This video is especially for anyone who’s been to my apartment and doesn’t believe I have two cats. MisStick is the more silvery looking smaller cat on top, Harry is the darker, larger cat on the bottom. And Harry’s the kitten - he’s nearly 1, MisStick is his aunt, and she’s just about 3.

Meet my cats!

Add to My Profile | More Videos

Some of you may have already seen over in my brothers’ blog, but if you didn’t…

Last week, on 2/5, Heather and Jason brought little baby Alice into the world. She is an adorable little baby, and we’re all wondering, who will get all the toys from now on - Jason or Alice? It will be fun to watch.

And, of course, she has a blog over at AliceBergman.com. Go say hi and check out the pics!!

For what I think are obvious reasons, I have no comment on this.

However, here’s a link to a blog entry Ben Metcalfe wrote on it!

My life has been a little hectic lately - we’ve been ramping up for the Developer Platform launch at MySpace, and, as expected, things have become slightly insane.

My cats seem to love that I’m spending so much time on the couch with the laptop, though, they’re fascinated by my typing, and the mouse moving around the screen. They’ll sit and stare at the arrow moving around the screen for hours, it’s hysterical. (note to self- I so need to upload pictures of the kitties and write an entry about them!).

Anyway! We began taking pre-registrations for our Developer Platform this past Tuesday, and are launching with a sweet party in San Francisco this upcoming Tuesday. The platform site is for developers interested in working with the MySpace APIs (including Open Social).

It’s kind of sandboxed right now - it’s not out to members, but applications created can be installed on live profiles for testing. It has everything a developer needs to begin building applications…documentation, sample code, test harnesses, forums where our developers will be hanging out to help, and a team blog (I’m blogging there too).

The site will remain as is for a while - long enough so anyone who wants to can create an application and have it ready to go live on day one. Even playing field for all, no “first mover” advantages, no “launch partners.” If you’re interested - you can prereg now, or just go to the site on Feb 5th - it’ll be wide open to everyone.

I’ve written here before about how the world is changing, and it’s a blast to watch. Wanna be part of it? You could be an application developer, independently working with our api’s, OR, you can work with us. We have two openings, and I know exactly who I want. I just have to find them, and I’m hoping maybe they’re reading this blog. The job description is below. If you’re interested, go to Fox Careers and search for req FIM10590 - it’ll show up as Fox Interactive.

Product Specialist MySpace

As a Product Specialist, you will be responsible for reviewing application submissions for the MySpace Application Platform. This will include, but not be limited to reviewing all application submissions for both security and technical quality, communicating with partners and independent submissions, analyze business data to identify trends, advance our application offerings, and build partner-integration and partner-management of applications.

- Programming Experience in JavaScript, Flash/Flex/Action Script, PHP, Python, HTML, CSS, AJAX
- 2+ years experience in Internet Software Development
- Previous experience in direct communication with outside vendors/clients

Those of you who’ve read this blog for a while know that earlier this (well, now last) year, my cat passed away due to acute renal failure. She’d been in kidney failure for years, but took a very quick and sudden turn for the worse. This was right as all of the pet food scandals were happening, and she had been eating one of the brands that was recalled. Of course, I’ll never know if it was the food or not - my vet registered her as a “possible” with the FDA - but I’ll always wonder.

When I got the new kitties a few months ago, as you can imagine, I was obsessive about what I fed them. California’s a great place for obsessive cat owners. I bought the way high end organic stuff from the specialty stores, I mail ordered a few types, and I tried the more generic organic versions petco has.

And my cats won’t eat a one.

Not that I can blame them. I don’t know what it is about “organic” that translates to “crap” in the land of kitty wet-food, but for some reason, all of the wet food I tried was the same. One solid chunk of what kind of looks like meat-mousse. They also smell totally foul, every single organic food I tried stunk up my apartment. Now, if I can’t stand to even smell the stuff, how can I expect my cats to eat it?

