Carbon Transfer (Carbon Gelatin)

Time to post some pictures of some pictures. Made using a combination of digital capture, digital print-sized negative, and an 1865 india ink (carbon based) and gelatin process.

The why’s of the post will follow following, suffice to say that the process represents a de-evolution relative to superficial instantaneous electronic gratification common to most and a reawakening of the energies that lead to satisfaction and contentment. Too philosophical, yes well…

The few photos posted are the learning phase. Buying already made carbon gelatin tissue, as it is called, exposing to ultraviolet light, mating the carbon gelatin tissue to a final support paper, and developing it in hot water in the kitchen while sipping a gin and tonic.

The prints are mostly 11”x14” and each took a really long time to make. In fact, there is no guarantee that it’ll even turn out and not just wash away in a large soup of cloudy blackness. Cool, huh. But when one does work, and it is a good image, you just want to show it to everyone. It’s fun to be 10 again.

French Bread - Revisited

After a while it has come to fruition, the bread, that is. I certainly can’t take the credit, or really care about credit anyway, but the bread is rather extraordinary. And, so here are some tips for the couple thousand hits due to the ‘French Bread’ title, google based blog, and whatever treatments it receives from their search engines.

Without the aid of a professional steam oven in my small townhome kitchen, I have used the wonderful training received during those formative years in Princeton Day School Intermediate Science classes. It was a rather good school - it even had a planetarium. I call the training ‘good science’.

First: Estimating the moisture content to be about 67% to 70%, water weight divided by flour weight, seems to make a rather perfect combination of fluffy inside and crispy crust.

Degassing: Very important. Squeaking out those bubbles of trapped gases is quick and enables long rises with ever-developing flavors.
Don’t Rush: Have extended the rise, especially the last one to two hours before turning on the oven. Cooler temps, longer rise, more flavor.

Lame: Visit the King Arthur website and get those razor cuts going in the right direction.
Steam: Wetting the dough after cutting, with hot water from a spray bottle taking one’s time about it, being a bit messy, will provide the extra moisture to allow the bread to really rise.

Temps: Preheating to 435 works. After placing the dough in the oven, an oven temp of about 375F to 400F for about 10 minutes is great and causes the wetted dough to really rise. I have a crappy oven. Then, about 12 minutes later after cooking at 430F to 435F, increase to 450F for the last 6 to 8 minutes. Creates an amazing flavor in the crust.

Rice Krispies: So, now there’s a little more ‘hands-on’ time but the reward is a loud crescendo of snapping and popping as the smooth crust crackles like a loaf purchased at Boulangerie Saint Preux walking up Rue Lepic, well almost.

Cheers and Have Fun.

Baguette Recipe

There are a million bread and baguette recipes out there and I was looking for one that worked in my electric oven in the 78°F of a/c Florida life. I know what a baguette tastes like and how it is made in Europe, and I wanted it here. This recipe has thirty minutes of ‘hands on’ time over a five and a half hour timeframe. “Easy’ is prevalent in our recipes as thirty minutes is unacceptable for most of us. "Easy" recipes are rarely acceptable. In my world, this is easy and much less expensive than a weekly ticket to France. Click HERE for King Arthur Flour professional video link for the ‘easy’ shaping techniques to make the bread great.

Enjoy Munchkin.

Poolish

• 1 cup cool water
• 1/4 teaspoon active dry yeast
• 2 cups King Arthur Bread Flour

Dough

• 1 teaspoon active dry yeast
• 6 oz lukewarm water (414 g. water; 600 g. flour; ~69%) *
• all of the poolish
• 3 cups King Arthur Bread Flour
• 1 1/2 to 2 teaspoons salt

*Use ~1 oz less in a humid environment, ~1 oz more in a dry climate, or somewhere in between.

Directions

1.     Make the poolish by mixing the yeast with the water, then mixing in the flour to make a soft dough. Cover and let rest at room temperature for about 14 hours, or overnight.

2.     Mix active dry yeast with the water, then combine with the poolish, flour, and salt. Mix and knead everything together at a lowest speed to incorporate the ingredients (and make adjustments) until you've made a soft, somewhat shaggy dough - it should be cohesive, but the surface may still be a bit rough.

3.     Cover and let dough rest for 30 minutes.

4.     Knead for about 5 minutes on speed 2 of a stand mixer. The dough should then be smooth and elastic showing good gluten development.

5.     Place the dough in a medium-size lightly olive-oiled bowl, cover, and let the dough rise for 3 hours, gently deflating it and turning it over after 1 hour, and then again after 2 hours. The deflating and turning can be done on a lightly floured work surface - the final one should be - stretching it and folding all four sides, tamping gently to degas.

6.     Divide it into three equal pieces. Pre-shape each piece into a rough, slightly flattened oval. To shape, slap/pat gently with the heel of the hand to degas and then pull and fold top 1/2 over, then pull and fold top corners, then small folds from the top with fingers curled over the top edge and the thumb and palms pushing/oscillating forward on the work surface until it forms a smooth and soft long oval.

