Challah Results

So, as per my previous post, I made challah. I decided to try to make it sweeter so that it could be eaten w/o adulteration by adding some honey and chopped prunes into it.

I prepared the dough as indicated in the recipe. Added the honey in during the initial mixing process, then set the dough aside to rise. During the first rise, I chopped some prunes up using my hand blender's chopper accessory, and then soaked the chopped pieces in water to plump them. This turned out to be an error in order. The soaked prune pieces got really waterlogged rather than plump, and carried too much water with them into the dough. Plus, they were chopped too fine so they lacked texture. I should've plumped whole prunes and then chopped them with a knife by hand.

After adding the watery prune mass into the dough, the dough got really wet and sticky, so I had to knead it out a bit by hand with more flour to get it back into shape. Then, I manually rolled and stretched it into one long snake that I looped around into a round loaf. Then, the second rising, an egg wash, and into the oven.

Overall, the challah came out edible, but not as great as I had hoped in a number of respects. Problems were:

• Not as sweet as I wanted probably due to overwashing of prunes and not enough honey
• Loaf much tougher than I wanted

I have two suspects for why the loaf was too tough:

• Too much kneading (especially after watching the "Dr. Strangeloaf" episode of Good Eats)
• Mistake where I used 100% bread flour instead of the specified mix of AP and bread flour

AB took the dough out of the hook while it was much wetter than mine. I added flour until the dough was much less sticky, although I was still in the bounds of the recipe. Both of my suspected errors would lead to too much gluten formation, which would lead to a tougher loaf.

I also was able to consume only 1/3rd of the loaf, part with dinner and part as french toast the following morning. Then I had to leave town and froze the unconsumed portion. It remains to be seen whether or not it will survive the cold.

Random Wines in Iowa

Had dinner at this small "world bistro" place in downtown Iowa City. These guys had reasonably priced ($4) half glasses on their wine list. (Half the price of a full glass! Who would've thought!) I was pleased to see the Leitz Dragonstone Riesling on the list (I never normally see any wines I recognize anywhere), but they didn't have it by the glass.

Artazuri, Garnacha, unknown vintage
Deep, inky red (or it couldve been the lighting. But definitely darker than Pinot). Meaty start, but bold and long fruity middle and finish. Not much of a nose though. Interesting varietal, but probably wouldn't buy a whole bottle of it.

St. Urbans-hof Riesling, unknown vintage
Very citrusy. Slightly floral start, then acid (I love acid), then a grapefruity and slightly efervescent finish. Pleasantly sweet. Very solid, especially what must be a reasonable bottle price. Definitely the same-day crowd pleaser buy option. I got a bottle of Christoffel at Whole Foods in Seattle for a bbq w/ Greg-Lillian-Dave-Cynthia. Forgot to record the details. A little too sweet (it was a spatlese) compared to acid for me, and too much petrol-minerality to be broadly pleasing. This riesling would've been a better pick.

The food at this place was also pretty good. The onion soup was not at the limit of my salt tolerance like it is at most restaurants (and I have pretty salty tastes), and the steak salad I ordered medium-rare actually came medium-rare! The gelato for dessert was kind of bad though, it was full of ice crystals and was slightly gritty, as if it had melted and refrozen. Oh well, almost perfect.

Challah Adventure

While I mull over what I want to do about baguettes, I want to try out other kinds of bread. I've gotten 2 requests: naan from Jerry and challah from Ben. Two in one weekend seems like a bit too much work, but since Rosh Hashanah starts today, it seems like challah is in order.

I'm gonna go with a self-proclaimed "Ultimate Challah" recipe from cnn.com, halved to be just one loaf. The 6-braided loaf described on that page seemed a bit too challenging, but I seem to have been offered a way out from this recipe which indicates that Rosh Hashanah challah should be formed into a round shape.

