My starter my sourdough

Rose sent me a video to an Irish baker on making sourdough starter and sourdough bread.  The Irish are not just great drinkers, they are great bakers!  I had watched another video of another fellow making sourdough starter in the summer and I could not get the starter to rise past the first 24hrs.  His video also made me feel like it was too much effort for a loaf of bread.  So I gave up on that until just recently when Kieran made his poolish starter bread.   And that bread was pretty good, it just wasn't true sourdough bread, it didn't have that specific flavour.  I like all bread, but sourdough doesn't use yeast from a jar, it's starter you make from flour and water.  Simple as that.

But after watching this Irish baker I thought I might as well try it again.  If it doesn't work then I'll get starter from a friend and then try with that.  But I really wanted to make my own sourdough starter and bread.  

So I started it at the cottage.  And let it grow.  A scale is critical.  You cannot make your own sourdough without a scale.  It's just how it is.  I bought this scale back in the summer.  When my sourdough starter failed to get to where I expected.  I still used the scale, but I weighed bike parts with it.  That's a carbon set back seat post I got for my bike.  It's crazy-ass light!

So come xmas we made Kieran's bread and used it.  And now we love his bread.  It's actually a baguette bread recipe.  Poolish starter bread has a baguette flavour to it.  The crust is amazing using the dutch oven.  We got that down pat now.  20mins covered + 30mins uncovered at 450 deg F.  I did the same for this sourdough bread.  It was basically what the Irish baker said to do too.

Now we finally have made a true sourdough bread from scratch.  Made my own starter for past 7 days.  I had to split the starter into multiple containers as it was bubbling up like lava from Mt Pinotubo.  I just baked a loaf and it has been cooling now for an hour.  We'll see how it turns out.  I'm happy it rose, even in the fridge!

I went down to cut a piece and see how the inside consistency was and crust.  As it was proofing I could smell the sour notes from raw dough that are indicative of sourdough breads.  But Tresa beat me to it and cut the end piece buttering it.  She said this was really good!  And that always is a good sign.  She is biased though, but she would be honest if it wasn't good.   I tried it and I have to say,  I was very pleased.  It was delicious.  It didn't have the exact flavour, but there was a hint, and as my starter ages it'll ferment a bit more and the sour notes will become more evident.  The texture was good, the crust was great!   I'm getting closer to the Blackbird Bakery standard of sourdough bread that we have been buying for years now.  

I've learned bit by bit the things to look for in bread.  The crust, which is dependent on humidity and time and temperature.  And the holes in the bread when you slice it, which is a result of the gluten, and kneading and proofing process.  And then the flavour, which is dependent on your ingredients (starter, water, flour and salt and whatever else you want to toss in).

This particular bread was made with an intermediate starter.  It was from Day 4.  And when you are making starter you have to discard portions of it.  Because if you do not it dies, it requires much more food (flour and water) to keep it going, it feels like a bit of a waste but that's the reason for discarding.  At least my understanding of it.  You basically reduce the starter back down to 200g after the first few days.  And re-add that in equal parts water and flour.  I did proof it over 2 days.  Adding in flour until I got the structure I needed to get it to not end up like a brick.  Sourdough bread also rises much slower than yeast bread.  That where the patience comes into play. You will need to let it rise for 3 hours after working it.  Even overnight in the fridge is okay for sourdough.

Props to this Irish guy, he really made things simple and his delivery was just so easy going and down to earth.  From making the starter to proofing and really making it feel like anyone can do it.  He didn't have a proofing box or anything fancy schmancy to baking.  The other vid was like a chemistry experiment and felt like factory work.  And it doesn't have to be.  After making bread now for over a year, it's not that hard and the results are dependent on your ingredients and some patience.

During these last 20 months of pandemic, it's forced us all to slow down and get back to life the way it used to be, simpler and less complicated.  Do you really need same day delivery?  How much binge watching can you do?  Do you really need more stuff?

It was certainly a remarable little journey to get to this point and sharing the results along the way, friends sharing their knowledge and giving me feedback and Kieran doing it with me.  Learning how to make bread, and then building upon that to learn how to do it like it was done for last 5000 yrs.  It is a cool feeling.

I wanted to make bread, and so I made bread.

MotionPi in the sky

Years ago I bought an Arduino project kit when Kieran was little.  I thought it might interest him.  I still have it and I made 1 project with it and showed him how to write code to make it work.  It was this project to make a motorized pinwheel.

He said to me. 

