Monthly Archive for January, 2007

Bread failure

Published on January 30, 2007 in Crafty, DailyGrind, PostsWithPictures and ResidentHipster. 0 Comments

In my last post, I talked a lot about re-taking up baking as a hobby. I’m in the habit of picking a basic recipe out of whatever cookbook I’m using and baking that a few million times before trying out another bread. I frequently have so-so results on a recipe the first time I make it, but if I think it’s something worth taking the effort to really get down, I’m pretty happy to keep trying it until I get it right.

And boy, do I need to keep trying. My mom got me a copy of The Easy Way to Artisan Breads & Pastries for christmas because it was pretty thin and had a variety of recipes in it. I have one of the basic ones down pretty well at this point, so I decided to try out another one. The book as a bunch of recipes that call for sourdough starters. I don’t have the kitchen equipment or space to even attempt a natural sourdough starter here so I decided that I’d try just taking a bit of yeasty bread dough and sticking it in the fridge for a few days to let it sour a little. I figured it’s be at least somewhat similar to a proper starter since it’s both old and yeasty.

I tried out my theory yesterday. It was a disaster. I mixed up the dough and everything seemed fine, but it was rising really slowly. And by slowly I mean barley at all. the recipe called for a 6 hour rise after shaping the dough into a loaf. It was supposed to get to be about three times larger. After about ten hours it had risen a good deal, but not really tripling the size of the loaf. I finally gave up and baked it. I figured that the old dough just didn’t have enough live yeast left in it. It wasn’t until I cut a piece off the finished loaf that I realized what the problem was.

It was salty. Really, inedibly salty. It sort of tasted like a pretzel that’s been so covered in rock salt on top that you can’t really see the bread. It was during that first piece of bread that I realized that I’d mixed up TEAspoons with TABLEspoons and had managed to put three times as much salt in the dough as I should have. Yikes! Salt kills yeast dead. It’s a wonder that the bread rose at all. It’s also a wonder that I didn’t die of dehydration just putting a piece of it in my mouth.

I was really sad at my failed little loaf of bread. Look at that picture of it! Doesn’t it look like it should be tasty? I think the least it could do is look terrible if it was going to be so bad, you know? I’m trying to bake all the bread we eat right now so I’m making another loaf of bread right now. I don’t have any old dough left at the moment so I’m baking something from a fresh starter. In a few days I’ll have a properly fermented nugget of dough ready to try the recipe again. Hopefully I’ll manage to put the right amounts of salt in this time.

(I have the tablespoons vs teaspoons problem all the damned time, by the way. I cannot tell you the number of times I’ve done something like this. I’ve also managed to switch salt and sugar amounts on numerous occasions. I need some kind of system to keep these things straight.)

I *heart* baking

Published on January 26, 2007 in Crafty, DailyGrind and ResidentHipster. 0 Comments

There’s a particular smell that starter gets when it’s starting to hit peak flavor, but before it starts to turn sour. It’s a yeasty smell, but there’s an overwhelming fermented scent to it. When I first mix up a starter – and really for the first few hours it’s sitting out on the counter – I mostly just smell flour. After about an hour it starts to smell less like flour and more like rising bread, all warm and yeasty. It’s only after four hours that it starts to smell right.

Back in California, I had finally settled on one particular bread recipe from the Bread Bible, that I loved. It called for a sponge starter that I would stick in the fridge for up to twenty-four hours. When I took it out to mix up the dough, the smell of fermentation would hit you like a truck when you took the cover off the mixing bowl and you knew that you were going to get a nice flavorful loaf of bread.

I love how baking bread involves all your senses. Besides just the smell of the bread rising and actually getting to taste it when it’s done, it’s a really tactile hobby. You mix up the dough, adding flour and maybe more water until it feels about the right amount of sticky. You knead it until it’s got just the right amount of give. The change in the dough as your kneading is really amazing. You’re going along, thinking that you’re not really doing anything until all of the sudden the whole texture has changed on you and suddenly it’s gone from this sort of shapeless, matte mess to having this crazy sheen and a real structure. Once you shape it and let it rise, you can tell it’s ready for the oven by how slowly it springs back into shape when you push it down a little with a fingertip.

