Hubris

Yesterday, they cemented in all the posts for the new railings outside my house - including the one that stands atop my newly-reburied, much-broken media cable.

And then they went away, and lo! I still had internets, also phone and TV! They had managed not to break it again!!

I was so relieved, I almost posted: there being no need on God's good earth why they should need to go anywhere near it ever again, it was safely under earth and stone and could stay there undisturbed...

This morning, they are digging up some of the block paving and relaying it. Some bureaucrat has been by, no doubt, and criticised the quality of their work. Slowly, slowly they are coming closer to my buried cable.

I am increasingly nervous. If I vanish altogether... Well. You know the routine. They shall have made me invisible.

UnDonne

Send not, to ask for whom the sossidge fries; it fries for Barry.

Apparently.

Even he doesn't quite have the nerve to hook one out of the sizzling pan, but he doesn't think he needs to. He reckons he can hook one out of my quivering conscience.

I am made of sterner stuff, I tell you. I tell him, I tell myself. I am.

*is firm of purpose*

Umm...

There's more than one way to bake a loaf

Sourdough generally needs much, much longer to rise than a dough made with the standard brewer's yeast. It's not at all uncommon to knock the dough back several times during the first rise - my last loaf, my current preferred process, I gave the dough a five-minute knead and then knocked it back every hour on the hour for the next four hours, before I shaped it and set it to rise for baking.

Right now I am trying a whole nother method, where it starts out mixed but not kneaded at all, and then gets ten or fifteen seconds of kneading every ten minutes for the first half-hour, then on the half-hour, then on the hour.

For some people, I guess this would be intolerable. For me, at the moment, it's all but ideal. I work from home anyway, so being around for four hours is no burden; I'm working revisions, which calls for no great extended periods of concentration; I really, really need to take a lot of breaks from the computer just now, so being constantly called away to fidget with bread is nothing but a blessing to my body.

And it's a fascination to my mind. Bread without hard kneading? What is this about? Will it, y'know, work...?

Also, I knead need a breadmaking icon, if I'm going to go on talking about it. But I need more cooking-icons anyway, 'specially now that I no longer grow chillies. I must take more photos...