We interrupt this writing day to bring you … bread.

A few months back, I decided to put my domestic skills to the test and bake a loaf of bread. But, even I know that my domestic skills suck, so I went with the easiest bread recipe ever. The results were okay. It was tasty, but my bread ended up much less substantial than expected and, frankly, a little airy and chewy. That, however, did not stop Hubs and me from eating every last crumb.

When I mentioned that I tried the recipe, my friend Karin told me that Cook’s Illustrated had improved it and so I proceeded to badger her for a copy until she finally brought it last week. Turns out it’s available on the internet. Whoops.

So, feeling the urge to be domestic again (and looking for any excuse to avoid a painful revision), I decided to test the 2.0 recipe. The result was much better. Not at all airy and completely substantial. It had more flavor and the crust was slightly thicker and crispier, which is just the way I like it. From now on this will be the recipe I use to impress people with my mad baking skillz.

Here’s what you need:

A couple of modifications on my part. First, the Cook’s Illustrated version calls for all-purpose flour, but why use all-purpose when you have bread flour? I’m not sure there’s that much of a difference, so if you only have all purpose on hand, use it.

Second, the recipe suggests using Budweiser for your mild-flavor lager. I’m not much of a beer drinker, but I simply will not buy Budweiser. Too many bad college memories. I chose the Sierra Nevada Summerfest Lager. It wasn’t bad, but I’m open to suggestions.

Here’s how ridiculously easy the recipe is. Once you’ve gathered everything up, mix up your dry ingredients in a large bowl and then pour in all your wet ingredients and combine until you have a shaggy ball of dough. So easy. After that, cover the bowl with plastic wrap, finish the rest of the beer, and wait 18 hours. At this point, I probably should have gone back to the revision, but instead I read a book.

Anyway, the rest of the recipe is just as simple as the first part. Place a sheet of parchment paper in a shallow skillet (I used my Lodge 10-inch skillet) and lightly spray it with cooking spray. Then remove the dough from the bowl and knead it into a small ball. Put the ball in the skillet, cover with plastic wrap, and wait another two hours.

With all this waiting you would think I could be doing a lot of writing. You would think that, wouldn’t you? You’d be wrong.

About 30 minutes before you’re ready to bake the bread, set your oven at 500 degrees and put your dutch oven in to heat up. The recipe suggests using an enameled cast iron, but I used my trusty Lodge. Then find every potholder you ever owned and get them ready. You’re going to need them. After the pot is heated, transfer the bread to the pot by using the parchment paper. Genius idea, really. Just don’t burn yourself. Then reduce the heat to 425 and bake with the lid on the dutch oven for 30 minutes. Remove the lid and bake for another 20 minutes.

Using your gazillion potholders, remove the bread from the oven and let cool on a wire rack.

And here is were I worry that the Cook’s Illustrated editors are smoking crack. You’re supposed to let the bread cool to room temperature for about two hours. Two hours!? Seriously? Have you smelled warm bread? Do you think it’s possible to resist the craving to taste warm bread once you have smelled it. Let my clue you in, it isn’t. Wait as long as you can, but I only lasted 10 minutes

That small disagreement aside, I think this recipe is a huge improvement over the New York Times version. Very tasty and much less complicated. (Not that the NYT version was complicated, just that this one is so much easier.) Also, cleaning up for this recipe means washing one bowl. That alone is enough to win my loyalty.

A note about the beer. When I first read the recipe, I was concerned about the beer addition. My mother occasionally makes beer bread and the combination is just not my thing. I was pleased to note that this bread was not beery at all, but that the beer did seem to boast the flavor. You can use non-alcoholic if you so choose.

So Operation Domesticity was a success this time around. Operation Revise that crappy story, not so much.

Source: Cook’s Illustrated.

(via Matt Bell)

This Guardian article gets a big amen from me:

The literary world only bestows acceptance, it seems, on those who are published through the traditional avenues. Independent and small presses get short shrift – national newspaper supplements seem loath to review indie books, the big high street sellers won’t stock them, unless the books are about the tough lives of mill girls or histories of public house names, which can be shoved on a shelf marked “local interest”.

