Bread…

 

I’ve recently gotten into baking… again ( when I was younger I used to make brownies, muffins a mad chocolate cake pudding and all sorts of goodies with my gran ).

So I decided to go ahead and try making bread… The first try was , well, bread, but not very nice bread. I went to the supermarket, bought some pre made dough, mixed in some cheese and popped it into the oven, Bread did come out, tasted like a giant vetkoek ( imagine deep fried bread) just high GI, make my pancreas go apeshit whitebread with giant holes filled with cheese…

This time We decided to make dough and to follow some sort of procedure… helped along by THIS post.

With some changes :

• 1 cup all purpose “cake” flour
• 1 cup brown bread flour
• 1 cup wholewheat flour ( which turned out to be the same as the brownbread flour…)
• 1 teaspoon “anchor instant yeast”
• 1 teaspoon salt ( I had some fine seasalt at hand)
• 1/8 cup brown sugar
• 1 cup warm buttermilk
• 1 tablespoon butter
• 1 tablespoon olive oil
• 1/2 cup warm water

then followed the standard:

Mix the dry ingredients, then add the wet ingredients. Mix and adjust water until all ingredients are incorporated and the dough is capable of forming a ball. Pour the dough onto a flat, floured surface and knead for approximately ten minutes until a silky texture is adopted by the dough.

Return the dough to an oiled bowl and let rise until doubled in size ( this took 70 minutes). Shape the loaf and buns and then let rise again until the desired size is reached  (took about 30 minutes already on the baking tray). They were glazed with a beaten egg before going in the oven.

Bake at 190’C for 20  minutes ( buns were done) and a further 10 minutes for the loaf,  when tapping the bottom of loaf the bread sprung back and made a hollow sound.

Left for 10 minutes to cool down, broke open a bun and put a slab of butter (“salted butter” ) on…

The bread is quite sweet and not as “heavy” as I thought it would be… next time I’ll try with less sugar..

"Gooi hom Bokkie !"

a Friend (Micheal) came to my room , while I was procrastinating (Environmental Engineering) and watching skins, he asked if I could accompany him to the Neelsie for some late afternoon lunch. I thought about it for a while, "agreed", so we took a walk, wearing hippiejacket and a black umbrella, and found some people racing their cars in the parking lot, have a look at the snappies.

Hangbrug

Taken after the rain on a sunday afternoon, this view stretches from Jonkershoek (to the left) to where Cape Town is (Behind the mountain....) Taken on the farthest sportsfields at Stellenbosch University. You have to cross a very scary suspension bridge to get here, also, there are fireflies here.. sometimes.

Huis Visser Stellenbosch Panorama

Another Nokia N81 picture compiled panorama, This time of the place I stay at Varsity; Huis Visser Residence est 1945, This is taken on the "Grasperk" (lawn) to the side of the res on a Sunny day in June.

Eersterivier Panorama

The above picture is a panorama made from about 100 2MP photos taken with my nokia N81, Its not the best, but its a great view from a park bench next to the Eersterivier (First River in Afrikaans) in Stellenbosch South Africa

Clear to Chrome

Well, not really chrome, Aluminium actually, but its shiny and reflective.. so it works...
I recently got a "Lomography.com actionsampler clear"




But then I saw the Actionsampler Chrome...

So I decided, having access to a PVD facility, I hacked open my actionsampler and proceeded to deposit a thin layer of aluminium on the inside of the clear perspex housing, The following image shows actionsampler before disassembly...

Where after I disassembled it and placed the housing and gutty-wuts in the PVD chamber

a Close up of the housing in the chamber and the finished innards..


And the un- assembled finished actionsampler "Chrome"..

Organic Math

Wolfram Alpha is the coolest thing since the invention of cool things, Plotting the following eq :
PolarPlot[(1 + 0.9 Cos[8 t]) (1 + 0.1 Cos[24 t]) (0.9 + 0.05 Cos[200 t]) (1 + Sin[t]), {t, -Pi, Pi}]
One finds that Math can be organic...

See This for more cool things to do on Wolfram Alpha