Being a Pretzel
Aug. 4th, 2021 09:16 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
taz_39I didn't sleep well Tuesday night.
Kept dreaming about trying to make the TinyMod work with CaseCAT.
Probably because I was in a chat discussing the issue right up until I went to bed.
Anyway, despite what my subconscious brain thinks, it's not the end of the world if I can't get it to work with CaseCAT.
I got up and had breakfast, messaging the TInyMod creator to let him know I'm available for walkthroughs if he has time today.
Then I did a little research on pretzel recipes...most of what I could find was in American measurements, a pain in the ass but I at least looked up a cup-to-weight flour equivalent before launching into making them.
It's a fairly simple dough of warm water, yeast, sugar, flour, melted butter, and salt.
Came together very nicely...because I've been working with so much enriched dough I forgot what it's like to have a nice non-sticky ball of regular dough to knead. It's so smooth and easy to work with! I made a few small changes to the recipe: reduced the salt by 1/2tsp and added 1.5tsp sugar (there was no sugar in the original recipe), added two tablespoons of vital wheat gluten, and used walnut oil to knead the dough instead of flour. I'm also going to use an egg wash. I'm obsessed with shiny bread.
Here's the lovely dough ball after rising for an hour.
That's the other nice thing about pretzels, they only take like an hour to rise.
While the dough was rising I cleaned up the kitchen and washed our sheets, ate lunch, and thought about what I wanted to do for the rest of the day. It turned out not to matter what I wanted to do, because what happened was the TinyMod creator got onto a Discord chat with me and wanted to have me wipe the software on my machine, and replace it with something else to see if that would get it working in CaseCAT.
I was all for it, but first had to finish these pretzel buns!
I punched down the dough and flattened it out on the oiled countertop, kneaded it a few times, then chopped it up into nine pieces weighing about 85 grams each. I then kneaded and rolled each piece until it was a little ball. I still haven't perfected the art of creating surface tension, so they weren't perfect little balls, but they were good.
They rested and rose for another 20 minutes, then it was time to actually turn them into pretzels!
This involved boiling water on the stove with some baking soda, then dousing each dough ball in the boiling solution for 30 seconds on a side.
To make "real" pretzels, you're supposed to use lye for this part. But I ain't got lye, and it's expensive so I wasn't about to buy any either. Here are the buns after being boiled and before getting the egg wash and the little "x" mark on top. Don't they look weird?
I sprinkled two with smoked sea salt and another two with regular sea salt, and left the others plain. I don't have the right kind of salt anyway.
20 minutes in the oven at 475, and here is the result:
I think they look great! And they taste great too. Super fluffy inside, nice and chewy outside.
They definitely don't have the same flavor as store-bought, and the brown "skin" is not as think.
Next time, I think I will buy the lye. I would also make them bigger; these are kind of slider size.
But for a first try they are really good.
The crumb:
While they were cooling I got on Discord with the TinyMod creator, and together we worked on wiping the software and installing something else. He had me download a program, then some files for the program to use and install on the TinyMod. Basically we were making the TinyMod appear as a different kind of steno machine to CaseCAT, so that they could find each other.
And it worked!
It took a bit of fiddling with CaseCAT settings, but in the end I could work in CaseCAT with the TinyMod. Awesome!!
I was very grateful that the creator spent so much time with me to figure it all out. But he said it was valuable for him as well; many students use CaseCAT, and now he knows how to modify his equipment to be compatible with it. And I really enjoyed learning how to work with the TinyMod on a technical level. So it was a win-win experience :)
After that I cleaned up the kitchen again, then Jameson's friend Clay came over so they could work on Christmas music some more.
I took myself to the back room to try on two bathing suits that had showed up during all that. Thank god, one of them fits!! It's not perfect because of my stupid long torso, but it's truly as close as I can expect to get with a one piece. The second suit didn't quite work out, which is great, I'm happy to send it back. FINALLY I'm done with this stupid bathing suit BS!
Here's the one I ended up with:
(photo courtesy Macy's, obviously)
Yeah, it's white. I'm really pale, and white makes pale skin look darker believe it or not.
After that I put the clean sheets on the bed and ate dinner, then it was time for steno school.
I had meant to practice trombone, and take a steno test, and do some gardening and gather things for the thrift store. But it was worth the time to get the TinyMod working the way I'd like. In class I mentioned the TinyMod and showed it to everyone, my teacher was intrigued and one of the students asked for more details. As someone who is super new to stenography, I'm surprised they don't already know about this whole hobbyist underground of people who make steno machines just for fun. I got to blow some minds tonight, that's for sure.
Class was ok. I'm just itching to take more tests and pass out of the class.
That was pretty much it for the day...after class I felt very tired, got a shower and had a little vodka and spent some time typing this up and relaxing. Tomorrow Jameson has a gig in the morning, so I'll have the house to myself until around 1pm. I definitely need to pratice trombone, then I want to get groceries, do my meal prep, do laundry, do some gardening, and take at least one steno test. If there's time I want to try again to gather stuff for the thrift store.
