I carry no phone An aspiring Luddite In a wired world. Mastodon Verification Link	Jeff Berry is an early adopter of the Internet and the Web, a late adopter of Twitter, and declines to adopt Facebook. With the death of Google+, he migrated to the Fediverse. He admins a medievalist Mastodon instance. He hates cell-phones.

I finally got around to reading Michael Pollan's book Cooked. It left me a bit cold (so to speak). Although I agreed with almost everything he said, the way he said it annoyed me. There is something about his style and authorial voice in this book that grated on my nerves. However, the section on sourdough contained one bit of information that I found interesting. Some of the sourdough gurus referenced in the book recommend using what seem like insanely high amounts of water in their breads - in some cases as much water as flour. My sourdough bread is very dense and I'd been experimenting with adding some extra liquid to try to get a little extra rise. Apparently 'some extra' might not be enough. A lot extra might be worth trying.

I wasn't expecting a miracle rise, of course. My sourdough bread for the last four or five years has been made with a 1:1:1 ratio of oats:white flour:whole wheat flour. (Although usually I use what is sold over here as 'brown flour' or 'half-and-half bread flour.' That reduces the number of different kinds of flours I have to keep in the cupboard.) With 1/3 of the dry ingredients being oats, I'm not expecting a light and fluffy bread. Something a little lighter than I'd been getting would be nice.

So I more or less doubled the amount of water. This means that I no longer had what I would, at first glance, call a dough. I had a batter. I also had a visibly higher rise than I had before and a somewhat chewier texture. I'm calling that a success.

I'm now experimenting with one more change in the protocol. My usual recipe now rises enough that the dough - let's go ahead and call it dough - reaches the top of the loaf tin. That's not good since it touches the covering piece of cling film and sticks to it. So I'm going to try using a pot with a lid. This has higher walls, and will also let me play around with baking it with the lid on or off and seeing what I find.

Further updates as the situation warrants.

(Oh, and I wrote earlier about sourdough bread.)

• 3/4 cup sourdough starter
• 1 cup white flour
• 1 cup water
• 1 cup oats
• 2 cups brown or half-and-half flour (or 1 each white and whole wheat)
• another cup of water
• some salt - a teaspoon?
• some olive oil - a tablespoon?

In any case, when your mixture has proofed and started to bubble a bit, add the other ingredients. I never measure the salt and oil, I just toss a bit in. Mix it well with your fingers, or even a wooden spoon. Oil or grease a loaf tin and put your batter into it. Cover it with some cling film. Let it sit for eighteen or twenty-four hours, or thirty-six ... a good long time. If I start it noonish, I certainly don't bake it until the next day, and sometimes not until the day after that.

Bake for 50 minutes at 175C (350F). Or a little longer or a little higher heat if that doesn't do the trick.