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United States, North Carolina, Carrboro, English, Paul, Male, 56-60, All Music, All Food.
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Paul Hinrichs:
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Sunday, November 17, 2002 |
 BreadScan (tm)
Put a freshly-washed pillow case over a a slice (in this case, a heel) of the bread. Cover the entire scanner bed with it and use all your fingers to keep the pillow case around the edges of the slice.
After scanning, use a DustBuster to clean up the crumbs, so they won't screw up your next scan.
This is the preheated yin-yang bread from earlier today. That large bubble near the bottom and the incrementally-browned crust in the last half-inch towards the perimeter give it a pleasant variety of texture for both the eye and palate. This scan is about 60% actual size. The darkness is a scanning artifact since the moister center collapsed, becoming a little concave, from drying out a few hours (darkness proportional to mositure content in the scan).
It is really slightly off-white and still deliciously edible (burp - it's gone now). A cheap plastic sandwich bag protects the exposed end of the remaining loaf. Crunch on the outside, moistness within, this about the best I expect from a loaf.
11:51:18 PM 
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‘Spectacular’ Threat
FBI Warning on Al Qaeda Threat Doesn’t Bring Any Change to Alert Status
W A S H I N G T O N, Nov. 15
Ridge Downplays New al-Qaida Threat
Homeland Security Adviser Tom Ridge Says Alleged al-Qaida Letter Contains No New Threats
W A S H I N G T O N, Nov. 17
The Fear-o-meter stays on yellow! Am I the only one who has learned to react to contradictory press releases with indifference?
Is that the desired effect? What is the point?
10:06:11 PM
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 The 'Ove' Glove passed an unplanned test. The baking sheet I used for the Choux Paste warped at 5 minutes in the 425F oven. When I tried to turn it 90 degrees, it started to slide out. Even though the afternoon's refreshments might have taken a nanosecond or two off the reflexes, a relatively quick stab at the sliding sheet nabbed it and it was out at third - no crushed pastries, no burned fingers, no runs scored.
3:54:48 PM
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Bread came out beautifully! It nearly quadrupled in size at 104F and held shape preheating with the oven and it's holding shape on the cooling rack.
Next up: That Pâte à choux from Cuisine At Home with blue cheese, bacon, scallions, and parmesan (Liz grimaces, BTW, when I call Pâte à choux "sneeze pastry"). The basic pastry is so simple, but so pleasing. That recipe was a touchstone, it was obvious to put stuffing into the central chamber mysteriously created during baking, but the Cuisine At Home recipe was the first I'd noticed to mix goodies into the dough. It opens up a whole world of possibilities - and it's very easy to fix.
One more test for the 'Ove' Glove - How long can you hold a hot pan before the heat makes you drop it. I have one those "UU" (anyone read Boy's Life growin' up?) perforated bread pans and most of the weight is on the middle finger between the two 'U's. Taking the hot loaves from a 400F oven, I counted roughly 15 seconds before the tip of my finger began to get uncomfortably hot. That's enough time to find a safe resting spot for the hot stuff, even if you haven't planned ahead.
1:30:50 PM
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'Ove' Glove = Good!
What's best is that you can use your thumb and index finger to make delicate adjustments on pans with stuff baking - better to rotate things when the oven is hotter in the back. Oven mitts are ham-handed. They work, but you're likely to smash a cookie or punch down the dough. Anytime you need mitts on both hands (like removing a turkey from the oven to baste), they'll do fine. One 'Ove' Glove is enough.
12:24:29 PM
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The oven is 104F - not gonna bake anything at that temperature. The 40 watt appliance bulb keeps it there, which ain't a bad temperature for the loaves to rise.
The dough has diastatic malt for yin and wheat gluten for yang. The main reason the dough is in the oven is that it gets so light and delicate it is likely to fall when moved. This means the oven will preheat with the loaves already in there, something I've not tried before. We'll see what happens. I've had airy loaves collapse on the cooling rack, so disappointment is no stranger.
The X-acto knife for lancing the loaves was okay, but a single-edge razor blade still is the best. Coming up later: the first test of the 'Ove' Glove. Expectations plummeted like a dotcom IPO when I learned the same company sells Chia Pets and The Clapper.
During the dough rises, I've been catching up on printing labels for the Apple-Pineapple-Macadamia Conserve and the Quince-Persimmon Jelly.
The 99-cent portobellos are gone. Only one store has the abundance of portobellos, a hard-to-find one on Route 54 across from the Friday Center. They're kept right by the door where you can't miss them coming in. The store is new and maybe the want to raise the "buzz". Still a great deal at $1.99 - the other stores sell them in bulk at $3.99. I suspect they mark them down to 99 cents when they start to shrivel. This particular Harris Teeter is right on the way home from work, so I'll check them out tomorrow. Next time there are 99-cent portobellos, 10 pounds of them will be sliced and in the dehydrator right after I get home.
11:19:41 AM
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Eating puff pastry and channeling Goethe
The smell of Thuringian fried sausage is blown over from the Schillerstraße, one again appealing to my body's simple needs. But should I just take a big bite out of the gingko pastry? Would it be not more suitable to take the yeast pastry called Gretchens Zopf to silence my hunger? But would I not have the same pangs of conscience before taking the first bite? Gretchen's Zopf of all things, which was already devoured by Faust and Mephisto? Anyway, I didn't fancy a yeast cake.
Such questions to answer shall not take long
yea, not forever,
do you not sense in my song
that I am one yet two together?
On the Frauenplan in front of Goethe's House, my current needs brought out in me a classic Deus ex machina: a wildly photographing group of Japanese tourists reminded me that the Gingko leaf is the logo of the municipal waste disposal department in Tokyo. I ate the gingko pastry made of pig's ear dough, and it was good, I was full, and I sent Goethe my warmest greetings.
2:18:08 AM
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To be young and not liberal means not having a heart.
To be old and not conservative means not having a brain.
- Apocryphal Winston Churchill
From Columbia Quotations:
QUOTATION: Two souls dwell, alas! in my breast.
ATTRIBUTION: Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe (1749–1832), German poet, dramatist. Faust, in Faust I, before the city gate (1808).
QUOTATION: The deed is everything, the glory naught.
ATTRIBUTION: Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe (1749–1832), German poet, dramatist. Faust, in Faust, pt. 2, act 4, sc. 1, “High Mountains,” (1832), trans. by Bayard Taylor (1870-1871).
QUOTATION: In the colorful reflection we have what is life.
ATTRIBUTION: Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe (1749–1832), German poet, dramatist. Faust in Faust II, act 1, Pleasant Landscape (1828).
QUOTATION: The Woman-Soul leadeth us
Upward and on!
ATTRIBUTION: Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe (1749–1832), German poet, dramatist. Chorus Mysticus, in Faust, pt. 2, act 5, sc. 7 (1832), trans. by Bayard Taylor (1870-1871).
QUOTATION: The eternal feminine draws us up.
ATTRIBUTION: Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe (1749–1832), German poet, dramatist. Chorus Mysticus in Faust II, Act 5, Mountain Gorges (1832).
1:03:22 AM
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Geriatric Bikers Battle!
"They don't forgive -- or forget," said Hollister police Capt. Bob Brooks. "This is something that could fester for a long time. Some of these guys are long in the tooth, but they can still cause trouble."
That's not the Weekly World News, boys and girls, it's not even the Weekely Newes - it's the Washington Post! Authoritative! - the cycle of violence isn't passe after all and maybe we can learn something about cultures that perpetuate it.
12:45:28 AM
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