Just in time for Sunday.

[elfs]

Yummy.
Hosted on Flickr!. Click to enlarge.

That does look like one of those photographs you see on church flyers, doesn't it? It took a lot of work to get that; I don't have a tripod so I did this holding the camera in my hand, using only the light from the stove vent hood, with no flash, an extended exposure and a much slower than default shutter speed. I'm still figuring out what all that means but the result is quite nice.

As for the subject, well, I made that yesterday. It's amazing how easy plain French bread has become for me; I just toss yeast, water, and flour together and it seems to work. A few people have raved about the "no knead" bread recipe but I have to wonder if it's really that much fun to skip the kneading part. The only secrets are to have a sheet of canvas for shaping the loaf and a well-heated baking stone to make sure the temperature in the oven is correct and even. And the smell of fresh-baked bread in the house is absolutely worth the relatively minimal effort.

I've been having a hard time getting up the energy to write this week. Some of that is clearly because I've been doing a single dad routine. I did manage to sketch out a timeline for the Sterlings series only to realize there's this huge flamin' hole between Dove's major resolution and Zia's major resolution. Since I'm doing a kinky "Tales of the City... with dickgirls... in space!" sort of thing, I need to find a way to fill that hole. I have two sideline couplings available, so to speak, and/or maybe a military crisis (that would at least involve rewriting Zia's end story so she acknowledges that the crisis happened, she and her lover being involved with the military and all), but again, the energy is there.

Ah, what the hell. Maybe I'll write the last chapter of Jerrica's Story first, so I know where I'm planning on ending up.

Comments

[hydrolagus.livejournal.com]

The no-knead bread is tasty and uncomplicated, and therefore good for highly distractable cooks. One other trick with bread dough that my mom taught me is that moistening your hands or utensils will keep the bread from sticking when transferring it from one surface to another.