Wednesday, June 20, 2007

a time to bake

thought i'd take advantage of the forecasted lows in the low 50's tonight and make a loaf of bread. this whole wild yeast thing is mystifying. after the second rise, everything got all sticky and weird, and it hardly rose after that. now it's in a hot oven and will end up as food of some kind or other, i suppose. we're not picky about homemade bread around here. i finished animal, vegetable, miracle, and really enjoyed it. it's a good and different perspective on local eating. the longish section on the merits of meat-eating were valid, if a little off-putting for this vegetarian. still, this family is pasture-raised-itarian, which is something i can get behind. though i decide not to eat meat, for my own varied reasons, the rhetoric of "meat is murder" doesn't ring true to me. how can you tell an inuit not to eat animal flesh during the winter? are you going to ask tibetans in the himalaya to give up their yaks? nope. but we don't need to eat cheap chickens raised in misery, either. *edit the next day: what i really mean is that i don't get the moral absolutism that says that using an animal for food (flesh or byproduct) is always wrong.

1 comment:

JohnH said...

Soon, you too will turn back to the meat-eating side. Muahahahahaha (just some friendly taunting from your ex-vegetarian brother).

I forget what the name was of the very old sourdough book I got from the library, but it suggested that you mix in half as much commercial yeast as you would usually do at first. This gives you a chance to slowly get to know your local colonies.