Welcome to Medary.com Monday, November 25 2024 @ 10:52 AM CST

Where sourdough yeast comes from

  • Contributed by:
  • Views: 3,113
Boing Boing:

Real sourdough, (retired pathologist and sourdough bread expert Ed) Wood tells me, begins with nothing but flour, water and your friendly, native microscopic flora and fauna. Set out a mixture of wet flour, and wild yeasts and bacteria will drop in to munch on it. The yeast produce fermentation and make the bread rise by consuming sugars in the flour and breaking them down into water, alcohol and carbon dioxide gas. The bacteria also eat sugars, leaving behind acids that give sourdough its tangy taste. There are starter recipes out there that call for store-bought yeast, but Wood brushes them off as flavorless junk. San Francisco's Exploratorium science museum has a more objective explanation. They say wild works best because yeast and bacteria are balanced. Purchase your yeast, and any wild bacteria will end up hopelessly outnumbered, unable to compete with yeast for sugary sustenance. No bacteria, no flavor.

Mmmmm. Sourdough.

Oh, but don't try selling your home-made sourdough to raise money in your local school (New York Times article). Geez, can't the Nanny State stay out of anything? This started out being one of those talk-about-something-but-politics posts. Really, it did. Damn, I'm tired of being whapped upside the head by government every time I turn around.

Thought for the day

  • Contributed by:
  • Views: 1,829
From the book Power in the People by Felix Morley, as linked by Gary Galles at the Ludwig von Mises Institute:
The American tradition is of course completely opposed to authoritarian government … The American conviction is that the 'Safety and Happiness' of the governed takes precedence over every governmental prerogative and that deference is not necessarily owing to those temporarily in a position of political command.

Ding, dong, the Stick is dead

  • Contributed by:
  • Views: 1,183
Which old stick?

This old stick.

Ding dong, the wicked Stick is dead!

OK, for those of you too lazy to click through: the article's title is "United Nations pulls hockey stick from climate report."

The "hockey stick" is one of the key props under the pseudo-scientific "global warming/climate change" conjecture.

I call it a conjecture because not only is it not proven, it has already been falsified. Repeatedly.

The world may be warming, it may be cooling, but CO2 isn't doing it.

"Lesse...'Congress shall make no . . .' aw, f**k it . . ."

  • Contributed by:
  • Views: 1,172
Item 1: President Obama's hand-picked representative to the (laughably mis-named) U.N. Human Rights Council pushes through a consensus proposal to "protect the human rights of religions."

item 2: The Federal Trade Commission decides that "freedom of speech" doesn't include bloggers who accept compensation--monetary or "in-kind" for blogging.

Item 3: Congress shall make no law respecting the establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

Does that sound at all familiar to anyone? No?

For a guy who supposedly "taught Constitutional law," President Obama shows no discernible sign that he's even seen a copy of the United States Constitution, let alone read it or understood any of the smaller words, not to mention the bigger ones, nor does he demonstrate any sign of comprehension of what the various words might mean when arranged in the particular order you find them in that document.

Didn't Obama swear "so help him God" to "preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States? Anybody remember that? The whole "John Roberts flubbed it up" thing?

And to think we're stuck with this guy for three more long, long, long years.

Uh, OK . . .

  • Contributed by:
  • Views: 1,103
ABC News: Government watchdog reports Treasury and Federal Reserve knew bailed-out banks were not healthy

OK. I yield to no one in my extremely low opinion of the intelligence of people in the government, but really . . .

if a company is healthy, why the hell would even the dolts in the government want to bail them out?

(I mean, besides the usual reasons of graft and corruption, that is.)

Question 2: Why in the name of all that's holy would anybody else believe the dolts in government when they say that any industry is healthy (like these banks) -- or they say it's in dire trouble and needs immediate right-the-hell-now reform (like, oh, say health care)?