DEBRIS.COMgood for a laugh, or possibly an aneurysm

I saw Fahrenheit 9/11 last night. I think I learned more about my town than about the Bush administration.

The local theater often sells out shows on Tuesday nights, because they drop their prices for selected films to $3.50. “Tightwad Tuesday” is a local tradition; I know people who go to the theater at 7pm on Tuesdays without knowing or caring what’s showing — they pick a movie from the “cheap” list once they arrive.

Fahrenheit 9/11 tickets were not on sale, but the auditorium filled up faster than for any other movie I’ve seen there. Not only did it fill up, not only did it fill up early… my row was asked to move one seat to the right to consolidate open seats at the other end. This wasn’t about entertainment; this was a community education effort.

After 9pm, the theater lobby is a ghost town, usually. After Fahrenheit 9/11, it was full. Sixty people were standing around in small groups, talking about what they’d seen, exchanging horrific Bush anecdotes that didn’t appear in the film.

So, the movie didn’t shock me, but the scene did. I knew this to be a pretty liberal town because it’s populated almost entirely by aging hippies. (BTW, that’s not a slam; I aspire to be an aging hippie.) But getting a bunch of liberals, especially the aging-hippie variety, behind a single cause takes a compelling story. Like a war, I guess.

(This is day 2, part 3 of a 4-part series on world-class focaccia.)

The Crust & Crumb instructions for focaccia dough are clear and complete, so far as the actual mixing procedure goes. I’ll elaborate on three areas: quantity, scaling, and shaping.

The recipe as written makes 74 oz. of dough, which in my experience is too big for a home mixer. I often make a 2/3 or 3/4 recipe because these sizes are easier to handle. If I need more bread, I’ll make two 2/3 recipes, which is just enough for three sheet pans and will feed 30 people. I’ve written the .67x and .75x quantities into additional columns on my copy of the recipe; I recommend calculating these in advance, rather than on the fly while the mixer is running. (Never leave your mixer unattended.)

Home sheet pans measure about 18x12 inches and will take approximately 36 oz. of dough (2 lbs., 4 oz.) to fill. The best way to “scale” focaccia or any bread dough is with a fancy digital weight-measuring tool.

Filling the pans properly takes a few steps not adequately explained in Crust & Crumb (although they are documented, with photos, in the sequel, The Bread Baker’s Apprentice). I learned these techniques in class with Peter Reinhart:

1. Spray the bare pan with a small amount of oil. Any food-grade oil will do. This will anchor the parchment paper to the pan as you shape the dough.
2. Press unbleached parchment paper into the pan, then cover with a generous amount of olive oil. Spread the oil with your fingers. If you’re making multiple pans of focaccia, prepare all of them at once; you can stack them (as pictured) but take care not to get any oil on the outsides of the pans, or it will burn and smoke in the oven.
3. Finally, add 34-36 oz. dough, and follow Reinhart’s instructions for pressing the dough out. You may find that reaching under the dough with your fingers to stretch it is more effective than pressing from above.
   Be aware that the dough will relax and spread somewhat on its own as it rests overnight; therefore you need not be concerned if the dough doesn’t fill the pan completely. There is no great aesthetic concern here; people won’t like your focaccia better just because it fills the corners of the pan. In fact, if you stretch the dough too thin, it won’t rise properly.
4. Cover the dough, during or immediately following the pressing-out process, with a “generous” amount of olive oil. I used to use 1-2T, until I saw Peter Reinhart do it in person. He sloshed a big puddle of oil onto the dough, probably a half-cup of it. Start with 4T (1/4 cup) per pan. Spread it around with your fingers.
   Be sure to oil the dough before it has been exposed to air for very long. You need to prevent the top of the dough from drying out or forming a skin. You’ll feel when this happens, if you wait too long.
5. Wipe any oil off the outsides of the pans, and then insert each into a clean plastic bag. Puff air into the bag, twist the open end and tuck under the pan to hold. You want to prevent the plastic from settling into the dough, because plastic bags of this size tend not to be “food grade” plastic.

The recipe in Crust & Crumb calls for toppings to be added at this point. I have had better luck topping the dough later, immediately prior to baking, especially when I’m using heavy toppings (such as tomato slices) that could prevent the dough from rising. I’ll discuss toppings in greater detail in the 4th and final installment of this series.

Whether you top the doughs now or later, the bagged pans should go into the refrigerator to rest overnight.

From Macintouch comes news of the EFF’s sample legal complaint against Apple, Toshiba, CNET for supporting copyright infringement.

Thus there can be no doubt that Apple materially relies on illegal infringement by its customers to support the commercial viability of its iPod and to maintain its high price in the marketplace.

The complaint is not real. It simply demonstrates the threat. Could the big music companies really make iPods and small disk drives and hardware reviews illegal? Under the INDUCE Act, it could happen.

At all times relevant to this complaint, Defendant Toshiba knew or should have known that Apple’s iPod would be used to induce infringement.

There’s a nice take-action site here: Save the iPod, Stop the INDUCE Act.

(It’s a new trend — enacting legislation to prevent technical progress. See the recent GMail privacy laws story for more.)

Two updates on energy stories covered previously in this space…

Following up on a story from May about the new “methane digester” energy generator at Straus Dairy, the Chronicle covers accusations from other dairy farmers about the difficulty of getting similar projects approved:

Rather than encouraging methane-powered electrical generators as other state utilities are doing, critics say, Northern California’s largest utility is actively undermining adoption of the technology by burdening farmers with excessive expenses and endless paperwork; that, they say, makes it impossible to get a methane system online in a timely and economical fashion.

Following up on the story of Snohomish Co. energy officials transcribing tapes in which Enron employees admit to gaming the energy market, the Chronicle published a human-interest story about the crew who transcribed the Enron audio tapes:

Headphones clamped to their ears, a dozen listeners spent 45 to 50 hours a week for three months crammed into a windowless Santa Cruz office, playing and replaying over 2,000 hours of taped conversations between Enron traders.
Many of the conversations were so disjointed and full of jargon that it was like learning a foreign language.
“On any given day, with 12 people listening, you might have one three- minute phone call that ended up in the transcripts for the final testimony,” [said Carl Pechman, president of Power Economics].

Aidin Vaziri’s review of a recent Carlos Santana show made me laugh:

The Mexican-born guitar player was deep into a 20-year commercial slump when Supernatural, his celebrity-packed 1999 album, changed his fortunes. The disc won nine Grammys and shifted 25 million units.

With its follow-up, Shaman, putting a couple more platinum discs on the walls of his San Rafael home, it wasn’t so much a comeback as full-scale rehabilitation…

But Santana … seems to have missed an important lesson behind the success of those breakout albums — that people would rather hear tight, accessible pop songs packed with personality and purpose than some dude with a mustache choking the living hell out of his guitar for three hours straight.