Happy B-Day MacKenzie! and a Great Bonding Activity for Fathers and Daughters and Others

Today is our little 2 year old GC's B-Day. She is a most cute, most bright, most engaging little character. Born to Aimee and Joe she has her Mum's good looks and the energy of both of them.
Her sister, Kaylee, loves her dearly. She just about didn't visit this world though as her Mum developed Preeclampsia and it was progressing rapidly about 7 weeks from her Real B-Day to be. They used to call this condition something else but I've forgotten that too, precious...aging, just precious. Anyway here's a link to get the real low down on this most dangerous and potential killer of new Mum's and babies.
http://pregnancy.emedtv.com/preeclampsia/preclampsia.html
So they took the baby by C section and though small at 3lbs and with the effects of the preclampsia, hospital bound for several weeks, she is a wonderful gift today!
Anyhow we will all eat Pizza at Mary's Pizza Shack and have a cake and all the mess that means. Great for kids and fun for us too.
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The rest of the few days I've paused from the blog have been spent reading about sourdough bread, the starter in trivial detail and modifying what I am doing somewhat. I sent a self-stamped envelop to Carl' in Maryland and he's returned to me a small package of his live starter. It looked pretty flat in the clear plastic bag but once freed and into a small bowl, warmed a bit and with a tablespoon of flour and a slightly shyer amount of H2O added and mixed well it came to life, burp! That was 5 days ago. I've divided the Mum Starter in two, forming a working starter that will actually become bread while preserving the original Mum, it's safer that way and less likely to end up getting polluted with some other ingredient. Mum stays a virgin, get it?
The Baby gets played with and will become a loaf, not today but probably tomorrow after I feed it two more times. To get Carl's famous starter stuff here's what you do; go to his site, read the blurb and ship off your SSAE, you won't be disappointed. Here's the link:
http://home.att.net/~carlsfriends/
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Then yesterday...Audrey came over as Kelly left as I needed the help of a strong woman with the mattress swap onto "my" man-bed (HA!) to try out our old marriage-bed mattress instead of the one that came with the bed frame. Audrey dragged and I pushed, Ooof, up the stairs we went with it and plopped it down on the box springs and wow, what a difference! A decent bed! Any you know...I didn't wake up once last night! Not once! And that had gotten to be a regular thing. Mattresses make a difference. Then in an ultimate step-father - step-daughter bonding moment we took on the task of changing the oil in her Toyota Echo some 13,000 miles since it was changed last...by guess who? Yes, me. 13,000 miles no less! Synthetic oil it was but ever so black and well contaminated now. I found the drain again (it was a year ago since I climbed under the beast, cute as it is) and proceeded to use a breaker bar to get enough leverage to pull the damned thing loose again! Grrrrrr. Loose, I unscrewed it and placed the old black lid from a boat battery box underneath to catch the black goo in all it's glory. Soon it was well draining and...what's that? Oh no! A FLOOD of oily mess...EXON VALDIZ!!! In our driveway!!! Shit! Merde! Something! A bag? Audrey rushed off to get some plastic bags, the mess continued to pour out onto the concrete of our previously clean driveway. Another container (no), rags? (no), paper towels (no), damnit...what a mess...and it has to be stopped before it gets into the drain system and reeks havoc with the local sewer system! (Think EPA, Corps of Engineers, State Lands Commission, City Hall, Barrack Obama!) Oh my God, this IS a disaster. So cat litter to the rescue! Having moved the car down the driveway and into the street...yes,yes with the plug IN and the filter changed and new oil added, the now thoroughly blackened driveway is fully exposed for my dear wife and Republican neighbors to see! So for the next two hours we scrubbed (more bonding), power-washed, soaped, scraped and removed MOST (but not all) of the slimy black goo. Such fun on a Sunday afternoon. And along comes my sweetie Kelly, all cheerful and pert, took no notice of the dark stain and pulled her car right in and covered the 20 foot long spot. Nice. And she's not even mad. Bonding activities are so very rewarding.

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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