PLN

A 847-post collection

Baking is fun... when you can

Heist plans will be underway for early Tuesday-ish, when I shall journey out of my bubble in the earliest possible hours to lay my hands on some decent darn flour to try and get one of my starters onto proper bread flour and not a mix. I may have to go with plain flour with nothing in it if I can't find the good stuff.

I mostly failed at bread. Things have been improved by putting my doughs into bread pans for the final bake. I'll see how things go when everything's on the good stuff.

Meanwhile, just keeping them alive will do for the meanwhile. Sourdough is a learning process. It's not really about making good bread, it's the farting around in the middle that counts.

Getting one starter off of bread mix and onto non-adulterated flour is just going to be a part of that.

IDK whether to keep feeding the bread flour starter daily until I can no longer detect the mix or just plod along on the reg.

I shall ask my Beloved when they're awake.

In plague news, we're about to enter the third wave here in Aus. Caused by asymptomatic or otherwise infectious people moving around as travel restrictions lift. Tracking and tracing and masks and social distancing will remain the most important method of fighting this thing.

Australia has experience with remote schooling, though this is possibly the first time it's happened in urban areas. I'm willing for some weird "well actually" to spring up somewhere, but we've had radio schooling for kids in the back of beyond since ham radio was ever a thing.

Internet school just highlights how dang bad the much-touted and also much maligned NBN is since demand has rocketed into the stratosphere. Folks are going to want that fixed if these kinds of plagues are going to be part of our "new normal".

China has decided to revive the wet markets again, so now it's a waiting game for the next gorram plague. Rich people wanna eat exotic animals and don't give a shit about how this effects anyone else. Fuck them.

Meanwhile the reigning joke is how the Muppet advised folks to "stick a UV light up their ass and mainline bleach" - as the meme says. Not him. He just vaguely rambled about getting "strong light into the body" and "cleaning out" human insides with disinfectant. The moron.

The sun shall be coming up soon. I should probably attempt some fiction.

Well, shit...

So I made my first loaves with bread mix, and Beloved decried that bread mix just makes bad loaves forever.

I'm still learning random BS here. Nevertheless, I am attempting to create loaves only with the wholemeal starter until such time as I can actually get my hands on proper bread flour instead of bread mix.

I'm going to have to get into the shops HELLA early to get my mitts on that. Gotta get me some heist music to organise that

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Thursday!

We have two recycling bins, now, which has got us finally ahead of the absolute mountains of recycling we've had clogging the house. Tomorrow, my starters are due a feeding and I still have enough to keep them going, but not enough to make loaves :P

Would that I could wish away the plague, but... I have half a standing chance of getting some flour today because I am off to the post office to mail the family grandparentals some homemade masks!

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Getting The New Swing

Today, I have a shrink appointment. I'm not leaving my house for this, neither is my shrink. We're using telecommunication technology to do the thing that used to be done in person.

I'm still procrastinating about getting my flu shots because the plague is still rife and that's one of those things that necessitate going in person to get. You need medical experience to jab someone with vaccines, you know.

The cold is starting to creep into the mornings and it's getting

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Another Monday

Time passes in a blur and it's difficult to know what day it is without checking my computer. If it wasn't for machine memory, I'd think anything shy of "day" and "night" are social constructs and ignore them completely.

Good news - I have a pre-existing account on Woolworths. Bad news, the stuff I want to get from Woolies is not available in my area. Two steps forward, five steps back.

The Aussie Government is planning to open up only if steps

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Attempting to Grind

Grinding is no fun. Putting my usual output into the wild has become a grind more than once. I don't have a lot to put on Patreon, so I'm going to look at freezing payments until I have a lot to share. It's possible. Toasty does it on the regular.

I did some poking around, and it's in (surprise) the Settings area. Therefore May will be free and possibly June if I feel that inadequate by then. Very possibly also June because

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Good Friday

I have learned that the absolute worst time to go shopping for Erastide Chocolate is the day before Good Friday. The shops are not restocking that BS.

I didn't get anyone outside the home any chocolate. I hope the surrounding family forgives me, but I had limited time and I had to see to my family first.

My masks' filter is only good for an hour and a half, so my Plague-specific protection routine goes:

  1. Start timer that's set for 1 hour
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Nope, the world is still crabonkers

I checked the news this morning and... a shopper attempted to gouge out a shop staffperson's eyes for not letting them in. There are occupancy limits EVERYWHERE. Folks need to learn how to chill.

I also need to do some shopping before everything closes for Erastide. Chocolate for the family, cord for the masks we're making, coffee for my own sanity, and any little Erastide treats I can actually find after I unfuck my house.

I have actually started things in motion

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Bread Day part 2

Wholemeal flour rises REAL slow, so I give it the maximum possible time to do stuff. I'm worried that the dough is really dry.

Probably the third iteration of bread will be much better because I won't spill water on my surface and I'll know about a proper surface to flour and all that nonsense.

This lot will be better than the last lot. The next lot will be better than this lot. That's what progress is.

Speaking of progress, my breads

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Whoof...

In the annals of "that escalated quickly", we have:

  • Queensland closing its borders
  • Parents keeping their kids at home if they can
  • Schools remaining open for the parents that don't have anywhere else safe for the kids to go
  • People fistfighting THE ELDERLY for more TP than they probably need [yikes!]
  • Empty shelves... empty shelves everywhere
  • There's been mass layoffs and a subsequent mass run on firkin Centrelink
  • ...and in other news, I'm shifting where my stories go because Steem decided to
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Stream Morning!

I'm functioning on a thin chain of naps and a lot of caffeine this morrow. Yeeps.

I owe a thing about my bread since both loaves came out... edible. Not perfect, but at least edible.

Perfection will take time.

Longer than I expect because everyone and their kid brother's dog has emptied the shelves of literally anything that could plausibly be long-term food.

I can only hope that sanity returns before I run out of enough flour to keep my starters alive

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Bread Fail!

People should make their instructions (a) clearer and (b) linear. If you're doing an instructional video for noobs, don't make a big deal out of the allegedly proper way and then mumble something about never doing that in person.

Share. The method. That actually. WORKS!

::Anguished ASD gargling::

So yeah. Instructional video said "use this portion" with way more importance than what the guy who made it actually did. So my dough was too moist and the loaf turned into a roofing

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Bread Day!

I made starter harvest pancakes and I have one batch of starter growing on the countertop ready to make some firkin multigrain sourdough. YEAH!

I got maybe a half hour before I need to start mixing and whatnot. I shall be measuring some of the important stuff with the house scales after I'm done with the blog.

If you're reading this, there is already bread underway.

Today's nonsense is going to include another episode of Inter-Mission and attempting to refine the backlog

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Welp. It's a crisis...

I'm making a mostly-vegetarian stew because there was no beef available when Beloved went for ingredients. So far, the ingredients include an entire Wombok cabbage, 1.5 kg of "low carb" potatoes [really, love?] and a decent dollop of vegemite.

Next on the chopping block, a decent container of carrots. I'm definitely adding some celeries to offset the potatoes in there. Lots of celeries.

On today's agenda, the Patreon nonsense, blogging about bread, writing the Instant of course, and making a bloody

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Okay. Let's do this!

We have, my Beloved and I, located a one-stop shop where sourdough accessories can be acquired. The problem? Even the closest one is fuck-off far away. 46 kilometers versus 51. South versus North.

Shall consult Beloved about the routes.

Honestly, I think North might be less bother, but more fuel. Things be a little bit nonsensical around here.

On the plus side, I do have enough prepped meals to last me almost a month. If the rest of the family starts eating

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