A New Training Plan For This Adult Improver

A ratings slump around the holidays has made me re-examine why I’m winning and losing. Like everyone else below grandmaster level, many of my losses are because I blundered material. I feel like the main reason I’m blundering material is because I’m so focused on what my plans and what I’m doing that I don’t do an adequate job of checking the threat associated with my opponents last move.

What I have been doing for practice is Rapid games and Correspondence games, puzzle tactics, opening study, and occasional endgame study (I feel I’m strong at endgames relative to my peers anyway). The other part of study has been walking through master games, specifically games that use an opening that I use, and I’m focused on the transitions from the opening to the plans of the middlegame.

I returned to chess a few months back and I now feel like the openings are no longer the problem against players around my skill level. I’m pretty happy with my opening repertoire as a fit for how I want to play, and I feel like I have a reasonable handle (to a decent depth) on the openings and variations that I see with any real frequency.

My tactics studying has been either: Targeted Lichess puzzles, such as rook and pawn endgames, mating combinations, or king and pawn endgames. In an attempt to get faster I’ve been doing Puzzle Storm on Lichess.

I don’t think “faster” is the problem though. Unless it’s a super long game I’m always fine on time, and even then I almost always have more time left than my opponent. I need “deeper”, and I need to maintain better overall board vision and not get so fixated on what I’m doing at the exclusion of everything else. If anything Puzzle Storm is training me to disregard everything except finding my tactic to win the puzzle. And that’s when I run into trouble.

The new study plan is going to lean more heavily to reviewing masters games, but now it’s going to mostly be annotated masters games. I’m also going to try to often set up a real board and walk through the games guessing the moves as I go. It’s slower than just clicking through a game on my phone but I think it encourages me to think a lot more deeply about potential plans and combinations – both mine and my opponents.

To start I have selected three books featuring masters games from my mushrooming book collection:

Winning With The Slow (But Venomous) Italian. Especially chapter 11, which is the “strategy” chapter. Well over 50% of the players at my level answer e4 with e5 (king’s pawn with king’s pawn). I wind up in a lot of Slow Italians, and my usual plan is to attack the queenside because my opponent doesn’t prioritize that side of the board. The strategy chapter offers a lot of other alternatives that I need to get better at recognizing. This represents 26 games, which I have loaded as a private Lichess study as well.

Rock Solid Chess: Tiviakov’s Unbeatable Strategy: Volume 2: Piece Play. Now that’s a title that lacks any pretense of modesty, isn’t it? To be fair Tiviakov claims to have gone 110 games without losing. I’ve just started really focusing on the book and at least one idea has already won me a game. I feel like the book is making me re-examine what I’m prioritizing for the better. As of today I have my bookmark in the “Centralization” chapter, though I think the more of this book I can work through the better.

The last book even newer to me and I’m pretty excited about it-

Zurich International Chess Tournament, 1953 (Bronstein). I just received this a couple of days ago, but the combination of era, level of competition, and level of annotation makes many consider this book a classic and a must-have for annotated master games. Because it’s 1953 and because it’s pre-computers it makes the games more relatable for players who aren’t masters themselves. There are 210 games here, which is completely overwhelming. I did some digging around and came up with a list of 18 games that received multiple recommendations as “must sees”. My plan is to start with the “must see” Nimzo Indian games then go through games in groups that share an opening. The 18 games are listed at bottom of this post for posterity.

I’m going to use a couple of other books to supplement those three: Fundamental Chess Openings, mostly to clear up plans and ideas in out-of-fashion openings from 1953 that I’m not familiar with. And: Chess Structures – A Grandmaster Guide by Mauricio Flores Rios. I *may* play through some of the Chess Structures games as well.

One final tweak to the training plan will be doing Puzzle Streak instead of Puzzle Storm. Puzzle Streak is not timed, it starts easy and gets progressively harder the more you puzzles you get right. It ends when you miss. I think this will be a better use of my study time — it forces me to really focus on the puzzle at hand and not just guess because I’m under a time crunch and the move looks plausible.

And of course there’s Youtube for ideas and “not 100% engaged” entertainment. Naroditsky is still the best. I’ve been branching out to Bartholomew, Finegold, Hanging Pawns, and others but it’s not the same.

