orbitalfrequency

Had a fun experience today — one of my friends finally took the bait and asked me for the full download on how to make my default crusty bread. I said “hang out at my place for a full day and I’ll get you to the next level,” and he actually did it. First graduate of nick’s bread school!

(Most people want nothing to do with that whole process; you’re looking for someone who gets excited by how many parameters they’re gonna have to hand-tweak to get shit dialed in.)

Anyway, the reason I said hang around for a full day is that there’s a bunch of technique elements that are just plain unexplainable. You have to see it, and then you have to immediately do it with your own hands (and ideally instant feedback on how close you got to the right moves). YouTube can be a godsend for this but there’s nothing as good as the real deal, even if your teacher is mid at explaining physical movements. I had him do his own batch and reproduce my actions right after I did em, which also meant he got to go home with his own loaf.

With the caveat that this is only fractionally useful without some supplementary visual (and ideally tactile and olfactory) aids, I went to the trouble of writing up some notes to print out for him, so I figured I’d dump em here as well.

( Excessive bread exegesis )