Kept dreaming about trying to make the TinyMod work with CaseCAT.
Probably because I was in a chat discussing the issue right up until I went to bed.
Anyway, despite what my subconscious brain thinks, it's not the end of the world if I can't get it to work with CaseCAT.
I got up and had breakfast, messaging the TInyMod creator to let him know I'm available for walkthroughs if he has time today.
Then I did a little research on pretzel recipes...most of what I could find was in American measurements, a pain in the ass but I at least looked up a cup-to-weight flour equivalent before launching into making them.
It's a fairly simple dough of warm water, yeast, sugar, flour, melted butter, and salt.
Came together very nicely...because I've been working with so much enriched dough I forgot what it's like to have a nice non-sticky ball of regular dough to knead. It's so smooth and easy to work with! I made a few small changes to the recipe: reduced the salt by 1/2tsp and added 1.5tsp sugar (there was no sugar in the original recipe), added two tablespoons of vital wheat gluten, and used walnut oil to knead the dough instead of flour. I'm also going to use an egg wash. I'm obsessed with shiny bread.
Here's the lovely dough ball after rising for an hour.
That's the other nice thing about pretzels, they only take like an hour to rise.
While the dough was rising I cleaned up the kitchen and washed our sheets, ate lunch, and thought about what I wanted to do for the rest of the day. It turned out not to matter what I wanted to do, because what happened was the TinyMod creator got onto a Discord chat with me and wanted to have me wipe the software on my machine, and replace it with something else to see if that would get it working in CaseCAT.
I was all for it, but first had to finish these pretzel buns!
I punched down the dough and flattened it out on the oiled countertop, kneaded it a few times, then chopped it up into nine pieces weighing about 85 grams each. I then kneaded and rolled each piece until it was a little ball. I still haven't perfected the art of creating surface tension, so they weren't perfect little balls, but they were good.
They rested and rose for another 20 minutes, then it was time to actually turn them into pretzels!
This involved boiling water on the stove with some baking soda, then dousing each dough ball in the boiling solution for 30 seconds on a side.
To make "real" pretzels, you're supposed to use lye for this part. But I ain't got lye, and it's expensive so I wasn't about to buy any either. Here are the buns after being boiled and before getting the egg wash and the little "x" mark on top. Don't they look weird?
I sprinkled two with smoked sea salt and another two with regular sea salt, and left the others plain. I don't have the right kind of salt anyway.
20 minutes in the oven at 475, and here is the result:
I think they look great! And they taste great too. Super fluffy inside, nice and chewy outside.
They definitely don't have the same flavor as store-bought, and the brown "skin" is not as think.
Next time, I think I will buy the lye. I would also make them bigger; these are kind of slider size.
But for a first try they are really good.
The crumb:
While they were cooling I got on Discord with the TinyMod creator, and together we worked on wiping the software and installing something else. He had me download a program, then some files for the program to use and install on the TinyMod. Basically we were making the TinyMod appear as a different kind of steno machine to CaseCAT, so that they could find each other.
And it worked!
It took a bit of fiddling with CaseCAT settings, but in the end I could work in CaseCAT with the TinyMod. Awesome!!
I was very grateful that the creator spent so much time with me to figure it all out. But he said it was valuable for him as well; many students use CaseCAT, and now he knows how to modify his equipment to be compatible with it. And I really enjoyed learning how to work with the TinyMod on a technical level. So it was a win-win experience :)
After that I cleaned up the kitchen again, then Jameson's friend Clay came over so they could work on Christmas music some more.
I took myself to the back room to try on two bathing suits that had showed up during all that. Thank god, one of them fits!! It's not perfect because of my stupid long torso, but it's truly as close as I can expect to get with a one piece. The second suit didn't quite work out, which is great, I'm happy to send it back. FINALLY I'm done with this stupid bathing suit BS!
Here's the one I ended up with:
(photo courtesy Macy's, obviously)
Yeah, it's white. I'm really pale, and white makes pale skin look darker believe it or not.
After that I put the clean sheets on the bed and ate dinner, then it was time for steno school.
I had meant to practice trombone, and take a steno test, and do some gardening and gather things for the thrift store. But it was worth the time to get the TinyMod working the way I'd like. In class I mentioned the TinyMod and showed it to everyone, my teacher was intrigued and one of the students asked for more details. As someone who is super new to stenography, I'm surprised they don't already know about this whole hobbyist underground of people who make steno machines just for fun. I got to blow some minds tonight, that's for sure.
Class was ok. I'm just itching to take more tests and pass out of the class.
That was pretty much it for the day...after class I felt very tired, got a shower and had a little vodka and spent some time typing this up and relaxing. Tomorrow Jameson has a gig in the morning, so I'll have the house to myself until around 1pm. I definitely need to pratice trombone, then I want to get groceries, do my meal prep, do laundry, do some gardening, and take at least one steno test. If there's time I want to try again to gather stuff for the thrift store.
