Posting, posting, yeah, posting
Mar. 18th, 2016 09:10 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
loaded_marchSo, I haven't much to post about at the moment, though topics occur to me all the time. I just haven't actually had the time to write them, and when I do, I procrastinate.
And, boy, I'm awesome at procrastinating.
But I'll get to that in a second. First, a random piece of information: I have started baking bread.
Rather, I have resumed my seemingly useless goal to learn how to bake proper bread. Years ago, I tried, failed miserably, swore to never do it again. And then I had it in my head that maybe if I used sourdough starter, it would go better and tried to capture my own wild culture. God, did that ever fail spectacularly, and I remembered how much I hated microbiology in school -- loved the science, but the teacher was dull and monotone, exactly how my attempts at sourdough turned out.
Anyway, fast forward to the present and the exclusion diet. I have a pretty healthy (or unhealthy) list of things that are never going to make it back in my diet if I can help it. I have half a mind to go back to basics again -- a modified "light" version of the diet -- which I will do once I finish poking at other foodstuff I haven't tried yet.
But I'll tell you this. I miss bread.
I MISS BREAD.
The coconut flour was a nice, crazy science experiment, totally up my alley. Banana bread, check. English muffins, check. Pancakes, check. I did not know better than to try regular bread (I have no idea how the Spouse finished it off) with it. I wisely elected not to make an attempt at coconut flour pizza bread.
But anyway, by the time I got to that point I'd graduated along the queue of different allergens and could start using gluten-free flours. I've used those before, many years ago, when the Spouse thought he might be sensitive (only to learn that he wasn't, thank God. My pizza dough was passably edible, but let's be honest, it tasted like cardboard), but I figured that the Internets had better recipes to try by now, and lo, they did!
But, yeah. Gluten-free banana bread, check. Gluten-free English muffins, check. Gluten-free pancakes, check. Massive failure on the gluten-free muffins, FYI, but whatever. My Gluten-free pizza bread looked nothing like the gluten-free pizza breads on the many blogs I tried, and I don't care how much the authors and commenters liked their recipes, because, while it tasted like a slightly better grade of cardboard, it was still cardboard.
And anyway, regular wheat is the next allergen I'm supposed to try, so what the hell. I looked into it a lot. I learned that there's scientific research supporting the belief that the way bread is baked now is vastly different to the way bread used to be baked -- with wild yeasts and ridiculously long ferments that break down all the nasty stuff that cause guts worldwide to rebel.
So I got myself some starter from someone who cultivates it from known and proven non-commercial strains. I read everything about sourdough that I could get my hands on (but still haven't read enough). I watched how-to videos. I really need a fucking mixer, FYI, because kneading, while relaxing, is inconvenient when you have to knead for up to 10 minutes and you really have to go pee halfway through. You'd think, since I have to get suited up for lab work a lot, I'd remember to go to the bathroom before, but, nope.
ON THE BRIGHT SIDE, while I've had major failures and some not-bad turn-outs, the longer the ferment, the less of a reaction I have. I can't eat a lot of bread, I get stuffed full super-fast, my metabolism's just too slow, but HOLY SHIT I MISSED BREAD SO MUCH. I just had the best tomato sandwich of my life.
Anyway. Ahem.
I have a different problem.
It's a serious problem.
The Spouse, who is escactic about being able to eat bread again? He keeps cutting himself on the bread knife. On all of the bread knives that we own, actually. Lost a bit of skin on one finger. Sliced a deep gash in his thumb that I glued shut since it wasn't so big as to need stitches. Almost cut the top of a finger.
Good fucking lord.
I've forbidden him from ever using a bread knife again. I see him with a bread knife and I shriek, Put it down. It's kind of ridiculous. He sees bread, goes blind to anything but the bread, forgets to keep an eye out for his fingers, and...
I'm almost willing to give up bread altogether, because I kind of like the Spouse's fingers where they are, JESUS FUCKING CHRIST. Blood doesn't squick me out, but his whining when I grab his hand, hauldrag him to the nearest first aid kit while putting pressure on the injury, and bandage him up? THE WHINING.
Ahem.
He's not really that bad. What bugs me more is how he sometimes pretends to cut himself because he knows my automatic reaction by now is an exaspperated For Fuck's Sake, I Told You To Let ME Cut the Fucking Bread eyeroll, a blind grab for the nearest clean towel to wrap around his hand, and a snarled, "Sit down on the toilet and shut up" while I start laying out all the contents of the first aid kit. I don't know why, but he seems to get a kick out of it when I take the dish towel off and can't find so much as a hangnail.
What a dick. I've warned him about crying wolf.
