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26 March 2008

mystery of the crumbly spelt and…

Alright, three things.

Number one is that i was doing a bit of internet research about baking bread with spelt flour, and to my great delight, i discovered why my two previous attempts to make bread using spelt were extremely crumbly, and not as great as i thought they should be, considering my past bread baking successes. Those were always with wheat flour — and i had (mistakenly) been assuming that spelt flour functions very much like wheat flour. Oh, i knew that rice and soy and buckwheat and kamut and all those were really different to bake with – my partner is allergic to wheat, so for many years we’ve been using alternatives — but my past experience of cookies or cakes with spelt have been very easy! Seemed like it was very wheat-like. But apparently, the internet tells me, it’s not good to KNEED your spelt bread dough too much (unlike wheat dough, which you can kneed almost indefinitely, if you want to); it makes it crumbly. Because it’s gluten structures are fragile! Do not over-kneed! Mystery of the crumbly spelt bread… SOLVED! If you know me, you know how incredibly pleased i am when i solve these small but mysterious little every day mysteries. So the happy ending which i felt compelling to share, here, on my blog, is that i just made the best loaves of spelt bread EVER. I hope those of you who have been similarly plagued with spelt bread failures will be as excited as i am. Here’s the recipe i found, it’s good.

Okay, number two. I got a lovely piece of mail yesterday, which was a letter and a cheque from the Ontario Arts Council supporting this spoken word thing I’m working on. Hazah! Two Wheeled Words (the working title) will get a little workshop performance at the end of September….and i’ll get to spend some of the summer and fall working on it. Exciting. This is the piece that uses a bicycle as percussion, and metaphor. Ideas related to “spin” and “cycles”, that’s what I’m working with. You can see that I really must be pleased about my spelt mystery solving, since number two really is so good, it could be number one. Thank you Ontario Arts Council!

Number three: this is my laugh of the week. There is a nice little review of my record, Small Theatres, in Shameless Magazine this month. I really like Shameless, it’s an awesome publication, so i was pleased to be reviewed in there. What is hilarious is just one small but funny editorial misinterpretation. There is a comment about the song Honey, which is I sometimes introduce, when i’m playing live, as being a story told to me by my uncle-in-law, Rod, who was a wrestler with the WWF. That is, the World Wrestling Federation. You may be familiar with it. Anyway, in the review it mentions “a man who wrestles bears for the World Wildlife Federation”. Heh heh. I thought that was funny.