Tolkien and Trees

...abashed partisan of trees. A couple of quotes from him regarding trees are making the rounds on the internet, but I’ve learned to distrust popular quotations. They are often misattributed or downright made up. So I searched his edited letters for references to trees. There are many–he always mentions trees when he describes places, has funny things to say about artists who can’t draw trees, and has many trees of significance in his books, which he...

Read…

Josey Baker whole / wild / wet / slow / bold

...https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J9pAObqHzXI The bread nerd club I co-founded, the Los Angeles Bread Bakers, brought Josey Baker down to LA to teach a class. Now you can watch a version that very same class via Youtube for freeeeeee. I’m a huge fan of his method and his book Josey Baker Bread. If you’re interested in making your own bread skip the Netflix tonight and get whole, wild, wet, slow and bold....

Read…

How to Mix and Shape Dough Explained Without Words in Two Minutes

...bout this video: Bakers use scales and so should you. Mixing dough entails making an incredible mess. Learning to shape dough requires practice. As regards point #3, my plan is to mix up some practice dough (I use the dead dough recipe in the Bouchon Bakery Cookbook but any bread dough will do) and practice over and over. As a professional once told me when I complimented her on her pizza shaping prowess, “It’s because I’ve done it 10,000 times.”...

Read…

Boozing Bees

...showed in a study that proved that even fungicides, thought to be safe, can impact bee colonies. In over a hundred years of tinkering with chemicals and bees we’re still making stupid mistakes. In addition to that whiskey there’s a lot of other things we shouldn’t be dosing bees with....

Read…

Saturday Tweets: Spiders, Boomerangs and a New HGTV

...via @Curbed — Root Simple (@rootsimple) July 2, 2018 I’m getting better at making and throwing #boomerangs. This thing was made out of light weight, cheap, underlayment plywood from home depot. Got the plans from this ridiculously large and entertaining database https://t.co/9gtj8155J2. Fun to browse just to see silly shapes. pic.twitter.com/XxFfqWwvpu — federico tobon (@wolfCatWorkshop) July 6, 2018 Meanwhile, in the beautiful world of medieval m...

Read…