#sothatshowtheydoit

NB: making a pure-levain bread is much more difficult than I expected. If you choose to go pure levain, keep very careful notes and do your best not to get discouraged when you don’t get the oven spring you wanted.

That said, King Arthur Flour has a fantastic recipe for sourdough bread that uses a low-hydration dough with your starter and some dried yeast. I love it, and it is sensational one or two days after it comes out of the oven, especially if you warm it up.

I suggest that you follow the feeding schedule from FWSY for your starter, and plan on giving it four or five days to get going before you use it.

is that a glitch or did you whiten stuff out?

that is real haha

and, like, personally.... i want to have more faith than that in the system? it way sucks though...

what year was this for?!

do you have a favorite "so you've never listened to opera before" opera?

“listened to” is not something I recommend at all—just listening to opera is a bit like just reading Shakespeare. Sure, it’s fine in a pinch, but it’s meant to be watched.

However, if you’re interested in diving into opera, here are a few I recommend:

COMEDIES

Rossini - The Barber of Seville and/or Mozart - The Marriage of Figaro (they are based on plays number 1 and 2, respectively, of an immensely popular French play trilogy. Between the two, I’d recommend The Marriage of Figaro for first-timers, but it does add an interesting layer of understanding to watch both!)

Rossini - La Cenerentola (Cinderella as a comedy!)

Offenbach - La belle Hélène (based on parts of the Iliad but, like, hilarious)

Prokofiev - The Love for Three Oranges (French absurdism at its finest like I can’t even explain the plot except that a witch accidentally shows her knickers to the prince, the Jack of Clubs, and so she curses him to fall in love with three oranges... which he then goes on an epic journey to find and save)

Johann Strauss - Die Fledermaus (a bunch of rich people get drunk at a party and make fun of everything. It’s often updated so that the jokes reflect current events.)

TRAGEDIES

Puccini - La Bohème (the opera RENT was based on, which adds another easy entry point)

Puccini - Tosca (powerful woman kills her would-be rapist to save her helpless lover! yaaay smashing gender roles!)

Richard Strauss - Salomé (based on Oscar Wilde’s play)

Gounod - Faust (man sells his soul to the devil. it does not go well.)

Dvorak - Rusalka (essentially The Little Mermaid, but taking place in a landlocked country)

Poulenc - Dialogues des Carmélites (omg don’t watch this but definitely do... it’s about nuns condemned to death during the French Revolution and the last scene is one of the most chilling I have ever seen)

OTHER

Humperdinck - Hänsel und Gretel (the children’s story, but an opera, lol)

Mozart - The Magic Flute (crosses many genre boundaries; both comedic and super serious and a lot of people have a lot to say about Masonic imagery in it)

but did it sound good?