Author: Ian Chadwick

Retired writer, editor, reviewer, media relations & communications consultant, municipal politician. Ukulele player. Aficionado of Shakespeare, Horace, Machiavelli, Chaucer, Cicero, Homer, socialism, science, Godzilla, ERB, & tequila. Curmudgeon, skeptic & cynic. Lay historian. Community volunteer. PC gamer. Avid reader. Woke socialist. Loving husband. Companion to one dog & three cats. Passionate about my small town. Perennially curious about everything. My writing is copyright © protected.

What am I doing wrong?

2013-11-24 2013-11-24 Books & Reviews / Bread & Baking / Food & Drink / Personal ReminiscencesOne Comment

I began a levain last week (Nov 19) and it seemed to go well at first, but then it just seemed to have stopped… or slowed to a crawl. Was is dead? Or just dormant? Did I have a welcome guest growing in the bowl or was it a wet mass of unwanted invaders? Am I too anxious and not patient enough? Sourdough bread has been called the “Everest” of breads, which I realize refers not to its towering presence but because it’s so damned hard to conquer. Getting it started seems a combination of art, science, animal husbandry and ……… click below for more ↓

Doing it by the numbers

2013-11-19 2013-11-19 Books & Reviews / Bread & Baking / Food & Drink / What I'm Reading NowOne Comment

The first thing I learned – well, not the first but up there, for sure – is that volume measurements are for amateurs. Being an amateur (and expecting to be there for some time yet), I took it on the chin when asking typical neophyte questions about recipes and ingredients. Might as well have hung a sign around my posts shouting “newbie!” Well, they were gentle with me, but strict. Tough love among bakers. Good bakers use weights, not volume, they told me in no uncertain terms. No more cups of flour: grams of flour, instead. Good thing I bought ……… click below for more ↓

Road Trip to K2

2013-11-17 2013-11-17 Bread & Baking / Food & DrinkLeave a comment

No, not to the mountain. To the mill. The flour mill in Beeton, a little more than an hour’s drive southeast of me. We took a little road trip today in my never-ending quest for baking ingredients. Susan came along, showing remarkable tolerance for my obsession. K2 is a modest, old-fashioned place that grinds flour – the only mill still operating in the county, as far as I have been able to tell. And one of the rare artisanal mills at all in Ontario. And of course it sells its products, as well as some other items like maple syrup, ……… click below for more ↓

These Poolish Things…

2013-11-16 2013-11-17 Books & Reviews / Bread & Baking / Language & Grammar / Personal ReminiscencesLeave a comment

Poolish. Levain. Banneton. Autolyse. Retardation. Lactobaccilli. Bassinage. Windowpane test. Crumb. Batard. Barm. A new vocabulary is building in me, one that brings the lore of breadmaking, the etymology of the loaf to my conversation.* It’s a necessary vocabulary, if one wants to fully understand the techniques and technology of baking bread. Knowing the names of things gives one power. It’s also a bit like being welcomed into a secret society where members whisper to one another in their codified language. Is there a secret handshake? It also helps broach that disconnect between our modern selves and what we eat. Knowing the process, ……… click below for more ↓

Coriolanus on Film

2013-11-14 2013-11-14 Arts / Books & Reviews / Culture / Film & Reviews / Music & ReviewsLeave a comment

Coriolanus is a tough play, full of politics and angry people and shouting mobs. It has no comic relief, no jesters, no romance and no real heroes. No great soliloquies, unsympathetic characters, uncomfortable double dealing, treachery and plotting. No powerful subplot as a counterpoint. Pride, arrogance, and power dominate. Coriolanus himself is empty, driven, bereft of the great passions that animate Shakespeare’s other main protagonists. Except the passion for revenge, which comes upon him halfway through the play. Before that, he seems an automaton, as fixed in his role as an aristocrat and soldier as Tsar Nicholas was, with little ……… click below for more ↓

Gluten, Sourdough, Fads and Ailments

2013-11-12 2013-11-12 Bread & Baking / Critical Thinking / Food & DrinkOne Comment

Gluten, that everyday protein found in many grains, has become the health-fad followers’ most recent evil spectre, and many (one in three, stats show) have jumped onto the anti-gluten bandwagon, generally with a simplistic message: “gluten bad.” Like most diet fads, I expect it will likely fall off centre stage when the next Big Thing To Rise Against comes along. But meanwhile, until the next fad raises its head, gluten gets sensationalized, demonized and generally misunderstood. Headlines like this abound (it was matched by a CBC Radio story on Ontario Morning Tuesday, Nov. 12): Sourdough breadmaking cuts gluten content in ……… click below for more ↓