7.     Cover with towel/plastic wrap or greased plastic wrap, and let them relax for 20 to 30 minutes.

8.     With the seams up (ends right to left), pat out the gas, flattening. Fold top 1/3 over and press in with fingers removing more gas, turn 180° and repeat. Start at one end working to the other end and fold top third+ over and down with one hand (fingers wrap over and thumb buries in), pat/press the dough with heal of other hand to meld and degas, fold & press, fold & press... Repeat, but take fold and seam all the way over to the surface edge.

9.     With the seam-side down, cup your hands and very gently roll the dough into a 16" to 24" log. Finger tips and base of hand stay in contact with work surface when rolling. Start in middle and roll back and forth out to the ends. Place the logs seam-side up onto a lightly olive-oiled or parchment-lined sheet pan.

10.  Cover them with a floured towel/plastic wrap or lightly greased plastic wrap, and allow the loaves to rise till they've become puffy, about 1 to 1 1/2 hours depending on room environment.

11.  Preheat oven to 435°F to 450°F.

12.  Using a bread lame or sharp knife, make 3 to 5 angled slashes in each baguette. Mist the baguettes heavily with warm water to help them develop a crisp crust.

13.  Bake the baguettes until they're a very deep golden brown, 25 to 30+ minutes. Remove them from the oven and cool on a rack. Optimum time and temperature varies with different ovens.

~6 hours

Bread Lame

Homemade Bread Lame

To make bread rise in our home non-steam ovens, it takes a good cut and some serious water misting. I like stuff that lasts, not plastic or such garbage and after seeing the King Arthur Flour video (link at the end here) I realized how simple a lame was.

So, I made one with stuff I had lying around. All you need is a piece of 1/8 inch brass hex rod, available at your local hardware store, a pack of old-fashioned razors, and optional is a small piece of wood for a handle.

Squeeze the razor by the ends and it will curve and slide onto the hex rod and when in place will not turn or slide. It has a nice curve to get under the dough surface. Add a bend in the hex rod of about 15 degrees for more comfort.

If you want to get fancy, you can fashion a handle - drill it for the hex rod and glue or just add a slight kink in the rod to hold it tight. More fancy, taper it to make the hand feel more yummy. Fancier yet, sand the wood and let some olive oil soak in. And, if you’ve gone this far, might as well rub it with a candle and then a small cloth to melt the wax into the wood for a nice shine.

To view a video of scoring bread, click here to visit the King Arthur Site.

Cheers.

Introperspectives Preview

Introperspectives by SM Boris Robinson | Make Your Own Book

Another Blurb book preview.

This book reflects the first toss up in the air of some of my photographs to see how and where they will land. The book size required 76 images and the first run through my photos revealed about 4 I liked, which would have left 72 pages blank white. This seemed wasteful. So, I explored again, which was the point of the exercise anyway. The exploration revealed some good stuff that will, with hope and perseverance, provide for more clarity going forward. The book, therefore, represents a point before the beginning. And, yes I know Introperspectives isn't a real word.

(Excerpt - woohoo)
Introduction, as it were...

It's quite easy to take a photo, it is really hard to hold on to them.

The drive to take a photograph is not something I understand. Sure, I can philosophize, especially after drinking a few glasses of limoncello, but knowing or pretending to know the answer has so far not altered the drive. I will, for the moment, not worry about it.

A photo represents an experience for me. One may look into it and think it is about the objects or subjects being seen, but that's because we look at photos from above instead of from behind. A photo is me looking back at myself. It is connected to a time and a place, or maybe my mood, or something as simple as the bent of humor in my mind.

The problem in this digital age is the speed with which we can process and view a facsimile of the image on the monitor. At this point, only two real things were done - I was there and I pressed the shutter. The image does not yet really exist in any permanent, touchable, or materially crafted form. Similis vulgus, I see it, process it, get a nice feeling about it, and then go on with my life.
A while later when viewing the photo (not sure how long as time is a bit out of control at the moment) it elicits a more critical reaction. Missing are the sympathetic gray-matter synapse firings representing a more tactile reliving of the experience. The image is now only one of the one-hundred or maybe two-hundred billion photos taken on planet earth that year.

It is rather amazing the way most people view images these days. Incredible marketing has programmed the masses that it is all about them. Images are viewed with such inwardness that those that don't press an immediate Warm & Fuzzy button are cast aside without any thought or appreciation. The point of all of this is that the sheer number of images taken and this affliction of the masses somehow lowers the net worth, even in my eyes, of images that may have had some potential when taken, but not a time later. This is my problem, of course, and I do not presume to blame anyone else.

And so I make this book as an indication of some permanence in a world dominated by linear electron flow trans-matrixed into blinking walls of photons that when focused on the back of my eye, even upside down, make me think I am looking at something real. The book is minimally hand-crafted, but nonetheless, provides one something to touch, to hold in ones hands, and find a good patch of light in which to view the ink printed images.

I thank friends like Jim Cohoe, Dick Robertson, and Ben Dallas for giving me the basis to take this seriously enough to put together a collection no matter how bored I am with the lot. Going forward, I promise I will process the images during the time that they pique my interest and save them in an appropriate format so that they may be stuck into another one of these books.

SMBR