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.

Snow, 2022

 It happens sometimes.  The mountain counties probably get snow every winter, but elsewhere, it's not an every-winter thing.  I got snow in mid-January this year for the first time since February, 2020. 

The total amount of snow was probably around three inches, but there was rain in between two bouts of snow, so the amount at the end of it all was less.

Southern lore holds that if the snow stays on the ground three days, another snowfall will occur soon--and it did, sort of.  I got a few flurries about a week later, but there was minimal accumulation.  The cold is not done for the year, although the snow may be / probably is.  Although snow is possible into early March, that is very rare.  March is early spring around here.

Snow and Ice

Snow in north Georgia isn't all that rare, but entire winters can go by without any snow at all.  Freezing rain is about as common as snow.

The pictures immediately below show a recent two-inch snowfall in north Georgia. The mountains got more, up to seven inches.  Inside Atlanta, very little fell and it didn't really stick.

Most often when it snows at all, it's less than one inch.  This snow didn't last long: less than 24 hours.  It started to fall out of the trees within a couple of hours as it warmed up to the mid-30s.

The pictures below show the aftermath of a bout of freezing rain.  Sometimes ice can knock out power and bring things to a halt for a couple of days.  The trees shown are, in order, a crepe myrtle, a sweet gum, and a couple of flowering cherries.