I’m struggling with this…

2013-11-10 2013-11-11 Books & Reviews / Bread & Baking / Food & Drink / My Writing / Personal ReminiscencesOne Comment

My recent passion for bread and baking has caused a bit of an internal upset. Not the baking thereof, but rather the writing about it. I’m doing a lot of that, recently. Writing (and, yes, baking too). And of course it comes with the attendant research into bread’s history, the combing through websites for recipes and book reviews, the hunt for equipment and the discussions about yeasts, pH balance, sourdough starters, Canadian versus American flours, protein contents, vintage and ancient grains… gawds, I’m having fun. And it is, if you don’t mind some hyperbole, damn tasty fun. It’s both culinary ……… click below for more ↓

Bread, Madness and Christianity

2013-11-09 2013-11-11 Books & Reviews / Bread & Baking / Critical Thinking / Food & Drink / History & Biography / Psychology & Sociology / Social Order & DisorderLeave a comment

The witch craze of Europe is a popular, albeit often misrepresented, part of our collective history. Everyone knows witches were hunted, tortured and often killed – burned at the stake, a particularly repulsive method of murder. While not a uniquely Christian form of killing, it was practiced widely by Christians throughout history in every European nation, perfected in ritual by the Spanish Inquisition. Hunting witches in the period between 1480 and 1750 (the so-called “classical period” of witch hunting) resulted in between 40,000 and 60,000 executions, although some authorities guess the total to be as high as 100,000. While it’s ……… click below for more ↓

The Fretful Porpentine

2013-11-06 2013-11-06 Arts / Books & Reviews / Culture / Language & Grammar / My WritingLeave a comment

Like quills upon the fretful porpentine. That phrase just makes the modern reader stop and wonder. What, you ask yourself, is a porpentine? And why is it fretful? We never learn, although later interpreters would knowingly tell us a porpentine is a porcupine in today’s argot. Porcupine itself dervices from the Old or Middle French term, “porc espin” or spined pig. Which it isn’t – it’s a rodent. * It’s an old word, encountered earlier as “purpentine” in 1589, but hardly a common word in any spelling after that, at least not in drama.** Shakespeare wrote it as porpentine in 1602. ……… click below for more ↓

What Bread Would Chaucer Have Eaten?

2013-11-04 2023-03-17 Bread & Baking / Chaucer / Culture / Food & Drink / History & Biography3 Comments

I was mulling over the growth of the whole ‘artisan bread’ movement as I made another batch of dough last week to cold ferment in the fridge. As I lay in bed reading one night, I started to wonder what sort of bread Chaucer would have eaten. Or Shakespeare. That led to: how was bread made 500 years ago? 1,000? What ingredients did they use? How did the technology and techniques develop? How was yeast’s work discovered and when? How authentic is today’s bread? Aside, that is, from the refined flour, sugar, salt and highly domesticated yeast… So I started to ……… click below for more ↓

In Appreciation of Vintage Music

2013-11-03 2013-11-03 Arts / Culture / Musical Instruments / Personal ReminiscencesLeave a comment

I was listening the other day to a song sung by Cliff Edwards, Cheating on Me, recorded from an old 78 RPM single. Scratchy, warbly, and a bit thin, but it comes across beautifully across the gap of time. When you listen for a while, the scratches just disappear into the background and you hear Ukulele Ike’s lovely voice cut through the noise. I was thinking it was a song I really should learn to play myself. Listen to Edwards’s classic strumming in his version, as well as the key change towards the end: I have it on my MP3, ……… click below for more ↓

Bread Tales, Continued

2013-10-31 2013-11-11 Books & Reviews / Bread & Baking / Food & Drink / Personal ReminiscencesOne Comment

This week I started a small batch of dough to bake later in the week, or on the weekend while I figure out a few details on my baking odyssey (and do some online research on a number of related issues). Probably just a small loaf this time, and I’ll likely do it in a pan. I plan to start a larger batch of dough, Sunday with the goal of a longer-term cold fermentation. And possibly a sourdough starter. The last loaf I made, a mere three days ago, is almost gone. Funny how homemade bread gets eaten so quickly. ……… click below for more ↓