Monday 11th June - Sourdough loaves, Breadmakers, Haikus

This is just a random hurdy-gurdy of what's filling my brain at the moment;

Working backwards... (why not!)

Haikus

Last night, before I went to bed, I did some work on the "Making Poetry" free online course from www.futurelearn.com that I'm part way through.

So far I've dabbled with sestinas and villanelles, and now it was the turn of Haiku. They hadn't been heard of when I did English Lit at school (I don't remember that we did much in the way of poetry anyway!)

The current poetry task is to take two words to use are "prompts" and make a poem. The haiku is a terrible, terrible thing!

Haiku (or hokku) A Japanese verse form most often composed, in English versions, of three unrhymed lines of five, seven, and five syllables. A haiku often features an image, or a pair of images, meant to depict the essence of a specific moment in time.
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/learn/glossary-terms/haiku-or-hokku

Terrible, in that when you are lying awake at night, trying to get to sleep, to have your mind invaded by haiku-mania is a sure-fire way of staying awake for ever.

I find a haiku
is rather more difficult
than I thought at first.

"You'll be surprised",
they said in the instructions
"at what you'll achieve".

My head's full of words
in never-ending circles
that create nonsense.

Please, please, make it stop!
I'm desperate to be sleeping!
not counting the words.

and so forth.

At one point I started a villanelle


I'm lying awake
Turning words round in my head
Constructing haikus

words filling my mind
do not encourage slumber
I'm lying awake..

It's quite a puzzle
to choose the perfect phrase when
Constructing haikus

And a villanelle!
It's no wonder that I find
I'm lying awake.

The words I should use,
'Hope' and 'loom', won't flow when
constructing haikus.

criss cross threads of day, warp, weft
hope in my story's loom while
I'm lying awake
Constructing haikus

It's not great, but it will have to do!

Breadmaking Machines

I've just put this into today's blog as this is a link to making sourdough bread in the bread machine which looks promising. I thought if I posted it here there was a chance I might not lose it.

http://blog.rachelcotterill.com/2014/04/making-sourdough-in-bread-machine.html

Sour-Dough Loaves

I've rashly begun a second starter.

The first one comes from a book all about "healthy fermented foods". It (the starter, not the book) is made with rye flour and will take 14 days to be ready. It involves an awful lot of discarding most of what you have brewed up every couple of days while you are growing it.

The second one uses "all-purpose" flour - I'm hoping that white bread flour will do the trick, and came from here  This should be ready in five days and doesn't involve chucking most of it away, which is probably why they stipulate a 2 quart (? of, four pints. why didn't you say so) bowl.
I've hidden it at the back of the counter so maybe he won't notice it...

But then I read the recipe for making the actual bread. What a faff! Making puff pastry from scratch would be less tie consuming! The whole process takes several days of kneading and proving and shaping and proving and turning and rising...

which is why I started wondering about bread machine recipes. I'm not bothered about healthy or authentic - just let me have some home-made sour-dough bread!

All these sour-dough loaves
are needy, demanding and,
attention-seeking.