Let's Go GIANTS!!!
In preparation for my impending citizenship application, i have finally crumbled and got into baseball.  The SF Giants, to be precise.  And - as it happened - I picked not only the best team to back, but the best time to get on board as the SF Giants won the World Series by a sweep on Sunday night, beating the Detroit Tigers 4-0!  Lori and I had gone to watch the previous game at Public House the night before and it was actually really exciting and the atmosphere was amazing!  Its similar to when England are playing in the World Cup and we're actually doing fairly decent (doesn't happen, I know) - everyone is united in support and cheering for their team.  When they actually won the World Series, it all went completely bat-shit crazy outside my apartment (which, as you know, is right next to the ballpark) which, again, was amazing to be right in the thick of, watching, cheering and soaking up the party atmosphere.  Yesterday, the team returned home from Detroit so, as early as about 10am, die-hard fans started to gather outside the ballpark to be there to welcome their returning heros home!   They didnt actually arrive back to the ballpark til around 4.30pm, by which time the crowd had swelled to several hundred and the police were well in control of keeping the traffic moving and the fans in order. I happened to be at home when they returned, so captured the following footage from my crappy video in my Blackberry.   Its a little dull, as all you can see are the white buses, but you can get a little taste of the atmosphere and just imagine the craziness that went down on Sunday!!   Lori - this one is for you!!

Normal Service Will be Resumed..... Soon....
Sazz-ers!!  Sorry chaps, but these last couple of weeks have been pretty intense at work, so the old blog juices have not been flowing as freely as usual - but I AM BACK!!  So, normal service will soon be resumed and - to reassure you that, despite the lack of blog posts, there has been no drop-off in the amount of crazy, here's a little snippet below from the Halloween costume 5K fun run that Lori and I did this past Saturday morning.  I'll post some more pics from that event as well as the rest of the mischief we got up to over the weekend soon....

Enjoy with CAUTION!!

On a mission in the Mission: Getting sweet with sourdough!

Ahh.....the continuing joys of Groupon and getting sweet deals to go and learn how to do different stuff  for the sheer hell of it!  Today's adventure was a Sourdough Starter workshop at La Victoria bakery in the Mission District - yey, the promise of fresh sourdough bread on tap!  Whoo-hoo!

The class was from 9am - 11am, so it was a bit of a shock to the system to be up and about at 7.30am on a Sunday morning, especially after our girl's night out the night before!  Fortunately we'd been pretty sensible the previous evening, so didn't have a hangover to contend with, so that was good!  Traffic was pretty light, so we had time to stop in this adorable little coffee shop and bakery on the way and have a kick-ass cup of coffee and bagel - very yummy.

Anyway, we found the bakery where the class was to be held no problem and waited inside the store, just through the kitchen, for the rest of the group to assemble.  I'm not sure if it was just too early or something, but the energy of the rest of the class was distinctly "off" - everyone seemed very grumpy, bored and that they didn't really want to be there!  I wondered if everyone else had been given a Groupon as a gift by a spouse or family member and so had been dragged out against their will - it was very odd.  But, we didn't let that affect our enjoyment of the class so, after everyone had arrived, the teacher - this very charismatic and joyful woman called Cat - led us into the kitchen to begin the class.

She started off by explaining what starter is and how its made and what some of the basic principles are of how to care for it.  Here is just a bit of background information from the post-workshop handout we received, in case you are curious to learn more:

STARTER OVERVIEW

Getting ready for a sourdough
smackdown

Your starter is a living thing (!) that you create and maintain in order to make bread.  Its two fundamental functions are to leaven your bread and to provide flavor.  You can create a starter by simply mixing together flour and water. When combined the microorganisms present in the flour and in the air (bacteria and wild yeast) start to ferment, first contributing to the flavor of the bread and eventually producing gas (CO2) that will cause the bread grow in volume.  Feeding the starter regularly with more water and flour keeps it healthy and active.  A starter is used to "seed" a starter culture or levain, the prefermented dough we use to mix with flour, water and salt to make bread.

Goofing around next to a big mashy-thing

Starters can be a variety of consistencies from very liquid (appearing like pancake batter or thinner) to very stiff (like modeling clay). Time, temperature, hydration (how much water it contains), the ratio of its ingredients and the type of food used will all affect the health and activity of the starter.  Get to know your starter by evaluating it using all your senses -- sight, touch, smell and taste. 

