Josey Baker on Bread: Whole, Wild, Wet, Slow and Bold

November 23, 2015

...both Baker and Miller push that wetness to very high hydration levels: sometimes in the neighborhood of 120% hydration if you’re keeping score. (N.B. Hydration level refers to the ratio of water to flour by weight: 100 grams of flour mixed with 100 grams of water = 100% hydration) A big advantage of wet dough is that you don’t need to knead it. The gluten strands align on their own in the wet dough matrix. You still have to do some stretching and...

Read…

Is Facebook Useful?

Mr. Homegrown

November 30, 2015

Thoughtstylings

34 Comments

...stead, focusing on comment threads on Facebook. It may be futile, but it’s time to fight back. What I’ve resolved to do I’m not going to give up on Facebook just yet. I can’t really. As authors we have to use it to promote our work and events. And I like keeping up with friends and family. But I’ve resolved to: Post only post positive things on Facebook. I do this already, but occasionally feel the pull of negativity. My favorite Facebook posts ar...

Read…

How to Design and Fabricate Homestead Projects

Mr. Homegrown

January 14, 2016

Design

6 Comments

...nce lots of high and low culture. I drew on those experiences when it came time to come up with a cage for the veggies. Due to my fascination with out-of-favor 80’s postmodernism, I remembered Robert Venturi’s Franklin Court from an architectural history class I took as an undergrad: Impressed that I remembered a small detail from a slide show in a class I took 30 years ago, I Googled Franklin Court and showed it to Kelly. She countered with Wonde...

Read…

How to kill your palm tree

Mrs. Homegrown

November 14, 2016

Gardening, Trees

...ic street palms. We tend to give them no thought whatsoever, but it may be time to start watering them if we want to keep them. Over Prune. If you imagine a clock face overlaid on the crown of a palm, never cut above 9 and 3 o’clock. And never, ever, opt for the heinous and misguided extreme pruning called the pineapple or hurricane or candle style cut, which leaves just a few fronds poking out at the top. Pruning a palm this way will only stress...

Read…

A Guilty Pleasure: The Mid-Century Menu

Mr. Homegrown

January 19, 2016

Food

5 Comments

Back in my time-wasting grad school days I made somewhat of a hobby out of thrift shopping. Along with the mandatory copy of Herb Alpert’s Whipped Cream, every thrift store would have a collection of post-war, space-age cookbooks. Recipes, in this period, are a kind of recombinatory matrix of industrial ingredients. You take some cocktail wieners, a dollop of mayonnaise, some ketchup and a surprise ingredient, say dried prunes and roll them all u...

Read…