Compare the organic crap with the regular cat food. High-end, but major label, I’m still not buying cat food at the grocery store. The food smells and looks like actual meat, and the cats can’t get enough of it.

Organic cat food also can go bad. I had mold growing out of my garbage can when I went out of town and the pet sitter threw the leftovers in there for a week. Regular cat food does not. From that, I gotta assume that there are chemicals keeping the regular cat food good in the can, and the mousse crap is the only way they can keep meat good without chemicals. I’m happier with chemicals than moldy mousse, though.

Pet food companies know that suckers like me believe that money is love - we don’t think we should ever buy cheap things for our pets. More expensive is therefore better, and I could easily spend a small fortune on organic pet food. I think this is just another way to sucker more money out of me. I normally fall for the tricks, I fully admit that, but this time I’m putting my food down. My checkbook will thank me too.

If someone has an organic cat food brand that 1) is actually recognizable as meat, 2) does not smell worse than a litter box, and 3) does not grow mold after a few days, then I’m all ears. Until then, I’m sticking with Purina.

To finish off yesterday’s basic ingredient tips:

Milk: Another “not required” ingredient. I use it out a lot, personally, since I like harder, crunchier crusts that you don’t get with milk in your bread. When I do use milk, I use powdered milk, since it frees you up to use as much milk as you want without worrying about the liquid vs flour ratio. Plus, powdered milk doesn’t spoil, and it really makes no difference at all to the actual bread. If real milk is used, again, count the liquid as part of your water. Milk will affect the help create a softer texture inside the bread, and can darken and soften the crust.

Salt: NEVER LEAVE THIS OUT. Minor, but trust me, you’ll notice if it’s not there. You can also experiment with fleur de sel or other fancy schmancy french salts – they do change the flavor a bit. Personally, I like plain old kosher salt.

Other stuff: Berries, seeds, cheese, anything can be added to bread. Just keep in mind the texture you want in the final bread, if you’re adding something mushy (raisins are a good example), don’t add them until just before the first rise. Stuff like cheese is better added earlier, so it melts and can flavor the whole bread.

Now, about my favorite appliance, my bread machine.

I adore bread machines. In fact, the way I got into bread baking as a hobby in the first place was by finding some old janky bread machine for $10 at a yard sale somewhere. I took it home, started playing, and was hooked.

I only use my machine for the dough cycle. I don’t think I’ve ever baked in the machine I have now, and I’ve had it for over 4 years (still running strong too!). Why use a machine instead of a mixer? Some say it rises bread better, some say it’s just lazyness. I think it’s a combo of the two. I will never pre-warm ingredients, rise, and mix them as well and as consistently as a machine can. My dough cycle ends just in time for the final shape and rise (unless I’m feeling very fluffy, in which case I’ll rise it again), and has been keaded for at least a good half an hour. That makes my arms tired.

So obviously, I highly recommend bread machines as a good way to take some of the work out of bread baking. Just please, don’t bake in the machine. Any machine worth anything will contain a dough cycle.

What you pay for when buying higher end machines:

• Dishwasher safe parts
• Closed mixing bowl (my first one was open, which meant liquids had to be carefully placed on top of the flour or they’d seep through)
• Better handles for mixing (one of the handles on mine is permanently stuck, but that’s fairly common). Cheap machines have one, better machines have at least two.
• Programs, both pre-set and custom – Mine has a bunch of pre-sets (wheat, white, sandwich, rye, etc), but they all refer to actual baking methods. I’ve programmed my own dough cycle that contains that extra rise I like, but I still mainly use the prebuilt dough cycle
• Timer – throw all the ingredients in before leaving for work, come home to either dough just finishing up, or a fresh baked loaf of bread. You’ll pay for the timer length, almost all machines have at least a 12 hr timer. Mine’s 24.
• Baking – both shape and how well it bakes. Cheap machines bake the dough upright, like a loaf standing on its end. Better machines will bake a longer loaf. I still have yet to find a machine that bakes as well as an oven, though, and any bread baked in a machine will still have the tell tale holes in it from the mixing hands.
• See through top and light, warning when to check your dough before the final rise. Both of these are nice since you’re really not supposed to ever open the machine until the final rise is done, you want that steam and heat in there to stay consistent. That said, you always have to check your dough before it’s done. A light and glass top allows you to do this without opening the machine. I find I can’t really see through the top of mine (despite the glass), so when it beeps, I open it anyway.