OH HAI! While I'm sort of still on the topic of breadstuff, I have way too much starter than I know what to do with. I've dried some of it to store for later, but I'm going to have to start giving some of it away, because this is ridiculous.
And, boy, I'm awesome at procrastinating.
But I'll get to that in a second. First, a random piece of information: I have started baking bread.
Rather, I have resumed my seemingly useless goal to learn how to bake proper bread. Years ago, I tried, failed miserably, swore to never do it again. And then I had it in my head that maybe if I used sourdough starter, it would go better and tried to capture my own wild culture. God, did that ever fail spectacularly, and I remembered how much I hated microbiology in school -- loved the science, but the teacher was dull and monotone, exactly how my attempts at sourdough turned out.
Anyway, fast forward to the present and the exclusion diet. I have a pretty healthy (or unhealthy) list of things that are never going to make it back in my diet if I can help it. I have half a mind to go back to basics again -- a modified "light" version of the diet -- which I will do once I finish poking at other foodstuff I haven't tried yet.
But I'll tell you this. I miss bread.
I MISS BREAD.
The coconut flour was a nice, crazy science experiment, totally up my alley. Banana bread, check. English muffins, check. Pancakes, check. I did not know better than to try regular bread (I have no idea how the Spouse finished it off) with it. I wisely elected not to make an attempt at coconut flour pizza bread.
But anyway, by the time I got to that point I'd graduated along the queue of different allergens and could start using gluten-free flours. I've used those before, many years ago, when the Spouse thought he might be sensitive (only to learn that he wasn't, thank God. My pizza dough was passably edible, but let's be honest, it tasted like cardboard), but I figured that the Internets had better recipes to try by now, and lo, they did!
But, yeah. Gluten-free banana bread, check. Gluten-free English muffins, check. Gluten-free pancakes, check. Massive failure on the gluten-free muffins, FYI, but whatever. My Gluten-free pizza bread looked nothing like the gluten-free pizza breads on the many blogs I tried, and I don't care how much the authors and commenters liked their recipes, because, while it tasted like a slightly better grade of cardboard, it was still cardboard.
And anyway, regular wheat is the next allergen I'm supposed to try, so what the hell. I looked into it a lot. I learned that there's scientific research supporting the belief that the way bread is baked now is vastly different to the way bread used to be baked -- with wild yeasts and ridiculously long ferments that break down all the nasty stuff that cause guts worldwide to rebel.
So I got myself some starter from someone who cultivates it from known and proven non-commercial strains. I read everything about sourdough that I could get my hands on (but still haven't read enough). I watched how-to videos. I really need a fucking mixer, FYI, because kneading, while relaxing, is inconvenient when you have to knead for up to 10 minutes and you really have to go pee halfway through. You'd think, since I have to get suited up for lab work a lot, I'd remember to go to the bathroom before, but, nope.
ON THE BRIGHT SIDE, while I've had major failures and some not-bad turn-outs, the longer the ferment, the less of a reaction I have. I can't eat a lot of bread, I get stuffed full super-fast, my metabolism's just too slow, but HOLY SHIT I MISSED BREAD SO MUCH. I just had the best tomato sandwich of my life.
Anyway. Ahem.
I have a different problem.
It's a serious problem.
The Spouse, who is escactic about being able to eat bread again? He keeps cutting himself on the bread knife. On all of the bread knives that we own, actually. Lost a bit of skin on one finger. Sliced a deep gash in his thumb that I glued shut since it wasn't so big as to need stitches. Almost cut the top of a finger.
Good fucking lord.
I've forbidden him from ever using a bread knife again. I see him with a bread knife and I shriek, Put it down. It's kind of ridiculous. He sees bread, goes blind to anything but the bread, forgets to keep an eye out for his fingers, and...
I'm almost willing to give up bread altogether, because I kind of like the Spouse's fingers where they are, JESUS FUCKING CHRIST. Blood doesn't squick me out, but his whining when I grab his hand, hauldrag him to the nearest first aid kit while putting pressure on the injury, and bandage him up? THE WHINING.
Ahem.
He's not really that bad. What bugs me more is how he sometimes pretends to cut himself because he knows my automatic reaction by now is an exaspperated For Fuck's Sake, I Told You To Let ME Cut the Fucking Bread eyeroll, a blind grab for the nearest clean towel to wrap around his hand, and a snarled, "Sit down on the toilet and shut up" while I start laying out all the contents of the first aid kit. I don't know why, but he seems to get a kick out of it when I take the dish towel off and can't find so much as a hangnail.
What a dick. I've warned him about crying wolf.
OH HAI! While I'm sort of still on the topic of breadstuff, I have way too much starter than I know what to do with. I've dried some of it to store for later, but I'm going to have to start giving some of it away, because this is ridiculous.
