RBWells

For 2 loaves, this one doesn't need the mixer, way more process than recipe, super simple ingredients.

1000g flour (between 30-50% whole grain something, the rest white bread flour), 20g salt

700-750g water

200g refreshed starter, 100% hydration

Mix everything and let it sit 20 minutes to hydrate. Then I smush it into a big ball and wash the bowl, leave it wet and dump the dough back in. Stretch and fold immediately, then every half hour 3 or 4 more times. Cover the bowl with a plate or towel in between. No, you don't have to knead it. Once it looks strong and elastic, after the last stretch and fold, make it a smooth ball (flipping it over usually works) and let it rise 2-3 hours, covered, until bigger and lighter.

Dump it carefully onto a big flat surface and split it in two. Make lazy dough balls, dust them with flour and cover with a flat towel or t-shirt cloth. Let rest for 20 minutes - this is called 'bench rest' Meanwhile line 2 bannetons (or flattish bowls- something shaped like you want the top of the dough to end up) with flat kitchen towels and dust with rice flour. Shape each loaf carefully and place into the baskets with bottoms up. Let rise then bake in preheated cast iron pot at about 450F, 230C ish, no fan, 20 minutes with lid then 30 without - I have to tent mine with foil because oven heats from the top.

There are 2 places you can pause this, since it's such a long process. Either after stretch and fold (cover bowl with plate) or after putting them in baskets, which is what I do. If you do this you have to enclose them in plastic loosely, I use produce bags for that, and even if they don't look like they rose in the fridge, the cold dough into hot pan enclosed makes steam that makes them rise so well.

It's easier to do than describe so ask anything.

Oh, I forgot that in my list - I upgraded mine to a model that can handle my 2 loaves of sourdough dough (about 2 kilos) and it's glorious. Had wanted one for a dozen years, finally started watching the prices and got it last year when it hit the lowest I'd seen.

Agree with:

Dishwasher (really just toss dishes in as you use them, close and run at night, put 'em away in morning, it's magic. I didn't have one till I was almost 50)

Electric bike (I hate biking but this is like a dream of a bike)

Roomba (wood floors no grit)

And the mesh wifi system that lets me easily see and address the rare hiccups it has.

Florida is talking about a state windstorm pool (risk pooling, not gambling pool) like the national flood insurance. I guess that would be the compromise, but the insurance industry here really is plagued with fraud. The companies keep folding then coming back, I can only assume they are lining the pockets of the legislature with our money.

In the years I've owned a house (about 30) I have paid them enough that if I'd banked it instead at a reasonable rate of return I could buy another house. But have made no claims. So they are charging like every house will be knocked down once every 30 years, I guess, but again, my previous house and that whole neighborhood from 1925 is still standing.

Even making it a state plan would work better in Florida than what we currently have. They let private insurers cherry pick the less risky houses, and cover whoever is left with the state plan. Then those private for profit insurers take the premiums, pay big bonuses to themselves, dissolve the company and leave, rinse and repeat. It's a scam.

A large majority of us born female (female-bodied) also do not have that shape either. In fact even those models probably don't have that shape.

Thank you! Clockwise looking down at a bottlecap makes sense!

You know this has always confused the fuck out of me. You are going around a circle, how is there left and right? There is up-and-left, down-and-left, either way is left. If I am starting on the right of the circle (assuming I'm looking at it) which way is right? Up or down?

I thought lizards lived everywhere, and didn't know until I was 18 that Oregon was on the west coast of the US, I thought California ended where Washington started and that Oregon was inland (we did not have geography in school).

When I finally went to college as an adult I took a world geography class as an elective because I felt so incredibly ignorant. Now, even years later I can help my kids with geography, quite a bit of it actually stuck.

New houses are required to be built to code for hurricane force wind here, the "post-Andrew" building code is good. Most of us don't have new houses though, my house is from the 1940s, and the one I moved from is 100 years old this year.

We do have building code, what we don't have is anyone willing to say no to developers. Sprawl, less land to absorb water. I see houses being built on seasonal wetlands, they fill them and raise 'em then the rest of the neighborhood floods in the rainy season. Nobody should be able to do that.

It's the dental of home insurance.

We carry flood insurance, it's cheap if you are not in a flood zone.

But the home insurance in Florida is mostly just a scam to suck money out of the state. Company is incorporated, funnels money from policies into the pockets of the rich, then they go bust and fail to pay claims. Then the same people start all over with a different name. While cherry picking policies and leaving the riskier for the state to insure.

If Florida would kick all the insurers out and put everyone on Citizens it would be better. I really only feel "insured" when we fall onto the state plan; and if I had a spare half million you bet I'd self insure and get an umbrella policy for liability, not keep paying those assholes for nothing.

I am good at that too, and think it may come from being able to understand some computer syntax. It's being able to form natural language queries. Asking things in a way a machine can understand.