Easy Spelt Bread for Dummies

Today I take you through ALL the steps for making a beautiful, spicy japaleno and herb spelt bread like this one:

Never made bread before?  No worries, I take you step-by-step through the routine, and I offer plenty of photographs to help you duplicate the experience exactly.

Ingredients:

Step 1:  Starting the yeast

In each step, I'll first show a photograph accumulating the ingredients.  For this step, you need a tablespoon (or two, more of this never hurt) of yeast, a couple tablespoons of sugar or honey, and several (maybe 6) tablespoons of warm water.  To tell if your water is the right temperature, use the "baby bottle" trick: touch a drop to the inside of your wrist.  If it feels slightly warm but not hot, it's the right temperature.

Mix these together in a bowl, trying to dissolve all the yeast and sugar:

When it's mostly clump-free, it's time to place the mixture in a warm spot, like a sunny windowsill, and find your other ingredients.  I ran off to my patio-garden, and look at the cute little guy I found nestled in among the peppers!

You can just barely see him on that leaf, the cute little Praying Mantis baby.  I am so happy he's here in my kneck of the woods to keep pest insects and spiders at bay.  Go little baby, go!  Eat all those other bugs!  (He's smaller than two of my fingernails, little guy.  So cute!!)  Anyway, I gathered in the following ingredients:

Clockwise: multicolored sage, half a jalapeno left over from breakfast, three tomatoes discovered in the garden (watch these, their number declines and then disappears with time), and haha, thyme.  To prep these, I sliced the jalapeno then then diced that, pulled the thyme off its stalks, and first made a chiffonade of the sage and then cut it into small squares.  The tomatoes?  A nice snack for the gardener-cook.

The result of prepping these ingredients.  Based on the amount of jalapeno, I probably should go harvest more herbs.  But not only am I a tad lazy, but just look at how far the yeast mixture has gotten in this abount of time!

Well, with that said, I set aside the stems / cores of the incredients for a future recipe:

Well, now I have to find an oil to add the mix.  I looked through all my cabinets, and these were all the oils I found:

I seriously contemplated using some of the scheswan oil, just for novelties sake, but then I remembered I was giving half of this to a person who dislikes scheswan peppercorns.  So I used plain olive oil instead:

Now we're down to 2 tomatoes.  I was hungry.  Also, you can see we have 1.33 cups of water, 1.5 tsp of salt, and 2 Tbsp of olive oil.  These we mix with the herbs and spice:

Next we assemble the dry ingredients: 2.5 c spellt flour, 1 Tbsp spellt bran, and 1 c all-purpose flour:

First I mix the started yeast with the wet ingredients:

Then I add my secret ingredient:  Paula Deen garlic peices.

Anything with Paula Deen's name on it will turn out good.  Also notice there is now only one tomato in the background.  Watch for that tomato.

Added 2.5 c spellt flour at this point.  I can still mix it with a spoon.

Added 2 c all-purpose wheat flour.  It's starting to look more like bread dough!

One half-cup flour later, it looks ready to turn out onto a floured table-top:



How to knead dough:  first push it with the heel of your hand away from you:

Then pull the far edge back towards you to double the dough:

Then rotate the dough 90 degrees (1/4 turn):

Then push it again with the heel of your hand:

If you do this for 10 minutes or so, you'll notice a couple things: (a) the dough is REALLY STICKY at the start.  I mean the kind of sticky where you can't hardly pull your hand free.  The temptation is to keep adding flour.  Don't add flour unless you have to.  Better to wash your hands free of all the sticky dough and oil them slightly than keep adding flour. (b) The dough becomes less sticky as you work it.  Eventually, with patience and care, you will wind up with a nice ball of dough:

Because I have only one large bowl at this time, I'll have to wash and reuse my bowl.  My other set of large bowls is up North, with my husband, at the Wall.  (For non-geeks who don't get this, disregard.)  Anyway, after washing and drying my bowl, I pour a tad of olive oil in it and tilt it around to coat it.  Then I put the ball of dough in, and rotate it to make sure it is fully coated.  Coating the dough with oil decreases moisture loss and is vital in the dry So Cal climate.

