More Sourdough Stuff

Soooo I realise that it was a while since I posted the very short guide on sourdough starters, and although you do need a little time to get it going, probably not as long as this. Luckily nobody tried so there is no loss.

I will provide a quick recipe for making some awesome bread, although I have not dialled this recipe in to be perfect quite yet.

Extra-Tangy Sourdough Bread

Baking
Prep Time: 15 mins | Cook Time: 30 mins | Servings: 1 1/3 loaves

Ingredients:
151g ripe (fed) sourdough starter
227g lukewarm water
241g Flour
200 grams More Flour
1 2/3 teaspoons salt
2/3 teaspoon ground pepper

Directions:
Combine the starter, water, and the first of the flour. Beat vigorously for 1 minute.
Cover, and let rest at room temperature for 4 hours. Refrigerate overnight, for about 12 hours.
Add the remaining flour, and the salt. Knead to form a smooth dough.
Allow the dough to rise in a covered bowl until it’s light and airy, with visible gas bubbles. The dough will expand and become puffy. Depending on the vigor of your starter, this may take up to 5 hours (or even longer), depending on how active your starter is. For best results, gently deflate the dough once an hour by turning it out onto a lightly floured work surface, stretching and folding the edges into the center, and turning it over before returning it to the bowl. Adding these folds will give you a better sense of how the dough is progressing, as well as strengthen it.
Gently divide the dough in half.
Gently shape the dough into two rounds or oval loaves, and place them on a lightly greased or parchment-lined baking sheet. Cover with lightly greased plastic wrap and let rise until very puffy, about 2 to 4 hours (or longer; give them sufficient time to become noticeably puffy). Don’t worry if the loaves spread more than they rise; they’ll pick up once they hit the oven’s heat. Towards the end of the rising time, preheat the oven to 220°C.
Spray the loaves with lukewarm water.
Slash the loaves. If you’ve made round loaves, try one slash across the center, and a curved slash on each side of it; or slash in the pattern of your choice. For oval loaves, two diagonal slashes are fine. Make the slashes fairly deep; a serrated bread knife, wielded firmly, works well here.
Bake the bread for 25 to 30 minutes, until it’s a very deep golden brown. Remove it from the oven, and cool on a rack.
Store bread, loosely wrapped in plastic, for several days at room temperature; freeze for longer storage.

Source: https://www.kingarthurbaking.com/recipes/extra-tangy-sourdough-bread-recipe

Give this a go, but it is not perfect, but that is the joy of sourdough baking, you never know whether you are gonna just fuck it up, or produce a pistorial masterpiece that would not be equalled by Mr Warburton himself.

Well what a year this has been!

Well I don’t really know what to say to cover everything since my last post. I guess most of it has been consumed by Covid, the rest has been consumed with work and feeling ill. Luckily I have avoided the cough and temperature, but this has not saved me from feeling like shit the majority of the year. I managed a few days of holiday like experience, and have brewed and drank a pint or two; although a the time I was blissfully unaware that they might be my last drinkies, as I have become teetotal, at least for the time being.

Sadly, there has not been time or energy for the allotment, which I fear I may lose, but did get a nice late crop of spuds from there and the bag in the garden.

I have made some new friends, some of whom I have instantly lost, and I have had way less funerals to avoid this year as last year.

I am entering 2021 with a sense of optimism, if only for the fact that while the morons run around with their masks warming their chins complaining loudly that Boris isn’t gonna ruin their socialising, I will be inside waiting for them all to die off, so the lucky survivors can get on with our lives when this finally dies out.

I have also discovered hash brown fries, ate reindeer for Christmas dinner, and have lost my shit to the ‘Clips’ app on iPhone and iPad. I have also experimented with the new mini HomePods, that are, for the record, amazing.

I will close this off with some photos, as this blog may no linger be here next year, I fail to see why I am bothering with it.

Have a great new year to me and anyone else who reads this.

Leading on from my last post…

I feel I should try and explain the cover photo of the last post, that appeared to be a brace and a half of bottles dangling upside down with greenery sprouting from them. Actually that was exactly what that photo was of, but it is well worth searching the internet for videos of people using old plastic bottles in the garden. What I have done is planted some upside down tomatoes, that against all expectation, seem to be thriving.

I do not believe these will be the first ones to be harvested this year, but they have survived a summer of horrific storms and winds, mainly due to their inverted lifestyle.

In fact, their dangling mitigated the wind quite nicely, and they turned out to be sweet and petite. When added to the yellow tumbling toms, they made an amazing pasta sauce.

Worth mentioning that the salad bowl at the top was salad from the garden with a mix of the tomatoes from the upside down bottles, and tumbling toms, with some home made mozzarella and free range quail eggs from a local farm. This is undoubtably the healthiest thing I have eaten this year.

Just a quick quote

“We’re all lights in the darkness for one another. When one light goes out, it makes it that much more dark for the rest of us. The human eye can see a single candle from four miles away. You never know when your light is the only light someone can see.”

Not sure why I felt the need to post this, it just spoke to me a little. Sometimes people don’t realise how important they are to others, and some people don’t realise how important other people are to them. When they’re gone, however it’s too late. Wave at people, smile, you never know when you’re bringing a little happiness to someone who needs it and won’t let it show. Unless it’s Donald Trump, he can fornicate himself with a rusty piece of scaffold wrapped in barbed wire.

