Bread - "Lame" or bread slashing thing

A "lame" (pronounced in the first part of this), or "bread slashing thing" is a razor blade on a stick.

It's really important if you want to make those nice textured loaves that are slashed before baking, like baguettes.

I found a knife did a poor job, and I keep my knives sharp. The problem was their thickness rather than their sharpness. A scalpel worked a bit better, but was still too thick.

I thought I'd make one, and it worked really well. It's what I used on my last loaf, with the 5 overlapping cuts.

I started by wrecking a disposable razor. Safety glasses are important here, bits flew all over the place.

Really, really, really, sharp bits.

Wear glasses.

If you get a razor stuck in your eye, I bet it really stings every time you blink.

Wear glasses.

Next step was to trim it into a shape that I thought would work. My aim was to minimise friction as it cut into the loaf.

Scissors worked to shape the blade. The thin blades cut like thick paper.

The to make a handle, I cut the end off a chopstick...

And split it with a steak knife.

I made the split long enough to hold a decent amount of the blade.

And glued it in place with super glue.

It works really well.

I think the secret to the slashing bit is bold confident strokes.

Here's a picture of a totally unrelated ball of dough in a glass of water.
















120 Things in 20 years is all about boldness and confidence. And bread and a lame. And a glass of water with dough in it.

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Entomology - green caterpillar to moth

A while ago I put a few green caterpillars into a jar to watch how they went about changing into a moth.

I've always thought the green caterpillars that ate my aquaponics garden were from the white cabbage moth. The ones that fly around during the day.

But last night in the hours just before dawn, the jar on my desk suddenly erupted into life and out flew this.

In this part of the world, this is one of those crazy moths that love flying around lights at night.

I don't know how they get anything done.






It seems they do this because they normally navigate by the moon. When using the moon for navigation, you can fly in a straight line, or very close to a straight line, by just keeping the thing up there and a little to the left or whatever. If it's up there and a little to the left, and you veer off a bit to the right, it becomes up there and a little more to the left. So you turn left a bit.

The moon is so far away, that even though it's moving as far as a moth is concerned, it's a pretty stationary object in the sky. Perfect to act as a lighthouse.

But when you fly past an artificial light thinking it's the moon, you see it change it's position, so you turn a bit, but it's still changing position, so you turn a bit more. You end up flying around and around until you vomit or die.

If your flight plan happens to be to fly almost exactly at the moon, and your moon is a candle, you don't even get to the throwing up stage. You just die.

So I had a look in the jar and saw this.

I cant tell if this photo of the moth's old home is interesting or not.

I'm guessing it's a little bit interesting.

I should really pt the camera on the one on the left and watch it emerge, but instead in the interests of bread, I just put the jar outside.











120 Things in 20 years - Entomology - green caterpillar to night time moth. Who knew.

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Thinking - Annoyed at myself

For ages I've held the belief that time travel is impossible based solely on the basis that if it were, there would be people from the future all over the place. Being irritating, and buying up all the shares in Miscosoft and 120 Things in 20 years.

And tourists.

Doing exactly what we would do if we could go back in time.

From fire, to the gun, to nukes, it's a given that eventually everyone with a screwdriver will eventually have the tech to make anything that can be made.

That was always my proof for why time travel was impossible. If it was possible, someone from the future would have come back and stolen my teeth or something because of some kind of future shortage of calcium... whatever.

But....

Someone interested in CERN made the comment that, like the telephone, perhaps time travel needs a second handset to be useful.

The first phone wasn't very useful until the second one was made.

"Hello? Saluton? Ahoy hoy'? Nope it simply doesnt work. It must be impossible."

What if people from the future cant come back to the past until a time machine is invented, and we leave a note to the future saying where it is, and when it will be switched on?

I still don't think we will be seeing visitors from the future, but I'm kicking myself for not thinking about the possibility that the only reason we don't see them now is because we haven't got around to building the other end of the connection.

How can I form an argument against something without all the facts?

Let that be a lesson to me.




When trying to learn 120 things in 20 years, and thinking about being annoyed at myself, I sometimes get annoyed at myself.

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Bread - Scoring or slashing

There is a lot of different reasons given for why we slash bread before putting into the oven.

Many claims involve letting steam out.

I'm finding it almost imposable to tell truth from fiction, so I did a stack of tests for myself, and this is why I think it's done.

I made a loaf that ended up looking like this.

By far my best loaf to date.

It was bread by any standard.

In fact I wouldn't change anything if I wanted to make this style of light white bread.

Luckily for me, for the first time, I took detailed notes of the amounts and durations etc. so I actually have my first recipe.


I will eventually follow some recipes, but for this first stage I want to know why people used x amount of this and that, so I wanted to do the tests myself. I just enjoy exploring, even where it's already been explored. From everything I've read, it's all about very accurate measurements if you are trying to make a particular kind of bread.

I'm finding it pretty easy now to make bread, but I haven't yet tried to make a particular kind of bread.

No doubt that will be an entirely new challenge.

But this post is about slashing the bread with a razor just before putting it into the oven. And it really does need to be a razor. I found everything else pulls the bread and doesn't really cut it decisively, and it's done at just the wrong time to be being rough with the dough.

My loaf had to go into my container with a lid, and it had already risen to the point where, if it went up too much more in the oven it would touch the lid.

If I had left the bread un-slashed, it would rise pretty much equally in all directions. Probably a bit more out, than up because of gravity.

