This is a continuation of Part 2: Experimenting with Bread Dough Process.

I had mentioned I wanted to try adding a longer primary fermentation, a so-called “preferment” or “pre-ferment”. The first one I tried was a simplistic poolish using my typical bread formula and flour amounts. The second batch used too little yeast, and it didn’t rise very well.

The first poolish batch turned into very nice bread, bread that was accidentally ruined after it had been bagged in plastic, ready for slicing the following day and stored in the oven, when I forgot it was there and started warming up the oven for something else. The oven was somewhat over 200F when I remembered the two loaves there, but the plastic had shrunk itself around those loaves. I decided to compost that batch, as I figured that plastic fumes had saturated through the bread.

I wasn’t enthralled with the poolish process, however, because it was more complicated to make, it involved more weighing of ingredients and separate processes (particularly if I had to separately autolyse each), as well it didn’t seem to provide much advantage over the straight dough approach I’d been using judging by the results (but it was and is easy to mix). More work for the same result? That’s when I realized that the poolish methods didn’t autolyse all the flour, at least not a strict autolyse.

So I started wondering if I could autolyse all the flour much the same as the straight-dough process I’d been using, then turn some or all of that dough into a long fermentation that occurred prior to the typical overnight bulk refrigeration. Flipping the question around, it seemed easy enough to simply add a long fermentation step between the straight-dough autolyse and the typical, retarded or refrigerated overnight fermentation. Additionally, I realized that with an additional fermentation step, I could add the salt and oil immediately prior to the secondary or bulk fermentation, and not need to do much kneading the next morning before division and panning for the final proof: there would be nothing that needed to be mixed into the dough at that point in the process.

I had originally hoped the long fermentation would take 8-hours at 72F (winter room temperatures here), but it had tripled in bulk at 4.5 hours due to the 0.15% Instant Dry Yeast added to it at that point-in-time. I’ll have to reduce that amount the next time for a longer fermentation, as the schedule allows an 8-hour primary ferment without needing a third day. For reasons of simplicity of process, I opted to subject all the autolysed flour to this long fermentation at 55% water (only flour, water, vinegar, and yeast added to the dough at this point).

First, a warm autolyse of only flour and water that resulted in 100F degree dough, which was placed in the refrigerator for 1.5 hours, at which point it cooled to about 83F degrees. Then the vinegar was added and kneaded, then a small amount of yeast for the long primary fermentation was added, and this mix was returned to the refrigerator for another 1/2 hour or so, until the dough cooled to 70F, when it was removed to room temperature. This rose for the next 4 hours at room temperature (72F) for a total of 4.5 hours. Because the dough had tripled in volume, I thought that was enough, but my guess is it would still be considered immature. At this point, more yeast was added, a short knead of a minute or so followed by a 10 minute rest, then salt was added and kneaded, then oil was added and separately kneaded with 1/3 of the dough using the prior-mentioned food-processor blade technique, then reincorporated and all of it stand-mixer kneaded for another minute on the slowest speed. The dough was 79F when it entered the refrigerator for the overnight bulk or second fermentation.

This dough process seems to result in the nicest and softest crumb yet, and the crust is a somewhat darker golden color. The crust was slightly tough following baking, but as toast it’s wonderfully crisp:

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This is a continuation of my prior post title Experimenting with Bread Dough Process. Apparently, when my updated posts become too long, with too many words, there are times when text gets lost on an update, so I’ll have to come up with a different titling scheme and give up on the idea of continuing to add content to existing posts. For now, this will be Part Two. As with the prior post in this series, the dates below were snipped from the prior post, and is why they are earlier than the date of this post.

2009.Aug.14

I feel like I found the mother load of information about enzymes, and as I was reading through the commercial report from an apparent enzyme manufacturer (PDF), I found these two paragraphs that may explain the increased stickiness (I may have gone overboard with my chosen emphasis):

Glutenin can be classed as a heterogenous mixture of proteins. It has a molecular weight of 100,000 to several million. It is a multiple chain protein with crosslinked intermolecular disulfide bonds. It has moderate adhesiveness and high elasticity….

Gliadin is considered a heterogeneous mixture of prolamines with a molecular weight of 25- 60,000. It is a single chain protein containing intramolecular disulfide bonds. It has high adhesiveness and low elasticity.

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This is a continuation of my prior post titled Experimenting With Bread Dough Moisture, Sandwich Slices, and Oven Spring. I kept adding text to that post at the bottom, but due to some errors of unknown origin, the frequently re-saved post started losing large sections of text. At some point while investigating the issue, I found that shorter posts worked fine as a workaround.

The continuation here was of text snipped from the bottom of that post, and is why the date of this post is later than some of the entries.

2009.Jul.27

Massive volume increase! Wow! This was the first dough I’ve made that passed the windowpane test without tearing before light was visible through the stretched dough.