Now it's time to cover this with the cloth damp from multiple hand dries and walk away for an hour:

It's helpful if the bread has a nice view.  But now we have about an hour to kill.  I recommend first cleaning up the mess:

Then doing dishes is a good plan:

Then maybe a load of laundry:

Ahh, finally it's risen.  It should double in size:

This is the fun part: punching down the dough.  I'm serious, we get to make a fist now and punch at the dough:

Once it's punched down to its original size, we divide it in two and think about how we want to bake it.  I am thinking a regular loaf and a round-ish boule.  Sound good to you?  Sounds good to me, too.  So first, I break off half of the fully-submissive punched-down dough.  I pull the edges and pinch the bottom so it looks like this:

Then I roll this on the table and between my hands until the ball of dough looks nearly seamless.  I prepped a sheet pan by covering it with aluminum foil and spraying it with non-stick spray, and I plopped the ball on this:

Because we chose to do one bouille and one loaf, I have to show you how to do a loaf correctly, right?  First, we stretch the dough carefully into a rectangle:

Then we roll this up into a cylinder:

That nasty seam must be pinched out:

Whoops! I made the rectangle of dough longer than my pan...

No worries, I'll fix it! First I'll fold over the dough:

Then I'll pinch and rub and pinch and rub all the seams until they nearly go away:

The loaf goes seam-side down in the loaf pan to rise.

Both loaves go back in the window covered with a damp cloth:

It has to sit there for another hour to rise.  I look at it for five minutes.  Okay, I'm bored.  I do another load of laundry:





Then I make a snack:

Mmmm....  Finally it is time to actually bake the bread.  I preheat the oven to as hot as it will go (500 F), and cut some marks in the bread:

Sweating, I put the loaves in the oven:

Then I set the timer for 20 minutes:

And walk away for a bit to come back to bread almost burning.  I turn it out to a cooling rack, and use the ghetto lazy method of both cooling bread while softening the crust and stopping carryover-cooking of rubbing the loaves with a chilled stick of butter:

It works.  All that is left is to let the loaves cool in a pretty place for a little while:

Mmm, a tad salty, but yummy.  I couldn't pick a better place to make bread than in my kitchen window.  Bread, wine, chicken, and slaw.  A wonderful evening.

Stay hungry,

Amanda









Reflections on life, the sun, and ice and fire.

As I was walking to the parking lot after work today, the sun hit my right eye directly through the space between my head and my sunglasses.  I marveled about how life evolved a sensory organ that can so easily be burnt out by something that is in the sky all over the planet for 12+ hours for half of the year.  At first, this seemed odd to me, and I began wondering whether this level of photosensitivity is a “standard” trait.  In other words, if we lived next to a warmer but dimmer sun, would we have evolved eyes like ours that would not be burnt out by looking directly at our sun, or would we have eyes with a proportionately higher photosensitivity to make that hypothetical sun appear just as bright as our brighter sun appears to us here on Earth?  Conversely, would we have eyes that could stare at our sun here on Earth if we had evolved on a planet with a cooler but brighter sun?

This led me to marveling about our “comfortable” temperature range.  Obviously our comfort level is somewhat limited by the freezing (0 ^oC) and boiling (100 ^oC) points of water at terrestrial pressure, which is essential for life as we know it and constitutes 65-90% of our living cells.  Our body temperatures are relegated to a temperature that falls right at about 1/3 of that temperature range, 37 ^oC.  I started to wonder why it is so low in comparison to the full range of temperature available to us within the regime of liquid water.  According to Vostok ice cores, the average global temperatures when modern humans evolved 200,000 years ago and even earlier ranged from 8 ^oC cooler to 3 ^oC warmer than they are today.  The average temperature in central Africa (we evolved in Africa, but where and what climate are still somewhat debated, so this is just a starting point for thinking about the problem) is about 27 ^oC, 10 ^oC cooler than our internal body temperature.  However, we are actually made up of millions of metabolic furnaces (our cells), and we need a heat sink for all the energy released just from the chemical processes that keep us alive, so it just makes sense that we’d evolve to have an average internal temperature relegated to above the average annual temperatures where we evolved.  It also makes sense that our average internal temperatures would be higher than the typical expected summer high temperatures, but not much higher than that so that we wouldn’t have to waste energy heating ourselves year-round.  I think I can say that our internal body temperature therefore makes sense to me, after really thinking about it.