Halving and converting the recipe to weights I'll have:

• 1/2 scant tablespoon (1/2 package) active dry yeast
• 7/8 cups lukewarm water
• 1/8 to 3/8 cups sugar
• 1/4 cup vegetable oil
• 2.5 large eggs
• 2.5 cups bread flour (12.5 ounces, 354 grams)
• 1.75 cups AP flour (8.75 ounces, 248 grams)
• 1/2 tablespoon salt
• Optional: 1/4 cup honey
• Optional: 1/4 cup raisins
  

1. In a large bowl, dissolve the yeast in the warm water. Add the sugar and the oil and mix well with a whisk or a wooden spoon. Beat in 2 of the eggs, 1 at a time; then gradually stir in the bread flour, 1 cup (5 oz) of the all-purpose flour, and the salt. When you have a dough that holds together, it is ready for kneading.
   
   
2. To knead by hand, place the dough on a lightly floured surface. Knead well, using the heels of your hands to press the dough away and your fingers to bring it back. Continue, turning the dough, for about 10 minutes, or until the dough is smooth and elastic, adding the remaining .75 cups (3.75 oz) of all-purpose flour or as needed.
   
   To knead by machine in an electric mixer fitted with the dough hook, knead for 5 minutes on medium speed, or until smooth. You can also process half the dough at a time in a food processor fitted with the steel blade; process for about 1 minute.
   
   
3. After kneading, place all the dough in a large oiled bowl, cover with plastic wrap, and let it rest in a warm place for 1 hour, until almost doubled in size. You can also put the dough in an oven that has been warmed to 150 degrees for a few minutes and then turned off.
   
   
4. When the dough is almost doubled in size, remove it from the bowl and punch it down -- the rougher you are, the more the dough likes it. Return it to the bowl, cover it again and let it rise in a warm place for 30 minutes more. Or, if you have to go out, let the dough rise slowly in the refrigerator several hours or overnight and bring it to room temperature when ready to continue.
   
   
5. Form into a round
   
   
6. Let the challah loaves rise another hour, uncovered. Fifteen minutes before putting the loaves in the oven, beat the remaining egg and brush it gently over them. Five minutes later, lightly brush them again. Then sprinkle with poppy or sesame seeds and let dry a few minutes.
   
   
7. Preheat the oven to 400 degrees. Bake the loaves on the middle rack of the oven for 10 minutes. Then reduce the temperature to 375 degrees and bake for 30 minutes more. Turn off the oven and leave the loaves in 5 minutes longer to get a dark-golden crust. Remove and cool on a rack.

Self-Spreading Media

A little over 8 years ago, Greg and I made an AMV for the Otakon AMV contest. Our prime purpose in making this AMV was to win. We determined a category that would best favor our effort; a song and theme that would be the most likely to win the maximum votes. We placed second in our category. After the whole contest was done, the whole thing was pretty much gone and forgotten.

These were the days before divx and any kind of Internet-based video delivery. Although we used all-digital non-linear editing to create the video, nobody but me had the original video file. The other contest entrants received copies of our AMV on VHS, and that was about the limit of our distribution. Hard drive space was expensive and fragile and over the years, I lost just about all the digital media related to this project.

But, somehow, our Evangelion clone-themed AMV did not fade and die.

I first got a hint of this in 2004 when it turned out that some current CJASers had actually seen this video somehow. But just this morning, Jerry discovered a version of our video on YouTube. Turns out there are at least 3 copies of our video posted to YouTube (one with over 20,000 views), but most interesting to me, is that the one that Jerry found is not a digitized-from-VHS version.

Someone completely re-mastered the version with identical music cuts, and effects, but with new high-quality footage.

That's a lot of effort. We once considered doing this ourselves, but lacked adequate motivation. This person obviously has the skills to be making his own AMVs, but instead decided to remake ours. In the part where we did our own animation, this fan traced and re-animated the cut. He even used his retraced version of this animation as his profile image at animemusicvideos.org and credited us by name.

