Another Bread Post

I seldom bake white bread.  While it has its pluses, overall I prefer some whole wheat flour.  Since I just baked a loaf of 100% whole wheat, however, I decided to go the other way and do a loaf of white.

Temps for the overnight rise were rather warm, probably about 82 or so, and rise it did: over about 8 hours, it bumped up against the plastic wrap covering the bowl.

This has happened before with all-white flour dough, and it has always been in the summer when it has done this--I have never seen anything this explosive with dough mix that includes any amount of whole wheat flour.

Ordinarily, a vigorous pre-baking rise seems to portend poor oven spring, and that may have actually happened in this case.  However, the volume of the dough mass that went into the baker was so large it didn't really matter.

What came out of the oven was pretty nice.

I haven't often (or maybe ever) used a ruler for scale, but this loaf has a bigger cross-section than anything I have ever baked with whole wheat (even with vital wheat gluten added).  That's just the way it usually goes.  For a semi-useful comparison, here's the 100% whole wheat loaf again from the last baking session:

Back to the white loaf:  the structure shows that the rise, while pretty dramatic in comparison, was well-controlled and uniform (unlike what I was getting last winter when I let the dough sit out overnight at 60 degrees then switched to the oven for a couple of hours at 100).

So it was a success.  Maybe it's easier to be successful with white flour, but I usually get at least decent results (if not serve-to-guests-good) with some blend of whole wheat, despite occasional spinouts.

Sediment, Continued

As I noted a while back, the water from my well has sediment.  A lot of sediment.  The filter I was using previously, a one-micron wound string unit, worked pretty well, but some clay got through.  My filters are mostly nominal one micron, not absolute: the difference is explained here, in a document by the University of Nebraska Extension Service.  Essentially, with a nominal filter, some particles larger than one micron will get through--the standard indicated in the publication is 85% of particles with the size of the filter rating.  That being said, clay particles can be smaller than one micron: the Nebraska piece indicates they they can be as small as 0.2 microns.

I do have an 0.5 micron absolute filter cartridge that I may try sometime.  For now, I'm getting good results with nominal 1.0 micron filters.

The water is pretty good, without readily visible sediment, as I noted before.  Dishes and white clothes look okay to me, although with time they may look sandblasted (in the case of the dishes) or red-tinted (for the clothes).

That being said, as with the toilet tank, evidence of what's getting through can be found.  The picture shows what happened when I wiped out the detergent dispensing tray from my washing machine.  Even though the water flow rate is pretty high, unmistakable evidence of clay can be found.  A reverse osmosis filter could remove even more, but that would require a much larger filtration setup--multi-stage--that might impact throughput too much...for negligible gain.

A Nice 100% Whole Wheat Loaf

...Nice for summer, that is: the house is cooling down a little, but was still about 80 overnight during the rise.  With the newly fine-ground wheat from the Mockmill, the loaf turned out decent (no vital wheat gluten).

The first rise was about 8 hours and the second one was about 25-30 minutes.  It's white whole wheat, so the flavor is pretty mild.  The first two slices were rather small, but that's typical of 100% loaves--and much better than the nasty disaster of a couple of months ago.

Murine Recidivism

Trigger warning: this post discusses ways to trap mice and contains homicide scene photos.

My current house is older than the previous one I was living in, and it has a crawlspace (the other one was on a slab).  I'm not exactly sure where all of the gaps are, but mice can get into the house with little apparent difficulty.  When I was remodeling the place it was largely empty, and I was surprised to see mouse sign in the house in the fall and winter.

The picture is overexposed and out of focus, but clearly shows a mouse running around in what would become the master bedroom.  In the background, along the wall, is a spring trap baited with peanut butter that was never of any interest...that was my first (and unsuccessful) attempt at eliminating them.

Also in the background you can see long boxes: those contained blinds.  I had to replace one that the mice got into before installation; it/they snipped a bunch of the cords for use in a nest.

I then upped my game.  Maybe the peanut butter was no good the first time (I assume mice wouldn't like old rancid peanut butter any more than humans would; maybe it wasn't fresh--I got some single-serving PB containers to haul up to the house before I was living there and didn't try it on my own to see how good it was).  I got some Mini T-Rex mousetraps  (the link takes you to Shawn Woods's YouTube channel; he knows more about mousetraps than I ever will).  I got a 12-pack from Do-It-Yourself Pest Control.  The traps have mostly proven effective.  I also have set a number of Victor Tin Cat live catch mousetraps (I like the ones with see-through lids, although some have alleged the mice can chew through the plastic and escape).  I have continued to use peanut butter for bait; it does eventually go bad but seems to be palatable for some time if fresh when deployed.  Mice also like it.

I have a number of each kind of trap set out, and can go months with no mice.  Then all of a sudden, I'll get a spate of captures in one of the live catch traps.  I can catch mice in T-Rex traps in quick succession, too, but the streaks are more of a problem with the live catch traps.  Last December, I had a mouse in the same trap every morning for about five days in a row.  You can see where this is going...

I would release the mice far from the house--in some cases over 100 yards away on the other side of the road in front of my house.  Mostly I have caught deer mice.  They are supposed to have a range of about 0.5 hectares, aka 1.25 acres; a circle 262 feet in diameter is all the farther they should travel.  I thought.  You can see where this is going...

The spate of December captures ended when I released a mouse on the last day and inadvertently killed it. It started running back toward the house and I blocked it with my foot; it ran around the block and I tried to block it again, coming down on top of it by mistake.  So that was the end of that mouse and the end of the break-ins.  I began to wonder if I had a recidivism problem.