The enthusiastic Cat introducing us to The Starter as
Dull Guy looks on dully

Cat taking us through the basic principles
of sourdough starter care 

So, yes.  Evaluating your starter through all the senses - including taste.  Umm... yeah.  I can confirm that both starter at its peak of readiness, as well as starter that has gone past the peak into more of a "sour" phase taste vile!  The only one that didn't taste completely gag-worthy was the youngest starter, in its more "sweet" phase where it hasn't chomped its way as much through the flour and water.  Again, i was profoundly grateful i wasn't in the least hungover otherwise that could have got a little tricky.  As it was, one girl in the class had to step outside for a few moments, but she looked deathly ill anyway, even pre-starter snacking, which was a little worrying.

Anyway, Cat took us through the various factors that can influence how well your starter does and how quickly it moves through its maturation cycle.  Again, here's the info from the super-duper info handout we received that gives you the basic principles - who knew it was so complicated??

Five Factors Affecting Starter Health & Activity

Time, temperature, hydration, ratios and food all work together to affect one’s starter and in turn one’s bread.  Determine what kind of bread you would like and how bread baking can fit into your schedule; by consider the factors below, and their relationship, adjusting to meet your needs.

TIME: Daily feeding will train your starter to be active and reach its peak stage of fermentation at predictable times.  The feeding schedule can be set on when, and how often, you want to bake.

TEMPERATURE:  As a general rule, the higher the room temperature of the starter, the faster it will ferment and become ready for use. Controlling this temperature and the ingredients in your starter (including the water) will affect both flavor and activity. Warmer fermentation (86-96 degrees) tends to favor more acetic acid production (sour flavor) from the bacteria; yeasts in an acid environment grow better in cooler temperatures (68-78 degrees). Therefore, both starter and rising dough should be kept within this cooler temperature range.

HYDRATION: The more water in a starter, the faster it will ferment because the water gives the yeast and bacteria easier access to nutrients. The hydration percent refers to the amount of water relative to the amount of flour: 100% means equal parts flour to water, 50% means half the amount of water to the amount of flour, creating a stiff starter, which grows more slowly and requires less attention (feeding).

RATIO: The ratio of starter: flour: water represents your starter formula or feeding schedule, ie 1:5:5. Experiment with different ratios to find the best one for your environment, knowing it may change with the weather, season, and location.  Weighing ingredients is an effective way to train oneself to consistently apply a desired ratio.

FOOD: Food refers to the type of flour used to maintain your starter.  The flour used in class —Central Milling Artisan Type 85— has a higher level of gluten protein, similar to bread flour, at approximately 12% gluten protein. We like to feed our bakery starter with the same flour we bake with, but feel free to use your starter confidently with any other type of flour to make bread:  rye, spelt, whole wheat.  You can use a mix of 60/40 all-purpose or bread flour (60%) and whole wheat flour (40%) to achieve a similar protein profile, or you can use straight bread flour, which is high in strong gluten proteins. Bread flour produces the lightest, highest, and chewiest bread. Pastry and cake flours are inappropriate for bread because of their weak gluten proteins and chemical processing. Do not use bleached or bromated flours: this "sterile" flour will not repopulate the wild yeast and bacteria.

So after all the education and learning, it was time to get stuck in and get our hands dirty (or floury, I suppose) and make our own little flatbreads.  It was actually very easy indeed - i've made a few loaves of bread in my time (most recently during KSCC) so felt suitably proficient in the dough kneading and shaping department.  Our flatbreads turned out completely yummy, especially brushed with a light coating of olive oil, to complement the sprinkling of dried rosemary or sea salt or sesame seeds that we'd chosen to adorn our carbotastic confections.  So, all in all, a great little class and a fun way to spend a Sunday morning - and, I'm pleased to report, the starters are still alive and kicking as I write....

How to make sourdough flatbreads: your step-by-step recipe and picture guide....

BAKING WITH YOUR STARTER

Successful bread baking requires attention to detail.  One way achieve consistent baking results is to measure ingredients by weight (using a scale) rather than by volume (using measuring spoons and cups). Many cookbooks and on-line recipes now list weighted measures in ounces or grams.  The following formula will allow you to create flatbread similar to the one you made in class. This recipe makes 525 grams of dough: a little over one pound and enough for 6-8 flatbreads or 2 small (individual size) pizzas.

