Catch up and a recipe for baking joy and comfort

Short: a delicious recipe for delightful "little breads." The usual collection of links related to previous posts.

The links come after the recipe, by the way.

Raza, S. Abbas. My Favorite Tree Next to the River Eisack in Franzensfeste, South Tyrol. November 2024. Digital photograph. 3 Quarks Daily. https://3quarksdaily.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/465108460_10161093249504425_4005594901772330099_n.jpg. Used with permission.

Short: Fresh baked rolls for joy (and solace)

Last Thursday, I held the last session of my fall seminar. The very last.

I won’t be returning to teach next year. That prospect feels, well, a bit sad but also a bit liberating. I’ve loved the students and the experience of exploring with them in the classroom. But it has been a task that I’ve perhaps been a bit too obsessive about, beginning as I have in early summer to line up resources, refine the sessions, and arrange for guests.

Shifts like path changes, refittings, alterations, prunings, accommodations, endings and beginnings—they are all part of a rich and fruitful life.

We nudge and change things all the time, I tell myself, so a shift of what seems routine can end up feeling like a flourish or a crucial comment scrawled in the margins of a longer narrative.

It’s about the size of a Mandarin orange or maybe a tennis ball, covered with coarse-grain salt. A cross cut into the roll before baking lets the crisp crust open. Photo by Mark DeLong, November 6, 2024.

Take recipes, the ones written on paper, at least. They gather comments with each batch of rolls, sheet of cookies, or pot of stew. Sometimes, the pencilled scrawl reads “more time in oven” or “very good!” Other times, the instructions get a more drastic makeover, as in the case of the recipe I’ll share today for Laugenbrötchen, a delicious roll that Bond Girl Bride and I often ate with breakfast when we lived in Germany.

Our current recipe riffs on a recipe in a cookbook that returned with us to the United States (that recipe was a disappointment), a soft pretzel recipe we tried decades later, and then some refinements in the kitchen.¹

That is, this Laugenbrötchen recipe scrolls a history and is a sort of palimpsest of tastes and kitchen tries. As a result, the “little breads” are delicious.

I’ve been able to bake them in well under an hour, from proofing the yeast to buttering a roll.

German Laugenbrötchen

INGREDIENTS

1.5 cups (350 ml) of warm water
1 packet of yeast or 2.5 teaspoons (12 ml) of instant yeast
1 tablespoon (15 ml) of brown sugar (we use Splenda light brown sugar)
1 tablespoon (15 ml) of softened butter
1 teaspoon (5 ml) of salt
3 and 3/4 cups (450 g) of all-purpose flour (we use King Arthur flour)
Some coarsely ground salt for sprinkling on the rolls
One-half cup (120 ml) of baking soda

DIRECTIONS

The dough

Mix the yeast, salt, and brown sugar into the warm water.

While the yeast proofs, preheat the oven to 400F (200C), cover a baking sheet with parchment paper, and heat two quarts of water and the baking soda in a large pan for the baking soda “bath.” Find a slotted ladle or, in a pinch, a large spoon to use for dipping the rolls into the soda bath.

Once the yeast has proofed, add the softened butter and add the flour, cup by cup while mixing. I use a dough hook on a mixer, but you can use a spoon to mix as well. For the last three-quarters cup or so of flour, mix until the dough firms up and isn’t sticky. If it stays sticky, go ahead and add some more (say, a quarter cup) of flour. You want to be able to poke it and have the dough bounce back a bit.

Put the dough on a floured surface and knead it. Since I use the mixer, I knead for a couple of minutes, but if you mix by hand, give it about five minutes. Then form the dough into a ball, and smash it down into a flattened circle, just enough to help you divide into individual portions for the rolls (that is, the Brötchen, “little breads”). I find that a three- or four-inch thick round works. (Thinner than that and you might as well make pizza!)

You can choose to make a dozen small Brötchen or eight larger ones. I’ve found that eight is easier; a dozen of them of equal size is harder to manage.

Cut the dough into eighths (or twelfths, if you do a dozen). Roll each section into a ball. This sometimes is tricky because the part of the dough exposed by the cut tends to be stickier than the outside of the ball. Do your best.

The soda bath and baking

The soda bath will be boiling by the time you need it. You stick the rolls into the bath only for about 30 seconds. I do two rolls at a time, and about 10-15 seconds in, I use the ladle to flip the rolls over. If a roll stays in the bath more than 30 seconds, it might begin to taste a little “metallic” (but this isn’t a disaster). Take out the rolls and place them on the parchment papered baking sheet. Sprinkle some coarse ground salt on them. Repeat until you’ve got all of the rolls suitably bathed and salted.

Using a very sharp knife (I’ve used both serated and straight blades successfully), cut an “X” on each roll. You’ll notice that the rolls have a skin. You cut through that skin. I usually cut about one-quarter (6 mm) inch deep.

You can put the rolls into the oven right away, though I like to let them rise for a few minutes. Not too long a wait, since the rolls will expand a bit in the oven as well. A little rise helps make the rolls a bit lighter.

Let them bake for 12-15 minutes. Once they have a nice brown color, pull them out and put them on a cooling rack.

You’ll find it hard to wait until they cool to eat, so I say, go ahead and indulge!

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And now the catch up links….

The links relate in some way to the Technocomplex articles, arranged below by their titles. Send me a link that I can use in a future catch up post: technocomplex@substack.com

Separated by more than a century, two musicians share a complaint

Rick Beato and John Philip Sousa agree on a "menace" to music and to human creativity even though they never met.

