(Cue Ella Fitzgerald, singing Cole Porter:) "Oh, give me land, lots of land, under starry skies above...Don't fence me in..."
It's much more open and much less thorny here. I confess it's taking a while for my eyes to adjust to the relatively spare vegetation. We see evidence that there's been some rain since we were last here, but most of the trees and bushes are looking all too dry. No matter, our nearest neighbors are far away.
I won't bore folks with repeated pictures of my sourdough starters. The North Woods starter is alive and well. The Tucson starter is still struggling. It has a more complex and tangy odor, so I hope it survives, but it didn't seem to like all the jostling that went with yesterday's drive.
I have a batch of bread dough doing its first ferment, using bethesdabakers' test batch recipe. I used the Sonoran flour blend. It's clearly a mix of white and whole wheat flours, as seen in the left frame below.
It pulled together quickly from a shaggy dough to a smooth, silky dough that passed the windowpane test easily.
I may put it in the refrigerator to retard it until tomorrow; I haven't decided yet. It's intended for tomorrow's dinner, but with a small single-rack oven I've hit problems before with trying to time everything.