And, this guy is from Sweeden. The global power of the Internet.

Subtly Snapping Phones in Half

There was an article on Slashdot yesterday about fake home videos on YouTube that are actually ad campaigns or depict fictitious activities. One video hi lighted was of a smiling woman easily snapping a Samsung cell phone in half while saying "Samsung handset, easy to break at one try!"

The underlying article was kind of interesting, but it was this Samsung handset example that really caught my attention. Such vivid imagery represents some very powerful yet very subtle manipulation. If there's anything that I've learned from the various literature that I've read is that these sorts of things are inescapably influential on the decisions we make. A viewer of this video will make an almost unconscious connection between the brand/device and the concept of "easy to break." And, almost counter intuitively, the most susceptible people would be the ones who say "oh, what an obvious attempt at manipulation! I won't fall prey to that." and then promptly put it out of their minds.

Robert Cialdini's "Influence" teaches about the subtle and inescapable effects of various kinds of influence tactics. The implication from the book is that rather than try to ignore or forget the manipulative event, the only way to combat it is to acknowledge its irresistable effect. Then, when a decision arises where the incident might be relevant, one would consciously remember the influencing factor and then deliberately use analytical techniques (e.g. focusing purely on quantitative qualities) to mitigate the bias. I expect there's probably an expiration so by the time you forget to remember, the influence is probably gone as well.

Bread Results

Updated 9/19/2006, 8:30AM - Added last paragraph about how the leftovers got consumed and what they tasted like

So, in our last episode, recall the plan was for 3 versions of the same baguette recipe: short ferment, normal ferment, long ferment. The goal was to hold all other variables constant and explore the role of fermentation alone.

On Friday night, I assembled 1 baguette's worth of dough in my kitchen, bundled it up, and then put it through the prescribed first rising in my network closet, which turned out to be a perfect 80 degrees F.

Four hours and two punch-downs later, I put it in the fridge to rise slowly overnight.

The next day, I got up and made a batch of dough large enough for the remaining 2 baguettes, put that dough straight into the fridge, and then left for 2 hours to run errands.

I returned from errands, unglazed quarry tiles in hand (more on this later), and divided the dough from that morning. Half went back into the fridge, the other half went into the network closet for its first rising. More errands.

Then, I took the fridge dough (short and long ferment batches) out and set it out to return to room temperature. Quarry tiles got rinsed off and set into the oven (6 each on 2 shelves), which got set to 500 degrees to preheat.

After the dough had been out for an hour, I got the medium ferment batch from the network closet and shaped each batch into a loaf. The instructions for loaf shaping were kind of cryptic, so I sort of did some folding, but mostly pushed, pulled, and stretched. For some reason, the medium ferment batch was really springy and hard to shape. I also accidentally re-kneaded the medium ferment batch even though the directions said to try to keep the large bubbles intact. The short and long ferment batches stretched really easily and held their shape and I was able to get them much longer (too long really). The loaves then rose for 40 minutes and went into the oven.

Now things get strange. The recipe calls for regular oven, 500 degrees for 12 minutes, then 400 degrees for 30. However, after 12 minutes, the loaves were clearly done. My guess is that the recipe expected the oven's temperature to really drop during loading, whereas the stored heat from my quarry tiles retained most of the heat. Thus, much faster baking. I'll have to take this into account and do a tile vs. no tile experiment at some later point.

My dough shaping skills are weak, so the loaves came out all kinds of misshapen as the pictures show. (Ignore the car keys and the hard core leveling yardstick thing. They're an artifact of the errands I was running and have no relation to the bread making process.)

The final taste results were kind of hard to interpret. All the loaves came out way crusty even though I used no crust development techniques (e.g. pans of water or misting). The short and long ferment loaves were noticeably denser than the medium ferment batch. The short ferment loaf tasted kind of flat, like a water cracker. The medium and long ones seemed also a little flat, but perhaps a bit more flavor. It was actually pretty hard to tell them apart, particularly since the crust caramelization had some really strong taste. I wonder if I didn't let them sit at room temperature long enough. I probably should have let them re-acclimate in the network closet rather than on the kitchen counter.

