Vault of a Wurdyburd

Here’s @dduane​’s first take on it and the finished product. We’ve made even more photogenic batches since.

Kneading is easy as well; either let your machine do it, or if you don’t want to or don’t have one, get hands-on. It’s like mixing two colours of Plasticine to make a third. Flatten, stretch, fold, half-turn, repeat - it takes about 10 minutes - until the gloopy conglomeration of flour, yeast, salt and water that clings to your hands at the beginning, becomes a compact ball that doesn’t stick to things and feels silky-smooth.

Here’s what before and after look like.

My Mum used to say that if you were feeling out of sorts with someone, it was good to make bread because you could transfer your annoyance into kneading the dough REALLY WELL, and both you and the bread would be better for it.

Then you put it into a bowl, cover it with cling-film and let it rise until it doubles in size, turn it out and “knock it back” (more kneading, until it’s getting back to the size it started, this means there won’t be huge “is something living in here?” holes in the bread), put it into your loaf-tin or whatever - we’ve used a regular oblong tin, a rectangular Pullman tin with a lid, a small glass casserole, an earthenware chicken roaster…

You can even use a clean terracotta flowerpot.

Let the dough rise again until it’s high enough to look like an unbaked but otherwise real loaf, then pop it in the preheated oven. On average we give ours 180°C / 355°F for 45-50 minutes. YM (and oven) MV.

Here’s some of our bread…

Here’s our default bread recipe - it takes about 3-4 hours from flour jar to cutting board depending on climate (warmer is faster) most of which is rise time and baking; hands-on mixing, kneading and knocking-back is about 20 minutes, tops, and less if using a mixer.

Here ( or indeed any of the other pics) is the finished product. This one was given an egg-wash to make it look glossy and keep the poppy-seeds in place; mostly we don’t bother with that or the slash down the middle, but all the extras were intentional as a “ready for my close-up” glamour shot.

I think any shop would be happy to have something this good-looking on their shelf. We’re happy to have it on our table.

Even if your first attempts don’t work out quite as well as you hope, you can always make something like this…

"People with time/money" include you, owners of breadmakers and of full-sized oven kitchens. "Those who are struggling" aren't going to turn things around from the cost-saving measures of a (checks web) $20 CAD twelve-inch terracotta pot, give or take the same price or more than a baking tin from Walmart, no matter how crafty or ghetto it feels to use.

People have bought bread for literally thousands of years because it makes more sense to have a single baker wake up at 4am to do all the nonsense needed to get the loaves ready for people's breakfast. It was easy enough to do that if someone started screwing around, you could run them out of town and/or set up a competing bakery. It was so common that some of the first European laws revolved around standardizing bread production and punishing bread scams. What's changed now is that grocery has pricing precision down to a science, to figure out exactly how much people are willing to spend, while resting assured that nobody can easily compete with them due to their bulk purchase powers. It's why Canada's grocery stores could get caught in a price-fixing scheme on bread; store-bought bread is cheap enough, and consistently good enough, and is preserved to last long enough, being effortless enough, that most people will not bother with the labor-intensive, comparably high starting investment that baking your own bread might cost to someone living paycheck to paycheck.

The Vrill are one race and many. Originally human their ancestors resorted to radical bioengineering to survive on a planet devoid of metals and heavy elements. The classical human shape was remoulded into hundreds of forms, each to suit a particular role. The Zsch are the soldiers of the Vrill conglomerate, each standing 3 meters tall and armoured with an impact and heat resistant exoskeleton. They are a match for any solider from a technologically advanced culture.

PUMPKIN PUDDING PIE w/ ORANGE ZEST & CARDAMOM WHIPPED CREAM

(makes ~3 pies)

2½ cups sugar

15oz can pumpkin puree

2 eggs

½ tsp baking soda

2 cups flour

2 tsp baking powder

½ tsp ground cinnamon

¼ tsp vanilla

pinch of salt

2½ cups milk

4 TBSP butter (melted)

1 orange

1 tsp powdered sugar

1 cup heavy cream

2 TBSP powdered sugar

1 tsp cardamom

pinch nutmeg

pumpkin pudding pie w/ orange zest

preheat the oven to 325°F

prepare the pie crust (that's another recipe's job—either find a scratch recipe or buy a pre-made dough or graham cracker crust)

blend 2 ½ cups sugar, pumpkin puree, eggs, and baking soda in a large mixing bowl (if using a mixer, blend with a paddle attachment)

add the flour, baking powder, cinnamon, vanilla, and salt; blend until well mixed

add the milk and melted butter, whisk until well mixed (if using a mixer, blend with the whisk attachment)

pour your batter into the crust, filling right up to the edge (the mix will be more liquid than solid, but it will rise/solidify in the oven)

bake at 325°F for 55 minutes

remove from the oven and let it cool

top with sifted powdered sugar

zest an orange over the top of the pie (microplane if possible but regular zester is fine; have found that the most aesthetically pleasing version is to peel the orange and then finely dice the peel but that's a hassle!)

whipped cream

put your metal mixing bowl and whisk in the freezer for at least 15 minutes

whisk powdered sugar, cardamom, and nutmeg together in bowl

add heavy cream; whisk until stiff peaks start forming

Implicit or implicit enumeration of uncountable things (example: taking inventory of the fucks which one gives)

Suggesting the divisibility of things which are not customarily thought of as able to be subdivided (example: "six whole people")

Using words that aren't numbers as numbers (example: "one William dollars")

Technically correct but contextually misleading estimates (example: looking at a group of several thousand things and observing that there are "at least three")

6. Comparing a stated number to a somewhat larger number in a context where this adds no information. (example: "I found 50 dollars!" "Wow, that's almost 60 dollars!")

8. Saying “maybe more!” when someone very clearly states an exact number, ie, “I have $2.45 on me right now.” “maybe more!” “no, just… just $2.45”

L. Numbered lists with items inexplicably missing or out of order.

13. Numbering things but mixing in letters, Roman numerals, etc. ("First, we need a way into the party. B, we need a distraction so we can find the safe. And 3, we need a getaway route that will still be open after the alarms go off")

16. Using a number and its synonym like they're different. "do we need a carton of twelve eggs, or can I just get a dozen?"

17. Conflating a number's size and its value.

3

and then, two months later....

because SURPRISE, there's no such thing as "plastic" either. every kind of wood is basically the same on a chemical level, but the only thing every plastic has in common is "some of its molecules are long" and that is NOT a quality that determines how things stick together.

I just ordered some stuff I hope will permanently stick a circuit board to a steel sheet and withstand temperatures up to 150 degrees. by the way circuit boards are made of epoxy-bound woven glass cloth which is cool as hell but what the fuck do you glue that with? can any of the 12 kinds of adhesives I currently own do that? no of course not. if I want to stick two pieces of acrylic together so hard they become watertight to a depth of 3000 metres I have some shit that does that, but it does literally nothing else.