Thursday, March 05, 2009

Sourdough Adventures or The NHL and I



http://www.nyx.net:80/~dgreenw/sourdoughfaqs.html

The National Hockey League and I have ONE thing in common, we both have PUCKS.
Yes, they use them on ice, hitting them with sticks into a small net, big men dressed in huge over sized costumes do this to a paying audience. I, however, have learned how to MAKE PUCKS and I'm damned good at it too! It's called Making Sourdough (insert ANYTHING) Sandwich Rolls. The end product could easily replace a NHL Official Game Puck if it were the right color, black...which I can do mind you.
Sourdough is the subject, if you are a baker you know of what I am speaking. I live in San Francisco, the best breads baked hereabouts that fetch GOOD money are Sourdough thises and that's. The Puck cokes in when one is not patient or has not the needed experience to accomplish the task. Mainly it takes patience. Not Hockey, no one is patient there at all...they hit each other for chrisakes, tear out hair and knock out teeth! My Pucks could do the same believe me. I am, if nothing else in this Life, PERSISTENT. I made my own sourdough culture about 2 months ago now and have been baking breads, normal yeast breads and flat breads in the ensuing time. I made Sourdough Sandwich Buns a week or so after creating the SOURDOUGH STARTER...a joyous chemistry and biology experiment if there ever was one.
It goes like this:
Use a non metallic bowl, into it place the following 2 ingredients:
A cup of bread flour (I like the starter's final consistency better)
A cup of water (tap water here please, no mineral water or bubbly crap of any kind)
Cover with a piece of light cotton cloth or a piece of cheesecloth. Allow to sit open to the air in your kitchen, how long? As long as it takes to become a foamy, bubbly sour and alcohol smelling goo. You now have a Sourdough starter. Fancy huh?
Not very and the results can be stunning or...Pucks!
So, where's the yeast? you might ask, knowing that w/o yeast bread will not exactly be eatable...useful for hockey, baseball or frisbee, you get the idea. Well...yeast is all around you, spores, the Brits call them "bits"...so yes, yeasty bits are all around us, all the time...in the air no matter how fresh it might be. Molds, bacteria, yeasts, birds, flies, bats, flying squirrels, helicopters...all in the air flying around. Some of the smaller ones...the yeasts, bacteria and molds will fly right through that cheesecloth onto the surface of your fine starter mixture and set up a small homestead for themselves. Not knowing about birth control or perhaps because manufacturers haven't come up with rubbers that small...they reproduce at an alarming (18 - 24 hrs!) rate and do IT over and over again, consuming the flour as food and giving off (pooping I guess) alcohol (hooch) and carbon dioxide gas (yeast farts). There you have it, end of science lesson for now. Trust me, there's more of this exacting science stuff but you'll have to wait a bit. Here's a web site if I bore you too much:
http://www.nyx.net/~dgreenw/tableofcontents.html
Basically that's all you do to get it started, but there's more...lot's more, don't be scared now, it's not bread yet!
Ok, so you've let the beast (the starter) chomp on flour overnight or all day or both. Now remove 1 cup (8 oz, 1/2 pint, 1/8 kilo) of the foamy bubbly stuff and either use it in a 1 lb loaf (small) recipe or toss it down the drain. Flush. Now,
add back one cup of flour and one cup of water and mix well. Cover with the cloth again and wait another 18 - 24 hrs. Now...you can either put it away for future use in the refrigerator (yes it freezes well too) but before it can be used it MUST get back up to room temp. When refrigerated feed weekly else the little yeast, bacteria and molds get all skinny, stop farting and your culture will settle into a boring long winterized period, not dead but not active, no sex, no fun even for these creatures. Now to make a loaf of sourdough bread from your actual home-made starter.
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Remove a cup of starter from the goop you have on hand...the momma starter. Put it aside for a minute and feed Mom...1 cup of water, one cup of bread flour.
Now put your cup of starter in a bowl and add:
1 1/2 cups of flour, 1 cup of water and mix together. Cover the bowl and let this mess work for 8 -12 hours. Get busy...NOW! (Start this in the morning and you'll be able to take an afternoon nap, else...
When the surface of your new batch is bubbly and has an odor like vinegar or alcohol and is quite pungent...you're ready to go! This is the stuff the bread is actually MADE FROM. The Child from the Mum.
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The MUm is now eating in the refrigerator while the child is hanging out in the kitchen alone...except for you, Babysitting. The child is growing and will soon be a frothy, bubbly, awful looking mess with a clear liquid (hooch) on top of the doughy stuff. This is good. Once it is at this stage you can begin making bread...did I say that before? Hmmm
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A Real Actual Sourdough Bread Recipe, call it Dad.
In your finest clean and wonderfully deep mixing bowl combine the following from your store or larder:
1 cup (8oz., 1/2 Pint, 1/8 kilo) Child Starter Stuff.
1 teaspoon salt
2 cups Bread Flour ( NOT All Purpose!)
1/3 cup warmish water
Mix, fold, spindle and mutilate til is a nice firm loafy thing. Knead for 10 minutes. Put it in a butter greased (ok, use Pam if you wish! Jezzz) bowl.
You want the dough a tiny bit sticky...not a lot sticky but just a surface stickyness that doesn't stick to you finder like goo does but is still unwilling to let go of your finger without sticking...got it? It's hard.
Shape your loaf into whatever form you like, Sandwich buns shape is nice and makes a lovely Puck too! Or a loaf, round just sitting there or in a loaf pan. Cut it, helps it to form a decent interior and fill out the mold if there is one.
Allow to rise...now that is a sentence and the basic reason why my first efforts at making eatable hockey pucks turned out the way they did. This homemade culture is slow on the rising, yes...they eat and they fart but it takes time and temperature...
80 degrees F (26 degrees C) is a nice temp for the rising cycle. How long? Til it doubles! Not triples...just doubles and it could take a long, long time poopsie. Depending on many variables it could double in 4,6,8, 10, 12 or even 24 hours! That's the reason my batch went to hell and created bookends, doorstops and hockey pucks. I wasn't patient enough! You MUST be patient with this sourdough bread making.
It works when it works and takes time. Get started NOW! Then a nice red wine and maybe a risotto with mushrooms would be nice. Comfort food for the baker.
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Wednesday, March 04, 2009

