No-Knead Bread

In 2008 the NY Times brought an article about how to make “no knead bread”.I found it fascinating for 2 reasons: My inherent laziness and the reasoning behind the concept, namely a natural chemical process that completely replaces the knuckle work otherwise required.

And then I discovered the real benefit: The resulting bread is absolutely delicious, looks and feels professional, something I have never been able to produce in a normal oven, and is so easy to make that it defies description.

I promise you, anyone between the age of 5 and 95 can make it, and you cannot buy any bread in town better than this. Forget about buying the £5000 steam-injection oven you always wanted – your old Ford-T gas or el-oven will do – and forget about the useless tricks that advise you to install a brick bottom in the oven or adding a pot of water while baking. It DOESN’T WORK!!!

First of all: Here’s the result:

Professionally home baked bread!

Does it look fine or does it look fine?
And here’s the recipe and process:

6 cups bread flour, strong or plain, plus some for dusting
1/2 teaspoon instant yeast (true – only ½ tea spoon) 2 ½ teaspoons salt
3 cups of water (or slightly less according to experience - you will know after the first bread!)
Extra flour or wheat bran for more dusting of a towel.

A. Combine flour, yeast and salt. Add the water, and stir with a wooden spoon – or the hand; the dough will be sticky and of a consistency like thick syrup. Cover the dough lightly and let it rest for 18 hours at room temperature. (Yes – 18 hours; time and chemistry does what kneading otherwise would have done)

B. Have patience and let it rest all 18 hours. You should be able to see a surface dotted with small bubbles by then. If you prepare at noon the day before, you are ready for an early morning baking session at 6am and delicious, crusty bread by 9 am! Work?? Well, how about Saturday/ Sunday?

So, 18 hours later, scrape the dough with a spatula onto a lightly floured surface. Remember: it will be sticky and quite different from what you are used to – like slow moving lava from a volcanic eruption! Sprinkle the dough with a little flour (or use wet hands to prevent sticking) and fold it over on itself a couple of times. Not critical.

C. Shape dough into a ball. Coat a cotton towel well with flour or wheat bran and put the dough, seam side down, on the towel. Cover and let it rise for 2 hours. When ready, the dough will be ca. double in size.

D. Heat the oven to maximum bread baking temperature (450F/ 200C in a hot air oven) and put a heavy covered pot (cast iron, enamel or ceramic) in the oven as it heats. Le Creuset pots are excellent for this; just make sure your pot can stand the heat. I recommend lining the pot with baking parchment. At my first attempt, I couldn’t get the bread out!! When hot, remove the pot from the oven and turn the dough into the pot. Cover with a lid and bake for 30 minutes. Remove the lid and bake for another 20 minutes, until the bread is golden brown. It will look like the gourmet baker’s expensive bread – and taste like it.

Remove from pot and cool on a rack.

The secret of this bread-success is the high water content of the dough and the chemical process that aligns the yeast and all the little flour molecules over the 18 hours. You can, of course, experiment with timing, nuts and different kinds of flour.

Trust me – you will never buy an expensive loaf again, when it is so easy to make your own: 2 min. mixing and putting away; 2 min. forming the bread to let it rise and letting the oven do the rest. 10 sec. to remove it from the oven.

I call this a 4 min. luxury bread!!!

Jeremy Clarkson, wind turbines and mental methane.

Why is it that celebrities always feel they have to add their penny’s worth to discussion topics they have absolutely no understanding of?
Jeremy Clarkson, probably best known from the TV series Top Gear has done it again.
This time his contribution ranges below farthing level.

Why again?

Because a few years ago he was paid handsomely to celebrate the 80th anniversary of the invention of the jet engine. He clearly didn’t know anything about that either and spent BBC’s money yawning himself on an 80 hour global roundtrip, boring the socks off his viewers and contributing nothing with even a remote reference to neither the jet engine nor the cultural and geographical marvels he happened to pass on the way.
And hey presto: now he is onto an eruption through his elbows (or from a worse source, talking about methane) about wind turbines.