The loaves were consumed with a variety of toppings I got, a Wensleydale (which I've only heard of in Wallace & Grommit and never tasted before), Brie, some cultured butter, and Nutella. The Wensleydale was very dry and had signs of long aging. It tasted like a long aged cheddar with a smoky or ashy taste added in. The Brie was too cold and didn't taste like anything. Also had some of the Grapeleaf Pinot with the bread, which was also too cold (but got to be the first resident of my new Pek). What I really could've gone for is some of my Bordeaux futures brought back from the future, but I'll have to wait until I'm 40 for that stuff (2 more years until I even see the bottles).

We finished about half of each loaf of bread and I consumed the remainder over the next 2 days mainly by slicing them into small pieces and toasting them until crunchy in my microwave-grill. Some I ate with cheese, some I stir fried in with some leftover stir fry. The medium-ferment loaf got eaten first(next morning) and tasted cracker-like. The short-ferment loaf got stir fried the next evening and was overwhelmed by the accompanying flavors. The long-ferment loaf got eaten the evening after with cheese (like the short-ferment one) and definitely had a noticeably present bread flavor. However since the long-ferment loaf was eaten a full 48 hours after baking, it's unclear how that flavor (positive) formed.

So what's next:

• Tile vs. No-tile
  
• Loaf shapes (including loaf pans of different types: ceramic vs. silicone vs. aluminum)
  
• All-purpose instead of bread flour (I used an unbleached flour that was labelled "great for bread" instead of all-purpose flour. If this was actually bread flour, that means that it had more gluten protein than AP. This probably makes a difference since this recipe called for AP and cake flour. Since cake flour is virtually gluten-free, the overall mix has less gluten than AP by itself. Thus if I was using bread flour, I almost certainly had too much gluten for the recipe.)
• Micro-additives like milk, yogurt, sugar, oil, or egg which should change the texture significantly
• Macro-additives like olives, fruits, or nuts
• Whole wheat flour
• Potato flour
• Naan
  

So many variations, so little time...

Bread Adventure

Since I was a wee lad, I've liked baking bread. However, preparing bread is a time consuming process involving various rising and punching, and my travel-heavy lifestyle makes it difficult to practice. Plus, I've never really taken the time to study the various aspects of preparation that give bread different kinds of flavor. But due to some random good luck, I'm gonna be in town from today and over the weekend!

Before I get into various kinds of additives, I want to get a handle on the basic taste of unadulterated bread. So first, some research:

• Simple: http://www.bearcave.com/bookrev/bread_satori.htm
• Detailed: http://www.baking911.com/bread/101_intro.htm

I'm not a huge fan of sourdough, I greatly prefer the taste of sweet French rolls and baguettes. So, I'm going to investigate various yeast doughs, where fermentation seems to be the key difference. Being that I don't want to hunt down a lot of different kinds of yeast, I'm going to stick with the garden-variety powdered kind found easily in the supermarket and experiment with different fermentation methods. Meaning that out of the basic ingredients (flour, water, yeast, salt, kneading, time) I'm going to be mainly experimenting with time and keep the other variables constant.

According to that baking911 site, the basic yeast rising lifecycle for a bread is:

1. First rise (unshaped lump)
2. Shape into loaf
3. Second rise
4. Bake

If using instant powdered yeast, this can be reduced to:

1. Shape into loaf
2. Rise
3. Bake

A cold-rise can be added by allowing either the first or the second rise to occur in the refrigerator. If performing the first rise cold, the dough should return to room temperature before punching it down for the second rise. The duration of a rise varies, and is generally calibrated to whatever it takes for the volume to double.

