On the Lake Blvd walk

Blue skies and sunshine.  A little on the coolish side (40℉) and the barometer is up which bodes well.  

 I bottled the first batch of my “basic” beer yesterday.  Yield was 13x22 ounce bottles and 3x12 ounce bottles.  I also put aside 3x pint jars of the lees off the bottom of the fermentation vessel.

Todays experiment is a heavier bread 

Molasses Oatmeal Bread

Ingredients and costs

• 375 grams of white flour (I use Power Grain Craft Unbleached Flour) 25 pounds for $12.89 so around $0.43

• 1 tablespoon of dry malt extract ($8.00/lb, a tbsp weighs 9 grams so $0.16) 

• 2 tablespoon buttermilk powder ($4.48/12 oz, 18 grams so $0.23)

• 125 grams of oatmeal (your call, I tend toward Quaker Oats but will begin buying Bulk Bob’s Red mill. 25 pounds for $29.00 So around $0.28) 

• ¼ cup of molasses (A gallon costs around $25.00 so around $0.40) 

• 1 teaspoon salt (7g)  ($1.67 for 750 grams so $0.02)

• ¼ teaspoon vitamin C powder (a pound is $17.00) about 0.5 gram so about $0.02)

• 1-¼ cups hot water

• ½ cup lees (or trub?? who knows for sure what it is called) from last beer batch

• 1 teaspoon of the safale yeast in case the lees don’t get going.  (I figure around $0.03)

So the total cost is $1.67.  Pretty good overall, will definitely taste better toasted.  

Directions

The first task, that I finished last night is to mix together in a used, covered three-pound cottage cheese container the flour, oatmeal, malt, salt

I mixed the ¼ cup of molasses into the 1.5 cups of hot water to get everything mixed up.  Molasses is great stuff, but it is messy and drippy and kinda nasty.  If I were using an oil in this bread, I would just use the lubricated ¼ cup to measure the molasses so that it doesn’t stick (too badly anyway).  I wait for it to cool and then dump in the ½ cup of lees/trub and add it to the mixing bowl of the ancient kitchenaid.

I attach the dough hook and dump in the dry ingredients and then set the timer for seven(7) minutes on low and let it go.  Once my low-level automation has done its thing, I pull the dough of the hook and spend a minute of so (max) kneading it.

It is a pretty heavy dough.  I let it rise twice to get some rise to it.  Put it into a greased 9x5 pan and let it rise until it looks properly “loafy”.  Baked it at 350℉ for 35 minutes.

Discussion

I might let it bake for 40 minutes next time.

The discussion today centers around convenience, planning, and costs.  We have come to a place where convenience seems to rule above all.  By making everything a time-saver and always wanting to cost in the value of our time, we put ourselves into the money economy and all that does to demean the individual.  Altogether, this took around four hours.  But most of the time was spent here on the computer, talking to a neighbor, texting my sons, checking the postal mail, taking out some garbage, sweeping the kitchen floor, and vacuuming.  

In other words, I don’t count time doing normal household chores.  Some people see this kind of thing as an imposition on their valuable time so they spend money to have it done for them.  But at what point does it just not make sense?  Suppose that instead of the simple, overlapping chores that I accomplished today, I hired a maid to do the job for me?  Any service that I have been able to find costs about $120.00 for each visit.  

I have a hunch that the money spent on convenience and other such fripperies are an artifact of a different time. Old ideas like “conspicuous consumption” and “keeping up with the Joneses” may well be coming into play in the none too distant future.  

In the long time ago (1980’s) I read a book called “Voluntary Simplicity” by Duane Elgin.  It was pretty simplistic and poorly thought out, and while I thought that it had merit, most of my cohort wanted nothing to do with it.  

I think that another book is needed now, “Involuntary Simplicity”.  It won’t sell worth a damn, but it might well describe things that folks can do to get by in a future that seems very likely.