The Zurich 1953 games list:

Averbakh v Kotov, game 96, Old Indian

Bronstein v Euwe, game 39, Nimzo Indian

Euwe v Smyslov, game 19, Grunfeld

Euwe v Najdorf, game 58, Kings Indian

Geller v Euwe, game 9, Nimzo Indian

Keres v Smyslov, game 168, English

Najdorf v Stahlberg, game 68, Queens Gambit

Najdorf v Averbakh, game 148, Queens Indian

Reshevsky v Petrosian, game 12, Nimzo Indian

Reshevsky v Stahlberg, game 38, Queens Gambit

Reshevsky v Kotov, game 51, Kings Indian

Smyslov v Stahlberg, game 23, French

Stahlberg v Boleslavsky, game 7, Kings Indian

Szabo v Bronstein, game 31, Old Indian

Tiamonov v Averbakh, game 41, Nimzo Indian

Tiamonov v Euwe, game 54, Nimzo Indian

Tiamonov v Petrosian, game 134, Nimzo Indian

Tiamonov v Najdorf, game 28, Kings Indian

Scid vs PC. Thoughts About The Getting Started Process

I think I now have the very basics of Scid vs PC together. Initially I was somewhat hesitant to get involved with the setup because I wasn’t really sure where to go or what to download. And because I wanted to focus on other things chess. Then there was the word “database”, which can often translate to “Byzantine”, which was also a turnoff. To try to warm up to the idea I watched parts of a few (mostly dry) videos and chose to dive in.

Here’s how I got started:

I downloaded Scid vs PC here.

I ultimately decided to start with just the OTB (Over The Board) files at Lumbra’s Gigabase. It’s actually about ten zipped files containing 9 million+ games of OTB, split up by years or decades (or more). The free unzip utility I used was 7-Zip (here).

The “trick” is to download all of the zip files, create a new database on Scid vs PC, then load each unzipped file into that database so all the games are in one larger db file. Then save *that* file to a new name. That’s the file to be used going forward.

There are millions of online games available at Lumbra’s as well. My feeling is that I may download them at some point, but for now I’m mainly interested in parsing the database for masters OTB games. For example: as White when I play e4 and Black responds with the French defense – I like to play the Tarrasch variation. For model games I can search the main database for just that ECO code, and further narrow my search for GMs I’d like to try to emulate in that opening, for example, Michael Adams. Even better, search terms can also include things like “White Wins”, or “Only games with between X and Y total moves.” I used that last feature to remove super long games since what what I’m really interested in are the openings and middlegames — I can study endgames separately. All of these options are available in the General Filter.

In Scid vs PC there is always a “scratch pad” database open called “Clipbase”. If I search and get say 15 games from one GM and 20 from another, it’s literally a drag and drop process to combine all of those games into the Clipbase, which can then be saved as a new database or exported as PGN game files (or a bunch of other options I haven’t really played with yet.) Note that Clipbase doesn’t and won’t save, so make sure to save what’s in Clipbase as something else if you care about the contents before you close the program.

One neat thing about the PGN export option is that by combining the model games into groups of a maximum of 64 PGNs they can then be easily imported into (also totally free! yay!) Lichess Studies, and Lichess Studies automatically divide the PGN files out into one game per Chapter. So I can have a Study of model games of one particular opening I’m interested in, (or one GMs selected games), and I can share those Studies with friends. (If you want the Study to stay “yours” then Select Unlisted (no one else can see) when creating it and invite your friends as Members. It’s also possible to set “Allow Cloning” and “Share and Export” to “Only Me” if you’re concerned with a Study getting broadcast. There’s no way to “un-ring the bell” if a Study gets public.)

A Note regarding importing bulk PGNs into a Lichess Study: I like to work through model games with the color I intend to be playing at the bottom of the screen — Lichess Studies give you that option to have Black or White at the bottom at the time that you import. If you forget to toggle Black or White at the bottom during a bulk game import then the only way to flip the games is one at a time. Which means you’re better served just trashing the Study and getting the import orientation right the second time.

With Scid vs PC it’s possible to download different analysis engines. It’s also possible to download your own games from your chess website of choice. I haven’t done it yet but you can search the database for specific positions, or specific pawn structures, or search by the material that each side has remaining.

