Baking Bread

For the last couple of weeks I’ve been adventuring into the wonderfully rewarding world of baking bread. There is something quite zen about baking bread. The effort that goes into kneading the dough until it is just right and then the magical chemistry that takes place while the yeast has a party eating up all the sugars and farting all that C02 making the dough rise.

The secret to getting inspired by bread making is simple… You need a simple fool-proof recipe to get yourself going and inspire you to try crazier and crazier things. Don’t be foolish and dive straight into something fancy because if it flops you might just lose interest.

Ok, foolproof recipe. I know it off by heart… (funny saying that… seems quite apt)

Jonathan’s No-Bread-Tin-Required White:

Ingredients:

  • 3 and a half cups of regular cake flour (basically flour)
  • 1 and a quarter cups of warm water.  (body temperature)
  • 1 table spoon of salt
  • 1 table spoon of sugar
  • 1 sachet (10grams) of yeast

Directions:

  1. Put the warm water in a small bowl.
  2. Add the yeast to the bowl, stir it up a bit.
  3. Put the flour, salt and sugar in a bigger mixing bowl. (you could use a pot if you wanted to)
  4. Add the yeast water to the flour, salt and sugar and mix it up as best you can with a fork in a minute. (This is to try and keep your hands relatively clean)
  5. Once it’s kinda mixed up start using your hands and mix it up some more until you have one big clump of dough.
  6. Next, sprinkle some flour on a counter top and start kneading the dough on the flour. The flour is to try and stop it from sticking.
  7. You’re looking for something about the same consistency as play-dough. It mustn’t be gooey or sticky.
  8. Depending on the flour and a whole myriad of weirdnesses, you might need to add some more flour or water to the dough to get it the right consistency BUT don’t be lazy. It might look too dry initially but once you knead the dough for a while it might end up seeming too wet.
  9. You should probably spend about 15 minutes in total kneading the dough. The best technique is to repeatedly fold the dough over on top of itself.
  10. Once you’ve got a nice big ball of dough, put some oil in a clean pot at least twice as big as the ball of dough you currently have and then put your piece of dough in the pot, making sure to cover the ball with a thin layer of oil.  You want the sides of the pot/bowl to have a thin layer of oil too so that the dough won’t stick to the sides of the pot when it rises.
  11. Cover it with a dish towel (if possible some cling-film too) and stick it in a warm place. On top of or near a hot water cylinder is awesome.  The dish towel is too keep out the light and keep in the heat.
  12. 60 minutes later it will have risen to almost it’s complete size. Without punching it around too much flip your ball over onto a slightly oiled baking tray. I like to put the tray on top of the bowl and flip them over together to try and minimise how much I beat up the dough. It will disappointingly collapse as a lot of the air escapes. Never fear.
  13. Leave the pot on top of the dough for another 20 minutes to give the dough a second chance at rising and then put the tray with your huge lump of dough in the oven on 200 degrees Celsius for about 20 minutes. You’ll want it to be golden brown but not dark.
  14. Take it out, give it 2 minutes to cool and cut yourself a slice…
  15. Bread and butter is an awesome thing.

Train Party 2008

ThomasA while ago Jonathan Hitchcock mentioned that he occasionally takes the trains to Kalk Bay for the day. I haven’t been on a South African train since I was in High School… which is really a tragedy because the line from Cape Town Station to Simons Town is quite a beautiful one.

Hence the Train Party 2008 (Mon 28th April) — We’re going from Newlands (where there is safe parking) to Kalk Bay for lunch and then probably Simons Town. I’ve created a facebook event, but in case you’re unable or unwilling to do “the facebook” thing and want to come I would suggest you leave a comment here so I have a rough idea of how many people are coming.

All are welcome so invite your friends!

If it’s a great success I will do it again next year.

j.

For Security Reasons Our Website is Crap.

After much too’ing and fro’ing.

We apologise for the misunderstanding regarding your query.
Kindly note that to apply for a garage card linked to your cheque account you will need to visit your nearest branch with your ID book.
For security reasons the site only allows you to apply for a Stand Alone garage card.

Yup, for “security” reasons… *cough*bullshit*cough*.

j.

Quality of life.

I am very happy at the moment. Perhaps the happiest and most relaxed I have ever been. Life is good, the flowers smell great and the sun is on my back. What got me here? I don’t know, probably a combination of things; I’ve got my head screwed on straight, I have a good job, a great girlfriend and a fun social life. I’ve managed to balance my time effectively, working on little pet projects but not getting obsessed. My girlfriend and I cram our weekends with activities, some exciting– like making tom-yum soup, and some mundane — like shopping at makro. It’s all good.

It’s at this point in my life that I am acutely aware of time. It slips by, week after week, month after month… Perhaps this is a morbid view of things, but it does force me to pay attention… and I find it strange how time didn’t slip by so fast when I was not in such a happy place in life… In fact it may have dragged.

My father worked for 25 years as a white collar manager. He got a R1600 HiFi on his 25th year anniversary. He still works there. Corporations do not care about you, even the good ones. Besides, we really should have more stuff going on in our lives than to expect to garner happiness from our jobs. Sure, it’s great if you can… like I said, I have a great job… it has mundane moments like any other job but makes up for the mundane with the occasional challenges and a great work environment. I do not however look to my job for happiness. I would be foolish to do so.

