The Perils of Chief Longwind

[tinlizzie]

Ah, Chief - Oh, how the ghost of it clings, these poolish things remind me of goo.

 

[justplainbill]

Imagine if you will a deep and dark blue indoor/outdoor carpet, set in a dining room, with a fairly standard dining room table sitting on it. Now imagine this guy who thinks he knows how to cook making a poolish on the kitchen table, and when done, placing that poolish in a gallon-sized zip lock bag, then removing all the air from that bag. Sounds OK so far.

Now imagine that the guy who thinks he can cook is going to be late for work if he doesn't hustle and get out the door. So he lifts the bag full of poolish and sets it on the dining room table, seemingly far enough from the edge to not fall off.

He goes to work from 8 to 11 a. today because he's taking flex time for extra hours put in on Monday and Tuesday. He plans on checking the poolish when he gets home, and turning it into bread dough, to be refrigerated and used on Saturday.

Now you all have this picture in your head, right? Ok, my DW has a crafting class she's attending. So I figure I'll go in and give her a ride home when she's done. I ended up staying there a couple hours, helping various folk with their projects. I punch holes through leather, help run beads onto lines, and just provide general support. We didn't get out of there until about 2 p.m. But it's not over yet.

DW broke another person's needle-nose pliers, so we had to go to a sewing shop to get a replacement pair. And of course, there is no store ever created that my DW doesn't get stuck in, whether she's planning on purchasing anything or not. But she always does spend money. She can't help herself.

Finally she's ready to go. It's 3:00 p.m. We drive home and she has a full grown tomato plant, in a pot, and the pliers to deliver to the lady who runs the crafting shop. I go to check my poolish.

Horror! It outgrew its space on the table, and drooped over the edge until it fell to the carpeted floor. Of course it broke its seal and left about half a cup of poolish on my carpet. Now if you drop a piece of cheese on this carpet, you simply pick it up. If you spill milk, the weave is dense enough that you have plenty of time to get a towel, or paper towel to blot the milk with before it soaks into the carpet. But poolish, well it just sticks like glue. You have to get it very wet, liquify it, then blot it up for about ten minutes. Then you have to scrub the carpet with fresh water to remove any stuck on gluten.

Fortunately, the bag landed in such a way that the poolish wasn't contaminated. I added enough additional flour, with a little cooking oil, to make enough bread dough for a good sized loaf of bread. That dough is now sitting safely in the fridge, waiting to be wrapped around hot dogs on Saturday.

Moral of the story, don't spill your poolish on the carpet. It's a very foolish thing to spill poollish on the carpet.

Seeeeeeya; Chief Longwind of the North

Sounds like you should have used less yeast.

 

[justplainbill]

Sounds like you should have used less yeast.

Or need a cooler dining room.

 

[Chief Longwind Of The North]

Or need a cooler dining room.

This never would have happend if I lived at the North pole! Darn it.

Seeeeeya; Chief Longwind of the North

 

[Greg Who Cooks]

This topic is going to go 100 replies for sure!

I still don't know why you didn't just leave it in the kitchen, perhaps on the counter...

 

[GLC]

This topic is going to go 100 replies for sure!

I still don't know why you didn't just leave it in the kitchen, perhaps on the counter...

There was probably already a sourdough starter approaching sentience on the kitchen counter.

 

[PrincessFiona60]

Maybe the kitchen was too chilly that day, or too warm. I used to let dough rise on top of the TV becasue that was the right temp and the rest of the house too chilly.