Slow Rise Vogels

From http://www.kiwiwise.co.nz/recipe/jaquelines-slow-rise-vogels-bread

See also http://liverstone.blogspot.jp/2009/06/home-made-vogels-bread.html

I have long searched for a recipe for a Vogels-like bread and recently adapted Jim Lahey’s no knead white bread to come up with a loaf that is just like vogels, moist and chewy with a great crust. It is baked in a pre heated cast iron dutch oven with a lid, but a pyrex or ceramic container can also be used. No kneading, just mix up ingredients and let time do the kneading for you. Only requires a few minutes hands on time, but requires forward planning as can take up to 22 hours before ready to bake.

Prep time: 15 minutes
Cook time: 45 minutes
Servings: 2x 750gm loaves
Ingredients:
½ cup kibbled wheat
¼ cup kibbled rye
4 cups high grade bread flour
1 cup whole meal flour
¼ cup rolled oats
½ cup sunflower seeds
1/4 cup pumpkin seeds
2 Tbsp Quinoa
3 tbsp flax seed
3 Tbsp chia seeds
3 tbsp sesame seeds
2 tbsp gluten
2 Tbsp skim milk powder
1/3 teaspoon instant yeast (yes thats right!)
2 3/4 teaspoons salt
3 1/4 cups cold water
1 tsp wine vinegar
Directions:
Place the dry ingredients in a large bowl and mix well (seeds are all optional)
Add water and vinegar
Mix well until a shaggy dough forms.
Cover bowl and dough with a plastic bag and leave in a warm place in winter or on bench in summer for 12 -18 hours to rise. Leave for longer if cold weather, it needs to have bubbles forming on the top of the dough when ready
When dough is bubbly on top, stir and fold dough over on itself once or twice, using a silicone spatula. It is a very wet sticky dough.
Cover and let rest about 15 minutes.
1. Using a spatula, gently shape dough into a ball, folding it over on itself, no kneading necessary.
2. Dust flour over the bottom of the bowl and place the dough seam side down into the bowl. Cover and let rise for about 2 hours. When it is ready, dough will be more than double in size and will not readily spring back when poked with a finger.
3. Half an hour before dough is ready, heat oven to 220 deg C and place the 4 1/2 litre cast iron dutch oven and lid in to heat also.
4. Tip dough gently into hot dutch oven container, seam side up. (No need to grease container, doesn’t stick, can use baking paper liner if you must). Sprinkle quickly with water and put lid on pot and place back in oven. (I use a silicone spatula to ease the dough from the sides of the bowl cleanly as I tip it into the bowl. I try to prevent any strands of dough from breaking)
5. Bake 35 minutes then remove lid and bake a further 10-15 minutes to brown top. Remove from oven, tip bread onto a rack, cover with a tea towel and leave to cool. Do not slice until cool..
The quinoa and any of the seeds can be omitted to make a loaf like the “Original Vogels loaf” , costs a lot less but still gives a great textured and chewy bread. I still like to add sunflower seeds if i have them though, they do make it very tasty.

My costing for the basic loaf without seeds:
$1.04 for 675gm champion white high grade flour @$7.99 per 5kg
$0.27 for 90 gm Kibbled Wheat @ $3.00 per kg BinInn
$0.15 for 45 gm Kibbled Rye @ $3.40 per kg BinInn
$0.05 for 1/3 tsp Tasti active yeast @$3.77per 130g (78 servings)
$0.01 for 2 tspns (10g) salt (Pam’s iodised table @ $1.65 for 2kg
$0.06 for ¼ cup (22g) rolled oats (Pams @ $375 for 1.5 kg
$0.30 for electricity cost for oven use (220°C for 1 hr [including heating-up time]
$1.88 = Total cost for 1460gm loaf of bread (almost twice the size of a store bought 750gm vogels original loaf)
The cost of $1.88 for a 1.460kg loaf works out at approx 13 cents per 100 gm, or 97.5 cents per 750 gm loaf.
Total cost for a homemade version of the 750 gm loaf of original multigrain vogels bread works out at less than $1.00 dollar.

Delicious Barbecue Ribs

Here’s a recipe I have tried and love. I do it a little differently to the original recipe (and will update this post at some point, for the moment it’s just here so I can easily find this recipe when I need to) but it still tastes really good.

For the most delicious, sweet, barbecue flavored ribs you’ve every made yourself, try this. Instead of cooking only for 5 mins on the barbecue, I like to cook them for a bit longer, basting and basting. Thus, cook them for a bit less in the oven.

