No Knead Bread

No Knead Bread, originally uploaded by tpl108.

The New York Times ran an article back in November that was perhaps the biggest thing to happen to bread since some outside-the-box thinker had the bright idea to slice it. The technique is remarkably simple in an almost too-good-to-be true sort of way. Whereas most bread recipes require 7 to 10 minutes of kneading by hand or stand mixer, this recipe involves none of that. Time, lots of it, in fact, substitutes for work.

It's simple. Quickly mix your flour, water, salt and yeast; let stand for 18 hours; turn it out onto a counter top for 2-3 hours; plop into a heated cast iron pot and bake for 45 minutes at 450 (30 minutes with the lid on and 15-30 with the lid off). That's it. The bread has a crisp crust with a crumb filled with large holes typically seen on rustic breads like ciabatta. It tastes great, too.

I deviated from the recipe a little bit, substituting bread flour for all-purpose, using 1/3 tsp of active dry yeast instead of instant, and 1 tbsp of kosher salt instead of 1 14 tsp of table salt.

The recipe
3 C bread flour
1 5/8 C water
1/3 tsp active dry yeast
1 tbsp kosher salt

Observations
The loaf started to burn on the bottom at around the 30 minute mark. Even with the lid on, the bread had a nicely browned crust after a half-hour in a heavy cast iron pot. Next time, I might consider either putting the pot higher up in the oven or lowering the temperature to 400. Also, the bread was too salty. Two teaspoons of kosher salt should do it.

Even though it's a simple technique, as with any bread recipe success is often as much as matter of feel as it is hewing close to the instructions. Look, feel, and smell should guide you as much as the clock.

Video here and original NYT recipe here.

UPDATE: Here's a good tip. Mix up all the flour, yeast and salt before adding water. Even if you do goof up the order, chances are the bread will still turn out well. To resolve the burnt bottom, I moved the dutch oven up a level and lowered the heat. 30 minutes covered, 10 minutes uncovered made a great loaf, with a center, that was slightly undercooked. But, no burning. Just crisp golden crust. (I need to get out more.)

When Forecasters Jones

Weather forecasters seem to be a reserved bunch of folks. When the Patriots win the Super Bowl, they're not out there rioting and flipping over cars. They're out there telling folks to put some gloves on, for heaven's sake. There's no whooping, no hollering, no bullets from the AK.

So, it's a rare day, indeed, when this coarse facade is lowered and the emotions leap out. In the afternoon forecast discussion issued by the National Weather Service in Boston, the prospect of a huge nor'easter next week was apparently too much for one meteorologist, as witnessed by the following lead. (ed. note - forecasters always write in capital letters)

WOW!!! HOW ABOUT THAT 12Z GFS AND 12Z UKMET? [Has a nerdier sentence ever been written? I love it.] A CLASSIC NEW ENGLAND COASTAL BOMB WITH SYSTEM BECOMING VERTICAL STACKED...YIELDING A LONG DURATION WINTER EVENT HERE.

LOTS OF DETAILS TO BE WORKED OUT...ESPECIALLY ON HOW PROGRESSIVE THE
WESTERN RIDGE BECOMES AND ITS AMPLITUDE...WHICH WILL ULTIMATELY
IMPACT THE CONFIGURATION AND DEPTH OF THE DOWNSTREAM TROF HERE IN
THE EAST. HOWEVER ENOUGH SUPPORT HERE TO KEEP CHANCE OF SNOW IN THE
FORECAST THU AND FRI. STAY TUNED!

It's unusual for any technical forecast discussion to put so much emphasis on a 162 hour forecast. Just how badly do you think this guy wants it to snow? While this storm does look impressive, especially considering that the model appears to foreclose the possibility of any rain/snow mixing, it's hard to imagine that the near total lack of snow this season hasn't played at least some small part in this forecaster's jonesing for snow.

Book Review; The Worst Hard Time

Motherly Love eases Oklahoma Dust-bowl Hardship, originally uploaded by chrisjman.

For most, the 1930s dust bowl is little more than a few pages in a textbook. Lots of dust, little rain, and an uncompleted assignment from Mrs. Watts to read the Grapes of Wrath are the familar reference points for this time in American history.

An environmental disaster on a scale previously unknown, the Dust Bowl was the product of unbridled national ambition. An attempt to work the unworkable and make the barren fertile. Ignoring warnings, sod-busters plowed under the grasses of the southern plains and exposed millions of acres of soil to the elements, all in an effort to join the then-rising wheat empire. It was the last of the frontier. The last chance to claim and prove up a homestead in a nation that was slipping its agricultural roots.

