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Cake day: March 17th, 2024

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  • Alcohol is a waste product that some yeasts produce while eating sugar rather than being something that the yeast feeds on, so I wouldn’t expect it to improve the results here over using a non-alcoholic beer. Normally, fermentation stops when either the yeast is out of sugar to eat or it has produced so much alcohol that the alcohol kills the yeast. Brewing yeasts are of course quite tolerant of alcohol and would probably handle a regular beer in the dough better than other yeasts though

    Trying a brewer’s yeast to bake bread is an interesting idea though. No idea if it would do anything different. I just ordered some brewing yeast yesterday, so I will set a little aside and make two batches of bread to compare when it arrives


  • Certainly! I’ll give the original recipe first, maybe it’ll work better for someone else or someone more experienced can identify something I missed

    Ingredients

    • 600g strong white flour
    • 200g wholemeal flour
    • 200g malted flour
    • 40g finely-chopped dulse (a type of seaweed, other seaweeds can be substituted here)
    • 500ml Colonsay ale (the Colonsay brewery has gone out of business now, but you’re looking for a British-style brown ale that is only lightly-hopped)
    • 100ml water
    • 20g instant yeast
    • 20g salt
    • 60g butter

    Method

    • Mix everything and knead until no longer sticky
    • Cover and leave to proof until doubled in size
    • Knock back and shape into two loaves
    • Cover and leave to double again (described as “at least one hour”)
    • Dust with flour
    • Bake at 200 C for 45 minutes with steam

    But, of course, I found that following this as written didn’t work for me. Maybe it’s a me problem at some point. Changes I made for this loaf were:

    Ingredients

    • Reduce white flour to 300g
    • Replace ale with non-alcoholic ale
    • Reduce salt to 15g to account for reduced flour

    Method

    • Mix to combine and only knead until homogenous
    • Replace first proof with 12 hour cold ferment
    • Second proof took over two hours for me
    • Remove steam source when baking

  • I have a cookbook called The New Hebridean Kitchen that has some lovely stuff in it, and near the back is a recipe for a loaf of bread with butter, beer, and dulse in it. The taste is lovely, but with all those extras giving the yeast a hard time and it being a partly-wholemeal dough I’ve never managed to get a good rise, so the texture has always let it down. I’ve been experimenting with different adjustments to the recipe (alcohol-free beer, overnight ferments, extra time to rise, a pinch of sugar in the dough, baking temperatures) and have finally gotten it to work. It’s delicious!






  • And to explain the connection a little further:

    • “Al” stayed the same, obviously
    • The “arismi” bit was influenced by Greek “arithmos”
    • The “Khw” bit went through several sound changes, going from Khwa > Kho > Go

    The name “Al-Khwarezmi” is also basically just “of Khwarezmia” in the first place, so the entire time we have been naming the way youtube decides what to show you after a place in Uzbekistan



  • Oh, I didn’t mean to come across as argumentative, I just offered a description in case it jogged a memory. It’s entirely possible you never did meet him. Though if it helps at all, he’s wearing an execution hood rather than an executioner’s hood — as in, he’s the one getting executed. You are correct that all three are wearing them and Vasha doesn’t give much of a shit about the whole situation, all things considered



  • That’s the only reference, yeah. The character is only present for one scene in one quest, and the only mention of his sexual exploits is that line. I certainly always interpreted him as a womaniser rather than a rapist

    It’s funny that you mention Zorro — the voice actor that does this character’s lines (and also other male khajiit) has done parts to fill in for Antonio Banderas before


  • To be fair he may not actually be a rapist. He calls himself “defiler of daughters”, but he’s doing so in a theatrically rogueish list of reasons people would want to kill him, so it could just as well be consensual but the parents are furious about it.

    However even if that is the case, he actually is also a self-described murderer and thief who implies that he runs a dangerous gang of some sort and regularly has people trying to kill him