That’s not close to everything you can do with Scid vs PC, I’d recommend checking it out. I think it’s a really nice tool that when combined with the Lichess Studies makes viewing selected games on the go very convenient. I’ve also used the Scid vs PC and Lichess Study combo to put games that are in a paperback “Opening” book into a Lichess study, so I can follow along on my phone or laptop rather than getting a board out and moving pieces around.

Again, highly recommended and not nearly as scary as it all sounds.

King Arthur Baking Dutch Oven Dinner Rolls

King Arthur Baking Dutch Oven Dinner Rolls. Recipe is here

2025 Thanksgiving modifications:

All of the water (227g) , milk powder (28g), 70g whole wheat flour (Sonora White), 157g AP flour, and a tiny tiny pinch of active dry yeast were combined into a poolish, covered, and refrigerated for 2 days. I also removed the butter from the refrigerator at that time to ensure it was room temperature when needed.

About 4-5 hours before time to bake, combine the rest of the ingredients (including the remaining 127g AP flour) and mix until a smooth ball of formed.

The recipe calls for a total of 350g flour, one half AP and one half whole wheat. I used 20% of the total flour weight as fresh milled Sonora White flour.

The rest of the recipe was used as directed except that I baked 10 minutes covered and 13 minutes uncovered. I have found that 15 covered and 10 uncovered leaves the tops relatively light.

The poolish and Sonora White combined nicely to make smooth but interesting on their own dinner rolls.

More Chess On The Brain — And Other Resources

Returning to chess many years later, I’m realizing that “modern theory” didn’t wait around while I was gone. Almost all of the books that I read back in the day were written pre-1960.

I recently came across Secrets of Modern Chess Strategy: Advances Since Nimzowitsch by John Watson. (Nimzowitsch’s classic “My System” was written in 1925.) I’d heard of Watson’s book, and it happened to be available at the local used book store, so that one has been added to the library. Modern Chess Strategy was written in 1998, which for me qualifies as “new theory”.

In a lot of respects Modern Chess Strategy has been more eye-opening for me than Silman’s How to Reassess Your Chess. (Published 2010). Given the reading foundation I already have, the Silman book seemed like a lot of “I’ve already seen that idea”. Though there are a lot of people who read Silman’s book and attribute significant rating gains to having read it.

All of this is not intended as a dig at How To Reassess Your Chess. Had I not already worked through Pawn Power In Chess (Kmoch), My System, and other old classics, I’m sure Silman’s book would have opened up my mind to a lot of things that I’d previously had no idea about.

So that’s not where intended this blog entry to go…

My phone has been acquiring an increasing number of Chess apps and website links, with an emphasis on free stuff. I might be fine with paying a one-time fee for some of these sites, or making a donation, but I’m not going to sign up for several hundred dollars annually in courses and membership fees. There are some instances better database manipulation would be nice, but I have no intention of ever turning pro, so I can live with my workarounds. Chess can be an almost free hobby if you want it to be.

Listed below is online stuff I’ve been using. Note that I’m not covering all of the features available for each, just the features I’m using right now. Most of these offer games and training at the very least:

The Lichess app, Lichess.org, and Listudy: The Lichess app is where I spend most of my chess time. All free, no ads, free studies about nearly any chess subject. You can even personalize studies if you choose to. Or create your own study with the subject you’re focused on. Terrific resources. Lichess.org is the web version which offers some different functionality. Listudy is maintained by a different group of people I think, and offers some training and studies.

Chess.com: Monetized through and through. Some good free stuff available but if you’re not willing to pay a monthly fee then many or most of the useful things are behind a paywall. For me that’s a hard pass.

Chessbook: I’ve been using this for spaced repetition opening training. The free limit is 100 moves per side per color. That worked fine when I could fit all of my white openings with only a few lines each under the limit. I’m now to the point where I can practice a subset of the current white opening that I’m working on, so I’ve broken the opening into smaller modules that I can save and swap out when I want to work on something else. Again, workarounds.

PGN files: Mostly freely available from virtually every site. Games, openings, studies, you name it. This is (I think) the most common file format for chess content. Many websites and apps will allow you to export your study/opening/game to a PGN file, which you can save and share with other sites or friends. I’m still learning the syntax for writing directly into a PGN file — it hasn’t been a priority yet so it hasn’t happened.

