How's the Weather in Florida Today?
Jan. 27th, 2026 11:10 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
pshaw_ravenMy second batch of bagels was a success. This time around I ended up letting the dough have a 48-hour cold ferment because we ordered a set of Nordic Ware aluminum baking sheets and had to wait on delivery. The flavor developed nicely, though, so I may start just doing that as a normal practice. The bagels also baked up much better, since I now have two matching pans, instead of the hodge-podge of baking sheets we all tend to accumulate over time.
I found that bagel boards are overkill when you aren't putting toppings on them, so I skipped that step entirely. I also used half bread flour and half high-gluten specialty flour. This has solved the problem I was having with the shaped bagels sticking to the pan no matter what kind of greasing I did, and then going flat and not getting any oven spring. These keep their shape almost aggressively. Several actually closed up and have bellybuttons instead of proper holes.
I've got a new St. Felix story more or less done, but I'm working on an illustration, and it's taking longer than it ought because there's a house in it, and I'm not good at buildings. I'm trying. :)
I fell off reading The Mahabharata for a little while but started up again. The Bhagavad Gita is done and we're now in the war, which is kind of like a lot of other wars in ancient epics. I'm also reading The Iliad, and it, too, has long passages of basically, "This guy killed this other guy, son of so-and-so from this place, and here's the gruesome way he died, and his soul went to the land of the dead." They're honestly very skippable. Except in this case, I think all of book six is taken up with the Kurukshetra War, so I'm just going to have to slog through it. War. War never changes.
Said the person who has never been in a war.
Well, I was in a food fight in college.
We're staying warm here but we will probably need to cut a tree down later this week or maybe this weekend. There's a sick or damaged one that Fox located that looks easy enough to get to. He says it's weeping sap about ten feet up and looks like it might have been storm-damaged. Just looking at the upcoming forecast for here. We're going to be staying cold until well into next week - as I assume everyone else is, as well.
I found that bagel boards are overkill when you aren't putting toppings on them, so I skipped that step entirely. I also used half bread flour and half high-gluten specialty flour. This has solved the problem I was having with the shaped bagels sticking to the pan no matter what kind of greasing I did, and then going flat and not getting any oven spring. These keep their shape almost aggressively. Several actually closed up and have bellybuttons instead of proper holes.
I've got a new St. Felix story more or less done, but I'm working on an illustration, and it's taking longer than it ought because there's a house in it, and I'm not good at buildings. I'm trying. :)
I fell off reading The Mahabharata for a little while but started up again. The Bhagavad Gita is done and we're now in the war, which is kind of like a lot of other wars in ancient epics. I'm also reading The Iliad, and it, too, has long passages of basically, "This guy killed this other guy, son of so-and-so from this place, and here's the gruesome way he died, and his soul went to the land of the dead." They're honestly very skippable. Except in this case, I think all of book six is taken up with the Kurukshetra War, so I'm just going to have to slog through it. War. War never changes.
Said the person who has never been in a war.
Well, I was in a food fight in college.
We're staying warm here but we will probably need to cut a tree down later this week or maybe this weekend. There's a sick or damaged one that Fox located that looks easy enough to get to. He says it's weeping sap about ten feet up and looks like it might have been storm-damaged. Just looking at the upcoming forecast for here. We're going to be staying cold until well into next week - as I assume everyone else is, as well.