The next time I caught a mouse in a live catch trap was not long ago.  I had put one in the attic (baited with pecans) and one morning heard insistent tapping sounds, which were the mouse pushing against the box trying to get out.  I released it on the other side of the road.  A few days later I caught one in a different live catch trap and before releasing it, marked it with a magenta paint marker.  I drew a line or two on its fur and the mark wasn't very apparent, so I marked it more heavily on its left haunch, then released it and chased it into the undergrowth on the other side of the road.

Three days later I found this by the water heater.

When I took it outside, I flipped it over and saw this:

Two observations: First, it was the mouse I had caught before and marked.  You can see red streaks on its fur.  Second, I obviously caused a big problem with the heavier marking.  The mouse pulled out its fur.  My bad.  At any rate, the return of the mouse was disheartening.

It's even worse than I thought.  A mere 100 yards in no way gets it done.  I didn't read the above-linked article carefully enough.  It notes that, "Individuals that biologists have marked and then displaced have returned to their nests, on traveling 3.2 km (2 mi) in two days."  Two miles?!

This means the options are kill traps only or relocation far from my house.  I'm not averse to the latter; I can easily dump the mice out 10 miles from home.

Another option is poison, which I'm not wild about using.  I'd have to combine it with the live-catch traps, because rodents that eat poison bait and then leave the bait station to die are hazardous to predators. Compared to all of this, the kill trap is quite humane.

More Bread Developments

Back in July I wrote about the worst loaf of bread I had ever baked.  It might not have been the very worst.  I have had some rye loaves turn out pretty badly, too.  But July's loaf was definitely a D- (at best).

I noted in July that "I might need to adjust the stones in my mill."  That was indeed the case.  My emmer grain is all gone for the moment, but ordinary white hard wheat was on the table for last week's bake.

I finally checked my Mockmill and found that it was indeed grinding coarse.  It had drifted to about setting 3 (1 is finest and should be calibrated to where the stones just barely touch when the mill is running empty).  I moved it back to 1 and was pretty pleased at the fineness of the grind.  It wasn't as powdery as some commercial whole wheat flours, but it was comparable to some (e.g., King Arthur red).  This was probably the finest whole wheat flour I have worked with in several months. 

It's still summer here, so the house was very warm.  In the overnight rise, the dough almost filled the bowl. That's usually not a good omen for the loftiness of the final loaf, so I was prepared to be disappointed.  I think I got the dough form a little misshapen when folding it over and getting it ready for the proofing basket.  During the second rise in the proofing basket, once the oven was warming, the loaf got a little more distorted. Normally there isn't much rise because I have cut the second time short to just the preheating time: about 25 minutes.  However, this time it did noticeably bulk up.

The final product was pretty good, if asymmetric.

As you can see, the rise is very decent and the crumb is okay (or at least as okay as it ever is with my efforts).  There will be substantial slice size variation, but I have long ago learned to be satisfied with asymmetry and sandwiches of all sizes.

I'll have to wait until the next baking session to see if this was just a serendipitous confluence of factors that can't be replicated or if it is something I can do going forward.

Update: the next baking session has come and gone, and the results were similar--a pretty good loaf.

This I can definitely work with.  The first rise was about 9 hours and the second, as normal, about 25 minutes.

"Bigger than a Bread Box..."

The title used to be a common way to describe the size of something.  My parents might have had a bread box at some point when I was growing up, but I didn't really know how big one actually was.  I visualized something about the size of a loaf of bread.

When I moved into the new house, I realized I might have a need for one.  When I bake a loaf of bread, I usually leave it out for about a day to harden the crust.  I realized that with the possibility of mice--I have caught them in the house before--I needed a better plan than letting it sit on the counter unprotected.  I have never had anything go after my loaves while they have been sitting out--here or at my other house--but finding a loaf with bite marks and rodent droppings on it would not be welcome.

So I hopped online and started looking.  I was surprised that they were somewhat large-ish, certainly bigger than a single loaf.  Shown above is the box I got with one of my standard two-pound loaves.

Somewhat visible on the lid are a bunch of ventilation holes.  A tiny bug could get through them, but nothing larger.  What I have found is that the box does a good job of keeping bread fresh--maybe a little too fresh.  When I stick a loaf in there, it softens the crust a bit.  I don't store bread in it long-term; I just put it there (sometimes) on the day I bake it. Then the loaf goes into the refrigerator; that's a solution that works for me and keeps bread usable longer than just a few days.

The box is also big enough to hold a bag of potato chips, bananas that aren't fully ripe, or other items that are vulnerable to predation (not necessarily all at once).

Garden Carts

I have a nice wheelbarrow.  I got it at Lowe's 20 years ago and it still serves me well.  For some tasks, like hauling dirt or other dense, heavy items, wheelbarrows are optimal (though for truly heavy loads, one with dual tires would probably be better than my model).

However, for other things they leave much to be desired, such as hauling brush.  I have a long driveway and keeping the privet, wisteria, and other plants hacked back during the growing season is a chore.   Recently, I did some trimming along the driveway.  I used a garden cart instead of the wheelbarrow--I got mine at Carts Vermont.  Its capacity is nominally only about double the wheelbarrow, but because of the box shape and the handle, it can hold far more plant cuttings.  I was able to pile brush high on the cart and balance it for the walk back up the driveway, towing the cart behind me.  I don't know if it was effective or not, but I cut some lower-stem pieces and stuck them into the stack vertically to try to hold it together.  One way or another, it worked, and nothing fell off on the walk.  Most of the cart is privet, although there was some wisteria and a few oak or pine saplings (very fortunately, there's no poison ivy in the area I was cutting).  Before loading, I trimmed everything to be about 4-6 feet long so that I could still get a decent grip on the handle.  Here's a side view:

When dumped into the truck bed, before stomping the load down, the one load from the cart looked like this:

I'm impressed with its hauling ability.