A Range of Cultures

Seven days after we ordered it, the new range showed up from its long journey from Texas, along with mom & dad to join the excitement and help me install the matching microwave. Mom & dad didn't come in a box from Texas but they did lovingly drive up from their home in Pleasant Hill.

We had no choice but to buy a microwave now since the color black is being discontinued by Electrolux.

Presley kept

Nana busy by

attending to

her every need.

We bought an Electrolux gas range to replace the one I had killed. I hadn't shopped for an appliance since our dishwasher died a year or two ago. I thought Electrolux only made vacuum cleaners; boy was I wrong! It came, it's beautiful and it's black, shiny black, black-black, so black that if we don't pay attention it will need dusting black! My first pizza in the new oven came out and I dropped a bit of corn meal over the top of it. It looked like several thousand galaxies on a clear summer night. With a wave touch panel that looks like the control panel of the USS Enterprise D, it takes finger oil and at the right angle, multiplies its visibility about 300 times. I'm glad it doesn't have a retinal recognition security device on it or it would have me smear my nose onto the wave touch panel to scan my retinas before using. I think a box of windex wipes will be needed to keep that wave touch panel from looking like a petrie dish. All that being said, I like it. It has ball bearing glide oven racks that slide like a dream. I love a nice rack. It also has a bread proofing setting and big knobs. (Fill in joke here!) I'm glad they put knobs the size of tennis balls on it. When you reach down to adjust the fire you don't want knobs that feel like after thoughts or even worse, another wave touch control panel.

I got to use my new pizza stone, the Fibrament D for the first time. It felt world class. I used Gail's dough recipe but substituted 1/2 cup of the 250 year old sourdough starter instead of yeast. I should have used a whole cup, but I misplaced my instructions from class amidst several tons of cardboard and styrofoam packaging I had to deal with after receiving two appliances the same day. The sourdough taste came through in the crust and I felt like I had moved on to the next level of pizza making. Next time I will use a whole cup of starter for a quicker and fuller rise. This is where pizza making starts to really get cool: taking it to the next level.

Pizza hasn't been around as long as wine, but I can see the similarities. Bread, however, I'm sure dates up there with the history of wine going back into antiquity.

As with wine, a substantial variety of flours cultivated, milled, and combined, along with the dough starters used over centuries with love and care worked into each batch of dough, like fermenting of wines. This gives the palate multiple layers of complex flavors. You can almost taste the history in your mouth. Think of it! Cultures in your mouth dating back to 1760! Paul Revere, George Washington, John Hancock, King George himself eating from the same exact bread cultures that are in your mouth right now. Now that is culture!