I diverged from the scientific process of making only one change at a time, so some of the results cannot easily be traced to particular changes made. The following batch used a strictly-defined autolyse rest, and the fermentation was similar to a sponge as well as a biga, but it uses 100% of the formula’s flour, thus cannot be called either.

The major change made in this batch was one of process, or the order in which various ingredients were added. The following ingredient list or formula is not reflective of that order.

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Ron Paul is the sponsor of a bill to exempt industrial hemp from definitions apparently including it in the Controlled Substances Act. According to thomas.loc.gov, the bill has 10 cosponsors. Here’s a cut and paste from the search page:

H.R.1866 Title: To amend the Controlled Substances Act to exclude industrial hemp from the definition of marihuana, and for other purposes. Sponsor: Rep Paul, Ron [TX-14] (introduced 4/2/2009)

Cosponsors (10)
Latest Major Action: 4/2/2009 Referred to House committee. Status: Referred to the Committee on Energy and Commerce, and in addition to the Committee on the Judiciary, for a period to be subsequently determined by the Speaker, in each case for consideration of such provisions as fall within the jurisdiction of the committee concerned. COSPONSORS(10), ALPHABETICAL [followed by Cosponsors withdrawn]: (Sort: by date)

Rep Baldwin, Tammy [WI-2] – 4/2/2009
Rep Clay, Wm. Lacy [MO-1] – 4/2/2009
Rep Frank, Barney [MA-4] – 4/2/2009
Rep Grijalva, Raul M. [AZ-7] – 4/2/2009
Rep Hinchey, Maurice D. [NY-22] – 4/2/2009
Rep McClintock, Tom [CA-4] – 4/2/2009
Rep Miller, George [CA-7] – 4/2/2009
Rep Rohrabacher, Dana [CA-46] – 4/2/2009
Rep Stark, Fortney Pete [CA-13] – 4/2/2009
Rep Woolsey, Lynn C. [CA-6] – 4/2/2009

Apparently the text is not yet available at Thomas, though Internet searches indicate some of the major news outlets already have some information on the bill.

It is my understanding that Industrial hemp has no psychoactive properties, so if this bill attracts enough attention, and eventually passes into law, farmers could probably grow it without applying for a special license. Once that occurs, folks will probably will be able to buy hemp clothing at reasonable prices once again. It is said to be stronger and more durable than other natural fabrics. Industrial hemp is quite useful for a number of other things, including paper. It seems preferable to make paper from an annual crop, versus cutting down older trees for that purpose. My understanding is that hemp as a crop is drought tolerant.

All of these plants breath in CO2. Surely this would help some with the Global Climate Change portion that’s said to be due to mankind’s accelerated production of large amounts of CO2 that seemed to begin with the Industrial Revolution in the 18th and 19th centuries.

So if you support this bill, be sure to write to your Representatives encouraging them to sign on as cosponsors.

I plan to do that myself soon, this post hopefully will remind me. I believe it’s better to print or write the letter on paper and send it by mail. I’m not at all certain that electronic submissions even reach the intended offices. Maybe they do.

2009.06.20

In a peculiarly relieving way, the city of Austin reportedly approves a particular composting toilet.