However, our experience of discomfort when touching cold or hot things and where those temperatures lay within the regime of liquid water still seemed odd to me.  In my own experience, it’s not that uncomfortable to touch extremely cold things (rather briefly, mind you), even down to -80 ^oC if the substance isn’t that conductive (like dry ice).  For conductive things, I still only begin to experience discomfort below the freezing point of water.  However, I begin to experience discomfort touching hot things well below the boiling point of water (like sink full of really hot dishwashing water).  This seemed odd to me.  Why would we be okay touching things that are so very cold compared to the temperatures that would freeze our cells to death and not be okay touching things that aren’t really all that hot compared to the temperature that would boil our cells to death?

I started to think about this, too.  When we evolved, we were in a relatively warm climate.  We didn’t have much exposure to the ultra-cold temperatures that would freeze us to death, so there wasn’t much stimulus to develop nerve cells that would give an immediate “remove your hand from that, right now!” neural response to touching something extremely cold.  However, there was definitely fire, even if we couldn’t control it when we evolved.  Fire is a natural phenomenon on a planet covered in reduced carbon (living and dead life forms) under an oxygen-rich atmosphere. 

Begin digression.  We’re always in a thermodynamic dis-equilibrium that would result in a big boom of fire if it weren’t for a nice activation energy barrier that must be overcome.  The best way to get over this activation energy barrier is called a “spark” when there isn’t enough water to absorb and dissipate the energy away from a potential flame, which is what we call the rapid combination of oxygen and reduced carbon that actually should be happening all the time.  If there weren’t the nice activation energy barrier and lots of water around keeping us all safe.  That also freaks me out, but may be another story for another time.  End digression.

Anyway, our ancestor hominids definitely evolved in a landscape that included fire, and probably not much ice.  They definitely were not exposed frequently to items with temperatures below -20 ^oC, but they may have frequently (on evolutionary time-scales) been exposed to temperatures ranging up to 800-1000 ^oC, or the temperature of a grass fire.  If a grass fire is headed your way, and they can move at speeds of more than 80 mph, then your nerve cells had better warn you early to get the heck out of dodge.  Near a stationary fire that isn’t roaring to get you at 80 mph, the distance between “I’m SO COLD” and “I’m BURNING HOT” isn’t very far, as anyone knows who has stood facing a campfire in loose-fitting jeans and upon sitting down experienced the joint discomfort of really cold pants hitting the back of the leg and really hot pants hitting the front of the leg.  Therefore, I suppose it makes sense that we evolved nerve cells that warn us “early,” well below the boiling point of water and long before we can actually get our hand to a hot flame, that we are about to stick our hand in a fire.

Now back to my original question: would our eyes burn out looking at a dimmer sun if we had evolved on a planet with a dimmer sun?  I don’t have the answer, but I bet it could be found by studying species that evolved to take advantage of the low light environments of caves.  Maybe the answer is already out there in the scientific literature or even on the information highway we call the internet.  If you know, please tell me!

Inability to post some things....

I am trying to write a book based on my experiences as a scientists, much in the spirit of James Herriot writing about being a countryside vet.

I'm running into a problem that I'm sure Jim also experienced: When writing about your own life and trying to make the stories heartfelt, alive, humorous, and poignant, you wind up revealing a lot about the people around you.  Not all of it is good for those people.