Scid vs PC: A PGN Database handler, among other things. I’ll be using this a lot more in the future. You can import games/ openings/ studies, etc in PGN form. It allows for chess engine plug-ins. It’s free in contrast to many other options. I haven’t had the time to really explore this yet either, but I think it’s going to get a lot of use.

Chessable: I’ve started using Chessable a little more lately. They offer free courses, with a whole bunch more courses behind a paywall. There are a couple of free openings courses that I’m working through, but I don’t know what my long-term relationship with that site is going to look like. I do think there’s some functionality I haven’t really looked at yet, so maybe I’ll be singing a very different tune later.

QChess.net: Pretty new, and I only happened across it last week. There’s a searchable database and an opening trainer, among other features.

Chess Tempo: Has both an app and a web presence. I’ve been using its Advanced DB search to look for particular players playing particular openings. It offers many other features as well that I haven’t delved into yet.

And that’s what I’ve found in the first couple of months. I know that I’m missing a bunch of quality sites and quality content creators. This blog post will likely need a revisit at some point.

As for me, I’m not playing a ton of games, and I started out with a relatively not-awesome Lichess Rapid rating, but my win rate remains high and I’m gaining a significant amount of rating each month. I’m sure there’s a plateau coming eventually but I haven’t hit it yet. “To Infinity And Beyond!” …. No, of course not. But the journey is fun.

Returning To Chess As An Adult Learner

Before home internet. That’s the last time I would have been considered an “active” chess player. At that time the resources for learning were either books or people. Back then I was a member of the local chess club, and I had a small handful of books including Bobby Fischer Teaches Chess, Pawn Power In Chess by Hans Kmoch, Nimzovich’s My System, and a massive encyclopedia of openings that probably dated from the 1970s.

I recently got the bug again. I did some internet reading, and started watching a few Youtube videos. I loaded the Lichess app onto my phone (totally free and no ads!), and after a couple of games against bots decided to try some rated 10+5 games (10 minutes + 5 seconds added per move).

To backtrack just a bit — when I played at the club a zillion years ago many of the players were better than I was. Everyone had favorite openings and pretty much stuck to them. My openings were mostly sharp, tactical, and study intensive because I liked games like that. (Ruy Lopez or Sicilian Dragon as white, Sicilian Dragon as black when I could get them. I was trying to attack and channel Fischer and Alekhine.) Overall though, the whole experience was pretty controlled and genteel.

When I recently started playing online I discovered I was playing against a large percentage of people who would substitute traps, straight aggression, or just insane crazy moves in place of what I’d call an “opening”. Initially I had trouble with it and it’s taken a little while to adjust, but by now I’ve figured out that if I just play it cool and “sound” — most of that stuff blows up at some point and I’ll have a superior position. But it’s wild, at the level where I am there’s a lot of rock fights.

So now I’d be considered an Adult Learner. Or Adult Improver if was ambitious and trying for a high rating. What that means to the community is that I have interest in the game but I also have a very definite ceiling as to how far I could reasonably advance, mostly due to lack of a malleable brain and a finite time available for commitment. Which is fine with me, I’m having fun with it. I enjoy the learning and I enjoy the competitiveness of playing the games. I do want to improve but I don’t have any illusions of ever getting to be better than the level of a respectable club player.

I’ll close with a few things that have been helpful for me getting back into the swing of it after a very long time away.

For Youtube: I watched all of the Chessbrahs Building Habits series. Building Habits is pretty universally recommended and it helped me feel much more comfortable and confident. I watched a number of Gothamchess videos (Levy Roseman). Lately it’s been Daniel Naroditsky, who to my mind does the best job of teaching more advanced concepts and getting deeper into the positions and potential positions in his games.

For general books: How To Reassess Your Chess: Chess Mastery Through Chess Imbalances by Jeremy Silman (4th ed). By far the most recommended book I’ve seen and for good reason. It covers some of everything. I can do without some of the writing style, but it was a very good refresher for a lot of concepts for me with a few new ideas sprinkled in. Lots of people say they get better after reading this book. His endgame book is very highly regarded as well. I own it, but I haven’t gotten deeply into it yet.

I also feel more comfortable when I have openings to refer to as a templates for piece and pawn placement. For me, even learning 5-7 moves into a smallish numbers of common openings helps me not wind up all twisted going into the midgame. My pieces tend to wind up better deployed if I have the framework of an idea to work around.