That is a good story to upon which to end seasonally based news rants.

~~~

ProPublica has a very curious article out that relates to the healthcare debate, but is specifically about insurance companies’ denials of medical care payments to civilians injured in war zones. Here’s a paragraph I find particularly illuminating:

A retired U.S. Army Reserve general who served in Iraq, Fay called the war-zone insurance program “a flawed statutory and regulatory scheme.” He noted that the law requires payments for injuries within 14 days — a timetable he said required carriers to issue denials to protect their legal rights.

I find the quote revealing because shows how some war-zone insurance companies presume guilt instead of innocence with regards to those humans submitting claims.

2009.05.28 (more…)

Some changes will be made to this weblog over the next few days or weeks. This means there will be times when this website will be completely non-operational, and other times when what appears will not even look like a webpage. These less-than-ideal changes will be temporary, as we upgrade some of the software.

We currently use ancient (in android time) weblog and anti-spam software. While it used to work superbly, changes our host has made, that I will not attempt to explain except to say we now have hanging MySQL queries, are causing problems for folks trying to comment.

So, be advised that our websites will be non-operational at times, but that these glitches will hopefully be temporary.

Update (of same day): The upgrades went a lot smoother on this weblog than I expected. Now I have to watch how it reacts in actual operation. This weblog is the test box.

Update (Saturday, March 21 2009): Made it through the night without any apparent issues requiring manual maintenance! This is a tentative, “Yay!” Even if the current solution is not as good as the old one (it may be better), our need to make the change seems somewhat forced by realities of our current host’s and the recently-increased existence of the hanging queries that manifested as several different interactivity problems.

Public Knowledge has a section devoted to patent reform. One item on their list that I wanted to comment upon that I quickly scanned or read the other day:

“Raising the standard from determination of obviousness from the person having “ordinary skill” in the art to a person having “recognized skill” in the art.

Who defines “recognized skill”? One thing I’ve learned over the years is that those who recognize “pat each other on the back” and either express disdain for, or quietly dismiss, those not in their “inner circle” however they define that phrase.

I once went to a Patent Attorney many years ago, with an ugly but functional device I’d built by hand out of PVC pipe, a dish-washing device, and he tried to convince me that no one in their right mind would buy that, that consumers want something pretty, then he spent the rest of our appointment time trying to convince me to become a petition “signature gatherer”, that’s where the money was he said, and then charged me about $250 for his time of less than 20 minutes! Another time, I went to an invention submission corporation with drawings for a specialized front bicycle wheel, that another guy appeared to study carefully. While this time there was no charge, he spent some time discussing this and some other drawings I showed him which he didn’t look at closely. While we talked, he found out I didn’t have any substantial money to spend, and then said that I should contact a bicycle company (corporation).

20-years later when doing an Internet search, I recall finding that a professor at a University had recently designed and built such a front bicycle wheel as that in my drawings.

The American revolution was fought to get rid of corporations from our lives. They didn’t precisely teach us that in compulsory education, though the educators danced around that precise point skillfully. They almost connected the dot for all of us.

It seems to me that with the explosion of the Internet, and the sharing of knowledge that now seems in the public domain, patent attorneys are probably chomping at the bit to privatize the commons of the Internet and specifically the ideas that have been freely shared.

Even Facebook was recently in the news regarding privatizing their members communal work, a policy they reportedly temporarily reversed, after a huge outcry from their members.

So the pressure to privatize others’ work is certainly there. Hopefully, Public Knowledge will change their position on at least that one item, or perhaps I simply don’t understand the strategy behind it. I did read it very quickly and probably missed important things, and it seemed like a good time for a rant.

Perhaps patents, and the protection of devices, shouldn’t be allowed at all. If there can’t be a level and equal playing field for everyone, including insuring everyone has the money that is required to be spent to acquire a patent and its implication for the masses of human beings who cannot possibly afford (hint hint) to play that game today, then why should there be any patents? Has the primary purpose behind “Limited Time”, espoused in the U.S. Constitution, now been crossed out by Orwell’s Pigs to mean something else: continually privatize the profits, and keep socializing the losses (some are more equal than others)?

According to Wikipedia, the first capacitor was invented in 1745. After its patent presumably expired, and with respect to a society that claims to want to advance knowledge and scientific understanding, shouldn’t our current compulsory schools be teaching this now common or public knowledge of what capacitors are, how they work, what they’re used for, and how to mathematically calculate what sizes are needed in particular applications? It is a ubiquitous device these days. Wouldn’t the same go for electric motors, again according to Wikipedia first invented in 1828 or thereabouts? Don’t some electric motors often accompany capacitors? When I went to public and private schools during the compulsory years, motor-winding class was never offered, even though that’s a skill I could have used many times! Instead, I’ve had to purchase (consumer) new motors when their windings did burn out, or do without.

So it seems the purpose of allowing a patent for a limited time so an inventor could profit from it, has now somehow transformed into a perpetual obscuring to the masses of knowledge gained over past years of scientific advancement, while simultaneously saying we must go to school.

Later in our adult lives our advertising supported media skillfully encourages all of us, regardless of our educational or income level, to buy, buy, and keep buying: so much so that in the last few decades we’re increasingly asked to pay for cable to watch advertising on TV, or buy the new converter box so we can keep watching the ads fed to us, or buy a magazine filled with ads.