It's one thing to share stories that have the potential to embarass me.  It's another to reveal too much about another person's personality without their permission.  Where is the line?  Can I reveal what everyone who has worked with my current boss already knows:  that he's so nice he can't come up with better criticism than "I'm glad you are exploring your creativity" or what everyone who has worked with my former boss already knows: he'll tell you like it is even if it's not pretty.  Should I share a particularly trying situation with a coworker in order to bring humor to a pattern of similar relationships I have observed over the years, or should I just keep a lid on all of it?  Is it okay to share that someone other than me got us pretty lost once?

I can't just change the names.  That would help for future anonymous google searches, but the people who know us would be able to easily figure out who everyone is in real life.  Unfortunately, while we may not care that common names like Amanda and Tom and Peter and Rich and Morgan and Fernanda are attached to some random stories on the internet, we will care deeply if our full personalities and identities are attached to something potentially embarassing or revealing about us that friends and family can easily find.

I know of bloggers who reveal everything about themselves, their husbands, their family, their kids, their work, their friends, etc....  But I'm not comfortable with that.  I'm a pretty private person, and I wouldn't want someone else posting anything on the internet that revealed anything but the most blase of content about me without my approval.

So I'm writing this book.  It has a lot of personalities in it that are easy to identify.  I'm not comfortable with sharing it fully with anyone yet.  I keep thinking in my head that I'll publish it when I'm old and most of the people are either dead or old enough to have a healthy sense of humor about their younger selves.

Anyway, the point of this blog was to test out new material for the book, but it turns out that I have issues with that, and it's been up for a month or two and no one has posted any comments to help me with my writing.  This post has been cathartic, but I'd appreciate some direction here.  Please comment if you have read this far and tell me what you think, or just e-mail or call me.

The Wooden-handled Broom

Those of us that work around high voltage are always imminently aware that one mishap could cause us to provide a ground to that voltage and therefore seize up in the current and be physically unable to escape the very thing that is killing us.  Workers with HV need an attentive person nearby with a long insulating device to knock them out of the ground circuit.  Wooden-handled brooms are a cheap and effective means of saving a life in this manner.  My father worked for Oklahoma Gas and Electric, and I learned early on that when Dad does something dangerous, you get out the wooden-handled broom.

When Merwan began his HV tests, I started carrying a broom around with me.  The thought was, “I can either watch this kid die if he screws up, or I can bump him out of the circuit with my broom.”  At first the other labmates made fun of me, but once I explained they fully understood and agreed with the notion.   Over time the phrase “Get the broom,” came to mean “I’m about to do something moderately dangerous, watch my back.”  However, the phrase “Dial 9 and 1,” still means to this day “I’m about to do something really dangerous.  Watch me and be ready to hit the last 1.”

Begin digression:  I was always willing and ready to hit anyone and everyone with a broom – it just sounds like fun sometimes.  Think about it, everyone you know has probably at some point in your life irritated you enough that smacking them gently with a broom would sound like fun.  In this case, I’d not only get to hit him with a broom, but I’d also be saving his life.  Seriously, does it get better than that?  When I got to my postdoc position, I was surprised to learn that there were no nearby wooden brooms.  There was, however, a selection of short (3’-4’) 2x4s on hand.  That was when I learned that the joy of potentially getting to smack someone with a wooden broom is surpassed by the joy of getting to potentially smack them with a 2x4.  Fer never had to hit me with one, but I could tell by the look on her face that the idea of saving my life by smacking me with a 2x4 would totally make her week.  It would make mine, too, I might have a bruise but I’d still be kicking and that’s all I ever want.  End digression.

Shoes... or rather, the virtues of tape

One of the biggest ironies of my life is that shoes made for adventure activities are invariably more hospitable to fragile feet than high heels.  I demand a life where I can wear both something cute and nondestructive to my toes!  There is no reason I can’t rock climb all day and hit the bars all night other than that high heels tear big holes in my feet and make it impossible to climb tomorrow.

When I first started climbing mountains, I quickly learned how cotton kills.  It’s great to wear cotton in an Oklahoman summer (>100 F), but if you want to go up any hill your cotton socks will rub your feet into all kinds of pain never imagined.  I still remember hiking up a small hill in southern Cali in my new boots and cotton socks and how all the boys thought I was a huge wimp until we sat down on the curb outside Zankou’s to eat our shawerma and I took off my boots and socks and revealed my huge gaping wounds.  I’ve switched to Smartwool and REI and Danskin now high performance socks for general mountain use, but I will never forget that lesson.