<…snip…>

But there’s a sea of dross in the worlds of pop music and movies, too. Quality rises to the surface there, so if the literary industry can relax its perceived inherently snobbish attitude to the output of anything other than the established, traditional publishers, perhaps the same will happen with independent, small press and even self-published books.

Someday I’ll be brave enough to publish my rant/bitch/whine about the stigma of self-publishing in the literary writing world. I think it’s becoming clear that in the current book market, traditional venues are losing ground. In the meantime, read the The Guardian’s take on the subject.

Hubs finally got a Playstation 3 last weekend. I say finally because before we started dating, the man had aspirations of getting a PS3. Three years ago he bought his entertainment center specifically so it could eventually house the PS3. But all the fun in shopping for Hubs is spending years looking for the best deal and agonizing over whether the price will drop or a new version will be released and so he waited and waited and waited. Well, the wait was over last weekend when he decided that there wasn’t going to be a better deal before Christmas time and his desire to play Lego Indiana Jones and Assassin’s Creed outweighed the need to wait for another price drop. He came home on Sunday night with both the PS3 and the Indiana Jones game.

So of course, I ran out the next day and bought SingStar.

For those of you who are not familiar with the goodness that is SingStar, it’s essentially a karaoke video game. You sing along with the song and score points for timing and pitch. All the while, the music video plays in the background. The game is so friggin’ addictive that we already have SingStar 80s, SingStar Rocks, and SingStar Pop for the PS2 and SingStar for the PS3. We need help, people.

But by and large, the most fun thing about SingStar is the WTF?! factor of some of the lyrics and videos. To that end, I submit Bonnie Tyler’s “Total Eclipse of the Heart” video. Now, keep in mind that I came from a household that did not have MTV until the 90s. The only videos that I got to see were the ones that eventually made it onto NBC’s Friday Night Videos and I’m pretty sure I never saw that one because when we played the Bonnie Tyler song, I lost 2000 points simply because I could not stop laughing. Ninjas, high school swimmers and some freaky angel looking guy… this video has it all.

Enjoy.

P.S. My utmost respect to whomever can tell me what that video is supposed to be about.

I am so thankful for my wonderful friends who find glorious online time wasters and share them with me. Today’s find: The Magic MASH Machine.

For those of you who were not blessed with playing MASH in junior high (i.e. boys), it’s a wonderfully silly game where you list all your crushes (plus one or two duds), all your dream jobs (plus one or two duds), all your car choices, kid choices, dream city choices, etc. and then wait for the hands of fate to determine your future. And by hands of fate, I mean, the girl that sits in front of you in Social Studies who counts out the answers and who may or may not be cheating thereby making you end up married to the class clown, Sammy Melcheck, instead of to Alan Peterson, for whom you KNOW you are truly destined.

Ahem. . . No hard feelings, Laura.

Anyway, there is now an online version of the hands of fate. I believe it only slightly less biased than Laura Dyer. My results:

You will marry Freddy Rodriguez. [1]
After a wild honeymoon, you will settle down in Deluth in you fabulous Apartment.
You will have 0 kid(s) together.
Your family will zoom around in a Seafoam Green Chevy Nova.
You will spend your days as an Acclaimed Air Guitar Champion, and live happily ever after.

If you are so inclined, leave your fate in the comments.

________________
[1] It totally came down to either Freddy or Meatloaf. Whew!

Via Jade Park: “The confessions of a semi-successful mid-list author“

If you don’t want to hear about the noir underside of publishing — if you’re a writer longing for a literary career, or a reader who’s happier not knowing that producing and marketing a book these days involves about as much moral purity as producing and marketing a pair of Nikes — I suggest you stop reading now.

The above linked article is not a cheerful read. I’ve had a long rant coming on the publishing industry, the death of reading, and the stigma of self-publishing. I’ll see if I can’t get that up in the next week or so.