I am so excited that Levi Johnston is weighing in on Alaskan politics! If somehow you don’t remember, he’s the dude who knocked up Sarah Palin’s daughter then did the manly thing and decided not to marry her after all. He done got his pretty little face plastered all over the news because he’s giving the world his opinion on why Palin quit her job as Alaskan governor. I can actually hear fingernails scrabbling for purchase as every last member of the Palin entourage tries to hold onto the limelight for a few…more…seconds. I have no doubt the name Palin is going to resurface as a question in the 2025 pop culture Trivial Pursuit game, and video clips will be shown on a VH1 First Ten Years of the Millennium retrospective show. Like Max Headroom and Kato Kaelin, Palin and her hangers-on will only trigger, “Oh, yeah, I think I remember her” moments in the next few years. Todd can go back to ice racing and goatee trimming, Sarah’s girls can keep having babies with weird names, and Levi can get more girls pregnant, reminisce about how he used to be a somebody, and grow a pot belly while he sits in his trailer and wonders why the book and movie deals never made it anywhere.
Now. The first bread experiments with the new stone-ground whole wheat were interesting. Because the flour is so coarse it feels different in the hand. I made two loaves of multigrain whole wheat struan last night with the flour. It took a lot more flour than normal, I suspect because there was more bran and insoluble fiber in the new flour that wouldn’t absorb the water. And I don’t know if it was because the oven wasn’t hot enough, but the new loaves didn’t brown nearly as much as they did with store-bought flour. I want to try making a whole wheat sandwich exclusively with this flour so I can see how it acts. Also, I think my multigrain is too grainy. I think it’s just TOO EXTREME with grains to be as enjoyable to eat, so I’m going to tone it down a bit with oatmeal and rice.
I’m also still on the hunt for a better rustic bread. I’m kind of stymied right now and need to rethink my recipe so I get different results, since the adjustments I’ve made haven’t made enough difference to get me the structure and crust I want. So maybe I’ll go back to baking in the crock pot, or will make the poolish a higher percentage of the total dough. Or I will only bake in zero-gravity environments. Does anyone like spherical bread?
Writer, architect, father, husband.