Miracles of baking

When a classmate brought this bread to one of our potlucks and I was skeptical that she had made it herself until I tried the recipe at home. Not only is this the best bread I've ever made - fantastic texture for sandwiches and gorgeous looking with fabulous crust - it's unbearably easy to make. You don't even have to knead it!

Do note the long rising time, though. This one does require a little advance planning.

No-Knead Bread
*Courtesy of the New York Times
Adapted from Jim Lahey, Sullivan Street Bakery
Time: About 1½ hours plus 14 to 20 hours’ rising

3 cups all-purpose or bread flour, more for dusting
¼ teaspoon instant yeast
1¼ teaspoons salt
Cornmeal or wheat bran as needed.

1. In a large bowl combine flour, yeast and salt. Add 1 5/8 cups water, and stir until blended; dough will be shaggy and sticky. Cover bowl with plastic wrap. Let dough rest at least 12 hours, preferably about 18, at warm room temperature, about 70 degrees.

2. Dough is ready when its surface is dotted with bubbles. Lightly flour a work surface and place dough on it; sprinkle it with a little more flour and fold it over on itself once or twice. Cover loosely with plastic wrap and let rest about 15 minutes.

3. Using just enough flour to keep dough from sticking to work surface or to your fingers, gently and quickly shape dough into a ball. Generously coat a cotton towel (not terry cloth) with flour, wheat bran or cornmeal; put dough seam side down on towel and dust with more flour, bran or cornmeal. Cover with another cotton towel and let rise for about 2 hours. When it is ready, dough will be more than double in size and will not readily spring back when poked with a finger.

4. At least a half-hour before dough is ready, heat oven to 450 degrees. Put a 6- to 8-quart heavy covered pot (cast iron, enamel, Pyrex or ceramic) in oven as it heats. When dough is ready, carefully remove pot from oven. Slide your hand under towel and turn dough over into pot, seam side up; it may look like a mess, but that is O.K. Shake pan once or twice if dough is unevenly distributed; it will straighten out as it bakes. Cover with lid and bake 30 minutes, then remove lid and bake another 15 to 30 minutes, until loaf is beautifully browned. Cool on a rack.

Yield: One 1½-pound loaf

Notes:
* I like to bake it in a slightly cooler oven - around 400º (vs. 450ºF). It still gets a good crust, but it isn't as overwhelmingly crusty.
* I tried this with 1c whole wheat flour and 2c white flour. It came out ok, but still not quite the whole wheat bread I'm looking for.
* The 18 hour rise time (vs. 12) is really worth the wait!
* Since I've been letting this rise over cool(ish) winter nights, I found that setting the bowl over the pilot light on my gas stove helps keep it warm... another reason I love gas stoves.

Fog

In some ways today was perfect.

I only saw the emails about my grandmother being in the hospital as I was on my way out the door. Something about a fall, a broken hip, lots of morphine, surgery and a question about her wishes. I had a quick business-like conversation with my mother as i walked to the bus stop to get the most up to date information, which was: I don't know. Little enough information that I could set it all aside to consider later.

The bus came right away, and I got to Tolman right on time. The psych experiment I signed up for was an exercise in active forgetting - not my strong suit, but it was good practice. The experimenter made a comment to the effect of - I've got a mind like a steel trap. And I made $25, which is great. I can use all the money I can get.

And then I was off to Hilgard, a convenient stone's throw away, to work with the Suding folks. I entered my data from the past month in no time at all and was apprised of this new experiment that I may be able to very nearly take over, which would be great. I spent the afternoon writing out labels. I got carried away in the zen repetition of it all and labeled five hundred-some cones. I'd have kept going if my hungry stomach hadn't noticed how dark it had become.

And then home just in time for Fresh Air with a lovely Tuscan dinner. I tried to read about the nitty gritty of xylem, but my curtailed sleep last night and the vague question of whether I should be booking a flight to Los Angeles for some time between my class Thursday night and my midterm Saturday afternoon kept me from it.

So, dinner was followed by an evening of uploading photos to the blog I made for my tree id class. Happy work that left my mind to relax. I prepared 25 posts for the next five days.

And I've been able to sleep! Ever since giving my word over a certain handshake, no one has died in my dreams. No awful things happen that I am expected to fix. I spend my unconscious nights in Paris walking along the Seine. I think I'll see if I can't get back there now.

Alive!

I'm still trying to assess the damage of the three and a half weeks of negligence I inflicted on my beloved houseplants while I was home over the holidays.

There has been carnage. Of course the little Easter Lily in the bathroom died along with one of my pink and green herbaceous plants and the cuttings I was trying to root. The orchid seems to have given up, several of the Alocasias are on their last legs. And perhaps the most tragic has been the passing of my beloved cardboard sago palm and Nikau palm. RIP.

The Ficus benjamina was of course visibly upset and threw down almost all his leaves, but has gotten out his aggression and has put out a respectable number of new leaves. I saved the Wandering Jews by making cuttings, which are growing happily in their water baths.