I'm going to go with a basic French baguette recipe (convenient because it doesn't require loaf pans) and divide it into several smaller loaves with different rising procedures:

• Stock recipe:
  
• First rise: 4 hours (with a punchdown at 2 hour and 3 hour marks)
• Second rise: 40 minutes
• Long fermentation test
• First rise: 4 hours + overnight in refrigerator (punchdown at 2 hour mark and before refrigerating)
• Second rise: 40 minutes
• Short fermentation test
• Second rise: 1.5 hours

Need a warm place to rise, I'll either use a warm oven or maybe the network closet.

Stay tuned!

Fundamental Attribution Error

In "The Tipping Point," Gladwell cites a variety of different studies and concepts that he summarizes in support of his theses. In two chapters, he talks about the power of context on perception and decision making. One psychological phenomenon he cites is the fundamental attribution error.

Take some people and have them watch two groups of basketball players shooting baskets. One group tosses balls in a well lit court. The other in a dimly lit court. Obviously the ones in the dimly lit court perform more poorly. However, if you ask the onlookers to judge how good the players were, they will invariably say that the ones from the well-lit court were more skilled. Even if you tell the audience that the dimly lit court causes the players to perform more poorly, the watchers will still judge the well-lit court players to be more skilled.

The bias, even when explained, is inescapeable.

Humans, various studies have shown, are irresistably drawn to explain people's behvaior based upon fundamental attributes (e.g. a person's character or skills) rather than environmental effects (e.g. weather, temperature, lighting conditions). Even with prior warning and explanation, we can't resist.

But I can't believe that we should just blindly give up, throwing up our hands and saying "oh well, I'm screwed. I can't make good decisions." There must be a way for the prepared mind to compensate to some degree.

One idea that came to mind comes from Robert Cialdini's book "Influence." The concept is that rather than resisiting or being (over-)confident and saying "ok, I understand and am immune," we can compensate by acknowleding our bias and realize that no matter what we do, our gut intuition will be wrong in these cases. That acknowledgement should hopefully then focus us onto other guideposts (like some kind of quantitivative benchmark) to lean on, away from our unreliable impressions.

The Rule of 150

I picked up the book "Blink" by Malcolm Gladwell 2 weeks ago and found it to be a very entertaining and quick read. So, I followed up last week and bought his earlier book, "The Tipping Point." Gladwell writes for the New Yorker and that magazine style of writing comes through in the book, making each chapter a very engaging tale of its own.

There is actually so much engaging info in these books that it's hard to absorb it all. It's very entertaining to read, but it goes so quickly that I need to review in order to actually internalize the info. So, I'm going to try writing about it, bit by bit, and see if I can remember various topics better as I go along. I left "Blink" at home this week, so today's post is from "The Tipping Point."

In one chapter, he talks about social behavior in humans and primates. It turns out that there is evidence to indicate that the main driver for our large brain size (and intelligence) is social relationships. Look at primate community behavior, there is a pretty consistent relationship between social group size and brain size. This has some interesting ramifications for modern human social interactions because if you look at the group size/brain size curve for primates and extrapolate the relationship to humans, the group size you get for our brain size is 150 people.

The hypothesis here is that as a function of our evolution, our brains are wired to effectively manage social relationships that include up to about 150 people. Gladwell then investigates this 150 person number in modern communities and social structures (e.g. companies) and finds that this "magic number" comes up often. In one example, he looks at the W. L. Gore corporation, makers of Gore-Tex and other high-tech products. Their company is designed around the rule of 150. The story is that during the growth of the company, they found that the largest effective size of a slice of the business (e.g. marketing, manufacturing, sales all rolled together for a given product or segment) was around 150. So, they organized their company around this principle, having buildings designed to house exactly 150 people and organizing the business into self-contained 150-person units. They find that there is remarkable alignment and performance in their business when the manufacturing people and the sales people are wrapped together in the same social unit.