Our Grape Arbor is a Stacking Function Fail

...eekend, combined with a few days of heat and humidity, got some very funky fermentation going. It’s like something out of my inner Martha Stewart’s worst nightmare. A poster by Benjamin Dewey. Available in his Etsy store. I wish I had a conclusion to this post with a miraculous solution, like say specially trained roof Chihuahuas. I don’t. I do wish that the non-fruit producing Vitis californica vine that grows along our northern fence could be sw...

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018 Wendy and Mikey of Holy Scrap Hot Springs

...y juice prickly pear fruit “Mad skills” Mikey’s temperature controller for fermentation and sous-vide You can find their store at: store.holyscraphotsprings.com. If you want 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...

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Craig Ponsford Bakes Whole Wheat Ciabatta

...ping the flour takes place not through kneading, but instead due to a long fermentation, a wet dough and the folding you’ll see him demonstrate. And you don’t need a spiral mixer. You can incorporate ingredients by hand or with a stand mixer. Just don’t knead! Baking requires a scale. Ponsford is very insistent about this and with good reason. As he puts it, when he hears about someone’s bread disaster, 99% of the time it’s because they did not us...

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Making Beer in Plain Language

...ferred with a tube into a second carboy. After about two to three weeks of fermentation some additional sugar is added (for carbonation) and the beer is bottled. After bottling I’ve discovered that it’s best to wait for at least three weeks, to let the carbonation happen and the flavors mellow, before sitting down with a post-structuralist theory tome and popping open a cool one. From the pictures you can see that brewing from scratch like this ta...

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