Thomas Pynchon on Pizza

...a cough remedy, the rennetless cheese reminded customers variously of bottled hollandaise or joint compound, and the options were all vegetables rigorously organic, whose high water content saturated, long before it baked through, a stone-ground twelve-grain crust with the lightness and digestibility of a manhole cover. Pynchon being Pynchon, pizza appears frequently in his novels as a multi-valiant symbol. In Vineland it’s a symbol of the Dharma...

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How do I get started baking bread?

...overly lengthy and, often, confusing. Best of all, Baker emphasizes whole grain, sourdough fermented breads. Baker has summarized all the popular methods out there right now in one place. Want to make a New York Times no-knead/Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day type loaf? No problem, that’s the first loaf in Baker’s book. Want to make a Tartine style loaf without reading a hundred pages of directions? No problem, that’s also in the book. Wan’t t...

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Saturday Tweets: From Archery to Jaywalking

...8sM2RcL6lk — Root Simple (@rootsimple) January 22, 2015 Process (Five Year Grain Program) http://t.co/aD8DC5d8ur via @BellegardeNola — Root Simple (@rootsimple) January 21, 2015 5 reasons that Fake grass is so Dead http://t.co/koX2q1nb5h — Root Simple (@rootsimple) January 21, 2015 True impact of settlers on erosion rates in North America revealed http://t.co/wlsoY65EUU — Root Simple (@rootsimple) January 21, 2015 Methinks we’re in a bubble: Cryst...

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Rip-sawing by hand

...ace of clamps when rip-sawing (cutting a piece of wood lengthwise with the grain). Some other pointers: The angle at which the saw is held is of importance . . . A common mistake is to “lay” the saw: that is, to bring it too much into the horizontal, and this is especially the case when learning to follow the pencil lines with the saw. It is a habit which the beginner should get out of as soon as he can. The stroke should be wellnigh the full leng...

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