What does any of this do for those of us who need money to eat? The last time I was in a grocery store, they still charged money for food. Recognition doesn’t bring money with it, I’m sorry to report. Just look at the homeless. They’ve been recognized at least since the 1980s. They’ve been on TV news. They’ve been studied by scientists. They have advocates working on their behalf. They’re celebrities who are eating out of trashcans because that’s all they can afford!

Think they’re planning on getting a patent anytime soon?

I’ll let you guess where this came from:

“To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries

When one realizes the U.S. constitutional authors didn’t intend “Authors” or “Inventors” to be corporations, the extensive undermining of our society and government created by the granting of corporate personhood, allegedly done not by a judge but instead a court clerk, becomes a lot clearer.

Are these deceptive games solely so a very few (corporations only and the wealthiest of the already wealthy who own most of the largest corporations) can profit and keep profiting until the end of Time itself? Is that how “limited Times” is currently being interpreted by some? If not, then where’s the progress to the masses within a society that continually keeps making all of us pay to keep socializing the losses of a few corporations? Is the sole purpose of the masses to be consumers and underpaid (hint hint) employees in an employment system most like the Feudal Era of Lords and serfs?

If you don’t have any money, you’re only worthy of eating out of a trashcan, or counseling that you need more education and a job so a few elitists at the top of the money pyramid can profit, and after getting that job you can barely pay your bills, never mind having enough disposable income from that job to have a professional file a patent on your behalf and defend it if need be?

Where’s the so-called “Progress”?

It appears there’s an effort afoot to change the California Constitution. I noticed this news item yesterday a couple of different times.

“More than 300 people gathered to debate the idea Tuesday at a Constitutional Convention Summit. They agreed on one thing: The state’s system of government is broken.”

Reportedly, the Summit was organized by a business-interest group, the Bay Area Council. Another item that stood out for me was how some reportedly want reform of the initiative process, while it appears they might use the initiative process that exists to make these changes. Is ‘use what they don’t like’ a correct summary of their intent?

“Who should be chosen as delegates to a constitutional convention? What issues should be considered? Whose ox gets gored? How do you sell a complex issue to a public that’s turned off by politics?”

Anyway, this is something to keep an eye on. There are statements in the article that Californians are uninvolved in politics, but is this even true? Isn’t every school kid who attends education for at least 13 compulsory school years (without pay) involved in politics for those years? Isn’t everyone who votes involved in politics? Isn’t everyone who pays taxes involved in politics?

Well, I guess that’s my view. Why are we being told we’re not involved, when in some cases we have little choice about our involvement? Does this business group really mean something else?

It’s been widely reported yesterday, and the reporting is expanding today, that California Assemblyman Tom Ammiano (Democrat-San Francisco) has submitted A.B. 390 to legalize, regulate, and tax marijuana.

Once again the Marijuana Policy Project (MPP) has a quick and easy letter you can send to California legislators if you as a citizen of California support this bill, A.B 390. You can choose among several different letters, by hitting the appropriate link at the site. The California weblog page of MPP also has some information.

[addition of 03.01.09]: What to read the current version of A.B. 390? Enter “390″ in the appropriate search field and select “bill number”, and follow the onscreen promts.[end addition]

I sent mine yesterday, and this time I wrote my own (it has typos, but at this point they can’t be edited).

Some of the thoughts expressed are based upon my prior post titled San Diego County Board of Supervisors, Medical Marijuana, and Waiting to Inhale. Here’s my letter:

February 23, 2009

[recipient address was inserted here]

Dear [recipient name was inserted here],

It’s my understanding that California Assemblyman Tom Ammiano has authored a bill, A.B. 390, that will legalize and tax marijuana. Additionally, it will regulate it similar to how alcohol and cigarettes are currently regulated.

This seems like common sense legislation to me. Recently I was appalled to find out that San Diego County has been refusing to issue Medical Marijuana IDs to patients with a prescription from their doctors for its use, which either prevents them from using this medicine, or subjects them and their caregivers to the pressure of arrest. Caregivers in our county are reportedly being stormed by swat-like police teams, their property confiscated. It’s now about 15-years since Californians legalized medical marijuana, and some counties within the state are refusing to follow our laws!

I find myself wondering why state authorities haven’t arrested our County Supervisors for failing to follow California law. When any of the rest of us decide to challenge a law in court, as they reportedly have, we still have to follow the law that’s in existence until such time as a court overturns it or the legislature agrees on new laws. I understand this is a complex issue, involving federal government prohibition, but it makes a poor example when our own local leaders refuse to follow a state law passed by ballot proposition some 15-years ago.

Therefore, I’m feeling quite strongly that legalization and taxation is the next step for the people of California to take: San Diego County has refused to issue IDs to lawfully prescribed patients, subjecting them to arrest, if not prosecution, and the state has failed to arrest the real lawbreakers: the county supervisors! Therefore, to legalize, tax, and regulate marijuana makes some sense to ratchet up the pressure on the supervisors and over time, upon the Federal government through the U.S. Senate.

California just had a record budget stalemate, along with reported tax increases and service cutbacks. Think of the tax revenues that could roll in with regulated and taxed marijuana, but also remember all the otherwise good people who’ve been hurt by the insane prohibition of a weed through stiff enforcement and jail time. How much money have Californian’s been taxed to process and jail all these citizens all these past years?

Just thinking of these folks’ tragedies over the course of decades breaks my heart.

Please support A.B. 390.

Sincerely,

Ken Klaser

The recipients were:
Assemblymember Jeffries
Senator Hollingsworth

Debian GNU/Linux “Lenny” 5.0 is released as stable! A free operating system? Highly recommended!

Can local school districts and kids or their parents save money? “OpenSource, Linux, belongs in schools. Ring their ears and wake them up!”

Thanks all you great programmers!