DEBRIS.COMgood for a laugh, or possibly an aneurysm

He sped home, leaning shakily into gravel-strewn corners, sending pebbles skittering out at tangents to the arc of the turn. The motorbike wobbled as he straightened out of the corner: the trembling had already started.

The bike was left on its sidestand in the garage. In his haste, he left the key in the ignition too.

It had been less than 24 hours and he already needed a fix. The intervals were getting shorter, and the doses larger. This is the cycle of doom; the body becomes conditioned to the stimuli that indicate that a dose is imminent, allowing tolerance to build, requiring ever-larger amounts to be ingested. Addiction.

With spastic hands he selected his implements: a long serrated knife and a shorter, duller knife too. He sliced the bread thick, toasted it for 75 seconds, covered one side with peanut butter and ungraciously stuffed the entire thing into his mouth, whole.

Sigh.

I’ve been upgrading my incandescent light fixtures to compact fluorescent (CF), to take advantage of the huge energy savings. (70+% savings is typical. That is, you can replace a 100-watt incandescent bulb with a 25-watt CF, which produces a roughly equivalent amount of light.)

The first CFs I purchased were Feit Mini-Twist Ecobulbs from Costco. They’re not wonderful; the bulb is very long, so it doesn’t fit in most fixtures, and the color temperature of the light is probably 2600° K, so the light seems overly yellow/orange and somewhat dingy. Standard household bulbs range from 2800° to 3000° K, depending on wattage, so these CFs weren’t far out of range but do cast a sickly light.

The second set is radically different. I purchased three 15-watt full-spectrum bulbs from fullspectrumsolutions.com for a tiny, dark bathroom. These bulbs have a color temp of 5500° K, or about the same as midday sun. The result is fantastic; from outside the bathroom, it now looks as if the room has a large window above the sink. Inside the bathroom the light is almost unnaturally white (which is ironic, in that it mimics perhaps the most natural light there is). This light is definitely different, but it appeals to me, possibly for the same reasons full-spectrum bulbs are used to treat Seasonal Affective Disorder. (Full-spectrum light stimulates the endocrine system, and who wouldn’t want their endocrine system stimulated? Certainly not me. I’m always up for a solid jolt to the endocrine system; in fact I have a pituitary massage scheduled for Tuesday.)

If you’re researching compact fluorescents, here’s an interesting article: Compact Fluorescent Lamps: What You Should Know.

I’ve been suffering from a sort of low-grade existential crisis lately, and in an effort to shore up my angst I’ve been buying digital entertainment by the box-load.

Already delivered: Space Revolver (The Flower Kings), The Secret Language of Birds (Ian Anderson), Live at Polskie Radio and Live Vol. 2, Acoustic Songs (Colin Bass), Situation Dangerous (Bozzio, Levin, Stevens), Scenes from New York (Dream Theater - live DVD). En route: North Ave. Wake-Up Call and Lucid (Freddy Jones Band), the entire catalog of Wine Field CDs, Don’t Try This At Home (Spock’s Beard - Live), Two Separate Gorillas (Neal Morse and Nick D’Virgilio), and the debut CD from Under the Sun.

So, to accompany my flat affect are 16 pieces of two-dimensional polycarbonate. My disposition, like the plastic on the CD, is mercilessly pitted. But through the magic of technology, the pits become sound, and the sound triggers the release of buckets of norepinephrine and serotonin in direct relationship to the amplitude of the sound waves. That is: the louder it is, the better I feel. Pity about my hearing though, especially when I miss the sound of the doorbell — could be another delivery!

(subtitle: The breads, the bakers, the best recipes)

Glezer’s book reminds me of The Village Baker, in that she takes us on a tour of bakeries and bakers, dispensing amazing recipes along the way. Her descriptions of ingredients and techniques are some of the best I’ve seen, and the photographs in the book are gorgeous.

Perhaps the best thing about the book is that it gives recipes for well-known local and regional breads from bakeries around the country. Many bakers will be familiar with these bakeries, if not the breads themselves.

I make three of the breads in this book regularly:

1. ACME Rustic Baguettes (p. 30), which I tested in a head-to-head baguette bake-off.
2. Dutch Regale’s Korn Bread, aka Vollkornbrot (p. 143). This is a dense wholegrain German sourdough rye, beloved by Germans and masons.
3. Kalamata Olive Bread, which I’ve modified into a multigrain sourdough boule.

This book is destined to become a classic. It’s my new must-have bread book.

Patronize these links, man:

• Amazon (Hardback)

So I’m two batches into this new “San Francisco” sourdough culture and I’m overwhelmed with disappointment. The starter is very active, quickly leavening both my breads, but the finished loaves are every bit as bland as any other wild-yeasted dough I’ve made in the past year. In every other respect, both loaves are beautiful, but they’re lacking the specific intensity of flavor I’m looking for.

I will find the solution. But first, there is a conflict in the advice of experts.

Background: there are two acids in a sourdough bread that are largely responsible for its flavor. As Maggie Glezer writes in Artisan Baking Across America, quoting French microbiologist, cereal chemist, and bread expert Dr. Richard-Molard:

If only acetic acid is present, the bread will taste very sharp and vinegary, but if only lactic acid is present, the bread “will have no special taste,” because lactic acid is much milder and less discernable.

So, my problem is a lack of acetic acid in the dough. The question now is how to correct this shortfall. On this, the experts disagree. Glezer writes:

Temperatures in the range of 95° to 104°F and wet batterlike starters favor the Lactobacilli that excrete lactic acid. Temperatures around 68°F and stiff doughlike starters favor the Lactobacilli that excrete both acetic and lactic acids.

In sharp contrast, Peter Reinhart writes in Crust & Crumb:

The thicker sponge encourages more of the sweeter lactic acids… As a rule, lactic acid-producing prefer drier sponges and acetic acid (sour) producers like wetter, looser, more oxygen-rich sponges.

To be fair, different strains of yeasts and bacteria may all respond differently, so it’s possible that both these bakers are correct, as far as their own home cultures are concerned. Which leaves me hanging, I regret to say.