According to an article, committed by guru Clarkson in the Sunday Times on 17 March 2012, wind mills should be dead and buried with the exception of the few that could be left for future generations to see at select museums around the world.

In one fell swoop this self-confessed know-it-all has judged climate change to be AGW and wind turbines to be a waste of land, money, time and energy – literally.
And I am sure the fans (sorry another pun) are drooling.

According to Clarkson, in particular the Danes, whom he recognises have a lot of experience and probably some sort of a leading role in this industry, have

- “ built wind farms that don’t work” and that
- “ haven’t caused one single conventional power station to be shut down” and
- “ caused their normal power stations to produce even more CO2 than they did in the past”.

Quite a mouthful from a person, whose main contribution to the life of couch-potatoes seems to be to demonstrate colourful use of the English language when determining which car is the fastest when driven nowhere by other TV celebs and the injection of satirical comments at a level that would make a 6th former proud.

Clarkson’s objective in life seems to be ridicule, self projection and cheap laughs.
Well, there’s the UK entertainment industry for you, when it is worst.
Then I, for one, prefer Freddy Starr.

Could it be, that in our attempt to create progress for the human species, while searching for welfare and pursuit of happiness (1776), we have stumbled upon the single most important invention ever: electricity?

And that this, as Clarkson correctly says pulled the descendants of both Henry VIII and his stable boy out of comparably dirty lifestyles?

Would it also be worth mentioning, that the electricity that drives the human circus , doesn’t come for free – neither in money nor the punishment called pollution?
And perhaps, that sitting on one’s bum doesn’t bring us anywhere?

The wind turbine story is a complex one.
It has its success chapters and its failures, but it deserves better than the Clarkson celebrity treatment and having come as far as we have, understanding the issues, wouldn't have been possible without research, risk taking - and the construction of windmills.

In some awesome way, the major arguments we humans are able to produce, always seem to come in waves of 3.
So, here are my 3 points, concentrated  for the sake of readability:

- Political issues

- Technical issues

- Philosophical/Aesthetical issues – also called emotional issues.

That should cover most.

Political.
From the wood burning stove, over coal and gas-fired power plants and nuclear power stations we have ended up in a situation, where there is not enough energy to go around for the (un)foreseeable future.

The energy sourcing is unevenly distributed. It is increasingly expensive or dangerous to extract, the energy product has political power and a state’s obligation and ability to provide for its citizens happiness is dependent on its economic ability, power position in the world and growth ambitions.

Without electricity you don’t even need to be bothered.
In short!

Changing that situation is not trivial, bar the option of returning to Henry VIII and his stable boy’s comparable life styles.
Therefore, a quick scan of the options makes wind, sun, water, thermo (both –nuclear and –ground) easy choices for our undivided attention. The problem is, that to learn how to harness one or more of these options efficiently costs a lot of money, but in the short term our know-how is encapsulated in the mentioned areas.

This is where “lift your bum” comes into the picture.
We will no doubt make many mistakes during our search for new energy supply – as the required technology develops with every new attempt to solve the inherent technical problems.
The combustion engine is a good example – one that Clarkson should understand.
Just compare the Alvis, that I saw outside the pub yesterday, with a modern Lexus Hybrid car.

But if there were no political will or power to help find out, we would never know.

Does the presenting problem mean that we shouldn’t research the fusion option either? We have no idea how to go about it, so research is hugely expensive and the outcome is far from certain, but it would solve our energy quest once and for all.
The answer is political, i.e. a belief or stance - and that's why we continue to pump money into this (perhaps) black hole.

Does the fact, that there’s overproduction of electricity at night and that inter-state pricing is a hot potato, depending sometimes on demand, sometimes on supply and most of the times on differences in local politics, mean that wind turbines are “out”?
How about solving the problem, where the problem arises – and it is not in the wind.

Therefore, Mr. Tax-payer, suck your thumbs, think about future generations and stop paying £6-800mill. to e.g. India in "3rd world support"; they even say they don't want it and they are perfectly able to manage their  nuclear programme themselves, thank you.
That should pay the cost of a few wind turbines on UK's Atlantic coast - if this is the solution.

