Homemade Sourdough Bread

Black Beer Bread

After buying a bread-baking book for naturally leavened bread back in March I finally began baking our own bread. Naturally leavened means that the bread only needs little yeast. The bread rises by the use of a sourdough.So past week I started making the sourdough setup. Mixing flour and water, waiting patiently for the next day to come, adding another bunch of flour and water…

Finally after three days of mixing and waiting my first rye sourdough experiment was successful. At this point I decided to make the Black-Beer-Bread from my baking book. First I prepared the sourdough and the Poolish. After another day waiting I could mix the main dough, let it rise  and start baking at last!!! Voila, it was worth waiting so long. I was rewarded with a wonderful fluffy, good smelling (and tasting) bread with a crunchy crust. Yummy! Continue reading

Short loin steaks with bacon beans and potatoes casserole

Short loin steak with salt and pepper

A new age of culinary excess has begun… for us at least! Here’s how the story started: on Friday we got a brand new gas grill. More precisely we (I) bought a Weber Q3200.

And even if it is too early for a full review, here’s how we inaugurated THE grill: two beef short loin steaks (mine weighting 400 grams and a 300 grams one for Katharina) with bacon wrapped green beans, potatoes casserole and Katharina’s most delicious herb butter.

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Dual 606 record player – Restoration (part 1)

If you read the very first article on this blog you might have seen that I’m rebuilding old record players. And lately I just started over with my third one; it’s a 1980 Dual 606. Back then it was a mid-range player, but much of the hardware was taken unchanged from the high-end equipment, most notably the drive-train (more on that later).

On a first sight the device was in a very good condition when I received it, but there were some issues with the electronics – rather common for devices this old – which had to be fixed. The first part of this series of articles is about technical details and how to break the turntable open. Continue reading