
• Bake for 20 - 25 mins, rotate after ~ 15 mins

Bagel bagel bagel

Chag Purim!

Making Hamantaschen!