I always played e4 (Kings Pawn) back in the day (The Fischer influence, again). Returning to chess, I was looking for a repertoire that wouldn’t require a ton of study and matched what I think I want the games to broadly look like. I landed on A Simple Chess Opening Repertoire For White by Sam Collins. It includes some openings I had already independently decided I was going to use, such as the Alapin Sicilian against …c5 and the Italian Game against …e5 . There were a few of other commonalities as well. The overall theme of the book is sound openings requiring limited study where I can still start with my preferred e4. The repertoire is based around white steering the game into Isolated Queens Pawn (IQP) structures, where the white advantage is to come from superior familiarity with the ideas of the position. The IQP approach is newish to me, but I happened to spend part of a week in a cabin in the woods with the book and no internet, and I’ve now worked through most of the main lines presented. I think the framework has promise.

———

Thoughts about the blog:

I used to write about games fairly frequently here. Given that chess currently has my interest I’d imagine I’ll be posting about the subject as well going forward. I can also see my sourdough baking getting more attention. We’ll see what else gets my attention next — I was feeling in a rut, and today’s chess post is fresh air.

The 2026 Garden

We cut back on the 2026 garden for a variety of reasons. One of the reasons is the yield is declining every year.

Mid-morning picture taken before the sun has come over the house, facing west.

That yellow tree was planted shortly after we moved in. The garden is in the back of the house facing west, and the sun sets through that gap between the trees, mostly on to the left, which is south. Very conservatively I think it’s reduced the amount of direct sunlight on the garden by at least 30%.

For our 2025 garden we’re growing basil, Oregon Spring tomatoes, and cucumbers. We just harvested the first ripe tomatoes. The basil has been doing fine. We’ve also gotten a decent numbers of cucumbers from two plants, though the cucumbers are now mostly done for the year. To be fair, we started a little late this year, so that could be contributing to the somewhat late harvest.

Going forward, I think we’ll continue with a more limited garden, at least so long as we eat the output. If I get excited or have extra time available maybe we’ll try growing something in the front of the house on a limited scale — there’s not much space without tearing up the yard. Alternately we’ll go all-in, pull out a few shrubs, and tuck a long skinny greenhouse up against the front of the house.

On the other hand — we have a big yard for suburbia, so as I age I may also decide the yard is plenty of work as is. One of our older neighbors moved out a few years ago and he said at the time that the yard and house was too much for him to maintain. We’ll see how it goes.

Bread Flour and Rogue de Bordeaux Sandwich Bread With Sourdough Discard

My current favorite sandwich bread using Bread Flour, Rogue de Bordeaux flour, and sourdough discard. The recipe is easy:

600 grams flour total:

350 grams King Arthur bread flour (58% of the flour weight)

200 grams Rogue de Bordeaux flour (33%)

100 grams sourdough discard (50 grams flour (8% of the flour weight)/ 50 grams water)

370 grams room temperature water (with the water from the sourdough the total hydration is 70%)

12 grams extra-virgin olive oil (2% of flour weight)

12 grams kosher salt (2% of flour weight)

1 tsp instant (not rapid rise) yeast

Combine all ingredients in a mixer and mix on low speed for 8 minutes. Lightly spray a Pullman Pan and move the dough to the Pullman Pan, patting it down and spreading to the ends. Cover and let rise until the dough is 1″ from the top of the pan. Preheat oven to 350F.

Bake covered 30 minutes, then remove the cover and bake an additional 25 minutes. De-pan to a cooling rack.

1/3 of the flour by weight is the Rogue de Bordeaux. This seems to be a good ratio of whole wheat to regular bread flour. The bread has good structure. The Rogue de Bordeaux adds a lot of the flavor and cinnamon and baking spices. One neat thing is that it highlights different flavors in the sandwich depending upon the ingredients.

The Pullman Pan works well for the relatively extensible Rogue de Bordeaux. Using wet hands for all handling helps a lot.

Happy Baking

A From-Scratch Gluten-Free Flatbread Recipe I’m Pretty Happy With

A friend of mine expressed interest in a recipe for a gluten-free flatbread, since they weren’t happy with any of the pre-made mixes they’d tried. That sparked my interest too — and I spent a bunch of hours digging around forums and websites looking for commonalities and differences among the recipes I could find.