Ingredient        Bakers %        Weight (grams)^*    Weight (ounces)    Volume*                       Notes  

Flour                100%               250 g.                          9 oz.                2 cups             your choice of flour

Water              70%                 175 g.                          6 oz.                ¾+ cup                       

Starter             40%                 100 g.                          4 oz.                ½ cup              liquid starter

Salt                  2.5%                5 g.                              0.18 oz.           1 teas.             kosher salt

1. Mix ingredients by hand until well incorporated.
2. Let dough rest, covered for 15-20 minutes (at room temperature).
3. Stretch and fold dough (stretch dough out and bring ends together in the middle. Turn over and tighten into a ball by repeated "tucking" of dough underneath.)
4. Let dough rest, covered, for 15-20 minutes.
5. Repeat steps 3 and 4:  two more times for a total of three stretch and folds (total time = 1 1/2 hours)
6. Give dough a final rest, covered, in a warm location, 20-30 minutes (1 hr+ for pizza).
7. Preheat oven to 500 degrees. If using baking stone insert in oven before preheating.
8. Shape dough into desired shapes and sprinkle with seeds, herbs, salt as desired.
9. Transfer dough to oven.
10. Bake approximately 7-15 minutes until desired color.  Cool slightly and enjoy! 

*Volume measurements are approximations. f you unfamiliar with metric measures, 1 ounce equals 28 grams. This recipe’s measurements have been adjusted for ease of use, not strictly converted.  The baker’s percentage holds true regardless of measurement method.

Spread out your flour in a big ring on your worktop, then
line the inside of the ring with the salt

Add your water to the inside of your flour & salt ring 

Then add your starter into the centre of the ring 

And, using your fingertips, start to work the
water, flour, salt and starter together 

Many hands make light work!

The outcome of the group's fingertip massage
 - a lovely ball of dough! 

The float test - how to check if your
sourdough starter is at its peak! 

The class hard at work forming little dough-balls
.... Giants-style!! 

It is VERY important to name your starter.....

Constructing our flatbreads....

The carboliscious fruits of our labors!!  Delicious!!!

Its San Andreas's fault - check out the scary dark line running
through the middle of the picture

Its a J Tree Finale!
So then, we rejoin our heroes back in Joshua Tree for their escapade-filled long weekend...

After lunch and another quick snooze, we headed back out into the park for a scenic drive.  We'd picked up some tips on cool places to check out from the Visitor's Center and that we could see quite a lot within a couple of hours drive.

First stop was to head eastwards and south, into the centre of the park, and to visit Keys View.  Perched on the crest of the Little San Bernadino Mountains, Keys View offers panoramic views of Coachella Valley and the mountains beyond.   The main attraction was a freak-yourself-out view of the San Andreas fault - one of the many fault lines in this part of the world and the one that could pop at any moment...  It stretches 700 miles from the Gulf of California to the Mendocino coast north of San Francisco and - as a recent graduate of the Shake House at the California Academy of Sciences - its not going to be much fun when it happens.  I just hope my house stays standing.  But, enough of that, back to the present, non-seismic moment!  All you could really see of the fault was a dark line of rocks, so it was a little anti-climactic!

Aggressive bees?  No problem.  Just call for the bee-whisperer....

But the rest of the view was spectacular and breathtaking in its scale and grandeur - it reminded me a bit of being at the Grand Canyon, where everything was just so immense, your poor little brain simply couldn't process it properly and just, instead, went "Umm....OK.  That's cool.  Wow.  Big...".  So we goofed about for a little while, avoided the big group of Korean tourists who'd just rocked on up, and headed back to the car to continue our explorations.

Amazing view of the Sonoran desert and Santa Rosa mountains

The Three Amigos....

WHOOOOOOAAAHHH!!!
 The wind is strong at the look out....

And what's the problem again with my parking??

Whoooo.....spooky!

After Keys View, our next destination was the Cholla cactus garden - a surreal cactus patch that is one of the highlights of the park.  En route to the garden, we passed an intriguing sign for Skull Rock, so obviously had to stop and investigate further - it was actually really cool and looked like a skull (hence the name, I guess!), so we took some pics and tried to get some with the self-timer on the camera, but they ended up focused about 10 feet above my head, so never mind!!