Of course, cotton generally kills because you wear it in the hot summer days of the desert and die at night when the temperature drops so low your water bottle freezes solid unless you sleep with it inside your sleeping bag.  Fortunately, I never had to learn that lesson, although I have had a few encounters with frozen water bottles in the morning.  (So sue me, the socks lesson stuck, the water bottle lesson is still a work in progress!)  For that matter, I still haven’t learned to pee when it’s so cold your urine freezes before it hits the ground.  I’ve been operating in desert environments and opt to empty my bladder only when the sun is up!

Now that I’ve shared way too much information, it’s time to move on to high heels, the shoes that were the original intent of this post.

I learned a few lessons from climbing.  I tape my hands before tackling a big wall.  Now I tape my feet before any time in heels.  Usually I just tape everything in sight.  My feet are fine in rock climbing shoes, my hands are usually fine unless I tackle a problematic crack.  I tape anyway.[1] 

I forgot to tape my feet my first day at JPL.  Big mistake.  I had big holes in my feet at the end of the day and had to bum a ride to the visitor’s lot.  That screwed up my trail running for a month, which was long enough to throw me off it, well, for over a year.

I can’t tape for guitar, and my fingers bled when I picked it back up after a 6-month thesis hiatus.  Morgan says liquid skin[2] is the solution, and I believe her for guitar, but for feet I think it’s a bigger issue.

Take my one of my friends, a great person all around, as an example.  She climbed Half Dome with me, despite her cotton socks and common running shoes.  When we reached camp she used up all my tape and gauze and general medical supplies and I had to give her my flip flops.  She could barely walk the next day anyway.  All I had was a very large open blister on the bottom of my toe.  Cotton kills performance, at least. 

I’ve often regretted going on short day hikes without carrying along tape and bandages and extra high performance (non-cotton) socks.  The worst was doing a short 1-mile in, 1-mile out hike to Bumpass Hell with my little sister in her cute flats when she was what, five years old?  She got blisters on her heels and I was so upset with myself for not bringing my usual supplies to teach her how to make sure this would never happen to her again.  I was upset with the Half Dome experience because I had supplies on-hand and I was a bad trip leader and did not stop the group and force them to check for hot spots every half hour for the first hour or two of the trip.  I was upset with my first day at JPL experience because I KNEW better and still screwed it up.

So, what’s the point of this post? 

The point is you’re not really allowed to tape your feet before going out on the town in high heel sandals, but you’re expected to wear footwear fancier than trail runners anyway.[3]  For all women who have experienced gaping wounds and blisters from cute but inadequate footwear, let’s just tape anyway.  Maybe someday one of us will eventually work up enough courage to market a line of cloth medical tape in varying shades to math skin tones from ebony to alabaster, just like makeup.  It would come in widths varying from “pinky toe” to “full heel coverage,” and come in cute little powder compact or lipstick-shaped packaging.  If anyone is interested in this line of products, let me know....  maybe we can get something rolling here!

---

[1] Tape is my solution to all of life’s challenging situations.  Medical tape is for troublesome biological issues like preventing blisters or covering the inevitable paper cut or semi-major gash obtained from apparently forgetting how to walk up stairs.  Electrical tape is for small jobs when I want something in the lab to really stick and have time to track down a pair of scissors, duct tape for larger jobs and when I’m too lazy to find the scissors.  Masking tape is when I want to be able to remove the tape without damaging a surface or want to label something with a Sharpie, clear tape when I want paper to stay put on other paper, and packing tape, well, packing tape is so useless and widespread that I kind of think it should be outlawed.

[2] A type of super glue.  Maybe I’ll write a whole other post on the virtues of super glue.

[3] I have confirmation of this!  A colleague of mine noticed all the tape on my toes one evening at a conference and made fun of me for the rest of the evening and into the next day….