60+ year old thread.

Good morning!
Today was my father's birthday... the man who exposed me to four wheeling and Baja California, in the mid-1960s! Here we are on his final Baja surf-fishing trip, 1983... I was 25. He passed away in 1989. Thanks Dad for showing me the way!

 

Back when the whole COVID thing kicked off and I was forced into WFH, I decided I needed to tackle sourdough, something I'd failed at a few times in the past. I purchased a starter from a woman in Texas who claims her starter has a lineage dating back to the 1849 Gold Rush, however, I did some research on that and it seems more likely if it dates back to a gold rush, it is the Klondike Gold Rush of 1896, regardless, the starter is exceedingly robust. I typically feed it once a month or so, sometimes more often, especially around the holidays when I'm baking a lot, and go sometimes more than two months between feedings if I'm on the road.

I learned fairly early on to keep starters in tip-top condition, they need to be fed a variety of flours, I rotate between organic King Arthur Bread flour, organic Einkorn flour, and organic Dark Rye flour; it is the rye which seems to supercharge the cultures the most, but using exclusively rye as a food seems to tire the little critters out and they become less effective over time. I have evolved my feeding cycles to three feeds with the bread flour, to one feeding each of Einkorn and rye. I typically keep a minimum of one liter and a maximum of a liter and a half of starter on hand and feed every two or three loaves of bread.

One of the special treats I make for my family is to start a "sponge" (2/3 cups starter, two cups Einkorn flour, and two cups full-fat buttermilk), say on a Friday afternoon, and then Saturday morning I'll make waffle batter from the sponge; I may be biased, but I believe sourdough/buttermilk waffles are the absolute best.

 

Seriously I have found nearly the same thing about flours.

I made my own starter - wild yeast/bacteria from the air, yogurt cultures, sour cream cultures, and mother of vinegar and a little beer yeast. Battle royal with some brown sugar (tiny amount), organic wheat flour and water. And I did notice throwing in some rye flour, man it was PARTEE ON!!!!!!

 

LOL, yeah, I've learned I need to burn down my starter quite a bit before I add rye flour; this happened last November just before Thanksgiving:

 

Morning all:

That bread looks so yummy Dale!
You guys talking about making bread reminds me of a 7 grain bread from a bakery in our area, it was absolutely delicious! Then the bakery was sold, and the 7 grain bread that the new owner made wasn't anywhere near as good, and I mean not even close!

 

Bread is an art; an art from two perspectives, the first is how it tastes, and the second is how it looks. I feel I do pretty well on the whole taste thing, but when I look at the literal works of art others create with their bread, I'd say I'm a lousy visual artist. Yeah, I can draw stick figures, meanwhile my wife used to illustrate and create clothing for royalty (literally), and fortunately both our son and daughter got her gifts of art.

 

My dad was a master baker. He started his own bakery supply company in Cleveland when he was seventeen and was inviting all the big flour companies to his in-house lab to demonstrate a pre-mixed dry cake product by the time he was twenty, so right around 1926. He sold his business to the Pelton's so he could "retire" at 30. They had the national doughnut chain, Spudnuts. About thirty years later they talked him into working for them as their Manager of Research and Development. Guess who he tested all his experiments on? I'm gonna have to see if I can find his bread recipes. He made the best Challah I've ever tasted.

 

Wow!! Fascinating!!!

Wait. How old are YOU? My dad passed and he was BORN in 1932.

 

Dad was born in '06 and Mom in '16, so they were 47/37 when I was born in '53.

 

Went to the fruit tree nursery and got 3 dwarf trees for the back yard (where we had fruit trees that were removed, as they were no longer performing): Moro Blood Orange, Cara Cara Orange, and a Pixie Tangerine... all seedless. Just want one more, a Meyer Lemon.

 

Just turned 60 today

 

Basically unfair!!! Hahahaha I kid

 

Evening all:

Welcome to the porch Tim, good group on here, and BTW it's the new guys who need to fill the cooler, I prefer sarsaparilla so throw a few cans of it in there, also some white birch beer!

OK, here was my days project!
My Minnkota deckhand 40 won't let the anchor down, but it will retrieve it, checked the micro switch, circuit breaker, and up/down rocker switch and they all have continuity and tested OK. The one thing I don't know how to check is the circuit board, so I ordered a new one hoping that that will fix the problem, I did notice that the new circuit boards have higher rated resistors on them, so it's an upgrade and they aren't that expensive. If that doesn't fix the problem it could get expensive to repair it if something is wrong elsewhere. I doubt that it is the motor since it does pull the anchor up, and it freewheels when letting the anchor down using some type of clutch system that is activated by the micro switch, might have to look into that if the new circuit board doesn't fix the problem.

 

Wow! Lots of food postings this morning. I don't think much about food, until I get hungry. Then, I'll go fix something. Doesn't really matter what. I'll eat anything.
Wifes' tests went well yesterday. Results should be in by now. They'll be online. We'll check. This has been an ordeal for her... I hope the issue can be at least managed. Otherwise, she'll be in a wheelchair soon. Our old '02 Lexus performed stellar, as usual... sure draws the looks. Cincinnati traffic was heavy, as usual. We only had one detour, though. I'll call it a win. Always glad to get back home.

 

Morning kids dodging some rain to get my walk in

 

Good morning all.

 

Interesting evening yesterday; I got a call from Google, it looks like I've passed all of the interviews and assessments, and my application package is being forwarded to the hiring committee this week. My head has been spinning ever since, yeah, I didn't sleep well last night.

 

Congrats

 

Good Morning

High temp today of 85° and Severe weather in the forecast for this evening

 

Ya know... what always weirds me out is that all these tech companies always hire thousands of technologically savvy people to make their products more interesting to other technologically savvy people... and they never seem to hire any luddites so they can overcome the easy to fix glitches that keep the millions of technologically disabled people from using their products.

But good on you. I hope the job is great for you and that you have what they need to prosper. Cheers...