So, onwards and eastwards to the cactus garden - one moment, you're driving through the Pinto Basin, the next you're surrounded by a weird collection of lanky, gangly, multicolored, fuzzy-looking cacti.  As soon as you spot them from the road, you want to pull over for a closer look, but that must be a very common reaction as there were lots of signs saying "DON'T STOP YET!!  CAR PARK IN ONE MILE" (roughly) so we dutifully obeyed instructions and kept going for a few minutes longer, until we could park up and hop out to explore.  By this stage, the light was just beginning to fade as it had taken us longer than expected to reach the garden.  Also, due to a lack of plumbing planning, both my travel companions were in increasing need of a restroom so, of course, there was nary a bog in sight, despite there having been loads of loos around earlier on!

So our visit was short and sweet but not without incident, despite only being there less than 20mins!  There is a little short guided trail through the cactus garden that you are not supposed to stray from - the nickname of the fuzzy cactus, the Jumping Cholla, giving you a clue as to your fate should you disobey...  This plant is an absolutely vicious bugger as the spines on the plant are so prickly and sensitive, they seem to jump out at you.  The tiny barbed hooks on the spines can easily penetrate flesh and, when the hapless victim (or in this case, Lori), tries to pull away, the cactus joint often comes with it, digging deeper as you struggle to try and remove it.  All this we read after our little visit which is why we only realized after the event just how completely stoopid our little photo shoot was below!!  (especially mine!).  Lori accidentally got a bit embedded in her foot after her off-road incursion and it was very painful to remove - I shudder to think now what would have happened had i lost my footing and stumbled forward into the great big cholla bush I was pretending to hug.  Yeah..they may look cute, fluffy and eminently huggable but I think I had a very close escape from a complete facial spikefest - eek.

Just one or two vicious barbed spikes....

Umm..... proof that being smart doesn't guarantee
you have common sense!

Before....  

A very welcome sight...

After our cactus-wrangling, it was time to hightail it outta there and look for a restroom, stat!!  Fortunately, we found one about 15mins drive away, at this lovely campsite, so i parked up quickly and both Karen and Lori made a run for it!   By this stage, the sun was really starting to set, so we were treated to an absolutely spectacular sunset, as we drove out of the park and back towards our bungalow.  Incredible reds and yellows, oranges and golds.  Simply stunning.  Enjoy the pictures below....

Groovy baby...

Day 3: Farewell, Joshua, hello Marilyn!
Sunday morning, and it was time for a Disney-redo, with the same adorable assortment of fluffy critters as before.  We had a nice and easy, relaxed morning as we didn't need to check out of the bungalow until midday, so we just vegged out and did our best to consume the remaining food in the fridge (including a smoothie that was probably close to 50% peanut butter!).   Sitting out the back, reading trashy magazines and watching the sun come up, the hummingbirds flitting to and from the nectar dispenser, it was another perfect start to the day and a fitting end to our short but sweet sojourn in Joshua Tree.  I would definitely like to come back here, perhaps in the spring, when all the desert wildflowers are in bloom - its supposed to be absolutely gorgeous.  And I would definitely stay at the bungalow again - it was such a great base to explore the park from.  Anyway, finally it was time to load the car up and say farewell, and head back to Palm Springs for our early evening flight to SF.  Here are some of my favorite wildlife pics from the morning:

No..... thank YOU!!

Bizarro largest sculpture in the world
 of Marilyn Monroe

We got back to Palm Springs just before lunchtime, so went and got some (non-Thai!) food for lunch, then wandered round for a little bit, exploring the very tacky clothing stores.  One store was misleadingly named British Invasion and it was very weird inside - other than the apparel (which was entirely synthetic, completely devoid in any taste and generally bedazzled to within an inch of its life), the guy in the store completely ignored us but was instead 100% focused on his Direct TV and selecting You Tube videos of Russian beauty pageants to watch.  Very bizarre and a little disconcerting.  So we beat a hasty retreat and went and had some very delicious frozen yogurt from this little store in the gay part of Palm Springs.  Duly restored, it was time to face the heat for the last time, walk back to the car, look up Marilyn's skirt and head to the airport.

Our flight was a bit delayed (way to go, United) but we finally got underway (along with a veritable contingent of cat ladies (and their moggies) as well as a very drunken ladies tennis team) and landed back in SF around 10pm.   Lori very kindly gave me a lift home, so i was all tucked up in bed by midnight and reflecting on what had been a thoroughly enjoyable weekend.  I feel very lucky to be able to visit such amazing places and to have such great friends to share the experience with - here's to our next adventure!!