Technical.
The arguments go in circles, based on no wind, too much wind, maintenance, cost of construction, difficulties concerning storage of energy, variation in current phase, steady supply to the grid and potential impact on more or less stable networks.
A lot of this has been solved, much needs attention – but it is a fact that we have learned a lot in the last 30 years - because we lifted our bums and because funds were made available.
Without the wind farms this learning would have blown in the wind.
Danish wind technology has helped us to reach a situation where we can speak from a base of knowledge.

The bottom line in terms of supply is, that there are no more big problems with wind energy generation and supply issues than with other forms of energy sources.
Just different problems.
Granted, they may be big, but doing nothing doesn't get us any further.
Example: if the energy storage problem were solved and/or oil prices went totally through the roof and/or political instability closed the oil and gas pipe lines, what then?

But how would a TV celebrity know this?
The difference is that his opinion reaches a larger public and it helps promote attitudes based on ignorance.

A good example is the three wind mills supplying the World Trade Centre in Bahrain with all its energy. No one wants to take responsibility for selling the inevitable excess energy to the Bahrain grid, e.g. at night time, claiming that a weak network couldn't handle the variation in supply.

If there is a reader out there, who wants to know why we today know much more about the stability of wind turbine replacement energy, then here’s a sample argument that shows how far we have come on the issue of stabilising variations in wind generated energy supply:

"The typical wind turbine has a twin supplied asynchronous generator that has the ability to control the frequency on the stator side through slip rings on the rotor side. Through forcing a frequency on the rotor you eliminate frequency interference, and through this control you can generate an active or reactive result, according to what the network requires. Mind you, modern wind turbines are actually helping stabilize weak networks."

Perhaps they don’t trust this fact in Bahrain, as the prophet Muhammad didn’t foresee this situation in the Hadith.

Success stories of how wind energy has replaced, and added to, conventional energy generation exist – even in Denmark, where you claim the situation is less than successful. Perhaps the failure to close down any of the conventional power stations, as stated by Mr. Clarkson, is owed to the fact that wind turbines take care of some of the growth in energy supply.
It could also be because political issues have clouded the situation and caused total confusion of the pricing structure.

In short, Mr. Clarkson – there’s no reason to spread FUD (Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt) about wind turbines for your private political or self aggrandizing reasons, in particular as you have no idea what you are talking about.

As the research moves forward, we may find that there are lots of ways to store energy from wind turbines or to use them for an extended variety of purposes: Export of energy though links to international grids, electric car charging, storing of energy in water reservoirs, in hydrogen cells and a plethora of  other possibilities not yet thought of.

I will agree with you, Jeremy, in one area: the moment we find that there are better (cheaper, safer, faster, more efficient) ways of producing energy, we should probably drop the wind mill project!
There is in fact one area popping up already - Thorium reactors, THE NEXT LEVEL DOWN FROM U238-235-230.
Both China and India have planned new plants and apparently they are safe, efficient and CO2-free. And there is no chance of a melt down like in Chernobyl and Fukushima.
It sounds too good to be true.

As always there is an additional aber dabei: it looks increasingly like global warming is NOT created by humans!!!
There's not eggs enough in the world to cover the politicians' faces, so we can't see them blush in shame.
The CO2 elimination chase has made us bark up the wrong tree, missing the required investments in preventing the CONSEQUENCES of climate change.
But that's another discussion that I will cover in this blog later on.

Aesthetic and Emotional issues
It is so easy to criticise and ridicule other people – they did that with Copernicus and Galilei too – but one day, when food supply is expensive or short because we grow sugar cane for car fuel instead, because there’s little or only expensive oil and gas available to run our TV sets, or when the Chinese, Indians and Brazilians use "our" oil, perhaps we’d wish we had pushed the use of various alternative energy supplies  before the problem came crawling up from behind..

There is a large index in the book of energy arguments:Windmills may in some people’s eyes be ugly; the desert should concentrate on exhibiting its beautiful sand dunes and not be covered in solar cells; the Severn Estuary should not be blocked by a tidal flow generator; and the Americans should start paying their share of the Earth’s energy consumption.