It’s really not worth laying out hundreds for a fancy machine until you’ve reached the limits of a basic. $20 will get you something decent enough. If you are looking for a higher end machine, research. Every machine out there is best at something, you want the one that fits your needs. Mine’s the best for dough, not so hot at baking, which is perfect for me.

Any yeast bread recipe can pretty much be shaped any way imaginable. Just please, please don’t bake it in a bread machine, as wonderful as bread machines are (I ADORE mine), use them for the dough cycle ONLY. It’ll only take you 5 extra minutes to shape and rise the bread yourself, but there truly is no comparison.

All that said, don’t ever make sourdough in a bread machine. Sourdough starter should not come into contact with any metal until baked (although that’s something of a debate – some say you can mix with metal, so on. I figure why risk it.). If you’re making sourdough, you’re gonna be spending a good half hour to an hour kneading it by hand. But that’s fun, right?

Tomorrow, tips on shaping and baking bread.

Who knew I could go on for this many entries about bread baking? I am quite the baking dork.

…quote from a King Arthur Flour catalog

The quote fit, since here’s where I get into the geeky, fun part of baking. The tweaking of the forumla that creates a basic bread to get what you want. Any loaf of bread can be made out of simply water, flour and salt, if you have enough time. The fun comes in turning those basic ingredients into the best loaf of bread ever, and understanding the science behind why each ingredient does what it does. I’ll leave the science out, but here are some good ingredient tips for any baker who wants to start playing with bread.

Don’t play until you are satisfied with a basic white and a basic wheat. Only then should you mess with ingredients, primarily by replacing one at a time to see what changes. Once you have THAT down - go nuts.
Part one of two of BamBam’s Bread tips. This had been intended for one entry, but, well, I rambled. Fancy that, me rambling.

- Yeast: Bread will not rise without something to start the process. Quick breads (carrot bread, etc) use baking soda and salt for this, but what I call “real” bread - the sandwich stuff, the rolls, etc - use yeast. Storebought yeast will never, ever be able to produce the same type of bread that a true starter can, but it is fine to use. Active dry yeast can be stored in the freezer, and if you have the time, it should be proofed - soaked in warm water for 10-15 minutes before you start mixing (unless using a bread machine). Take note, a typical yeast packet contains about 1/2 tsp more yeast then most recipes require.

A starter is live yeast (the frozen stuff is just the live stuff frozen, hence the “active”) that needs to be fed and maintained. It can be fun dealing with a starter, but also requires committment - an out of control starter can overflow a refrigerator, and a dead one can be the stinkiest thing you’ve ever smelled.

Bread can also be made without any starter - my two week amazing bread is an example - but it is using wild yeast picked up in the kitchen. ..and before you say “ew” to that, yeast is naturally in the air, everywhere. San Francisco Sourdough tastes, and acts like San Francisco sourdough because of the natural yeast in the region. One person making the same recipe with a homemade starter in two different parts of the world can end up with a very different bread. I think that’s neat.
To answer Dossy’s question from my last entry…I use storebought yeast (Red Star Active Dry) about 75% of the time, and a starter or do the two week thing with the rest. My starter is based on a SF Sourdough freeze-dried thing I reconstituted. I’d had my own back in Virginia, creating a starter really only involves mixing flour and water daily (fairly smelly and sticky flour and water), but it does take a while to get started, and I don’t feel like doing it yet.