I've been holding out on the Ficus lyrata, though, the Fiddleleaf fig. His enormous violin shaped leaves were too heavy for his flaccid petioles, and he dropped them all one after another until he had just a few stems jutting up from his pot. Normally, I'd have taken a plant like that for dead, but being a ficus I thought just maybe he had a little something up his sleeve. Or, down in his root. So, I kept watering his empty pot and lo and behold two itty bitty baby leaves have been unveiled from his growing tips! He is alive!

No reason

Plan B

If all else fails and whatever life I'm working on now doesn't work out, I will move to the hills of Santa Fe. I will find the German wizard from the farmers market and ask him to make me his apprentice. I will learn the fine art of artisan bread baking. Or I might seek out a creamery in a far off cloister that reminds me of Mont St. Michel and I will make cheese. I will bake breads and fashion cheeses and eke out a quiet but delicious life in the narrow streets of Paris.

Hearts

I was reminded today, sprawled on my blanket in the warm February sun out of doors, that these really are good times.

I'm a lucky girl to be able to make music and read and picnic out in the park on such a regular basis. To work so hard and feel like I'm not working at all. To run in with so many fantastic people.

Even valentine's day turned out lovely after all with a trip out to the farmer's market for carrots and up to the store for cottage cheese which would be fried into apple pancakes. Followed by banjo and fiction reading in the park. For it to be so warm and sunny these past few days, to be able to wear dresses and skirts, letting the sky touch my bare legs. Delicious. And then dinner at the co-op with Sarah and Jenna. Even the disappearance of two buses and the breaking down of a third and the long unintended walk through dark Berkeley streets on my way over was lovely.

I guess I really do love what little life I've made here. And it's good to remember that so clearly now and again.

My bloody valentine

I have just returned, triumphant, from the Red Cross. Advances in technology provided for me a little hand warmer in preparation of the telling needle prick, but I don't think I needed it. The few drops of blood from my would-be wedding ring finger came in at 14.2 on the hemoglobin machine. Success.

The woman in the donation room knew a professional when she saw one. I disobeyed her request to look the other way when she slipped the needle in the old vein and filled the pint sack in under five minutes. A record, she says. Any faster and she might have hit an artery.

I have neglected to make valentines cards, and I don't imagine there will be any wine or ballet or record playing this year. No Bobby Vee singing from the other room as I take my shower. But I suppose I still wanted a valentine, so I've given my blood to a stranger. Happy Valentine's Day, whoever you may be.

The nocturnal spirits

I've been having nothing but bad dreams for as long as I can remember now. Years, maybe. But last night it culminated with my mother having a stroke in my arms. I came down the steps to see her teetering, unable to find her balance. And then her words were slurred. She said it was a migraine when I caught her fall. She looked confused and felt soft as I held her. I felt calm knowing this must be the worst possible thing and felt my pockets for my cell phone to dial in the emergency, but it wasn't there.

I didn't wait to find out what happened. I woke up and called my mother instead. Still there, thank god. And healthy as you could hope.

Maybe I need a witch doctor to translate my black unconscious, to tell me what I need to metabolize or come to terms with that is haunting me at night, to tell me what it knows that I am missing.

Maybe I need a dream catcher.

An entree to the pantheon

I wandered through the Botanical Garden for hours today, hours in which it did not rain, though meteorological sources claimed 90% certainty it would. The February air nipped at my fingers as I collected leaves for this project and that, but what was quite remarkable were the squirrels. The squirrels were following me around as if they knew me, following me for lengths of football fields and calling their brethren out from the shrubbery to join, as if we were in a circus, and I was their ringleader. Garden patrons commented in passing about the squirrel parade. At one point there must have been thirty of them teeming in the walkway, racing my direction. Thirty squirrels looking to me knowingly as if I was their queen, their god. I thought there must be some magic in it. I tried to think of a number I could dial on my cell phone that would ring and be answered by some familiar human voice to which I could relate the mystery of that moment, to make it somehow both more magical and more real. But my godliness seemed to fade as I struggled to determine the right number, and the squirrels, sensing it, disappeared among the leaves.

Were you aware of it? vol. 26: Roots, or why we're glad plants stand still

Roots [...] are organs that enable plants to mine the soil for essential nutrients. The intimate contact with the soil mass that roots require for normal function is the reason for plants being sessile during most life stages. Functions such as photosynthesis and nitrogen fixation do not preclude freedom of motion, but the primary acquisition of mineral nutrients from soil does. We and other terrestrial animals have gained our freedom of movement through evolutionary developments that emancipated us from the need to acquire mineral nutrients directly from our environment. This liberation from a sedentary existence in turn led to the evolution of sense organs and coordinated body movements--hence the need for a central nervous system and the evolution of the brain. The triumphs and tragedies of our intellect and our emotions can ultimately be traced to our reliance for mineral nutrients on the fixed, silent plants rooted in the soil.

[...] if intelligent life on solid land is ever discovered elsewhere in the universe, there, as here the world of life will consist of two "kingdoms": plant and animal. Only sessile plants can absorb from a solid substrate the many mineral elements needed for the machinery of life, and only organisms depending on those pants can evolve mobility, sense organs, and the further steps already referred to, culminating in the evolution of sentient beings.

~ Emmanuel Epstein and Arnold J. Bloom, Mineral Nutrition of Plants: Principles and Perspectives, p. 25