Croissant with Poolish

[Dough from 1/2 the following recipe - about two cups of flour and a lot of air. Slightly over-proofed.]

Poolish is a pre-ferment that you are supposed to mix up the night before and put in fridge: a small tsp yeast +1 cup flour + 1 cup water. [Today, I am starting the poolish in the morning, using it later this afternoon or evening; and freezing the dough for overnight, later.][I admit, I am not sure how much yeast to use. I put a bit too much in my poolish, so I'll go light with the additional yeast later.]

Mix:

poolish + 1/2 tsp yeast + 4 Tbs oil + 1 tsp salt + 1/2 cup milk + 3 Tbs sugar +  ~3 cups flour

Then follow the instructions for continuous croissant. Given all the amendments, here is what I am going to try:

- Kneed thoroughly, until silken

- Rest at room temp until double in size, then punch down and

- Either freeze the dough for overnight or put in fridge while softening the butter.

- [If frozen, next day:Take out of freezer and bring to room temp, then back in fridge to fridge temp]

- Soften butter, take out cooled/not-frozen dough and do the butter envelope, with two turns. 

- Rest dough in fridge for 2 hours, then do two more turns, then rest 2 hours, then form croissant.

- Let them rise until "jiggly" (not quite double) on a parchment paper-covered baking pan.

- Coat with egg wash, bake at 420 for 18 plus minutes. 

I heard that Chia is re-opening

Not the pet, dummy! The country.

A comment on aethetics

One thinks of "The Beautiful" as some kind of absolute - perhaps involving ease of perception and such things built organically into our anatomy. [I used to think this was the basis of violet being more beautiful than red.] But the appreciation of beauty must have an important learned component. I remember well how my father would pause on a ridge in the White Mountains and exclaim with pleasure about the beauty of the view across the 'Great Gulf'. I am pretty sure those views were not appealing to me, as a youth. I think maybe we learn to enjoy sunsets.

So I found a badly waterworn 'blade' that I thought was quite beautiful, in a Japanese sort of way. But I knew no one would believe it was an old tool and most would say: "it is just a rock". That truly detracts from my ability to enjoy the beauty of this item.

Another example is a glass "arrowhead" I just found in northern Taunton. It is obviously pretty, obviously an arrowhead and, yet, having trouble believing an Indian would still be making arrowheads with glass when metal was available spoils it. Not being able to believe it is Indian, makes it not beautiful - even though it is, objectively.

Both examples show the influences of non-visual components of a visual experience. So the beauty of a physical object includes a psychological construct I put around the object that makes the object's beauty dependent on its share-ability with others.

But then, this makes up for some of the pain.

Whining about how hard it is to find arrowheads in Massachusetts

I watch these YouTubes of arrowhead hunting in other parts of the US with total jealousy and almost always it is because those f*ckers have got some kind of terrain advantage. It just doesn't seem fair. So at least I should get to complain. Fact of the matter is that a good contemporary arrowhead collection from Massachusetts might have a hundred arrowheads, the ones from other places look like they must number in the thousands. Here is my list of why it is hard to find arrowheads in Massachusetts:

1. No bare dirt. Everything is covered with vegetation or dead vegetation. You are limited to farms, constructions sites, dirt roads, eroding banks, seashores. Out west, everything is exposed.

2. The creeks are all silted in from past farming and excessive fertilizer use. Our brooks have cattails along the side, not gravel banks. Down South and in the Midwest they seem to have clear creeks that cut through habitation levels. I don't know where you might find that kind of terrain in Massachusetts. Certainly not in southern MA where there are long estuaries and no bluffs (I know of).

3. Lousy tool-making materials. Best is quartz or what ever blew in on the glacier - some rhyolites. A mudstone here or there. No cherts. No obsidian. We barely have decent quartzite and basalt.

4. Sea level rise and the lack of pre-glacial archeology. When the glacier melted, this was a rugged boreal environment. Out in the great basin, it was a lush pluvial environment with plenty of arrowheads being produced. 

BUT I CANNOT FIGURE OUT WHERE TO LOOK FOR ARROWHEADS IN FALMOUTH! Is it only on Devil's Foot?

5. Finally, there just are few farms left. The land is worth more for housing. Those that remain are  "boutique" farms, often just hayfields. In the last few years there has been a move towards "regenerative farming" which forbids plowing. That means arrowhead hunters last line of defense  - the cornfield - may soon be gone. 

Then, all that will be left is the coastline and an occasional construction site. I cannot figure out the coastline. Do I have to dig? It is all very frustrating.