The Rye Revolution

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Bread, Events, Food
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At last the rye revolution has arrived! We have nothing to lose but our fake supermarket rye loaves. I’m happy to say that the Los Angeles Bread Bakers is hosting a class with the rye expert, Stanley Ginsberg tomorrow, Saturday the 7th of October. There’s still space in the class if you’re interested. Head here to sign up. If you live elsewhere or can’t make it, Ginsberg has penned what I believe to be the definitive book on rye baking, The Rye Baker: Classic Breads from Europe and America. In the book Ginsberg covers every imaginable rye recipe from around the world, from loaves to crackers to scones.

Since it’s hard to find good rye loaf even in a big city, learning to bake your own rye really pays off. The unique chemistry of rye, especially when leavened with a sourdough starter, also means that a rye loaf stays fresh longer. Due to all that’s happened in the past year I’ve had to put baking on hold. When I get back into it I’m going to focus exclusively on rye.

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The Rye Baker: Classic Breads from Europe and America. True rye bread―the kind that stands at the center of northern and eastern European food culture―is something very special. With over 70 classic recipes, The Rye Baker introduces bakers to the rich world of rye bread from both the old world and the new. Award-winning author Stanley Ginsberg presents recipes spanning from the immigrant breads of America to rustic French pains de seigle, the earthy ryes of Alpine Austria and upper Italy, the crackly knäckebröds of Scandinavia, and the diverse breads of Germany, the Baltic countries, Poland, and Russia. Readers will discover dark, sour classic Russian Borodinsky; orange and molasses-infused Swedish Gotländ Rye; nearly black Westphalian Pumpernickel, which gets its musky sweetness from a 24-hour bake; traditional Old Milwaukee Rye; and bright, caraway-infused Austrian Country Boule

111 Cardoons, Medlars and Hipster Toilets

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Fruit Trees, Gardening, Podcasts, Vegetable Gardening, Water and Power
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On the podcast this week, Kelly and I read and respond to listener questions and comments about cardoons, medlars and Toto’s Eco Promenade toilet! Here’s some links to the topics we rap about:

If you’d like to leave a question for the Root Simple Podcast please call (213) 537-2591 or send an email to [email protected]. You can subscribe to our podcast in the iTunes store and on Stitcher. The theme music is by Dr. Frankenstein. Additional music by Rho. A downloadable version of this podcast is here.

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Baco: Vivid Recipes from the Heart of Los Angeles. Visually stunning and conceptually fresh, this is the cookbook of the season from Josef Centeno, the chef credited with capturing the myriad tastes of Los Angeles on the plate. Recipes span from simple to show stopping, exploring sauces, soups, mains, salads, and desserts, too. More than 130 vivid photographs convey the beauty and excitement of Chef Centeno’s extraordinary cooking.

What’s Buried in Your Backyard?

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Thoughtstylings
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I hate digging. Around the Root Simple compound, if you dig deeper than six inches and you hit a layer of hard packed clay entwined with tree roots and chunks of concrete. At least my digging efforts yield the artifacts of previous inhabitants in addition to the raw material for adobe ovens.

While recovering from a bad cold this weekend I fell deep into the hole that is the Historic Glass Bottle Identification and Information Website created by a retired Bureau of Land Management Rangeland Management Specialist, Bill Lindsey. While the bulk of the internet consist of intemperate tweets and cats, it still has useful information like Lindsey’s bottle website which was created to, “assist archaeologists with the dating, identification and classification of historic bottles and bottle fragments located during cultural surveys and excavations.” You can lose a lot of hours on this site marveling at the design details and uses of old bottles. There’s a handy page for dating bottles, scans of antique bottle catalogs, and page after page of bottle types.

My unintended archaeological efforts have yielded no Spanish doubloons, viking graves or Anasazi ruins, but I have found lots of glassware, mostly broken milk bottles. I’ve also discovered what I think are cheap perfume bottles like the one above. If you know what this bottle contained please leave a comment. I suspect perfume, because this tiny bottle has a very narrow, flow restricting opening.

What have you found while digging on your homestead?

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Strong Is the New Pretty: A Celebration of Girls Being Themselves. Girls being fearless. Girls being silly. Girls being wild, stubborn, and proud. Girls whose faces are smeared with dirt and lit up with joy. So simple and yet so powerful, Strong Is the New Pretty celebrates, through more than 175 memorable photographs, the strength and spirit of girls being 100% themselves.

Saturday Tweets: Cactus Confit, Fissionable Poker and a Lion knight Riding a Unicorn

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Saturday Linkages
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A Lithium Batteries

The World’s Most Beautiful Font?

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Design
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The Futility Closet podcast had an interesting episode a few weeks back that told the story of the creation of what many consider to be the most beautiful font ever designed: Doves type. In 1913 the type’s creator, Thomas James Cobden-Sanderson, threw the typeface into the Thames rather than let it fall into the hands of his unscrupulous business partner.

Designer Robert Green spent years attempting to recreate the font. Unsatisfied with the results, he went to the bridge that Cobden-Sanderson had stood on while pitching tons of typeface. Over one hundred years later in the shallow, muddy waters at the base of the bridge, Green found enough Doves typeface to perfect his digital recreation. You can now purchase Doves font through Green’s website.

Something should also be said for Cobden-Sanderson’s bookbinding skills.

William Morris made some equally impressive printing achievements with his Kelmscott Press, a last ditch effort to hold back the tides of industrialized mediocrity. I found a list of Kelmscott Press facsimiles that you can view online including John Ruskin’s The Nature of Gothic : A Chapter of The stones of Venice.

Call me fuddy-duddy, but I think the Cobden-Sanderson/Morris Arts and Crafts posse have a few things left to tell us about the importance of beauty in our lives.