You say potato guy, I say potato girl

Just a very quick update to the story of my magnificent spuds. Whilst enjoying a relaxing glass of lager on Friday evening, I was approached by the lovely young lady who posted me a potato so many months before. I got to meet her charming mother, and showed them how well the king of spuds was doing now he had been planted and given the opportunity to grow. I had intended to post a pic of how well he was doing, but now realise that I have neglected my family photos regarding tubers. I guess I will update this post when the weather is better and I can set foot outside without risk of drowning.

In the mean time, I thought it was worth mentioning that although the benevolent potato giver was known in my circles as the potato girl, apparently in her household, I was known as the potato guy. Just goes to show that you could always be a potato guy in someone else’s story.

And if potato girl and her family are reading this, it was lovely to meet you, and I look forward to keeping you updated on the spud of spuds.

More About Crypto Cards

A couple of people have asked me to go into a little more detail about the crypto.com link I posted yesterday. I realise everyone gets suspicious about links to places that promise free stuff, so I will try and clear it up as much as I can. Bearing in mind I have no great insight into the world of cryptocurrencies and blockchain, I just see what looks like a good idea and I am going with it. Crypto.com were originally called Monaco, hence their main coin being MCO. The sale of the MCO coin has provided the funding for the cards that have been released in Singapore, and are about to be released in USA. Their goal, as far as I can see, is to make trading in cryptocurrency easier, and getting access to those funds via a Visa card on the high street a more viable option.

The free 20USD referral link I posted is designed to make the spread of the cards and app more widespread, so although it seems like you’re getting something for free, you are playing a part in making cryptocurrency more available to everyone. It is worth mentioning as well,that so far I have found the charges for using the crypto.com app way lower than any of the other apps I have used.

As I said earlier, this is by no means an in-depth look into their plans or company, I just like the idea and it seems like a good step forward in bringing Crypto to the high streets. The link again is https://platinum.crypto.com/r/vurvacwxsm and use the referral code VURVACWXSM to claim the free $20, and if you aren’t one of the first five, apologies, but you will still be part of a revolution in cryptocurrency on the high street.

If you are Chloe, this is for you

Random post title I realised, but I needed to get a code for someone, so this is said information.
Please feel free to comment or email if this was helpful, even if you’re not Chloe lol

Click this link for the Curve Card

Use the code KDLWD for your referral and we both get a fiver in the account 😀

This is a link for a Starling account

Use Code LA98C08W and I get a little heart thingy on my app, not sure if it does anything, but it is worth knowing that Starling are awesome.

Anyway, click those links and share them with the world, and if Chloe is reading this, hi, and thanks for the help and let me know if these work 😀

Longer than Anticipated (that’s what she said)

After a load of stress with internet and the suchlike, everything is back to normality, as soon as we work out what normal is.

Since the rain has returned to our sceptred isle, the grass in the back garden has become a nightmare. A friend of mine was recently jealous of my backyard greenery, but she doesn’t realise that to get some lawn hoovering done requires moving all the pots and flora so I can find room to get the lawnmower onto the grass.

The sudden turn in the weather has made life hard for the plants, some are drowning, and some are now cold. I would be the first to admit that I started things a little late in the year, but as I have no idea what I am doing, this should come as no surprise.

After successfully growing a plethora of red and yellow tomatoes, I decided to have a tomato-off. Which of the contenders could T up the classic BLT? Well, this isn’t a telly quiz show so I won’t hold you in too much suspense. I was very surprised that the red ones were sweeter than the yellows. Sylvester will be disappointed, but I’m sure he won’t take it personally, as so far he is the only individually named tomato plant.

I will admit the loss of the internet for the last month has thrown me off my game a little, so I will try and get more organised in future, but here’s a random pic of a little dude enjoying what the slugs left of one of my sunflowers.

Morning thoughts

I will apologise again for the lack of articles springing forth right now, but it is only a few days until the internet will be back up and in action. In the mean time I managed, after a long wait, to upload these pics as a brief post just to let you know I haven’t hung up the keyboard quite yet.

As I was about to cook breakfast this morning, I found the cat just sitting there staring out of the catflap, and I realised that see-through catflaps are just like patio doors for kitties. He sits there admiring the scenery and watching the world go by, and when it takes his fancy, he wanders out for a closer look. Deep, man, deep!

So we have finally had some rain, which is good news for saving water on giving the plants a soak, but bad news as now the slugs seem to think they have the right to come on out and help themselves to my food. Very much open to any friendly natural ways to discourage them from doing so, if anyone has any ideas.

I will sign off with a picture of the sexiest looking bulb of spring garlic I think I have ever seen, and hope to be back to regular service in the next few days.

A Change is as Good as a Rest

I have decided to change my internet service provider, to better suit my high usage and low budget. The downside of this is that I currently have no internet access in the house. I feel very much hamstrung and have been spending a lot of time trying to remember how I used to survive without internet.

Worringly, I have no idea without checking my online calendars and diaries as to how I got on, and they would be understandably unforthcoming as if I hadn’t any internet I wouldn’t have been updating them. Luckily I have enough mobile intywebs to post this and add a countdown to the home screen detailing when normal service should resume.

Try not to miss me and don’t read anyone else’s blog while I’m gone.

Life, and how not to do it

Just Life