Learning Journal: March 13th 2019
Hydroponics and Bread.
Hydroponics I'm sucking at. Oh man can I kill plants! I'm pretty good at getting them started. Not so good at keeping them going. And the system *should* be fairly self sufficient. Basically, I had started with 2 green pepper plants that looked like they might live. Both dead. Now I have some tomato plants going that I'm just waiting to bite the dust. And for good measure I threw a ton of lettuce seeds into a couple cups and now they are growing like mad. And yet, I'm confident they will die.
Not sure what the best plan is. I never did scale back to putting them in cups instead of my giant hard to manage bins. I think that could help. But, it might be a good idea to wait for the warmer weather to put more effort here.
On the bread front... we're getting pretty good at making white bread with bakers yeast. But, I made some absolutely vile sourdough (well, that is my wife's take on it). I can't say I'm the biggest fan of it either, but I at least think it is edible.
I'm not sure which of the many things I may have botched enough to make it turn out as it had. But, I'm pretty sure I botched up quite a few. I believe I under developed the gluten (didn't knead long enough), let it proof at too high a temperature and killed much yeast, and finally, as a result of those two things, let it proof too long, turning the loaf, basically into an acidic bread-y mess.
My next plan is a much smaller test loaf addressing those concerns. I'm going to start with just a single cup of my starter and add enough flour to bring the hydration back in line with the original recipe. I worked it out and the original recipe has a hydration of about 42%. The starter is 100% hydration. So, 2.4 cups total with 1 of those being the starter and the other 1.4 being flour should yield that somewhere in that ballpark for hydration level. Then I just need to make sure I knead it enough and NOT let it sit overnight at room temperature.
Learning is failure. So I guess I'm doing that part right.
Hydroponics I'm sucking at. Oh man can I kill plants! I'm pretty good at getting them started. Not so good at keeping them going. And the system *should* be fairly self sufficient. Basically, I had started with 2 green pepper plants that looked like they might live. Both dead. Now I have some tomato plants going that I'm just waiting to bite the dust. And for good measure I threw a ton of lettuce seeds into a couple cups and now they are growing like mad. And yet, I'm confident they will die.
Not sure what the best plan is. I never did scale back to putting them in cups instead of my giant hard to manage bins. I think that could help. But, it might be a good idea to wait for the warmer weather to put more effort here.
On the bread front... we're getting pretty good at making white bread with bakers yeast. But, I made some absolutely vile sourdough (well, that is my wife's take on it). I can't say I'm the biggest fan of it either, but I at least think it is edible.
I'm not sure which of the many things I may have botched enough to make it turn out as it had. But, I'm pretty sure I botched up quite a few. I believe I under developed the gluten (didn't knead long enough), let it proof at too high a temperature and killed much yeast, and finally, as a result of those two things, let it proof too long, turning the loaf, basically into an acidic bread-y mess.
My next plan is a much smaller test loaf addressing those concerns. I'm going to start with just a single cup of my starter and add enough flour to bring the hydration back in line with the original recipe. I worked it out and the original recipe has a hydration of about 42%. The starter is 100% hydration. So, 2.4 cups total with 1 of those being the starter and the other 1.4 being flour should yield that somewhere in that ballpark for hydration level. Then I just need to make sure I knead it enough and NOT let it sit overnight at room temperature.
Learning is failure. So I guess I'm doing that part right.
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