The River is Rising, and so should my bread

Well, here in Cochrane, in early March, the river is rising. Quite frightening too. Ice has jammed up our river causing very high levels of ice. It makes for some great photos.

 

This is down under the bridge. The town has shut down the river pathways until the ice goes down.

 

This road typically goes down to the boat launch, but as you can see, that’s all under water and ice right now.

 

I can’t go on the paths right now as they’re all under water. Probably for the best.

 

There are markers on the bridge that show how high the waters are. I believe it said that it was at 4 meters. Wow, that’s something else. Our river is controlled by Ghost Dam about 15 km upstream, and generally that doesn’t fluctuate the river too much. Usually it’s low in the morning, and higher in the evening, but this is like nothing else. Reminds me of being back in Peace River during our floods there.

 

So in an effort to maintain my New Year’s resolution to bake one artisan loaf of bread per month, I have kept up with that as best as possible. February’s entry was a Ciabatta loaf and March’s was an Enriched White Bread. All recipes were courtesy of Peter Reinhart’s Breadbaker’s Apprentice book. A great read and must for artisan baking.

 

Like most of the Artisan Breads in the book, they start with a starter, which ferments overnight to add flavour. This is a poolosh, quite runny and spongy once done.

 

The next day, you mix all the ingredients and do rising and proofing of the loaf. The ingredients are simple, so I think there’s more to the technique in the bread making.

 

Home-made proofing bowl. To keep the heat in and let it rise.

 

After some time, I ended up with these. Like I said, I think more of the art is in the technique and shaping, but these turned out pretty good. One went to our neighbours for sampling (they were delighted). It still needs a bit of work, but it’s coming along.

 

I’m attempting to make a sourdough (acutally, a Pain a Poilane). Sourdough needs starter, also known as barm. Barm needs seed culture, whatever that is. So this is an attempt at seed culture, which takes about 6 days. It’s rye flour and pineapple juice, fed daily until it ferments. I think it relies on yeast in the air, which may or may not work. Regardless, this should lead to my sourdough loaf in a week or so.

 

The day after the Ciabatta, I went straight into a one-day bread to play with shaping. In the book, there is a recipe for enriched white bread. Enrichement (butter, egg, milk) being the source of flavour in the bread, these breads take only a few hours to make start to finish. A great way to play with shaping. This picture is the dough ready to rise. It says to rise it a room temp, but I cheated and used a warm oven to speed things up.

 

After rising. This is a very sticky dough and it’s best to handle it as little as possible.

 

For shaping, I chose to make 2 Boules (balls, monsieur Francais, oui oui!). Again, one would be going to our neighbours for sampling.

 

The book didn’t call for slash marks or flour dusting, but I wanted to play with it, so I did. X and O shaping.

 

Post baking. These turned out really well and tasted great! Enriched bread can sometimes have a chemical taste (in my opinion), but these were tasty. Quite sweet and delicious. I gave the X slashed dough to my neighbours, who were again delighted! The little man of our house also enjoyed some bread too (Nom nom Yummmmmm).

 

I will continue to play with shaping and baking breads. I need to iron out some technique, but this is definitely something I am really enjoying. Lucky I have people to help eat these batches of bread and provide comments and feedback. I am quite sure that everyone who gets a hot loaf of bread at 10pm is happy, but you never know. Maybe I will purposely make a really gross loaf to see if they are good sources of feedback.

Next blog is about my new bike. Oh yeah, did I mention I got a new bike (for dirt cheap too!).

I would like to blog more than once per month…

So yeah, looking at my blog that comes up as my homepage on my internet browser, I realize that I haven’t blogged in a while. Every time I see it, I go “I know I know” I need to write a new one. So here I am, writing a new one. Let’s take a look at what has happened recently.

I did a winter run on Ghost Lake a little while ago. GPS data can be found here. This is the drive out there. Wintery indeed.

Last time I was out at Ghost, it was not frozen. But now it is. Figures… Good thing I didn’t bring a canoe.

I have a picture similar to this one that I took while kayaking this past summer. It can be found here. I love how we have seasons here. It’s so cool (and cold!).

I got out to the little island on Ghost lake and had some fun flying through the air. I am a nerd, that’s for sure!

I managed to get this one. I think it worked well.

Temperatures were close to –30 while I was running, which makes exercise and breathing difficult. It’s great for maximizing lung capacity though. I don’t know how, but after running in the cold, running in normal temperatures seems so much easier. Maybe it’s just in my head. Anyway, the plan with the run was to go circle the island and come back, but I ended up losing my car key somewhere along the run. So I spent a whack of time sifting through the snow and couldn’t find it. Bummer. Luckily, I got back to the car and had left the door unlocked. I got in the car, called for help and waited for 1/2 an hour before rescue came. Ooops. Luckily, friends were in town and able to help, or I would have had to hitch-hike back home.

I have also held true to one of my resolutions to try making an Artisan loaf of bread each month. This month’s (well, January’s) was a French Loaf from Peter Reinhart’s Bread Baker’s Apprentice book. The book is fantastic. I read almost 100 pages of bread theory. I ended up with this.

A sad attempt at a French Loaf. I think the main problem is that I accidentally shut off the oven during baking.

It sure looked good, and tasted great, but the oven-shutting-off incident caused a thick, chewy and rather hard-to-eat crust. At least the bread tasted really good.

The payoff though? Well my wife got some great photos . I learned that turning off the oven while baking generally produces poor results. But the key thing I learned is that a 2 day pre-ferment makes absolutely deliciously flavoured bread! I will definitely try this again.