This recipe makes a flatbread that just fits into our grill pan. When the flatbread comes out of the grill pan it’s flexible — to make it crispy on the bottom put the finished bread onto a pizza stone at 450F for 2-3 minutes. The oven is also a good way to warm up any desired toppings.

I’ll post some other thoughts towards the bottom of the post.

The Recipe:

Wet Ingredients:

110g lukewarm warm (~100F)

40g milk powder

8g psyllium husk

10g extra virgin olive oil

Dry Ingredients:

65g Super Fine Brown Rice Flour

20g Tapioca Starch/Flour (same thing)

10g Corn Starch

5g Potato Starch

4g Baking Powder

3g Kosher Salt or Sea Salt

The steps:

Add the lukewarm water to a mixing bowl. Add the powdered milk and whisk to combine.
Add the psyllium husk and whisk to combine. Let rest a few minutes to let the psyllium husk hydrate.
In a separate bowl combine all of the dry ingredients and stir to distribute.
Add the olive oil to the wet, now viscous milk mixture. Whisk to combine.
Add the dry ingredients to the wet ingredients. Starting with a spoon or spatula mix to combine.
“Knead” and press the mixture until it becomes the texture of masa. I use my knuckles to fold and press the dough into the leftover dry bits until it’s completely combined.
Preheat a pan to medium-high. I use the same temperature that I use for hashbrowns. I want brown but not charred.
Cut a piece of parchment to the same size as the pan. Mine is 8″ x 8″.
Oil the parchment and roll out the dough to 1/4″ thick. (picture below)
Oil the top of the dough.
When the pan is up to temperature, invert the dough/parchment onto the pan and peel away the parchment paper. Add more oil to the top if it looks dry.
Bake 3 minutes on side one, then flip and bake on side two another 2-3 minutes. I use two spatulas to flip to try to make sure the bread doesn’t break.

At this point the dough can be topped and reheated in the oven.

For pretty edges, trim the outside with a knife or pizza cutter. I’m always ok with rustic.

When creating the recipe I wanted to pin-down at least one variable. I decided that 100g of flour + starches would fit pretty well in the pan so that became the “base”. The end result is (65g brown rice + 35g total starches = 100g). More notes on that ratio below. Once I settled on the dry weight only the wet weight required adjusting.

The tapioca / corn starch / potato starch ratio was partly inspired by a forum post on pizzamaking.com, and partly because I was targeting a particular mouthfeel and taste in combination. Every starch has a “signature” taste and mouthfeel, I tried to avoid using too much of anything so that when people eat it they won’t say “that’s tapioca”, or “that’s corn starch”. I started with way too much potato starch, which has a pleasant taste, but too much and it becomes dense and “potatoey”.

Some other commonalities among gluten-free baking recipes, broadly:

2% salt by weight is a very normal amount in all bread baking. This becomes 3g in the recipe above due to all the other stuff in addition to the 100g of flour and starch.

4% baking powder by weight is normal. This one took a little more digging since almost without exception people use volumetric measures.

For gluten-free flatbreads the ratio of flour to starch varies quite a bit but often lands around 2 flour to 1 starch by weight. Water tends to be around the same weight as the combined weight of the flour and starch. “Regular gluten-free breads” tend to be more around 1:1 flour:starch by weight.

One other thing I learned that I didn’t know going in, was that the potential ingredients/exchanges can vary a lot in weight, given the same volume. I always bake with metric weights, so changing one component for another was pretty simple, and I usually didn’t have to mess with the amount of liquid required to get a similar dough ball.

More so than in “regular” (gluten) bread baking, substituting anything will make for a different, or very very different end result. The ingredients themselves have different tastes, or they hydrate differently, or they give a different mouthfeel. I know that this recipe gives consistently pleasing results. Changing anything will basically make it a different recipe. It may still have a good taste and texture, it’ll just be different, and using a substitution may require more fiddling to make it work.

Finally: The most obvious way that this recipe differs from pre-made mixes is it uses psyllium husk rather than xanthan gum, or guar gum. I think the reason so many mixes contain xanthan gum, and by extension so many people include it in their recipes is this: It doesn’t require a separate hydration step and it can be bagged and shipped together with the rest of the pre-made mix. I feel like Xanthan gum has its places but psyllium husk was the better choice for this recipe.