And probably an un-slashed loaf would rise a bit less overall because of having the restriction of its own outer skin.

If I had slashed the bread with a cut across the top (pictured left), I should expect the deepest part of the cut to burst up and become the topmost part of the finished loaf. The sides would "rise" sideways less because all the rising would go up.

What I did was to make 5 cuts around the outside.

I hadn't tried 5 overlapping cuts like this in any of my tests, and really wanted to test my conclusions of those tests.

I figured this should give me the desired result, a well "risen" loaf, but one that didn't go up too much.





I should also point out that the dough was also originally shaped so that it was a flatter wider disc, rather than a high ball, so not all the final shape was due to slashing.

But after the loaf was cut and put into the oven (250c preheated with 4 cast iron plates in the bottom), the first few minutes saw the loaf starting to change shape.

At first the top rose a bit, and the cuts opened out a little.

But within 5 minutes, the top had stopped doing a lot, but the bottom most point of each cut started to fold up, and out.

The top outside corners followed an arc that created all the sideways "rise".

At one stage there was a step where the top was flat, and the cuts formed 90 degree angles. It would have been a funny looking loaf if it had set in that shape, but the lid was on so there was lots of steam in the container, so the outer skin was still flexible enough to keep growing out.

The result was almost a perfect dome, with a continuous shape without any steps or obvious cuts, just different colour and texture to mark the history of it's unfolding.

It looked like this on the inside, and the first picture of the post, shows the interesting colour and textural variations on the crust...

The best part is that this is the first loaf that turned out exactly how I wanted it to. Some previous loaves have turned out bready enough, but I didn't really have an idea of what kind of thing I wanted to create. With this loaf, it's light and fluffy white bread like you might buy as a knot roll, and every single one of those slightly larger holes is in exactly the right place :)

Perfect (to my biased head).

I'll just double check the recipe before posting it, because I had to keep adding flour to my original mix and as a result, some of the flour was added later during the kneading. I don't think it was so late that it will make any difference, but I'm make it again with the final amounts so I don't lead anyone astray by posting a fluke recipe that cant be duplicated.





120 Things in 20 years scoring and slashing bread - I just noticed the pentagram I created (I was too busy seeing what looked to me like fish tails), and no, this post is not part of a secret coded Illuminati conspiracy message, so if you just add the word DELETE to the subject line of any emails, I can filter them straight to the junk folder. Everyone wins!

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Aquaponics - Carrot

I pulled up one of my carrots prematurely to see if they were developing into something carrot looking, or were going to look like Elvis.

Something I read ages ago in a dirt gardening book mentioned that you should plant carrots in deeply dug soil that had old fertilizer added. If you had too much new fertilizer the carrot would branch out seeking the nutrient, rather than going straight down looking from nutrient.

I think my carrots are going to be carrot looking.

Obviously, it's early days yet, but at least they haven't started to go crazy yet.

I suspect that even if they do they might still be good to eat, because they will be all nice and clean and fine to eat without peeling.

Besides, I'm happy to eat Elvis shaped carrots if the ebay market has dropped off for rock star/deity shaped vegetables and pictures on toast.

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Aquaponics - Tomato problem

I haven't been into my grow house for a few days because I've been too busy making bread.

But today I went in and although everything is ticking along just fine, I found two odd leaves on my tomato plants.

One looked like this...

Very distinct purple veins.

Sometimes tomato plants have this a bit, and the photo didn't really capture how different this leaf is from others.

It's quite attractive actually, but is no doubt the harbinger of some exciting new tomato drama.

The other interesting leaf looked like this.

It looks a bit like normal old age in a tomato leaf, but this is a new leaf, on a new shoot.

I think this one might be nitrogen deficiency. The water has become cold, and the fish have nearly stopped eating, so there might not be enough nutrient.





I don't really have enough fish for my system.


120 Things in 20 years. That's the plan anyway. But for today, it's an exciting new aquaponics tomato leaf problem.

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Bread - Loaf 5

I think this last loaf worked really well.

---------------
But first, a correction to the last post.

The bit that read...


I read somewhere that if you take the number 44, and subtract the room temperature in centigrade, you are left with the temperature the water should be. (presuming your flour is at room temperature)

Should have said,  "Take the number 54 and subtract the room temperature AND the flour temperature, and you are left with what the water temperature needs to be."

--------------

So...

This latest loaf, loaf number 5 worked really well. 

I think. 

I haven't tried it yet because I'm risking taking it to a friends house for a dinner party. 

It was made the same way as the last loaf except this time I preheated the oven properly with some cast iron the bottom to try to get some heat under the loaf.

The other difference was that I removed the plastic handle, and lid handle from a deep non-stick frying pan to act as a backing tray. This meant there was a much smaller gap between the dough and the cover (the last time I used a large bowl) , and as I result, I think I got more steam. 

I didn't add any water, but the dough contributes a bit as you can see, with the lid steaming up. 

This is after their final shaping, and after a few minutes of rising. 

This is what they looked like after their final rise, and just before slashing and being put into the oven.

This time I saw an extra rise in the oven for the first time. I'm not sure if it was because the loaf was in a container, and had nowhere to go but up, or if it was the steam, the hot iron at the base, or something I haven't understood yet. 

My 120 Things in 20 years loaf number 5 worked as well. Two in a row is a lot, lot better than one in a row. 

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