Liralen's Adventures Through Life

I've been branching out a bit with my sourdough.  One particular branch had to do with my sore tooth. I couldn't quite handle the usual crust when I was recovering from my crown replacement. In part because I was still using a good deal of rice flour to keep the dough from sticking to the cloth I was using in the loaf pan for the overnight chill/ferment cycle. Rice flour makes for a much harder crust than I like, though it also allows for really pretty patterns because it comes out white.  The loaf to the left is one that had a LOT of rice flour being used to keep the cloth mostly non-stick, and I did it only once because the texture was so hard for me to chew. I read that one could use a 50:50 mix of rice flour and regular flour and that would mitigate the texture problem, but I ended up using the mix for just rubbing directly on the cloth AND using Farmer John's very coarsely ground whole wheat flour directly on the dough to keep it from sticking to the counter and that w...

There are two different everyday dumplings that we always used to make at home. One is the potsticker (gwo tiea) and the other is the boiled dumpling (jow tzs) (literally foot). They have a variety of innards and different wrapper dough to deal with their cooking environments. Dough Ingrediants Potsticker Dough 400 grams all purpose flour 210 grams boiling water 2 grams salt Boiled Dumpling Dough  400 grams all purpose flour 210 grams cold water 2 grams salt Dough Preparation - Is the same for both Put the flour and salt in a medium bowl, and, using a fork or chopsticks, gradually add the water. Pour out the pieces of dough and extra flour onto a clean counter and knead together. Place in a covered bowl and let rest for 20 minutes. Then take it out and knead it again until it's smooth and pliable, about 3-5 minutes, and then put in the covered bowl again to rest at least 20 minutes, but it can hold for a few hours. Filling 1 pound meat/protein. Usually ground pork, but ground turke...

I'm dreaming again. One of the side effects of the asthma drug I was taking was "vivid dreams". A lot of the wildest dreams I used to write about were when I was on the stuff. When I stopped taking it, I stopped dreaming. And with the sleep problems, I guess I wasn't getting much REM sleep. But... now that I seem to have worked out a new sleep regimen I'm regularly getting six to eight hours of sleep a night and, miracle of miracles, I'm dreaming again. Jet recommended the anime Demon Slayer  to me, so I've been watching it and it's been feeding my dreams interesting materials. Before that, it was mostly Hades and even Deep Rock Galactic. But between Demon Slayer 's art and motion (and the water animation is amazing) I'm now getting some distinct images at night and situations and sequencing in bright color and sound again.  And with the sleep, I seem to have also managed to make good progress with the healing of that tooth. It makes me aware w...