The outcome is familiar. The beneficial rains of the 1920s were an aberration. By the 1930s, the rains stopped. The soil dried out and great dust storms bankrupted the wheat empire.

Whereas Steinbeck describes the okies who left the Dust Bowl, Timothy Egan's "The Worst Hard Time" describes the lives of those who stayed.

The book is remarkable. A page turner in the most unlikely of subjects. Tracing the rise and fall of the southern plains, where promoters promised that dust clouds raised by plows would actually increase rain fall, Egan demonstrates the perils of toying with the environment.

Links to excerpt and NPR interview.

Cold Snap Forecast for Midweek; Low Temps Great for Peonies

pink world, originally uploaded by ms.lume.

A pool of arctic air is forecast to slip southward into New England on Wednesday, bringing a much-needed dose of seasonal reality to the grange. Forecasters predict temperatures will bottom out around 5 above.

This is great news for the peony that was transplanted in the fall. Peonies are incredibly hardy, withstanding temperatures as low as 50 below and rewarding gardeners with giant blooms the following spring. In fact, peonies, much like the homeless polar bears, need prolonged winter temperatures below 40 degrees. This chill breaks the plant's dormancy and prepares it for spring. Without the cold, it likely will not bloom.

This blog is moving.

A Walker's Nightmare, originally uploaded by starbeard.

In a few days, the IT staff will have completed the migration of backyard granger to a new URL, backyardgranger.blogspot.com.

Adjust your browsers and expectations accordingly.

Site Considers Changing URL; Thoughts Welcome

Considering changing the url to something like backyardgranger.blogspot.com. I'm not sure if blogger would even permit it, but am eager to hear thoughts.

So, my readers, all 5 of you who check back every day for updates (you know, I do have a feed that will let bring new content to your reader as soon as I post it, but I'm thankful for the traffic nonetheless), what do you think?

Earthworms Harming New England?

Before we add earthworms to the list of all things great like fluoride, exercise, and Ghandi, some scientists say that earthworms are changing the ecosystem as part of a 350-year-old invasion that creeps along at a half-mile per year. Apparently, earthworms are not native to New England, as all worms east and north of New Jersey were wiped out by glaciers during the last ice age about 10,000 years ago.

Although they do aerate the soil, according to the Boston Globe, "they can munch through the duff layer and can leave behind a homogenized hard soil layer in as little as three years. Invasive plants such as barberry and buckthorn can move in more easily, and erosion can increase. Scientists also say the worms change the chemical structure of the soil, and they are studying whether trees like sugar maples get fewer nutrients in regions colonized with the worms."

Hmmm. Maybe I should heap composting alongside of clubbing baby seals.

Read the full story here.

UPDATE: Apparently, the hardwood forests of Minnesota have similar issues with the earthworm as witnessed by the Minnesota Department of Natural Resource's "Contain those Crawlers" campaign.

Winter Composting; Earthworms Abound

Earthworm, originally uploaded by Satrina0.

Winter is a tough time to compost. The early stages of decomposition are marked by temperatures as high 140-150 degrees Fahrenheit, as several types of bacteria go to work. Winter makes composting difficult by preventing the pile from getting hot enough to support the compost-loving mesophilic and thermophilic bacteria, the main players on the compost stage. Fortunately, a mild fall ensured that these guys had plenty of time to do their thing before winter's arrival.

Two months ago, the pile was filled to the gunwales. Since then it has easily lost 20% of its volume, thanks to decomposition. With garden fork in hand, I checked-up on the pile and turned it to provide oxygen and break up any clumps.

What I found were the hallmarks of late-stage decomposition. As the bacteria peters out, temperatures moderate, opening the door for the physical decomposers: macro-organisms. Throughout the pile were hundreds of earthworms, some of which were the gigantic kind typically found on a dissection table. Earthworms are perhaps the most important players in this whole process. Consuming bacteria, fungi, protozoa, and organic matter, they leave behind nutrient-rich castings. In addition to primary consumers like earthworms, a few secondary and tertiary consumers, like centipedes, were present.

What was once a large pile of leaves, food scraps, and grass clippings, is now a crumbly, black, wonderfully earthy-smelling mass of compost. Amazingly, despite the relatively cold weather, the pile continues to break down, easily digesting two big pumpkins from Halloween, three pounds of old onions and several heads of lettuce in the past two months.

By early summer this compost should be cured and ready to use.

Frost/Freeze Maps

Frosty Morning, originally uploaded by shrike1964.

Here's a link to a great set of maps from NOAA that depict the probabilities of when the first and last frost will occur. The last freeze on the grange usually comes around the last week of April or first week of May.