True insight methodology and the loaf of bread

How dissimilar to the watch the favor and the very large fish, my life has moved from something along the lines of ..... to something more in the lines of the sour dough loaf and the strangely small little fishes I try to catch.

But we need to find the truth of the matter.

How the world is changing, a cloud is no longer just a cloud a cellphone is no longer a cellphone or a mobile phone is is a mobile device, the sea is empty of fishes and we have to pay someone for a piece of sour dough starter? A maori man stood up and told a whole lot of people that he had a vision, no one cares, they stare and ridicule. It is not that he was/is wrong or right, but that they dismiss his words without respect and with contempt. What has happened to the day that people that people listened and revered the prophets of old. No not the prophets of da city.. that is a kettle of a different fish.

But back to the epic tale of the Sourdough starter, 3 weeks and at least one bag of flour later it appears, wait and about 5 attempts. We seem to have a moderately active and fairly pleasant smelling yeasty bacterial symbiosis. It is an interesting thing this, the development of a sourdough culture. I would equate this to something similar to make roti, in principal it is so simple, but try as you may it just does not work as advertised.  The general principal is to take flour water, or flour and fruit juice or potato water and flour or something similar. Leave it for a few days and hope that a "natural" bacteria and a lacto-bacili lands in the muck and flourishes and grows.  The list of suggestions is endless regarding the ways to promote the bacteria (lactobacillus) and Saccharomyces or Brettanomyces. According to wikipedia (when wheat flour contacts water, naturally occurring amylase enzymes break down the starch into disaccharides (sucrose and maltose); maltase converts these sugars into glucose and fructose that yeast can metabolize. The lactobacteria feed mostly on the metabolism products from the yeast.^[5] The mixture develops a balanced, symbiotic culture after repeated feedings.) .. Bla bla something like that for those of you are not really all that interested in the chemical reaction albeit that it is very interesting and worthy of the number of books that have been written on the topic.

So why all this harping on sourdough you may ask, well it highlights a conundrum or pivotal point in the development of humans, or should I rather say ambivalence. We live in a culture that has, or should i say species,  diametrically opposing value measures. On the one hand we have the need and drive to be technologically centred or advanced, yet on the other hand we have the notion of slow food and living which in many ways are contradictory and they of course we should not forget cultural biases and most importantly the impact of the breadline on this perception.  Where does that leave us as a human race?
We seem to have a multitude of memes around our approach to food as a species. I suppose that is what makes us rather unique in that we don's have a consistent set of foraging and feeding behavior within a contiguous range?  There are numerous other species which display cross range memes in terms of foraging, the most colloquial being the milk/cream  stealing tits in England;-) I do digress, let me return to the notion of slow food and living. This is something I find very appealing, but that is for my subcultural meme. From an evolutionary perspective I doubt this has much in the way of selective advantage or disadvantage in the short term, most profoundly due to the rapid mixing of memes and behavioral patterns.

To get back to the whole sourdough starter issue, what did we try? We tried the flour and water left outside in the elements, I tried chopped up fruit, raisins, potato water and and and.. After leaving each of these Bio-experiments standing and fermenting on our kitchen counter for a good few weeks, much longer than intimated by the authors of various articles books and colloquial comments. The kitchen was filled with the aroma of fermenting flour, but nothing substantial. We then started getting fruit flies and fungus .. But it does appear that we have developed a moderately active culture, with the foam and all. This is after Anita had taken a sub sample of the last  few attempts. So where does this lead me? Phase n! of sourdough bread making.  So what we did before? We made sourdough, but decided that we needed a new culture because there was a fear that we had contamination with commercial yeast. One imagines we should have left best alone, but now we have started culture, which i will give away.. dont worry we wont sell it :-)

what else have learnt, wonderous things about the "science" of breadmaking, bla bla this would all be repetition of easily available resources on the Web. But one or two things i did discover was something to do with the percentage water/flour ratio and what impacts this has on bread making and the magic 60/30 rule. The thing i did however discover was something more amazing.. how the frig they do this ...

And the other thing is why bread is scored or cut like this?

 that is quite interesting, we have also discovered more about flours and types of flours and the misnomer that it means a tremendous amount..



It is all a learning experience, not altogether different from growing veggies in pots on our porch, learning to fish with bait in the sea...  Part of my life as an ex pat. No I did not say my name was pat or that I was a Patsy.. ;-)


So what next, more photos, more things to do and see.

oh here is a nice pic of mine that is in a gallery on the web .. no nothing that fancy, just a collection of images about the interislander ferry in Kiwiland :-)

it is here if you wanna see the bigger version HERE


oh well enough of all things exiting and random for today. You may ask, why the sourdough bread? Why the slow food, just randomness and limited meaning to another day on the slow hamster wheel in kiwiland.