Salt is one of the four essential ingredients in making bread, along with flour, yeast and water. Nothing more is needed, although often a lot more is added. Salt is listed in all the recipes. Only one bread I’ve ever read about is salt-free (a Tuscan specialty mentioned in William Alexander’s
Continue readingAuthor: Ian Chadwick
Scripturient: Blog & Commentary: How hot is your oven?
Seems like a silly question: the answer would be it’s as hot as I set it to be. Isn’t it? Well, no, it may actually be rather different from what you expect, based on my recent tests. I was reading on several bread-baking forums about oven temperatures and the effects
Continue readingScripturient: Blog & Commentary: American belief in evolution is growing: poll
A new Harris poll released this month shows that Americans apparently are losing their belief in miracles and gaining it in science. The recent poll showed that American belief in evolution had risen to 47% from its previous poll level of 42%, in 2005. True, it’s not an overwhelming increase, and
Continue readingScripturient: Blog & Commentary: Selling the electric upright bass
My first experience playing a bass guitar came when I was asked to join a local garage band in the mid-1960s. I was learning rhythm guitar back then, inspired by the Beatles and the wave of British pop bands that flooded the airwaves from around 1962. But they already had
Continue readingScripturient: Blog & Commentary: Council’s second strategic planning session
Although there were no media reporters present to cover it, Collingwood Council held its second strategic planning session this term, on December 4. This was an important, all-day session for council because it set priorities for 2014, the last year this term. We also collectively agreed upon a list of
Continue readingScripturient: Blog & Commentary: Canada Post writes its own obituary
Headline news this week: Canada Post moves to end home delivery. End home delivery? For me, both as a writer, a lay historian, and growing up in an era where letters were important for communication, business, family and for art, that’s just crazy. I mean really, seriously, way-more-insane-than-the-OLG crazy. But, in
Continue readingScripturient: Blog & Commentary: Art, Science & Baking
You gotta love breadmaking. It’s an opportunity to get the right and left hemispheres of the brain working together, not racing about in different directions like they do most times. The logical and the creative sides working in lockstep. Bread making combines the logic of science with the freedom of
Continue readingScripturient: Blog & Commentary: Pyramids in the Ice: Hoax
What is it about pyramids that excites the imagination? Their shape? Their size? Height? Age? The complexities and difficulties in their building? Or the sheer grandeur of them? And what is it about them that get the cranks and conspiracy theorists so fired up? What is it about these constructions
Continue readingScripturient: Blog & Commentary: Ah, Hubris…
Annabeth: My fatal flaw. That’s what the Sirens showed me. My fatal flaw is hubris. Percy: The brown stuff they spread on veggie sandwiches? Annabeth: No, Seaweed Brain. That’s HUMMUS. Hubris is worse. Percy: What could be worse than hummus? Annabeth: Hubris means deadly pride, Percy. Thinking you can do things
Continue readingScripturient: Blog & Commentary: The Weird World of Plotto
I came across Plotto a few years back – references to it in other works, rather than the actual book. it sounded strange, complex and wildly over-reaching. I couldn’t find one – it was long out of print. It wasn’t until I got my own copy that I realized how
Continue readingScripturient: Blog & Commentary: Six Rules for Politicians Using Social Media
This is an updated version of the talk I presented at the the eighth annual Municipal Communication Conference in Toronto, November 2013. I use social media regularly and frequently. As a politician, that makes me either very brave or very stupid. But I’ve been doing this for the last
Continue readingScripturient: Blog & Commentary: What am I doing wrong?
I began a levain last week (Nov 19) and it seemed to go well at first, but then it just seemed to have stopped… or slowed to a crawl. Was is dead? Or just dormant? Did I have a welcome guest growing in the bowl or was it a wet
Continue readingScripturient: Blog & Commentary: Doing it by the numbers
The first thing I learned – well, not the first but up there, for sure – is that volume measurements are for amateurs. Being an amateur (and expecting to be there for some time yet), I took it on the chin when asking typical neophyte questions about recipes and ingredients.
Continue readingScripturient: Blog & Commentary: Road Trip to K2
No, not to the mountain. To the mill. The flour mill in Beeton, a little more than an hour’s drive southeast of me. We took a little road trip today in my never-ending quest for baking ingredients. Susan came along, showing remarkable tolerance for my obsession. K2 is a modest,
Continue readingScripturient: Blog & Commentary: We have heading up for your net
I have to admit that I frequently read the spam comments WordPress traps for my moderation, and I often do so with a smile. The clumsy, crazy constructs, the awkward English, butchered punctuation and the twisted word use just make me laugh. Yes, like everyone else, I detest spam, and
Continue readingScripturient: Blog & Commentary: These Poolish Things…
Poolish. Levain. Banneton. Biga. Autolyse. Retardation. Lactobaccilli. Bassinage. Windowpane test. Crumb. Batard. Barm. A new vocabulary is building in me, one that brings the lore of breadmaking, the etymology of the loaf to my conversation.* It’s a necessary vocabulary, if one wants to fully understand the techniques and technology of baking bread. Knowing
Continue readingScripturient: Blog & Commentary: Coriolanus on Film
Coriolanus is a tough play, full of politics and angry people and shouting mobs. It has no comic relief, no jesters, no romance and no real heroes. No great soliloquies, unsympathetic characters, uncomfortable double dealing, treachery and plotting. No powerful subplot as a counterpoint. Pride, arrogance, and power dominate. Coriolanus
Continue readingScripturient: Blog & Commentary: Gluten, Sourdough, Fads and Ailments
Gluten, that everyday protein found in many grains, has become the health-fad followers’ most recent evil spectre, and many (one in three, stats show) have jumped onto the anti-gluten bandwagon, generally with a simplistic message: “gluten bad.” Like most diet fads, I expect it will likely fall off centre stage
Continue readingScripturient: Blog & Commentary: I’m struggling with this…
My recent passion for bread and baking has caused a bit of an internal upset. Not the baking thereof, but rather the writing about it. I’m doing a lot of that, recently. Writing (and, yes, baking too). And of course it comes with the attendant research into bread’s history, the
Continue readingScripturient: Blog & Commentary: Bread, Madness and Christianity
The witch craze of Europe is a popular, albeit often misrepresented, part of our collective history. Everyone knows witches were hunted, tortured and often killed – burned at the stake, a particularly repulsive method of murder. While not a uniquely Christian form of killing, it was practiced widely by Christians
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