Smiles are Beautiful – Things I want to teach my kids

There is no doubt that the materialistic world we live in favors the beautiful. So one of the things I’d like to teach the children I may someday have is that smiling is a powerful tool in beautifying yourself in a world that favors beauty.

It’s not that I want to raise shallow children. Of course I want to teach them to look beyond the surface of people and basically anything and everything else but I don’t want them to naively think that the world treats people equally. People are treated differently based on how they look. There is no arguing that, but with a smile we can present ourselves as  a little more beautiful to the world.

And of course, part and parcel, when you smile at people they smile back.

Life is like a mirror, we get the best results when we smile at it.
~ Unknown

Everytime you smile at someone, it is an action of love, a gift to that person, a beautiful thing.
~Mother Teresa

Beatboxing

Something Called Contact Juggling

Computer Humour and Joke Telling PC’s

When I was finishing up my last post which is mostly a bunch of blather about my computer, I was thinking a little joke about computer might be a nice way to end up. When nothing came to mind, beyond those old classics like:

A woman calls a computer help line to asks the operator “Where is the ‘any’ key?”

Ok, that one can be told better but the point is, I decided to check if google had any new jokes. And while google can’t actually tell you new jokes, I found out that there is a computer that has been designed to tell witty jokes based on the connections between two words. A couple examples:

I like my women like I like my gas…. natural

I like my relationships like I like my source…. open

And one that could only come from a computer:

I like my men like I like my monoxide…. odourless

Anyway, though it sounds really interesting, it’s obviously limited to “I like my something like I like my something” jokes. The computer from there analyses what third word fits both and creates the joke. Read the Telegraph’s article for the more.

They really did ask some great questions back in the day, and they really did speak well. By well I mean slowly and considered. Just watch this. Bertrand Russell.

I Built My Own Computer

So I built my own computer. From parts, obviously, so I guess I should say assembled but whatever. Anyway, it’s a desktop computer and the cool thing about desktops, especially ones you built yourself, is that you can upgrade them!

My current specs are:

• 8Gb Ram
• Intel Core i5 (quad core)
• 128Gb Hard Drive (Solid State)

With all that ram and the quad cores on top of solid state memory, the machine is pretty fast. I actually put it together a few months back and am thinking about doing a little tinkering.

At the time I was quite busy and gaming was the last thing on my mind and I had no interest in it at all. However, since then, I have cut back on work hours and developed a small interest in gaming, which started out because I found there were games you could play online, free! Games such as BattleForge.

The thing about these games is they are taxing on a standard graphics card. In fact, I don’t even have a graphics card, it’s built into the Intel Core i5. But there is room on the motherboard for a graphics card and I’d be really interested in seeing the difference in how these online games run with upgraded graphics.

I’m also pondering upgrading my CPU to the i7 version but I think the first thing, seeing as the CPU doesn’t seem to be working very hard at all at the moment, is to get the graphics card. Don’t you love technology!

I realise it’s not the best in the world but I do love my computer and how smooth it runs. Anyone else proud of their computer? What are your specs?

Great Lessons to Be Learnt From These Age Specific Quotes

I came across a page of 100 quotes applying to different ages we pass through as we grow older and hopefully, wiser. Here are a few of my favorites from the page:

• People who say they sleep like a baby usually don’t have one.
  Leo J. Burke
• A characteristic of the normal child is he doesn’t act that way very often.
  Unknown
• Nature gives us twelve years to develop a love for our children before turning them into teenagers.
  William Galvin (paraphrased)
• Middle age is when your age starts to show around your middle.
  Bob Hope
• The really frightening thing about middle age is the knowledge that you’ll grow out of it.
  Doris Day
• Men do not quit playing because they grow old; they grow old because they quit playing.
  Oliver Wendell Holmes

See the rest here.

Oh, and the lessons to be learnt? Enjoy life because it flies by!

Do Kids Learn Anything at School?

Ok, obviously they do. They learn math, science, history, geography, etc, etc. But I have been reading some stuff that ignited a spark that has been smoldering in the back of my mind for some time; that schools aren’t so much education facilities as they are worker factories.

Kids don’t really learn all that much at school. Seriously, beyond the ability to read, write and do some basic sums, what else did you “learn” at school that you still have with you and use to this day. Most of what school is about is the ability to study, remember and pass a test. And once you have passed the test, you are generally free to forget everything and move on with the next subject.

If you want to turn your kid into a great worker, send them to the worker factory, a.k.a. school. Here’s a few minutes of George Carlin (R.I.P.), the late and great thinking man’s comedian as he breaks the school system down for you.