No-knead bread

I've been interested in making bread for some time, but without a mixer, it can get a bit tough.  A friend recommended this recipe for no-knead bread, and I decided to give it a shot.  After a rough mixing of the ingredients, it looks like this

From BreadAndFood

About 20 hours later...

From BreadAndFood

After a quick reshaping and given two hours to rise, we had

From BreadAndFood

After baking covered for 30 minutes, uncovered for 20:

From BreadAndFood

it had a great crust, pretty nice crumb

From BreadAndFood

and made a tasty sandwich.

From BreadAndFood

Starter Yeast 1

I've gotten into bread making (and beer brewing) recently and decided to try getting some wild starter yeast.  This website is quite nice and gives some good tips for getting starter.  

I decided to try three different 

1. Took slices off of an apple core, crushed and set in a bath of 1/4 cup water.
2. 1/4 cup unbleached flour in 1/4 cup water.
3. 1/4 cup corn meal in 1/4 cup water.

Bottled water was used in all cases.  Here's what my setup looks like.

Hopefully something will start to grow in the next couple of days.  I'm exicited!

On an unrelated note, here's a few of the musicians I listened to today:

• Otis Redding
• Thrice
• Andy Friedman
• Freelance Whales 
• (thanks to Vi for this recommendation)
  

Introduction

Well first blog posts are good for introductions I suppose.  I'm a graduate student in electrical engineering at Johns Hopkins doing work in brain MRI analysis.  Really though, this site's not about that, my research website takes care of that.  My hope is that this will give me an outlet for some of my other interests, let my family and friends know what I'm up to, and just keep me busy in general.

Now to think a little bit about what kinds of things I'd like to talk about here.  Music is an important part of my life.  I'm a reasonably accomplished drummer, and a mediocre guitar player.  I love eating good food, drinking good beer, and like an occasional glass of wine or whiskey.  Cooking and brewing have become passions of mine.  Culture in general interests me quite a bit as well.  Music is part of this of course, but also film, literature and the like. 

Now, here's to hoping I can post something every once in awhile.