- Flour: Another required ingredient. If making sandwiches, use unbleached all-purpose flour, it’ll make the bread a little denser. Use bread flour for fluffier bread. Wheat flour adds flavor, but also density. My favorite wheat bread recipe uses 2 1/2 cups whole wheat to 1/2 cup white bread flour. Nearly every whole wheat bread you buy in the store has some white flour in it, all whole wheat is tricky to do without a massive amount of everything else to make up for it. I’ll get it down some day.

- Sweetener: Not at all required. White sugar and honey are the standard options, but you can use fruit juice, brown sugar, sweetened condensed milk…anything you can think of. You’ll notice the difference in both the taste and crust. If you use real sugar, watch the top, can get very dark and can burn. Splenda is the only artificial sweetener that can be baked, and has no effect on the crust.

- Oil: Not at all required, but unless making french or sourdough bread, it’s probably best to use something, bread without some oil can get a little dense and tough. Oil also adds flavor and fluffiness - use lots of butter in dinner rolls.

- Liquids: Without a doubt, the trickiest part of baking bread is getting the liquid to flour ratio down right. You want your dough to be slightly tacky, but not sticky, and form a ball with a skin over the top that you can stretch, but not rip (the top “skin” helps the dough maintain its shape as it bakes). Bread should always be mixed, kneaded, then checked for consistency before the first rise – if necessary, add flour or water to get the dough to the right state. It is VERY easy to go too far in either direction, but just as easy to fix the problem – add more!

Any liquid added to the bread should be included in the calculation for how much water to use. So, if using an egg, just crack the egg into the measuring cup before measuring the rest of the liquid.

Not sure what’s inspired this need to share baking knowledge, but, it is definately something I enjoy blabbing about.

More tips from “JuliaBam” tomorrow!

…quote from Julia Child

This recent article from the NY Times made me laugh.

As any true bread-lover will tell you (and I am a bread geek of the worst kind), whole wheat and whole grain bread is the only kind of bread worth eating. White bread is generally bland, over sweetened and buttered stuff left for dinner rolls, challah, and real traditional sourdough. Other than that?? Whole wheat/grain bread is healthier, ends up with a much better texture, and tastes about a billion times better. White bread’s also boring to play with as a baker. The fun comes in when I play with the other stuff.

King Arthur Flour (the god of all flour companies) has made white whole wheat bread for ages now. It’s not bad, although it still doesn’t act quite the same as real whole wheat. Still better than white bread, though, and marketed as a way to get the wonder bread generation eating whole wheat bread.

I love baking bread. To me, it’s a fun, enjoyable, edible hobby.

I still do buy bread on occasion, the best bread takes time and hours of love, and if I’m not going to do it right, I’d rather not do it. It’ll take me a minimum of 4 hours to bake a basic loaf from start to finish, but can take weeks if I really want to make that fantasy bread of every baker that crackles as it comes out of the oven. The perfect bread is crunchy on the outside, slightly dense, chewy on the inside with the big air bubbles that no storebought yeast will ever produce.

The ingredients in a basic loaf of bread are extremely simple. Some mix of different types of flour, and some mix of additional ingredients, depending on what I’m trying to get out of the bread (light and fluffy vs denser sandwich bread, etc). I’ll use butter or oil, eggs, powdered milk, but I rarely use sugar. If I’m making real, heavy whole wheat, I’ll add splenda, and dinner rolls just have to have a ton of sugar and butter, but other then that? The whole point of making bread at home is that it isn’t that icky sweet sticky storebought fluff balls they call bread.

That said, if someone is going to start baking bread for the first time, the transition is smoother if they use use some sort of sweetener, especially if they’re going to try to get kids to eat the bread. Just makes the transition a little easier, and after a while, you’ll find yourself making up your own recipes. Bread’s one of those great things you can throw half the refrigerator into. Even if you don’t make it part of the actual dough, you can always wrap dough around stuff and suddenly you’ve invented something.