Right now, 2012, humans account for ca. 20 TW energy output.
That's nothing compared to the 120,000 TW from the Sun that the Earth has to manage.
But what about it when it becomes 5000 TW in, perhaps, 2-300 years?

There are lots of both good and bad arguments - but we need to start now to prepare ourselves for the future - or aptly: having the wind in the back, not from the front.

We need to prepare for a better "energy future" than the one represented by Clarkson's irony.
.

Windmill politics and renewable energy arguments - pro et con

The windmill debate rages back and forth. Heated discussions on AGW and carbon foot prints move mountains and yet we don't seem closer to a reasonable conclusion about this : is all the money that goes into research of renewable energy through windfarms well spent - or a complete waste?

I have an opinion, and as a non-professional (on renewable energy production) average citizen, whose tax money contributes to the fray, I thought the following might open some sort of debate - - or end up in the usual Cyber-space black hole far beyond the Event Horizon!

Let's take the arguments one by one and perhaps catch all clauses by saying, that if anyone has good supporting or contra-arguments, I am more than willing to listen and change tack!

- Windmills are ugly? Invalid argument. Pylons, nuclear/coal/gas/oil power generators are ugly too. And so are cars. We learn to live with them. This doesn't add to a serious debate. The most windswept areas in the UK are around the coast with a steady supply, off people's "radar". People don't like change - a lot of the debate therefore focusses on emotional facts, caused by our failure to have a proper plan for "least annoyance", thereby irritating the wrong (=influential) people.

- Windmills are inefficient. This surely depends on which level of development and sophistication we have achieved. All new technology goes through phases, usually from rough, tough and expensive to smooth and cheap. Car engines, walkman players, Jet engines, iPads, PCs, mobile phones, etc. all did it.
If we don't undertake a concerted development while the pressure is low, we may find it exceedingly difficult when and if the house catches fire, i.e. war or lack of traditional energy supply in case of political unrest.
A free market with healthy competition, initially backed by a political will to seek alternative renewable energy sources, are in my opinion a prerequisite to find out, whether windmills are the way forward.
 If we don't try, we will never know and in my opinion we must look 100 or 200 years ahead, not 20.

- Windmills can't store electricity/ are useless when no wind/ stopped when storming. When the wind blows, we should be able to use less conventional fuel (gas/ oil/ coal) despite a need to run conventional power plants on empty. One way would be to export the surplus into a larger grid, e.g. European. This principle has long been used in Scandinavia in respect of hydro-energy plants.
This amounts to a storage of fuel, i.e. NOT USED fuel somewhere in the grid, i.e. energy storage.
And the Storm-argument? How often do we have this situation? (Actually quite rarely, as I can see).
Windmills can also be used to store energy  by e.g. pumping water into reservoirs, from where it can be released to drive turbines, when there is no wind or when the need arises.
As late as Sunday 18 March 2012 a UK researcher wrote a major article in the Sunday Times about this principle, presenting it as a novel thought. It is neither rocket science nor new!
The problem for the UK is that there are no suitable mountains in England and often wind still, so Scotland would have to carry the burden - and in Scotland the wind is almost always present.
But then the pumped up water could be used alternatively to supply an increasingly drought ridden South during the summer - a project that has been discussed with no end in sight for the last 40 years.
The combined need for water and energy could perhaps bring implementation a step closer.

- Cost/Pricing: The inefficiency (if any) is to a large degree due to political pricing and inter-country agreements, artificial support (which tends to generate either no research or just make producers rich) and not referring to the actual relationship between building cost and utilization benefit. Moreover, the initial costs (actual) will always be higher, when changing to a new system due to lower volume, learning curve and supply issues, etc.
Simplistically, compare the price of HD-TVs today to 5 years ago and you see what I mean.

The price tag will always be relative - when oil was $3/barrel (1970) and supply expected to last forever, only silly farmers or Dutch canal builders thought about their private windmills as water pumps.
But now that oil has broken the $100 mark and seems sure to hit $150-200 over the next decade, what then?
We want to begin preparation and thinking now and not in 10 years time.

