Nobody Knows Anything

Welcome to Diane Patterson's eclectic blog about what strikes her fancy

Archives for April 2006

Those frackin’ Templars

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I’ve always been fond of the Knights Templar. I read Holy Blood, Holy Grail a million eons ago. I have The Temple and the Lodge and The Illuminoids and The Pursuit of the Millennium and A History of the Secret Societies. I have undoubtedly even more such books around here someplace (still haven’t organized my shelves by topic, dammit). Jim McDonald’s The Apocalypse Door! Great fun. And, of course, I’ve read The Da Vinci Code and was aware that related books have been coming out.

Yesterday, as Darin and I wandered around Borders, I was struck by how many Templar-related novels there are out right now. And other Da Vinci Code related nonsense, such as (I am not making this up) The Diet Code.

I walked over to Darin with one of the books in my hand and said, “I know this isn’t an original sentiment, but… Dan Brown has a lot to answer for.” He nodded.

So much for the line of dialogue I always wanted to put in a movie: “Those fucking Templars are at it again.”

Did I read this right?

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I took Martha Stewart Baking out of the library. It looked great! Excellent pictures. A wide range of great baking recipes, not all of the whip-up-this-little-wedding-cake-in-your-spare-time variety, but homemade Oreos and cupcakes.

She had a recipe for Pullman bread (also known as pain de mie), and since I am still looking for the sine qua non of pain de mie, I couldn’t wait to try it.

Then I read the instructions and went, “Huh?”

Let me summarize it: make the dough. Let proof. Punch down; let proof again in the proofing bowl. (Most recipes I’ve read do only one proofing in the proofing bowl, but whatever.) Take the dough out, fold up, put in pain de mie pan, let rise.

So far, so good. Then we get to this:

Close the lid completely and bake, rotating pan halfway through, until loaf is light golden brown, about 45 minutes. Reduce the oven temperature to 350F, close the lid, and continue baking another 30 minutes.

I assume that second “close the lid” is there because you opened the lid to check on the loaf’s color. But this baking time — what the hey? 75 minutes total is almost double what any other recipe I’ve read has called for.

I pulled the loaf out after the 45 minutes were up: the loaf was a deep golden brown, and the crust was actually several millimeter thick. To be absolutely sure I used my insta-read thermometer, and the interior temperature was fine.

What’s up with that extra 30 minutes? If this was the first time I’d baked bread, I would have cremated the loaf.

This makes me very nervous about trying other recipes.

The cloudy sky

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March: comes in like a lion, goes out like Poseidon on a five-week bender.

Rain. Rain. More rain. Right now it’s just cloudy, although the forecast says “Rain” when it doesn’t say “Thunderstorms.” It says this, in fact, for the next two weeks.

I’m one of those Seasonal Affective Disorder people. I don’t want to do anything when it’s wet and cold like this for weeks on end. We’ve been home sick and we’ve been home recuperating. My left jaw still hurts from the surgery. I think it may hurt a little from the dampness too.

The ground is full up with water — our front lawn is damp and springy, except at the bottom of the slope, where it’s a big puddle. I think I’ve been running outdoors once, maybe twice in the past month, and most of the trail runs we would normally hit are out of the question. I’m not currently feeling hardcore enough these days to go out in the drizzle, let alone anything stronger. Getting back into it takes time, and as Rob says, when the weather gets better we’ll be able to do lots more runs.

When the weather gets better. I’m really hoping it’s soon.

I don’t know where these storms are coming from. Hopefully they’re passing over the Sierras so we have a lot of snow packed up there. California with rain is not that much fun; California without rain is much, much less fun.