Tick, Tock, The Mouse Ran Up The Clock

http://tinyurl.com/amgrmy

This is what happens when good friends die and you are given boxes of his/her "stuff" 'cause you "were there" for him or her. Him deaths are perhaps more interesting than her auctions for guys unless you like old shoes, hair clips, old
jewelery...not bad stuff but not nearly as interesting as the treasure trove
I got when my best friend Jerry kicked the bucket a few years back. Loads
of stuff, shortware and crystal radios, ship's clocks, guns, old computer crap, inventions, model steam engines, all kinds of Boy Toys all in fine shape. No tools though and he HAD tools! I treasured the metal lathe and milling machine alas.
No cars came my way, though I wanted the MG TF...a beauty and perfect with less than 5000 miles on it! Red no less. Kelly and I had driven it and it BELONGED to us
one day...alas...no. But it had a connection to this clock I'm selling on ebay. It was one of the many toys and I think I need to get rid of it to someone who will really love it, mount it and use it for it's intended purpose in it's mechanical perfect life. It's at $787 right now after a quick 2 day run up on eBay, Jerry would be amazed. He had that clock thing and had bought it many years ago when he was in Hong Kong during his service for IBM during the Vietnam war. He owned the
TF then too but it was back home in a garage, fully covered, safe for years
to come. The clock was meant for it's perfect wooden dash and it would have
looked impressive thereon. When he built his new house in Mill Valley the
car came back to the house and was put away as before and a tempting distance
from the Huere Master-Clock that NEEDED to be mounted. Such was the life of the car and the clock. Jerry and I did many projects in
that house, he fixed from the ground up an ancient player piano, made it
perfect I tell you, and collected rare music rolls from all over that played
in it, I helped cut the tubing to replace the old rotten lengths that drove the thing. One day on a coffee stop at his house (pot was always on!...always!) I picked on him with a want I had...lets run the TF around town, out of 101 for a few miles, cross the GG Bridge in it, I'll take pics I told him. So we did, cranked up, it purred. He drove with his Beret on tilted at a jaunty angle and we roared (in a tiny way) off down the drive. As we crossed the bridge with the City ensconced in fog as it can be in the summer (just for the tourists mind you), he said "That clock
should be right here"...and he pointed just top the right of the steering
wheel...where 4 lightly placed pencil marks shown where the holes to mount
it would be drilled. I said "uh huh". We drove back over the bridge, stopped for a beer (maybe 2) at Ondine's in Sausalito. We drove back to his house and I helped him hide the TF away once again. That was a close as the Huere ever came to
being on that car. The car was back to sleep that day, locked in the garage
for another 10 years and the Huere went back into his sock drawer where it had
been since he came back from the Vietnam war in 1966. He was dead 6 months
later of throat cancer, a life long chain smoker gone to glory. I loved
him. What a character. So many stories, so little time.

