Coffee, bread, and soup! And a (unrelated) job!
Yesterday after lunch I set up for roasting with the bread machine. Got out the scale, thermometer, bread machine, heat gun, a fan, colendar, my OveGlove, gloves, a notepad, pencil, power strip, and the coffee beans.

I set up on our patio, using one of the picnic table benches as my base of operations. Plugged everything into the power strip and measured out some beans (114g), got the thermometer positioned in the roasting chamber, and preheated the chamber with the heat gun. Then in went the beans and 14 minutes later I had a temp reading of 400, first crack had just finished, and the beans were a nice light brown. Off went the gun and bread machine and on went the fan. Into the colendar and over the fan went the beans and about a minute later (it was rather cool out which helped with the cooling) they were done. Post-roasting weight was 98g. Into a mason jar to outgas for the next 24 or so hours.

Yesterday evening I started a biga (preferment for bread, grows between 3 hours and a full day before use and gives the bread a better flavour--similar to sourdough but without all that time) and started some soup. For Christmas my mom gave us all (my sister, grandmothers, and me) each a jar of "instant" bean soup. My mom and sister had already discovered that since there are chic peas in the mix the soup has to cook longer than the directions say (2.5 hours on the directions, I cooked mine for nearly 5 hours and the chic peas are still not fully done. Usually chic peas have to soak overnight before cooking and always take a while to cook). I discovered today that the mix is VERY salty, some of that could be because of the extended cooking time and resultant reduction so tonight I added more water (about half what was put in originally) and it is much more palatable.

With the soup I am eating the dinner rolls I baked today with the biga I started last night. They are a lovely soft roll with poppy seeds on top. I made 13 rolls (a baker's dozen totally by accident, the recipe said it made two dozen rolls by weight) and doubled the size of the other rolls making 6 sandwich rolls. They are yummy and soft and yeasty and have a nice crust on the outside. Very yummy with soup and tomorrow I will experience a sandwich on one.

I also drank a cup of my coffee tonight (french press style) and it was very yummy. I have ordered a pound each of Kenya AA Giakanja Co-op Coffee Mill, Sumatra Lintong Special Prep, India Monsooned Malabar AA, and Panama Organic La Berlina Est. I also got the sampler pack of 4 half pound coffees selected by Sweet Maria's (the place I ordered from). Those should be here by the end of the week or so! (Actually, I just got the e-mail from UPS with the tracking info and it should be here Monday.)

Also today I was looking around and realized that while there is a Facebook group for Coffee Kids there is no Causes entry for them. So I made one. Join it. (Search for "Coffee Kids" in the Causes application. Two causes will come up. The second one is someone who is selling coffee to support Coffee Kids. This is a wonderful thing for someone to do and brings recognition to Coffee Kids, supports them financially, and gives what I assume to be good coffee, but I felt there should be a group specifically for Coffee Kids.)

Tomorrow I actually have to go to class again so all of this fun will have to slow down a bit I guess!

Wednesday I'll be interviewing with the personnel committee at a church in Columbia (the one I talked to the pastor of in November or so and have been wondering why I never heard back from them. Yay, this is good news! Perhaps I will have a job!
- posted by Nick @ 1/21/2008 10:17:00 PM | 0 comments