North Korean ICBM over Japan. Raisin Bread and Sourdough Rye Success

Sourdough mixed rye bread

North Korean missile flies over Japan, generating alarm overnight. The regime is ratcheting up the pressure, apparently to bring the US to the negotiating table. In reality, it has just heightened tension and greater risk of a backlash. Both the Japanese and the US have missile defence systems which were not used.

According to an ArsTechnica article, This could in part be due to the fact that if they missed taking the passing missile out, they would look weaker. Because of the height and the tremendous speeds of the intercontinental ballistic missile (15,000 to 20,000 kph, the fasted jets 'only' reach 4,000 kmh), there is only a short time window of a couple of minutes to try and hit a missile passing over. You have the most time to prepare when the missile is attacked from its target, but there is still a risk that it will not work. Apparently, developing anti-ballistic missile systems is more expensive than designing the missiles they target (Wikipedia).

President Trump and First Lady Melania visited parts of Texas to assess the situation and avoid a presidential mishandling. They did not visit Houston as the presidential security measures would have detracted from the continuing rescue and emergency service actions still going on. Over a metre of rain has fallen, another 30 cm may fall and the flooding is compounded because two dams have to release water into the Buffalo Bayou, which goes through the city.

It is not just people, but wildlife which is being displaced. Alligators naturally live in the area, however, the colder flood waters are likely to slow them down. Snakes are good swimmers and are likely to come to higher ground, where most of the houses are. Large mammals such as deer might also follow. Experts advise to simply leave them alone, as more harm to humans comes when interfering with animals. Probably most likely to cause harm are the floating islands of fire-ants, invaders to the US. Jane came across a video on Facebook from Houston, where an exhausted bird of prey took refuge from the storm in a car, was cared for and then passed on to an animal refuge centre.

Apart from working, I started different breads in the morning. The first was a raisin loaf, following one of Ulli's recipes from his online cookbook. It uses a bread-yeast based dough, incorporating extra sugar, eggs, butter, grated lemon rind and soaked raisins.

The second was a 50% rye loaf. After the success of the previous one, I wanted to go one step further and use sourdough Camilla without adding extra yeast. I used 145 g of Camilla sourdough, 150 g mixed strong white flour and strong wholemeal flour, 250 g of rye flour, 10 g salt, a desert spoonful of honey, 200 g  warm water. It gave an initially very dense dough. The first rise took about 4 hours. The second rise took three hours. I prepared a cob rather than a loaf, scoring it deeply almost into quarters, and checked how it rose at intervals. It was baked at 220 degC for about 25 minutes until it had a dark crust and then 180 degC for another 20 minutes.

Rye-wheat sourdough, 2 hours into second rise

 Camilla is a dry Levito Madre type sourdough culture that I started and now maintain in the fridge and feed every week. Its base is 50:50 strong white flour:strong wholemeal flour, uses only 45 ml water per 100 g flour, 1% salt and occasionally a bit of honey. It does not smell the house out like previous more liquid sourdough cultures I tried to get going in the past. Camilla grows slowly and happily in its glass in the fridge.