Sunday, March 01, 2009

Getting Around In France By Car

It's fun driving in the countryside of France, any day at all is like an early Sunday here in the Land Of Cars. No body is on the road by you. You and your car, a unit, moving swiftly without interference from that bane of modern highways everywhere in the world, traffic. We've driven from Lignieres to Montlucon, a distance of 37 miles and seen one or two cars during the weekday. The route we take which is as far as we can tell the most direct simply doesn't attract traffic. It takes us about a leisurely driven hour to make the journey. Rolling hills of verdant green, sheep, castles and tiny villages all mark the trail for us. The driving adventure to Bourges, our largest city, is similar in character though there are more cars but never enough for a traffic jam anywhere outside of the city proper.
The ease of rural driving is a blessing, it's like getting back for all those I invested in SF commuting in the past, this is my reward come true. In all my driving about off the main routes and out of big cities is similar to this. Pleasant to a fault, one can get distracted and not feel like you'll smash into the guy in front of you.
However, in cities like Paris, Tours, Nice and the entire South driving is hazardous and traffic burdened just like any big city in the US. Aggressive driving is an art form and assholes that cut in and out of traffic like the rats they are, abound. Speeding in France is common and wrecks are truly spectacular with parts scattered far and wide. The freeways, A-roads, M-Roads are smooth as glass and well constructed, no bumpity, bump, bumps here. The roads can only be blamed in that they allow for fast driving perhaps beyond the ability or nerve of some drivers.
Tailgating is also very common and drives me crazy. I usually just slow down or find a spot to turn off as these guys are a great hazard and endless rear view distraction can lead to front end catastrophe. The worse drivers are, of course, the Americans, the lover of automobiles and the maker of the damnable automobile culture in the US. They do all manner of bad things that can get one damaged or killed in Europe. They aren't particularly fast, not me anyway, but passing on the right, weaving in and out of lanes like some boggle-head doll and tailgating are all bad combinations in European traffic. The high speed lane here, the left most one...not like in the UK, is for High Speed traffic and they mean it! The right most is for slower traffic and trucks take up most of that space typically. The others, well for you and I at our moderate speeds and the infrequent passing truck traffic.
Most major freeways are 4 this direction and 4 the other, some are 3 and some are 2 both ways. Oh, and they aren't free...yes, mostly they are toll roads for various distances and can create quite a backup when someone doesn't have the money, the card or the proper change to get the paying done quickly. Then there are the famous (infamous) speed cameras. Oh yes, they have them everywhere, on highways, 2 lane roads and circle roads skirting big cities, many thousands have been installed and boy do they ever work. The warn you though...big signs about 200 yards before the camera that indicate that the camera is ahead and the speed limit prescribed by law. Speeds are generally similar to those in the US except somewhat higher on the freeways. Inside towns and villages typically 50km/hr..about 30mph, in suburban areas 70kph (42 mph), on main 2 lane roads you can legally go 90 kph (54) or even 110, a screaming 66mph! The real speed comes on the freeways where there is a 110 kph (66mph) lower limit...yes...lower limit, and 130 kph (about 81mph). Above that is not legal but believe me...people go a LOT faster than that when they know the road and want to get somewhere fast...like the beach! How fast? Well...how fast will it go? I've personally gone on a long straight and perfectly smooth concrete freeway
190 kph or 118 mph...seemed perfectly fine, smooth, good Michelin rubber all around and it was very near the top speed of my little Avensis's 2.2 liter diesel in 5th gear. Kelly was fast asleep or I'd been braked, that's for sure. I travelled on with the BMW's, Mercedes, the Hi-Lux vans et al. for about an hour that way until I spied an upcoming exit and a roadside rest where I could get a shot of espresso and to stretch my legs. These Aires are wonderful stops, you can get gas, diesel, foods, local products (honey, mints, wine etc.) and they all have spotless, McDonald's -like restrooms for both sexes...no Turkish toilets here! So that's a pocket summary of the driving conditions. Gentlemen, start your engines!