Kitchen Experiments

Finally figured out a trick for getting dutch oven loaves to turn out gorgeous:  and it isn't putting an ice cube in the pot (it makes the bottom look funky). Spritz the inside of the dutch oven with a spray bottle generously before you put the loaf in.  That's it.  Cook 25 minutes with the lid on, then 15-20 with the lid off. I'm so happy to finally put to use the spray bottle that absolutely failed to teach my cats to behave.  It now makes my crusts quite lovely  Thanks to my starter incident, I'll get more scoring practice, but in the meantime, I'll take it.

I grew up in the 1980s.  Clean plate club, Reagan era, depressed economy, kids running rampant, big wheels off the end of docks into a lake...those days.  You don't waste food.  You just don't. Flash forward.  I am a practicing buddhist in my 40s on spring break.  Over the winter holiday break, I binge watched American Horror Story and was shocked by what it did to my mind:  I was paranoid, thinking about sex and worried about violence.  Given that I live in Oakland, this isn't abnormal.  But, I thought maybe, just maybe I was feeding my consciousness a bit too much BS and need something more wholesome. So I watched Michael Pollen's documentary on Netflix:   https://michaelpollan.com/books/cooked/ I didn't know that most bread used to be fermented.  I thought, really, sourdough was something only my relatives (gaelic and celtic sorts) did.  I didn't know anything about why flour was "enriched" or what "processing" had done...