Happy Baking

Eight Bells Winery: May 2025 Salt Blade Speaker Series

We recently had the opportunity to attend the Salt Blade speaker series at Eight Bells winery. Events like these are always informative – people devote their lives to making good wine and good charcuterie, so they know a million times more about the subject than we do, and they’re happy to describe they whys and hows of what they’re doing in detail.

This event included wine with charcuterie pairings. The menu:

Our somewhat wrinkled menu. No wine or sausage stains though. We had two menus and this one gets the picture.

We were served the Rosé as a warmup. After some introduction from the principles, it led into the first pairing with Salt Blade’s Orange and Coriander stick. The Orange and Coriander is among Salt Blade’s best sellers, and for good reason, it has a universal appeal. The Rosé served as a great opener and it was a good marriage with the charcuterie.

Eight Bells and Salt Blade have done pairing sessions before. Some of the pairings were repeats from past events. One of the new pairings was Sangiovese with the Spring Lamb, which we thought was perfect. The Merlot with the Seattle Stick was pretty flawless as well. I like spicy, so I especially enjoyed the Southern Voyage with Sopressata.

There was further presentation throughout the pairings intermixed with Q+A about both the wine and the charcuterie. The doors were open and it was a beautiful spring night. We purchased more than a few things so that we can share some of our favorites with our friends. Thanks to everyone for a nice evening-

Links:

Eight Bells Winery

Salt Blade

Levain Starter – Evolutions In Bread By Ken Forkish

A few months ago I decided to begin maintaining a starter. To that point I’d avoided it, partly because I didn’t want Another Living Thing to maintain, partly because the idea of throwing away starter seemed wasteful, and partly because it just felt like it was going to be a messy and unnecessary hassle.

The flip side of maintaining a starter would be that it would allow for more interesting things to try with breadmaking. It would also add another “color” to my available “palette”. The end product could be better tasting, better for us, and keep longer before spoilage. Ultimately I read enough intriguing starter-based recipes that I decided to give maintaining a starter a try so I took the leap.

I wanted a starter recipe that wouldn’t consume or waste much flour. I also wanted a starter recipe I could mostly ignore after it was finished. I settled on Ken Forkish’s Levain recipe from Evolutions In Bread. The entire process requires one week and 550 grams of flour.

Creating the starter is pretty simple really. Weigh the container and write that number down. Every 24 hours some amount (by weight) of the contents of the jar will be discarded and then the container will be fed a small amount of fresh water and flour. I made the decision ahead of time to mill all of the whole wheat flour I was going to need, 250 grams total. That way I wasn’t getting the mill out for the first few days when it was time to discard and feed. The process felt very easy and pretty bulletproof — I think that fresh milled whole wheat contains enough nutrients and enough bacteria/enzymes/assorted microbes and whatnot that kicking off the new tiny ecosystem basically took care of itself.

The recipe it calls for 250 grams of starter as the end product. I “shorted” the final feeding and I didn’t see any adverse effect. I did that because I wanted to be able to pull a smaller amount out of the jar each week and still keep things fresh and lively with smaller feedings. If I want to build up a large quantity of starter it takes a little longer but I’m fine with that.

I maintain 150 grams of starter in a 393 gram jar (weighed with no lid). Each week I take a small spatula and scrape/pour out 100 grams for bread baking. I then add 50 grams of bottled water and 50 grams of bread flour to the container, scrape down the sides, and stir it up. I put the lid back on and let it sit on the counter for 1-2 hours, until it starts to show some signs of life. Then it goes into the back corner of the refrigerator for another week. I store yeast in a tupperware-type container on top of the starter. Everything is in one place and ideally staying fairly cold.

As for the container – it became clear pretty quickly that straight sides are a good thing and a threaded jar is a bad thing. Straight sides because it’s much easier to get into and scrape down the jar when there’s no “neck”. Threads just gather crud and rapidly clog. I purchased a 6-pack of the Weck 743 jars and split it with a friend who was also making a new starter. (At the time the total cost was ~$6.50 per jar for six.) I use them without the gasket. They’re nice somewhat heavy jars made of thick glass. The lid just sits on top and it’s plenty secure.

Final thought: Evolutions in Bread is a great book. Highly recommended.