Baker's percentages, finally explained to myself
Why every recipe here is written in percentages, and the one calculation that makes any loaf scale to any tin.
I bake bread and I look at the sky. The two go together better than you would think: both reward patience, both are mostly waiting, and both are best done when the house is quiet. These are my notes.
Light pollution, measured from the back step
Counting the stars I can see in one small patch of sky, once a week, for a year. The result was not what I expected.
Dark rye, and the one bake I cannot rush
A 70% rye loaf with coffee and treacle that needs a full day in the tin before you cut it, which is the hardest instruction in baking.
Saturn with the rings nearly edge-on
Drawing what you see instead of photographing it, and discovering you were seeing more than you thought.
The eclipse trip, and the bread that came with it
A hillside in northern Spain, 93% of the Sun covered, and a baguette bought that morning from a bakery that opened at six.
Perseids from a field with no name
Forty minutes of driving to get two magnitudes of darkness, a thermos, a tray of focaccia and 61 meteors.
Overnight focaccia, or how to use the waiting
The dough that takes twelve hours of nothing and twenty minutes of work. It happens to be exactly the shape of an observing session.
A small refractor and no patience at all
What a 70 mm telescope actually shows from a suburban garden, and why the first three nights were a disappointment that was entirely my fault.
Starting over with a new starter
My old sourdough culture died over the winter. Beginning again with rye flour, tap water and a jar on the radiator shelf.