The J Train

No-Knead Bread

A while back, NYT food writer Mark Bittman published a recipe from acclaimed baker Jim Lahey for a bakery-caliber loaf of bread that required almost no kneading. The foodie blog world was abuzz, and why not? Who wouldn't be excited about the prospect of quality bread with just about no effort?

The tricks are twofold. First, the dough gets a long, slow rise--almost 24 hours total. Kneading helps form the web of gluten that good yeast bread is all about, but the same magic happens on its own over time. The second trick is that the bread is baked inside a cast-iron dutch oven, which gives you the same all-around heat that a brick oven does.

Does it work? See for yourself:


Holy God, could this ever be dangerous. You're literally talking about ten minutes of effort, total--mix up the ingredients the night before, give it a turn in the afternoon, throw it in the preheated dutch oven a couple of hours later, and take out a beautiful loaf of bread. The crust is layered and crunchy, the crumb is soft and airy. The long slow rise gives it a depth of flavor that only comes from time.

My only quibble with the recipe is that it was a little under-salty. I'll probably try to up the salt to a whole tablespoon of kosher (=about 2tsp regular) next time--it might retard the yeast more than I'd like, but there's usually a good middle ground.

Briefly noted

Rock of Love reminds me of middle school in every possible way.

I'm not sure that word is legal

Can you get the first word in this Scrabblegram puzzle, published last Friday in the Washington Post?

It's "subtext", of course. Unless you're some kind of perv.
(Via Boing Boing)

There Will Be Blood (rambling review)

I caught bits and pieces of Boogie Nights on TV Friday night, and I realized again that the climactic scene from that movie--the "Sister Christian" scene--is just an incredible piece of filmmaking. I haven't seen many sequences that create that kind of tension, between the music, Alfred Molina's insanity, the big guys with guns, and the Asian kid inexplicably lighting firecrackers. And in the middle of it there's a long close-up on Mark Wahlberg, surprisingly unfazed by it all. Scenes like that make it hard not to call Paul Thomas Anderson a genius, even if his supposed magnum opus Magnolia was an excellent two-hour movie hiding in a 3 1/2 hour movie. (His feature debut, Hard Eight, is also a favorite of mine, and it shows all the restraint that Magnolia lacks.)

I worried that Magnolia's bloat would be even more pronounced in a sprawling historical epic like There Will Be Blood, but I needn't have. The focus on a single character and the brilliant performance of Daniel Day-Lewis keep it on the rails.

I was thinking on the way home about motivations. It's almost a given in literature and especially in theatre that motivations are paramount and need to be clear. I did a really silly Neil Simon play called Fools in college, and we joked all the time about the motivations of our ridiculous characters. One day the director sat us down after a runthrough and had us actually talk seriously about why our characters did the things they did. Nobody could explain exactly how, but the play just clicked after that.

Occasionally, though, this goes too far, especially with characters who aren't really stable. The crazy person mutters the same Bible verse over and over because it's the same one his father used to quote over and over while he beat the crap out of him and his mom. That sort of thing. Rarely do we get to see a crazy character do something just because he's crazy.

A lot happens in There Will Be Blood that just doesn't have any good explanation. It's jarring, but in a good way, especially early in the movie when we have every reason to believe that Daniel Plainview is a perfectly sane man. And maybe he is at that point. Maybe his madness comes on as we see it, so slowly that you barely notice it coming.

The last scene in the movie--the bowling alley scene--is probably the equal of the Sister Christan scene in tension, and maybe moreso because there is so much uncertainty built into the scene.

Definitely worth seeing, if only for Daniel Day-Lewis. Won't win Best Picture, but DD-L probably will and definitely should get Best Actor.

Best Soundtrack Oscar

There really ought to be an Oscar for Best Soundtrack. Juno, for instance, wouldn't have been nearly the movie it was without its music. Johnny Greenwood's score for There Will Be Blood was perfect, but it's ineligible for the Best Original Score award because some of it was composed previously. There really should be a place for it somewhere.

And then there's Once, which got one measly Best Original Song nomination while fucking Enchanted got three and August Rush got one. I haven't seen Enchanted, but I'm almost certain it doesn't have a scene like this:

Home buying tips

If you're considering buying a new house, here's an important question to ask yourself--if I had to replace, say, the refrigerator, or the oven, or the dishwasher, with one that's six inches wider or three inches taller or whatever, how big a pain in the balls would it be? I think we're golden on the fridge, but if our oven ever finally dies we'll have to go to the fucking Shire to find a new one that fits the hole.

And I can't say this enough--figure on two mortgage payments a year for repairs and maintenance, and have access to at least that much via savings/credit that you can repay painlessly/whatever.

Commercials and yuppies lied to me

Our chill chest is officially fucked, so I ponied up six bucks for a month of Consumer Reports online to aid the quest for a new one.

In their Brand Repair History, most fridge brands fare about the same, though Whirlpool edges out the pack. There are only two brands that consistently require more repairs than others: Maytag and Sub-Zero.

Vampire Weekend, "A-Punk"

I haven't blogged much about Vampire Weekend because it felt like jumping on the bandwagon, but the bandwagon happens to be going the right way in this case.  This song has been stuck in my head all morning, so I'm going to treat it as a sign.  Their full debut is out 1/29.  Highly recommended for anyone who knows Paul Simon's Graceland by heart.

Like a vacuum cleaner with a puffer fish on the end

This week's Zero Punctuation features his usual riot of a review of The Witcher, as well as an installment of "Opening Sequence Theatre".

Oh, and he finally got around to Super Mario Galaxy a few weeks ago.

(They're all worth watching, even if you don't know anything about the game in question.)

Three Girls and their Buddy (review)

Sunday night we trekked to Lexington to catch the Three Girls and Their Buddy tour, featuring Emmylou Harris, Patty Griffin, Shawn Colvin, and Buddy Miller.

We had perfect seats in a packed Singletary Center. All four performers shared the stage, sitting in a row and taking turns doing songs while the others backed up on vocals, guitar, or hand percussion.

In addition to his own fantastic turns at the mike, the chief accompanist for the night was Buddy Miller, whose electric guitar couldn't have been more perfect for the task. After all, this is the guy who manages to make Emmylou Harris sound even better.

Speaking of which, what the hell can I say about Emmylou? She's a goddess. Her voice in a live setting just hits you like a ton of bricks. Her highlight came early on with a cover of Dolly Parton's "Coat of Many Colors", a song I hadn't heard in years.

Shawn Colvin was in a very low-energy mode for most of the night, but that's OK; she does the low-key solo acoustic thing better than just about anybody. (The last time I saw her in that setting was about ten years ago, when she was six months pregnant. Great show.) Her highlight was probably Lefty Frizell's "That's the Way Love Goes".

If I had to give the prize to one of the three ladies, the narrow edge for this show would go to Patty Griffin. She's the only one of the three who did much of her own well-known material, but she brought the house down with "Flaming Red" and "Nobody's Crying" and the show-closing "Mary".

My other favorite moments were Buddy and Shawn doing the Everly Brothers' "Let It Be Me" and the all-hands takes on Emmylou's "Green Pastures" (originally a Stanley Brothers tune, but rapidly becoming Emmylou's) and "Sin City", one of my favorite Gram Parsons tracks.

I don't know how this show could have been better than I expected, but it was.