I’ve taken to baking bread every other day lately. The bread in The Netherlands is often tasty, but there isn’t a good bakery close by to our apartment so I don’t really feel like I’m missing anything by forgoing buying it all together. It’s making me very particular about how things should look and smell as I’m baking. Mom bought me a tiny baking book for Christmas and I’ve been using it a lot, modifying the recipes here and there. It’s been great. As I’m writing this, I’m waiting for ‘les to finish up preparing the stuffed apples that we’re having for dinner so that I can mix up the dough for the bread I’ll be baking this evening. The starter smells just right.

Wind and rain

Published on January 18, 2007 in DailyGrind, Den Haag and ResidentHipster. 0 Comments

It has been storming in Den Haag the last few days. There are rumors of snow in the next week but it doesn’t seem cold enough yet for that. No, we’re just getting hit hard by a windy storm.

It’s chilly out and grey. This is the sort of weather that I’d just skip venturing out in in favor of sitting in our heated apartment drinking tea and reading. But with Xena here I have to leave the house several times a day.

Yesterday wasn’t so bad. The rain was heavy but it stopped for about an hour or two at a time so if you were lucky you could go get your errands done and your dog walked in between cloud bursts. Today was much more exciting.

I was late in getting up and dressed so ‘les gave Xena her morning walk. I knew something exciting had happened because when they came back I could hear ‘les chatting with Xena about how scary it was outside. Turns out the gusts of wind that I’d been hearing over the sound of my shower were strong enough to actually knock tiles off of roofs!

There was more excitement involving the weather breaking buildings throughout the day. Around noon we got a call from our landlord asking us to clear out the drain on our roof because the store below us was starting to leak. I have to clear out the filter in the drain every time there’s a day of solid rain because the leaves from the trees around us cause it to clog up and water starts to pool on the roof. I has been much worse during this storm because the high winds are blowing plant debris from all over onto our roof. ‘les also stuck the live Christmas tree she bought out there and it was adding to the problems. We’d cleared out the drain already that morning so hopefully the problem is solved. An hour or so later as ‘les was leaving for school she stopped in to talk to the record shop owner to ask after the flooding. At which point she noticed a weird smell outside. Apparently there was a gas leak somewhere on our street! The gas company had been called already but it would take a while to fix. I had been napping at when ‘les left and she surprised me when she came back into the apartment, telling me that I should get up and leave. Gas! Everywhere!

It was time for Xena’s afternoon walk anyway so I gathered all my things and took Xena out for the afternoon. The rain had stopped by this point but the wind was still crazy. At the end of our street, a concerned man stopped to warn us about a flag pole that was broken and hanging off the top of a building, waiting to be blown down at any second. I made a note to myself to avoid that end of the street coming back and to keep a look out for any more flying tiles. Xena and I still went to the park for her walk, though. I was hesitant to let her off leash because she was a bit freaked out and I wasn’t totally sure she could hear me over the sound of the wind through the trees. It really was that loud.

After her walk instead of going home we went to a cafe for an hour or so, waiting out the gas leak back home. Afterwards I took her to another, smaller grassy spot along a canal and tried to figure out what to do with ourselves. As we were leaving the park, the wind picked up to such a degree that I decided that it was probably best to just try to go home.

Then the hail started.

I’m home now, happy to live in a place that is winterized enough to actually keep heat in. Although I did have to walk out onto the roof again to unclog the drains.

I kinda hope that it’ll snow a bit here. I’d prefer it to all this rain.

UPDATE:
Apparently this storm is worse than I thought. Hurricane speed winds have been knocking down trees and killing people. A boat even got blown out of dock and hit an oil line near Rotterdam.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070118/ap_on_re_eu/northern_europe_storm_1

Also:
Our country has not had a storm like this in years. We advise you to follow weather alarms and messages to the letter,” the Netherlands’ Royal Weather Service said.

Good thing we decided not to go anywhere tonight.

I’m back in the Netherlands.

Published on January 13, 2007 in CA, DailyGrind, Den Haag, Netherlands, ResidentHipster, Travel and USA. 0 Comments

Hi there.

My plane flight was unexceptional. I was sitting in a window seat in the last row of the plane, which was sort of nice. I prefer sitting further bak in the plane because they tend to get served food and drinks first and because I prefer waiting until most people are off the plane to try to take down my carry-on bags. They tend to be really heavy and awkward to get out of the overhead bins and I’d rather not hold up the line trying to get them down. Also, I’m afraid that I’ll hit someone in the head with my bags so I’d rather not have anyone still seated when I try to get out of the plane.