Papa, the stuff you just did on the computer.  I don't care about.  I was only interested in pushing that button that made the thing spin.

I just looked at him and smiled.  I think I did a few other Arduino starter projects, but I quickly lost interest cuz it wasn't something useful to me. 

So earlier this year from chatting with buddies who made raspberryPi (rPi) projects like old retro gaming projects for his little kids (I think he made it for himself though).  I may do this too for fun.  Or not since we have Nintendo switch.  But it lives in Kieran's room somewhere.

MotionEye

But the first rPi project was the pi-hole project to get rid of all the ads that every friggin site on the InterWeb has that redirects you to other sites and collects all your clicks and who knows what else.  In any case I got tired of it slowing down the site loading.  And it's been handy.  Now others are asking me what to do to set one up.  I do have to disable it from time to time when I'm shopping for something.  It even sometimes blocks me from posting reviews.  But I disable for 30s so I can click on a google search item and let it do what it was meant to do again.  The only thing it doesn't block are those YouTube ads.  Those are embedded into the video stream so it doesn't work.

pi-zero-2-w

So motionEye is another project that does motion detection via a web cam.  It's not a new project and has been around for at least 5-7yrs and the question for me was how was it compared to ones that are available out of the box like Google Nest, Ring, Amazon, Wyze, Eufy, Swann, etc.  There's lots.

Sony 8MP NoIR

I have seen the video from Google's Nest door bell cam and it is amazing in terms of resolution and it also has sound.  Even the night video is amazingly clear.  It must have an IR light on it to get the night quality to be so clear.

However, for all of these products they require you to pay a subscription fee per year to get video recordings.  But it goes to a cloud site and who knows what happens to that data.  Some give you video stream and notification but no recordings.

The MotionEye project provides, motion detection, video stream, recording (even TTLs on how long to keep the files - forever is an option), notification with images, even a web interface.  What's cool is that MotionEye will add a shortcut to itself so you can see who's at the front door if you hear a knock.  It is quite neat.

cheese!

The hardware is a Pi-zero-2-W and a Sony 8MP NOIR camera.  The newer pi-zero-2-W is not compatible with the MotionEye OS images currently available.  I didn't know this before I ordered the stuff.  It was only after I went through the setup that I noticed it was not booting up.  After googling I found a thread with someone trying a few months back to get it working on the exact same rPi board and got an image working and uploaded an image with a link.  Thanks buddy for that...  The original maintainer of this project was no longer doing ports to newer boards.  I just assumed the newer board would work since it was still a Pi-Zero-W.  But apparently not.

knock, knock!

I downloaded the source code so I can maybe have a look and understand the changes.  Worth a try.  Hopefully it's not in some obscure language like Scala.  Don't get me started on that.  Very hard to read and understand.  Code looks pretty, but incredibly difficult to follow and understand how it actually works.  So much is hidden or obfuscated.  Unless. you know where to look.  You won't know.  Like why do it this way?

In any case enough of that.  I finally decided to try this out to see if a security cam was something that would be of use for us.  First use case is we have a very old door.  Original to the house and it's solid wood.  And often I hear our knocker when someone is there or light knocking that I barely hear.  

Who's there?

And lately we have had marketers coming asking for donations for hospitals, underprivileged kids in some foreign country.  Just $1 a loonie a day.  I am not a scrooge, but my response is always the same.  I give to my church because it helps those that in need and are local.  I want to help and improve the local area first before I venture to help save the world.  Then they usually say, how generous and then add, how about signing up then.  Then I say... nice try, but still can't.

The other thing is.  There was the whole Salvation Army thing where the top management was taking 75% of the money being donated.  So who is it really benefiting?

It's Kevin the cat

So this MotionPi was so I could look on my phone, tablet, whatever and see who was knocking on my door.  Was it CanadaPost, Fedex, UPS, or Amazon?  Then I'm heading down to open the door to collect my stuff!

If was a neighbour, I'll decide if I was expecting them or not and I'll contact them later to see what they needed.  The thing is, neighbours don't know you are working from home, they just know you are home.  So if I was at work, this wouldn't happen.  But then again, I am at work and I have work to do.

purrrrr...

And if it was some marketing thing or someone who wanted to talk about the bible scriptures. Then I'm not opening my door at all and wasting my time that I'd rather watch TV or Netflix.  If you haven't watched Click Bait, do yourself a favour an go check it out.

But if it's Kevin.  Then I'll go get a bowl of milk.

And he can come in and warm up and have a nap.