Patience, Bread Making and more Patience
Finally i feel the need to write a new post.
Its not that nothing has happened, its just every day felt like a very closely packed suitcase without one little space to spare, and I didn't want to share my thoughts at my tiredest point. I did not want to write all the thoughts that were clouding around me because I was feeling so exhausted, mentally, spiritually and physically.
I knew that this summer would be a tough one, how did I know? I am not sure, I just had that feeling that there was turbulence up ahead.
After finding out about the situation in Serbia, I had to travel down there to take my things from the house. From here the news was that the landlady was changing the locks and keeping all my stuff, at first I thought it was funny and pictured her trying to fit into my collection of high collared shirts and high waisted shorts and enjoying the hipster gear I have collected over the years. Then of course I remembered my washing machine, fridge, stove and bicycle (the golden one that I designed). As it would be crazy to lose all these things I went to Serbia to clear it up. My schedule was very tight as I was working from Mon-Sat pretty much all day. However because it was my birthday i got Monday off (Oh yeah I am 27 now), and i did a weekend trip to pack up the house and move my things. I did have to pay her the full amount that I supposedly owed, but was happy to get the things out of the house, it was even kind of exciting for me to pack up a house as I had never done that before, I also had plenty of help from Danny and Lani and other friends.
I then returned to Graz to continue my hard-working life, basically shifts all day every day. I also moved apartment (again) and i really felt good in the new place, i suddenly got my energy back, started training every single day and cooking and making music and doing all the little things that make me happy. Yes happiness... it always comes back, like an old lover that you think is gone forever but calls you again and just walks right back into your life and you feel wonderful again.
I read an article about making bread, it gave the full recipe for bread (the easiest thing of course) but then it finished with.... ' the final ingredient is patience and that is the reason you will never bake bread'. After I thought about this I realised that I am a very impatient person, in fact all of society is, we kind of want everything to happen right away. I want to be successful right away, have the relationship I want or learn everything I want to learn right away. The thing is that of course, this is unrealistic and the real ingredient I think I have been missing a lot from my life was patience. I started to get passionate about bread making and its one of my hobbies that i love to learn and improve in. I saw so clearly how like most things in life, you can make everything, but there is that period where the dough needs to rise... and you just need to wait and walk away for a bit, put it somewhere warm and let it grow, after that you have the again patience taxing process of kneading the dough (about 9 minutes by the way is the perfect amount of time to kneed your dough, or 3 songs on your MP3). The perfect bread recipe was told to me by my friend Thomas, who is a world cyclist and bread expert, it goes like this.
4 cups of flour,
1 cup of warm water
Sprinkle of salt
1 packet of dried yeast,
+ whatever flavours or special ingredients you want to add to make it delicious
First put about 2/3 cup of flour with the yeast and add the warm water, it should not be a dough, but more of a paste, a liquid almost. mix it, then leave it for about 4 hours... yeah that's right... 4 hours.... the yeast will react with the flour and water and when you get back to it it should be all bubbly and have that yeast smell. then add the other flour slowly. till the point where you cannot mix it with a spoon. Get your hands in there and start to get the dough to a solid form, it should still be sticky, but not too wet. Flour a surface and your hands and kneed for 9 minutes or so. Add the salt and your special ingredients (olives, or sun dried tomatoes... pesto....). Shape it how you want, wet your hands a little with water and pat your loaf all the way around. If you want make markings on the top with a knife, this looks pretty and also helps you see how the bread has risen. Then its oven time, 180 degrees is the highest it should be. If you place a bowl of water under your bread in the oven it will keep the humidity in the oven be higher and this will give you a chewy crust and a soft inside. To test the bread, take it from the oven and tap it, it should have a solid kind of resonating sound, if you cannot tell, then just turn it over and check out the bottom of the loaf, it should be cooked and looking crusty.
So there it is, my perfect bread recipe for now. For now, because I am learning still and its all a process, just like life. Chances are I will discover a much better recipe and better way of doing it, but i guess the point of lots of things is the learning phase and that we are progressing and making bread definitely increases your appreciation of this simple joy. We are so used to just buying what we want, getting it wrapped in plastic and never understanding the process that everything goes through till its ready and in your hands.. or your mouth.
On the business side. CE in Graz experienced some pretty tough times too. We still didn't get our real licencing paper. It was a huge process and I don't think any of us were prepared for just how long it would take. Even though we received pretty much an OK to be open, we were told to be low key. However we had some gigs and party's here and the neighbours called the police a few times. It would not have been as much of a problem if we actually had our paperwork all in, but as we did not and the neighbours knew about this, they would purposefully send them to check just that. Just 5 days ago we got a letter in the mail, it was of course in German and we were not alarmed, until our unsuspecting friend suggested he read it for us and then said 'Oh it says you have to close'.... hahaa.... well this was a surprise. Apparently because of the complaints on CE from April and May, God knows what else we will get when we receive the penalties from the rest of the months. Anyhooo we figured out that because the bike shop is totally legal, the cafe can be open, but just cannot have gigs or parties. This was a set-back, because I had worked on September plan for ages, and also had scheduled a lot of gigs. Seeing as we mainly earn well during parties, it was kind of putting the business at risk of losing money in one of the months that we should do the best.
The thing is that now we have really gone through a lot with all these papers and legal procedures. I really feel almost numb to it, its like... yep here we go again, more obstacles. I guess I feel like they may always be there, and we may always have to jump the hurdles. Hopefully they won't always be so big like these ones, but it is a bit of a constant battle when you undertake such a big project, its a lot of risk, a lot of work and pressure.
The CE in Serbia is about to go into the remodelling phase, that's another big job, so I am guessing next blog post may be about that.
