utenzi

I still don't have any heat and it's a mite cold in here but since it's 10 degrees warmer outside tonight, it's not as bad inside either. As you can see here, the repair fellow did make a visit to see me. He checked out the underbelly of the house first since that's where the periodic ills of my HVAC system are usually found. While he was there he dropped the fan speed of the unit. The thing had been set so high it was like a gale was blowing through the house everytime the heat or A/C went on. And the noise! However despite careful and studious examination of the system, no problems were to be found. Thereupon the examination made its way to the outside unit. Yep, that's the inside of the outside unit. That makes for a rather confusing sentence, y'know? Most of the unit is empty space but the outer rim is lined with heat exchange coils like the radiator of a car. But it was the tubing in the middle that contained our errant part. The repairman told me it wa...

A few days ago I posted that I was going to make some no knead bread . I finally did so 2 nights ago and here's some pictures of the process: First off you gather the dry ingredients like so... then you add some water, in this case 1.5 cups and then stir them together so they look like this after that you put the dough into a warm place for an overnight incubation. I started this at midnight and it only took about 5 minutes to mix the flour, yeast, salt, and water together and place them in the microwave. No zapping! I only used the microwave because it was an easy place to store the bowl with the dough. After 18 hours the dough had almost doubled in size. It was on the small size due to the house not being very warm. I then dumped the dough, which was quite sticky, onto a well floured surface. In this case it was a silicon baking sheet on my cutting board. The silicon sheet worked quite well. You then fold the edges up onto the middle. You're not supposed to punch it down but ...

Yes, I'm probably the last person who bakes on the planet that's not tried the no knead bread recipe yet. I've been teased about this by a fellow baking hobbyist who I work with so I'm breaking down and trying the recipe this week. I'll post pics in a few days when I've done the baking. One reason I've resisted is that I don't think baking bread from scratch is that much work. Of course I use a stand mixer so the real amount of kneading I do when working from scratch is minimal. Actually the work is brief and consists more of punching the bread down to redistribute the CO2--which is easy work compared to kneading bread dough. That pic to the left is a loaf of bread I made using the old fashioned kneading method--albeit with the kneading done with my mixer over there. In the meantime, for those out there that aren't familiar with the no knead concept it's based on a recipe published in the New York Times on November 8th, 2006 in the Dining Section...