At the moment the installation and maintenance cost of windmills, in particular sea-bound wind farms, are exceedingly high due to the extraordiniary requirements to steel and concrete and complicated grid connections. I am not aware what the life expectancy of these windmills is, but the price and complexity is probably one of the reasons why various governments  have to put an enormous amount of money into the scheme. Tax-payers' money! And that is bound to create friction.

- Experience: There are plenty of succcess stories concerning wind-energy, both when implemented land-bound and in coastal areas. e.g. The Danish island of Samso, which is almost 100%  energy supplied through windmills with traditional supply as back-up through a connection to the general grid.
A couple of German towns likewise.
So experience shows that it works!! Why are the English so negative about European innovation, only believing it works if invented here? If you do a bit of investigative research into the success stories you'd see what I mean.
We are ideally positioned with vast coastal stretches.
- Political bargaining power of Oil and Gas suppliers. This is totally uncontrollable and actually unacceptable: Russia and an increasingly volatile group of states in Africa and Asia are slowly tightening the noose.
What if Israel bombs Iran and all hell breaks loose in the part of the world that supplies Europe with 85% of its oil and gas?
It is easy to imagine other, comparable situations. Ukraine showed it in 2009 and the Baltic gas-pipe could rupture during a frosty winter.
This implies a serious threat to Western Europe, incl. the UK, even if our shale deposits of gas in principle may take us through the next 75 years.
As I said, we need a 100-200 years planning process.

- A longer term assessment of our energy use is long overdue. With an exponential increase in the Earth's population, wealth and energy demand, we will over the next 100 years create a major disaster for the planet, totally irrespective of the greenhouse gas effect (if there is any). This is only a slightly longer time horizon than the estimated guess-work concerning CO2.
Even with a stagnating population on Earth there will be a huge problem, as the BRIC countries demand their share. At present, India and China add 10mill cars/year to their parking lot!

An important consideration here is of course: why do we think traditionally? Why do we need an increased energy supply at all? How about fewer people? Spending the money on population control would perhaps be more effective?
Question-1: Is this a good idea? Absolutely.
Question-2: Is this realistic? I think not - unfortunately.

- Other (simultaneous/ non carbon) approaches. Tidal water and wave power stations have huge potential in many parts of the world - but it is still an emerging technology. I hate to consider the maintenance/repair effort due to mud-blocked turbines in the Severn estuary, where the UK could build enough generators to supply most of the country. Sun panels on every single house in the UK? Surely a possibility and lots of people are already doing it. Surplus energy could be channelled into the public grid.

Nuclear Power stations are an obvious option and I believe development should be accelerated immediately.

There is an immense scope for building a UK power industry, earning money for the GDP many years ahead off loading the reliance on an immoral weapons industry.

- Political short sightedness. 100 MPs have started a rather farcical protest against the "windmill drive". I find it scientifically and socially myopic and defeating most objectives required for a proper and fact oriented discussion. This action is only topped by German politicians, who in panic have decided to close down the german Nuclear Power Plants in the next 8 years. Are they mad? It is a sad illustration of the incompetence demonstrated by our politicians (Labour, Lib. Dems or Tory - all of them), comparable to investing Billions of £££s in the High Speed train line (HS2 London-Manchester) when our communication society's technology could solve the presenting problem at only a fraction of the investment without physically moving the fragile human body around. But perhaps Virtual Office solutions are less attractive than a 1st class, bar-supported train ride for our leaders?
The 100 complaining MPs will really find something to complain about when their fridge-freezers stop working or when they can't afford to run them or their cars any more.

- Stopping unwanted money squandering to India and other countries. The UK sends in excess of $1Bill to India every year in 3rd world support. This to a country that spends loads of money on a nuclear industry. India has even said they don't want the money. The UK continues. This would pay for hundreds of Windmill  installations along our coast - and provide work for a lot of people. Or heating for hypothermia suffering pensioners.

Hello!!!! Anyone home?

- A Massive change in life-style is required - whatever else we do - Home insulation, more efficient car-engines, fewer holidays - the list is longer than this article.
But we probably won't adapt before it is too late!!!

Comments are welcome.