I would be more foolish to let my job affect my happiness… This is what this post is all about. Letting your job get the better of you. I have a friend whom I love to bits, she’s a tad crazy and always a lot of fun. She works in advertising… an industry notorious for it’s long hours, crappy work environment and stupid bosses. Even with the infamy of the industry I am gobsmacked (I literally don’t know what to say) by her stories and situations. And perhaps even more so by her apparent “okay”ness with it all. Sure she moans and groans, but she doesn’t walk out the door and say “screw you guys, I’m goin’ home!”

Is she stupid? No. Is she brainwashed? Perhaps a little…. Is she stuck? For now. Let me just paraphrase her job: She goes to work at 8am, 8:30 if she’s feeling buck. She works till 10pm most nights. 9pm is “early”. She works a few hours on each weekend. She is not being paid a huge salary.

I realise that I have a job that is essentially a walk in the park compared to what she’s going through. I’ve been with my company for a year. I’ve *had* to work overtime once and that was really just so that I could switch from one system to the next at the end of the month. I get there at 9am, take a short lunch because I actually quite like getting work done, and leave between 6 and 7… occasionally I’ll leave at 8 if I get stuck into whatever it is I’m doing.

My friend’s situation is bad… ugly even. Everyone at her company works like that. They’re like droids who’ve become brainwashed (and really, considering the stress they’re under, using the term brainwashed might not be so far off) by the routine. They brag about how late they worked, they joke with each other about taking the weekend off… they get shitty if you leave at 6.

In many ways we’re two polar opposites; but I want to bring you back to the point I made earlier. It is only now that I am happy and stress-free that I am so acutely aware of time and how it flies by so rapidly. I fear that my friend, in her stressed state, is not aware of how time is passing her by… how the number of evenings she could be sitting on the couch drinking a glass of wine with her better half are slowly disappearing… and for what? A cheap hifi after 25 years? Should she really let bad management take those evenings away from her? Those saturday mornings eating toast in bed? Those “Survivor” nights? A week-night dinner party?

Another friend of mine left his company after nearly 6 years of service. He got a framed certificate. If I had not known better I would have thought it was a joke. It wasn’t. Now he runs his own company and takes his gorgeous 5 year old daughter for walks on the Seapoint promenade while the rest of us suckers are sitting at our desks.

If this post tells you anything it should tell you this: Pay attention to your time and don’t let your job abuse it… Life is beautiful, but only for so long.

Impressed by the traffic department…

I just called the Cape Town traffic department (400-4900) to make sure that my address was correct on my car registration (I haven’t received my licence renewal form yet).

A very friendly Pumela asked me for my registration and then asked me what I thought my address was… Only then did I realise the huge social engineering opportunity that they’ve obviously been trained to avert. She would not tell me my address, but only confirm that what I told her was correct. This is obviously to make sure that you can’t just phone up the traffers with the licence plate of the guy who cut you off, or the babe in the Audi, and get their addresses.

Nice. My address was correct… I’ll be receiving my reminder shortly.

j.

Clever Unicorn Ad

UnicornsBeing a quasi advertising aficionado nerd person, I like clever ads. I snapped this pic with my cellphone earlier.

I’m also currently sitting in vida e caffe on my macbook via 3G.

Cliche much?

Getting my car waxed for the first time. The slick sales guy made me feel bad about how I treat my car and totally suckered me into a R350 wax.

Later, Suckers!

I love Relax

Live in PanamaA few years ago I was introduced to the Dutch hip hop band “Relax”. If you’ve heard of them you probably love them… If you’ve never heard of them you’re certainly not alone… try googling them; hardly anything… they don’t even have an entry on Wikipedia.

The band was formed in 1998 by a few guys from Harlem (the Dutch one) who decided they wanted to make live hip hop. I’ll repeat that. Live. Hip Hop. No backing tracks, no loops, no nothing. Just drums, bass, guitars and decks (for scratching). (ok, there is a studio recorded intro)

The result? In 2002 they recorded their début album “Live in Panama”. To say this band is brilliant demeans the very word “brilliant”. It’s a live album. Let me repeat because I know you aren’t paying attention. Live album recording of hip hop… If you don’t know how incredibly talented you have to be to pull that off you should rather just stick to your latest Britney album. If you want to hear one of the best drummers in the world hold back and play flawlessly for an hour, I suggest you get this album. It doesn’t get any tighter.

They’ve released many more albums over the years but I doubt anything will come close to the awesome raw honesty of the “Live in Panama” album.

A piece of my history.

http://www.its-relax.com
http://www.last.fm/music/Relax

Why I need to stop reading the comments

I am a comment reader… it’s a bad habit, but, like Pop Idols Auditions, morbidly addictive.

Today I did it again and then wanted to hurt myself.

A comment on a story about german hackers who have crypto-analysed, and cracked, the Keeloq system used by the majority of car manufacturers in their wireless, keyless entry systems. ie. Probably your car’s remote control.

I just don’t get it. This is just another example of the waste of a good mind. If these so called “hackers” would apply some of the God-given talents to some CONstructive activity instead of DEStructive tinkering this screwed-up world we exist in would rapidly change for the better. The same goes to the button pushers who develop video games. WHAT A WASTE! What good comes from a stupid video game depicting death and destruction? This is a blatent demostration of a society with no BALLS! These video-playing little flakes will hide in their homes pushing their little buttons until someone kicks in the doors and all of us wind up speaking Arabic or (worse) Chinese! They won’t have the muscle it takes to defend themselves and our country. How about applying some of that talent to creating something this world NEEDS! In the meantime, hack into one of my cars…I have a real trigger to pull not some plastic button.

— Jim Rhea, Bowling Green, KY

Jim Rhea, you are everything that is wrong with the world.