Floydm's blog

I'm wiped out tonight. Had a great weekend taking the kids camping for the first time, rafting down the Sandy River, and generally enjoying summertime. Nevertheless, I baked. Well? No, not at all.

I'm having a good, relaxing weekend here. I hope y'all are doing well too. Inspired by LilDice's quick rustic pizza, I made pizza last night. I didn't follow the rustic pizza recipe exactly, but I did use a dough with around 90% hydration. I made it around noon and folded at 2 and 4, then baked it around 6. The results were really good.

Sunday I finally got a real baking day in. It was the first time in... 2 months? 3 months? A very long time. I started with the Sourdough English Muffin recipe that Kjknits posted a month or so ago. They were *amazing*. There wasn't a terribly interesting smell or anything, but when I bit into one it was just one of those "Oh, wow" moments. I will definitely be baking them again.

Sourdough pancakes with fresh local strawberries, Red Beans and Rice with corn bread muffins and honey butter, pita bread with hummus and tabouli, and cinnamon rolls and a pot of hot coffee on a cloudy afternoon. Yup, we ate well this weekend. Nothing new or experimental, just good ol' home cookin'.

Oregon strawberries are in season, so this morning I whipped up a batch of fresh strawberry freezer jam and a couple loaves of whole wheat bread. Hard to beat.

I was looking at The Fresh Loaf traffic stats in the newest version of Google Analytics today and, I gotta say, I've never seen charts like these. For example, here is a visitor report for a typical website: Weekend traffic is lower.

I thought I had nailed the problem, but the server slowed down again this evening. Looks like it is running out of RAM. I've ordered more RAM, but it may take a day or two for it to get installed. Thanks for your patience.

Lately I've been thinking a lot about what this site is for. Part of the reason I've been thinking about this is my recent employment at Mercy Corps, but the disputes the last few days have brought to my attention that we don't all come here with the same expectations about what this site is trying to do. So let me riff a little about what I think think The Fresh Loaf is about. I'll admit up front, I'm not entirely certain either, and as the site has grown my feelings may have changed and probably will continue to do so.

We had a lovely dinner over at some friends house this evening. The only downside was there was no bread or starch of any kind with the meal. Being the carbivore that I am, I was very pleased that I had some sourdough loaves waiting to be baked when I got home. I haven't baked sourdough in three or four weeks. I was pleased to see my starter is still alive: Not the best sourdough I've ever made, but not bad.