Customs is sort of nonexistent in The Netherlands. There were no forms to be filled out and you don’t have to have you bags scanned for food scraps. I did have to talk to the passport control person about my stay here, though. Telling someone that I’m planning on staying in the country for 8 months sort of throws them off. So does the valid French residency permit.

After passport control, I picked up my bags and waited for ‘les to arrive to meet me. My plane was in early and she didn’t get out of class until around when it was supposed to land so I ended up waiting a while. As soon as she met me, we got on a train and headed back to Den Haag. There are two train stations in this city, only one of which has trams that will take you very near our apartment. The other station has trams that will take you 8 to 10 blocks from our place, which is odd since the stations are about equidistant from our home. We ended up arriving at the less convenient train station and had to carry our heavy bags home. I only had a carry-on sized rolling bag and backpack filled with my stuff, the two checked bags I had belonged to ‘les. She wanted to bring her synthesizer to Europe and i was kind enough to help her out with that. The two shipping cases that it’s carried in are really heavy. It was a bit of a pain to get them down the street. I kept having to stop to rest my arm for a second. It reminded me of trying to get all our bags from the airport to our place in Paris when we first moved. Only this time it was less awful because I wasn’t nearly so tired or hot and also because I knew where I was going and how far it was to home. Knowing what my journey is like ahead of time makes me much, much happier let me tell you.

After we got home, I changed my clothes and we took Xena out of a long walk. Got lunch and then walked to the conservatory. We ended up running into another student on his way home and decided to get a beer with him at a nearby bar. Xena was able to go everywhere with us, which is wonderful. It’s so much easier to have a dog here than in the US.

After we got home, I was ready to crash and took a long nap in the evening. My jet lag hasn’t been too bad but, man, travel is still really exhausting.

Oh and did I mention that I hate LAX? It’s just sort of ugly and the people who work there aren’t exactly rude but they’re not at all polite either. The guy at the ticket counter didn’t even bother pointing me in the direction of my gate. I ended up heading to the wrong security gate and had to turn around and go way back in the other direction. I knew there was a reason I always avoided flying in our out of that airport.

Xena update

Published on January 5, 2007 in Den Haag, Netherlands, PostsWithPictures, ResidentHipster, Travel and Xena the Dog. 0 Comments


Xena

Originally uploaded by un_cola.

I got a call from ‘les at about 4am last night, letting me know that she and Xena got home ok. Apparently the poor thing was too stressed out during the flight to drink much water and was horribly thirsty when she arrived. She also refused to make use of the airport planters at SFO so she really, really had to pee by the time she landed in The Netherlands.

‘les reports having some adventures trying to get herself, a large rolling suitcase full of cables, a dog crate, and Xena through the airport and onto a train. Trying to get a taxi was no easy task either, it seems.

I’m so happy they arrived ok! I was nervous all night.

Anyway, I’ll be back in The Netherlands on Thrusday morning and I expect to find the whole apartment covered in a fine layer of dog hair. Joy!

And they’re off!

Published on January 5, 2007 in DailyGrind, Netherlands, ResidentHipster, Travel and USA. 0 Comments

I said goodbye to ‘les and Xena this afternoon. They’re on a plane to Den Haag as I type this. Xena dealt with the airport crowds like a pro, but she looked so terrified as she was wheeled away in her shipping container that I got all teary. I feel sort of bad for crying like that. ‘les is already stressed out about traveling with Xena. She didn’t need me freaking out on top of that. Besides which, Xena is going to be fine so it’s silly of me to have freaked out. I’m totally sure she’ll be fine in transit. She tends to freak out for a while and then go to sleep, which is a fine way to deal with traveling fora dog or a human, as far as I’m concerned. Still I’ll be happy to hear from ‘les when she gets homes all safe and sound.

I’m leaving the Bay Area on Sunday afternoon. I’m in charge of getting two boxes full of analog synth to The Netherlands next Wednesday. Not as stressful as dog shipping, but I think it might actually be harder to get around with two big gear boxes and my heavy carry-on bags. I’m just happy that I know where I’m going once I get to Amsterdam airport. Having to lug heavy stuff is bad enough, having to lug it without knowing exactly where you’re going will make you break down in the middle of the Gare du Nord metro station. That’s a helpful little tip for you.