Baking bread is easy, fun, and nowhere near as difficult as people think it is. It’s edible playdough. Beat that.

Below is my recipe for my simple version of whole wheat bread. It’s light, fluffy, has a crunchy crust, and tastes better then anything you’ll find in the store.

Ingredients:

2 tsp yeast
1 ½ cup white flour
1 ½ cup regular whole wheat flour
2 tbl honey
4 tbl butter, unsalted
1/4 cup powdered milk
1 egg
½ tsp salt
1 ¼ cup water

Mix, let rise (about an hour), pound down, let rise again (about 45 minutes), shape, let rise one last time (until dough has doubled). Bake for 30 – 40 minutes on 425 in a VERY well preheated oven. You’ll know the bread’s done if it sounds hollow when you thump on the bottom.

Once you get the hang of the basic recipe, you can mess with ingredients - the only way to truly “fail” at baking bread is to forget the yeast (or flour, obviously). Play with shaping the dough - any bread loaf can also be made as rolls, or braided, or whatever, and play with the baking temp and time. Ideally, bread should be baked in the hottest possible oven you can get for the shortest period of time.

I’ll write another entry with general tips tomorrow.

Have fun, and happy eating!!

(oh, and thanks for the unanimous recommendation on what host to use, that made my choice easy!)

It’s almost comical what’s taking me so long.

I can’t decide on a web host.
My domains are split between GoDaddy and Joker, and neither of them are really going to be appropriate for hosting. I’ve found a few different hosts I like, from large to small, and just can’t decide. They all cost pretty much the same, anyway. Some walk you through setup more than others (copying entries from an older blog, preinstalling templates, etc), but I’m not even sure how much THAT matters, given how flexible wordpress is.

It’s a stupid reason, isn’t it?

But I WILL get it done, moving over is going to be my “project” for the holiday break. New blog location, new year. I swear.

Anyway - if someone has a web host they adore, lemme know, I’d love some recommendations.

I suppose I kind of have to write an entry about this, given my love of the story and sort of obsession with Wicked. Plus - Wizard of Oz goes sci fi? Sweet!

For those of you who may not know, Tin Man was a sci-fi original series taking a look at the story of Dorothy and the world of OZ (or as it’s known on the show - the O.Z. Outer Zone).

hrm. Trying to write this without spoilers…

The show was really interesting to me from the very beginning. We all know what happens - a tornado comes along and sweeps Dorothy and her house into the land of OZ. But this being a sci fi movie, the tornado couldn’t be JUST a tornado, right? No, it’s a time rift caused by an evil princess.

And the story just goes from there. The scarecrow is missing a brain, but it’s because someone sucked it out of his head. The cowardly lion sure is cowardly, but he also has an amazing psychic gift. The Tin Man, well, I’ll leave that one for folks to discover on the actual show.

The first two hours are definately better than the last one, which is filled with a ton of exposition as they explain everything that you’ve been watching for the last five hours. Understanding what has truly been going on is good, and it’s certainly hard to write interesting exposition scenes, but the show really does slow down because of it.

And, for those who don’t like Wicked (book or musical), have no fear. This is nothing like Wicked. Wicked starts before Dorothy arives in Oz, and ends right around when she leaves. Tin Man takes place at a different time, and is very much science fiction. I haven’t quite grasped my mind around whether or not they could exist in the same universe.

Wicked doesn’t mess with canon, which, honestly, was part of what it made it so amazing. It’s like Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead - as far as you know, what you are watching truly did happen in the background. You just never saw it as part of the original movie (or play, in the case of Hamlet).

I think this does mess with the story a bit (I don’t quite get how certain characters would fit in), and I need to hunt for whatever blogger somewhere did an analysis. Cuz you just know SOMEONE did.

All in all, I really recommend watching this. It may have taken me a few days to get through it all, but it was well worth it.