Lastly, I have officially signed up for the Powderface42 FULL marathon. Yeah yeah! For the longest time, their website was down, then all of a sudden it was up and the race was 80% sold out! I immediately signed up and made it in! Yeah yeah! So January 31st marked the beginning of my training. It’s basically a 3 day on 1 day off training schedule. I’ve adopted Crossfit Endurance to help out with that. So far, it works great, although I am only in day 2 of it, lol! But one problem I found last year during the Powderface21 was that I ran out of fuel. So I am experimenting with fuelling while running without having to buy energy gels. I found a recipe for Pinole, a roasted corn endurance food. I learned about it in Born to Run (I know, I know…) so I figured I would give it a go.

Basically, you take cornmeal or corn flour, roast it till it browns (parches), mix it with some honey (I used brown rice syrup, about 1tsp per cup of corn), cinnamon (or ginger for flavour) and water to make little cookies. I baked it at 400 till it hardened and voila, instant energy! I made 3 variations, one with corn flour, one with cornmeal and the third with a mix of both.

I ran a 90minute Time Trial this morning at the track and took one of these cookies every 15 minutes with water. I cannot believe how well it worked. I even tried skipping one meal at the 45 minute mark and noticed a decline in performance. So yeah, I just have to tweak the size of these things (big, dry cookies are hard to eat when you’re thirsty) and they should go well. It’s amazing how well fuelling works! I will keep this up as I continue my training!

That’s all from me!

Kayak-ak-ak-ak-ak

Ok, so for years, literally, many years, I have wanted to try a kayak. I have been in a canoe many a time, but there's a strange appeal to kayaks that I could not understand. So, on Thursday after work I went to Aquabatics in Calgary and rented myself a boat. Yep, finally. I was hoping to rent out their Liquid Logic XP10, but they only had a Dagger Approach 9.0. Fine by me...

My lucky car, with yet another thing it can haul along with it. Thanks to Thule, I have a nice kayak rack, so I put it to good use and off to Ghost Reservoir I headed. 10 minutes from my door... life is good.

The wind was up and the lake was choppy, so I stayed close to shore. Still, I felt like a cork bobbing up and down in the swells. The waves were so high, it was almost possible to surf them. But not quite, and perhaps I will save that for another day.

Kayaking came very naturally to me. After some minor adjustments, some foot pedal tweaking and a decent stroke, I was moving along pretty good. I've always wanted to travel to the little island on the east side of Ghost, so now I was finally able to. I could see off in the distance behind my Mt. Yamnuska.

Because everyone who paddles a kayak has to take this photo...

Since I had the rental for 24 hours, I got up early at 5am to get to the lake in the morning and do a 1st-thing-in-the-morning paddle. What a treat! 6am, no one on the lake, smooth like glass. The main purpose behind my kayaking is fitness and outdoor adventure, so the 6am kayak may become a regular ritual next year when I hopefully have my own boat.

This time, I paddled north up the inlet towards Ghost River. Again, like glass and I was able to hit the 9:00 minute/km mark with my paddling. A good pace for a newbie.

I felt creative, so I took this photo and called it Le Drip D'oar...

The cool thing about being in such a small boat is that you can go places you've never been and take unique photos. I'm sure you can go just as many places in a large boat, but there's something far more romantic about paddling with just the sound of your own breath and the swish of the paddles and wake. I paddled under the highway and took a photo that actually turned out quite a bit better than I had anticipated it would. It also showed me just how much graffiti there is under a bridge.

And of course, while paddling, one must look up. Tons of swallows who nest under the bridge were rather alarmed by my presence. It made for another photo opportunity.

I wish I had discovered or at least tried kayaking years ago, like when I was 13, cause then I could have been doing it for all these past years. But since I just discovered it, I will enjoy it now and from now on. I need my own boat. Until I can afford the one I want, I will just continue renting one. For me, swishing across a lake at 6am beats indoor cardio, anyday, hands down and paddles out.

Canoe Canoe Canoe Canoe Canoe Canoe!!!

So thanks to my pastor, I have a canoe on loan for a few weeks! I called up a buddy of mine and we headed to Ghost Reservoir, 10 minutes down the road. I love being so close to everything! Cochrane rocks!!!

Sweet! A canoe fits on my car and actually looks good on it!

Paddles were cleverly tucked inside on the rack underneath the canoe. That's using my thinker!

Meet Nate. Nate likes canoes. Nate likes water bottles. Nate is about to fall into the water.

Nate is also good at looking like a cool dude. I wish I could agree with that, but just look at those socks...

Meet Lorne. That's me. Fresh from being in the water. Lorne likes canoes. Lorne likes water. Lorne likes being outside.

Lorne also like paddling and pointing at things while he is in the canoe. I was trying for my explorer pose. Surely, Lewis and Clark or McKenzie must have done this once upon a time during their travels.

See? See!!! I told you Nate was going to fall in the water.

I told Nate to look like he was paddling like mad, so this is what he did. Are you convinced he's going anywhere?

Apparently, when I go canoeing, I end up spending time both IN and ON the water. I guess I have to make sure I only stay ON the water when I bring my wife and son with me.

And to add to all this funness of mine, I won a $500 rack from Thule in their Win a Rack Wednesday contest that they have on their site! Yeah, sweet is right! So I phoned them up (after confirming it was NOT a scam) and told them I already have a rack. They said I could have $500 in other stuff then. So I ordered the following:

884 Roll Model. For easy loading of a kayak. I don't own a kayak yet, but when I do, loading will be a breeze. At least those rental kayaks will be well secured and easy to load. One step closer Lorne... one step closer....

871XT Fairing, to eliminate that pesky wind noise. Also used for being a driving billboard for Thule.


594XT Sidearm. I already have a bike carrier, but this one is better. And free. What more could a guy want? Now I have two bike carriers!

All I have to say is thank you so much Thule! I think this is an awesome prize to win and I will cherish it every time it is used! What a blessing!