The Arrival of Fall

 Fall is here.  There's a pretty serious drought going on (stage 2, heading toward stage 3), so leaves are dropping early, and some color started earlier than normal.  However, plants need less water as they're going dormant, so hopefully the long-term damage will be limited.  I've been watering trees and plants for over a month (during which time I've only gotten 1/8" of rain).

My paw paws have never produced. They've been in the ground for a while now and I keep hoping I'll see blooms in the spring.  Maybe next year.  This year they turned a nicer shade of yellow than I think I have previously seen (the above picture was taken about a week ago; the tree is leafless now after a couple of hard freezes).

The muscadine vines are now fully turned; the picture below was taken a couple of weeks ago as they were midway.  The vertical orange leaves in the background are poison ivy.

 

Now begins a brief four-month window of complete dormancy to get things done.  Spring is just around the corner.

Fall Bread

 With my sourdough starter, I get optimal rise in the dough (aka sponge) at about 75 degrees.  Above 80 the rise is explosive, and letting it sit on the counter for 7 or 8 hours leads to big prebake rise, sub-optimal rise while baking.  In the colder months, I have the opposite problem.  My dough doesn't rise much at all, so needs an oven proof session of about two hours.

This fall has yielded a rapid transition from warm (> 80 indoors) to cool (barely 70).  I baked one loaf that turned out great before I had to go back to oven-proofing.

Obviously, in the summer I could switch to a daytime rise, when I could control the time a little better than when it rises overnight.  But that would be disruptive to other things in the routine. So overnight rise it is.  That will work well for the next few months.