“AI is the latest instrument that will take us into a new era of music, making current songs seem as old as classical music does today. And one of will.i.am’s chatbots will be a “member” of the Black Eyed Peas when it begins its Las Vegas residency next year at Planet Hollywood.” Albergotti, Reed. “Talking through AI and the Future of Music with Will.i.am.” Semafor, October 4, 2024. https://www.semafor.com/article/10/04/2024/talking-through-ai-and-the-future-of-music-with-william.

Book review: Filterworld: How Algorithms Flattened Culture & Kim and Kylie don't like algorithms

Kyle Chayka's new book comes out next week. It's a goodie & OMG! Strange attractors of TikTok and its algorithms swirl around social-graphed platforms.

“[I]s ‘free speech’ purely about the right to speak, or also about the right to be heard?” Barrett, Nicholas. “Facebook, X and TikTok: How Social Media Algorithms Shape Speech.” BBC News, October 12, 2024. https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cp8e4p4z97eo.

Careful language, machine utterance, Mostly fake people, dead ones & Billion-Dollar babies. Fake and real, too?

Tricked by AIs, I begin to consider a human strength that doesn't feel as unique as it once was.

“And while it identifies itself as an ‘assistant,’ it doesn’t proclaim to be a bot or an AI tool unless it’s explicitly asked, in which case it answers truthfully. In one example shared by Browder, the bot was repeatedly asked for its own name after it explained that it was calling as the user’s assistant, hesitating until it finally said ‘Go ahead and call me Alex.’ ” Melendez, Steven. “DoNotPay Will Now Call Customer Service Hotlines for You.” Fast Company, October 16, 2024. https://www.fastcompany.com/91210013/donotpay-will-now-call-customer-service-hotlines-for-you.

A good article. “Many of these people experienced real benefits. Many of them also got hurt in unexpected ways. What they had in common was that … they were surprised by the reality of the feelings elicited by something they knew to be unreal, and this led them to wonder, What exactly are these things? And what does it mean to have a relationship with them?” Dzieza, Josh. “Friend or Faux?” The Verge, December 3, 2024. https://www.theverge.com/c/24300623/ai-companions-replika-openai-chatgpt-assistant-romance.

Hanging out with artists in The Ark & Book review: Hanging Out: The Radical Power of Killing Time

Creative indolence, anyone?

Are we hanging out as much as before? “The biggest change in behavior was that lingering fell dramatically. The amount of time spent just hanging out dropped by about half across the measured locations. Note that this was seen in places where crime rates have fallen, so this trend was unlikely to have resulted from fear of being mugged. Instead, Americans just don’t use public spaces as they used to. These places now tend to be for moving through, to get somewhere, rather than for enjoying life or hoping to meet other people.” Cowen, Tyler. “Using AI to Analyze Changes in Pedestrian Traffic.” Marginal Revolution, December 5, 2024. https://marginalrevolution.com/?p=89579.

… But, no worries, there’s now a Chrome browser extension that can help you do pointless things, a first step toward hanging out, perhaps. “Whether it’s sending an email, checking LinkedIn or brushing up on your Dutch, consider it gone, outta here, geblokkeerd (that’s ‘blocked’ in Dutch, but try not to retain that information right now).” “Productivity Blocker.” Accessed December 9, 2024. https://www.productivityblocker.com.

Four photographs and their "truths"

Photos from the nineteenth century and from 2023 helped my fall seminar students explore truth, the fake, and fiction. And complex relationships with technology.

“Accidental imperfections may become a photo’s main achievement, so long as those imperfections are not erased first.” Chayka, Kyle. “How I Fell Back in Love with iPhone Photography.” The New Yorker, October 16, 2024. https://www.newyorker.com/culture/infinite-scroll/how-i-fell-back-in-love-with-iphone-photography.

Things work very, very well in this country

Many "personal technology" products are developing a special kind of "ownership"

“Richard Qian didn’t know what to expect when he heard that WM Motor, a Shanghai-based EV maker popular for its low prices, filed for bankruptcy in October 2023. He tried to drive his compact EX5 SUV as he normally would, but discovered that he could no longer log into WM Motor’s smartphone app, which remotely controlled the car lock and air conditioner. He also couldn’t see his car’s mileage and charging status on the dashboard.” Fang, Tianyu. “When EV Startups Shut down, Will Their Cars Still Work?” Rest of World, August 28, 2024. https://restofworld.org/2024/ev-company-shutdowns-china/.

Courbet, Gustave. The Oak of Flagey. 1864. Oil on canvas, 89 cm x 110 cm. Musée Courbet. https://www.musee-courbet.fr/?oeuvre=the-oak-of-flagey&lang=en Rights: Public domain

Three sonnets on a lone majestic oak & "An unloved sweetgum is a trusty herald"

A few sonnets, all with trees in mind.

“And what, I wondered, had she witnessed in her long life? Horse and buggy, farmers who lived in log houses with corn cob daubing, a barn raising, cold winters with piles of snow, many more birds, more insects, lots of bats (which are almost gone from the farm now). Darker skies, brighter stars, years with no airplane noise and then Flight 93 hijacked overhead. She’d watched the pond being dug, the house modernized, the land altered, by us, to divert new floodwaters.” Hoffstot, Daryln Brewer. “A Beloved Maple Tree Had to Come Down, But It Lives On.” The New York Times, October 16, 2024, sec. Climate. https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/16/climate/sugar-maple-tree-pennsylvania.html.

1. You might recall the 1,200-year refinement process that the Elf Judy conducted to land on Santa’s hot chocolate recipe. Thanks,

Via Marsh

, for the reminder! My tweaking of the Brötchen recipe took a fraction of that time.