Finally i feel the need to write a new post.
Its not that nothing has happened, its just every day felt like a very closely packed suitcase without one little space to spare, and I didn't want to share my thoughts at my tiredest point. I did not want to write all the thoughts that were clouding around me because I was feeling so exhausted, mentally, spiritually and physically.
I knew that this summer would be a tough one, how did I know? I am not sure, I just had that feeling that there was turbulence up ahead.
After finding out about the situation in Serbia, I had to travel down there to take my things from the house. From here the news was that the landlady was changing the locks and keeping all my stuff, at first I thought it was funny and pictured her trying to fit into my collection of high collared shirts and high waisted shorts and enjoying the hipster gear I have collected over the years. Then of course I remembered my washing machine, fridge, stove and bicycle (the golden one that I designed). As it would be crazy to lose all these things I went to Serbia to clear it up. My schedule was very tight as I was working from Mon-Sat pretty much all day. However because it was my birthday i got Monday off (Oh yeah I am 27 now), and i did a weekend trip to pack up the house and move my things. I did have to pay her the full amount that I supposedly owed, but was happy to get the things out of the house, it was even kind of exciting for me to pack up a house as I had never done that before, I also had plenty of help from Danny and Lani and other friends.
I then returned to Graz to continue my hard-working life, basically shifts all day every day. I also moved apartment (again) and i really felt good in the new place, i suddenly got my energy back, started training every single day and cooking and making music and doing all the little things that make me happy. Yes happiness... it always comes back, like an old lover that you think is gone forever but calls you again and just walks right back into your life and you feel wonderful again.
I read an article about making bread, it gave the full recipe for bread (the easiest thing of course) but then it finished with.... ' the final ingredient is patience and that is the reason you will never bake bread'. After I thought about this I realised that I am a very impatient person, in fact all of society is, we kind of want everything to happen right away. I want to be successful right away, have the relationship I want or learn everything I want to learn right away. The thing is that of course, this is unrealistic and the real ingredient I think I have been missing a lot from my life was patience. I started to get passionate about bread making and its one of my hobbies that i love to learn and improve in. I saw so clearly how like most things in life, you can make everything, but there is that period where the dough needs to rise... and you just need to wait and walk away for a bit, put it somewhere warm and let it grow, after that you have the again patience taxing process of kneading the dough (about 9 minutes by the way is the perfect amount of time to kneed your dough, or 3 songs on your MP3). The perfect bread recipe was told to me by my friend Thomas, who is a world cyclist and bread expert, it goes like this.
4 cups of flour,
1 cup of warm water
Sprinkle of salt
1 packet of dried yeast,
+ whatever flavours or special ingredients you want to add to make it delicious
First put about 2/3 cup of flour with the yeast and add the warm water, it should not be a dough, but more of a paste, a liquid almost. mix it, then leave it for about 4 hours... yeah that's right... 4 hours.... the yeast will react with the flour and water and when you get back to it it should be all bubbly and have that yeast smell. then add the other flour slowly. till the point where you cannot mix it with a spoon. Get your hands in there and start to get the dough to a solid form, it should still be sticky, but not too wet. Flour a surface and your hands and kneed for 9 minutes or so. Add the salt and your special ingredients (olives, or sun dried tomatoes... pesto....). Shape it how you want, wet your hands a little with water and pat your loaf all the way around. If you want make markings on the top with a knife, this looks pretty and also helps you see how the bread has risen. Then its oven time, 180 degrees is the highest it should be. If you place a bowl of water under your bread in the oven it will keep the humidity in the oven be higher and this will give you a chewy crust and a soft inside. To test the bread, take it from the oven and tap it, it should have a solid kind of resonating sound, if you cannot tell, then just turn it over and check out the bottom of the loaf, it should be cooked and looking crusty.
So there it is, my perfect bread recipe for now. For now, because I am learning still and its all a process, just like life. Chances are I will discover a much better recipe and better way of doing it, but i guess the point of lots of things is the learning phase and that we are progressing and making bread definitely increases your appreciation of this simple joy. We are so used to just buying what we want, getting it wrapped in plastic and never understanding the process that everything goes through till its ready and in your hands.. or your mouth.
On the business side. CE in Graz experienced some pretty tough times too. We still didn't get our real licencing paper. It was a huge process and I don't think any of us were prepared for just how long it would take. Even though we received pretty much an OK to be open, we were told to be low key. However we had some gigs and party's here and the neighbours called the police a few times. It would not have been as much of a problem if we actually had our paperwork all in, but as we did not and the neighbours knew about this, they would purposefully send them to check just that. Just 5 days ago we got a letter in the mail, it was of course in German and we were not alarmed, until our unsuspecting friend suggested he read it for us and then said 'Oh it says you have to close'.... hahaa.... well this was a surprise. Apparently because of the complaints on CE from April and May, God knows what else we will get when we receive the penalties from the rest of the months. Anyhooo we figured out that because the bike shop is totally legal, the cafe can be open, but just cannot have gigs or parties. This was a set-back, because I had worked on September plan for ages, and also had scheduled a lot of gigs. Seeing as we mainly earn well during parties, it was kind of putting the business at risk of losing money in one of the months that we should do the best.
The thing is that now we have really gone through a lot with all these papers and legal procedures. I really feel almost numb to it, its like... yep here we go again, more obstacles. I guess I feel like they may always be there, and we may always have to jump the hurdles. Hopefully they won't always be so big like these ones, but it is a bit of a constant battle when you undertake such a big project, its a lot of risk, a lot of work and pressure.
The CE in Serbia is about to go into the remodelling phase, that's another big job, so I am guessing next blog post may be about that.
