A Ku Indeed!

Where’s My Oven Spring?

Chris — Mon, 09 Jan 2012 14:59:36 +0000

I haven’t been consistently blogging for a while now, and it’s time to get back on track. To start up the new year, I need to express a little recent frustration – I’ve been baking quite a bit (regular rustic loaves) and for some reason, I seem to have lost my mojo. Specifically, I’ve lost the ability to get a decent oven-spring, and my crusts are not as crunchy as I once was able to achieve on a regular basis. What in the world is going on? I’ve tried everything, as I outline below. Like my breads, I’m a bit deflated as of late.

If you read up on oven spring in the literature, you’ll find that basically writers attribute it to a few sources:

1. High initial oven temperature (450+)

2. Steam in the oven

3. Solid bread proofing beforehand to build up CO2

These reasons for achieving good oven-spring all make sense to me. So I started making sure that each was happening. I think in a week I baked probably 8 loaves, trying out different things to assure that all of these conditions were present.

(1) I raised my initial temp to 475 for 10 minutes, then dropping to 425 (my typical temp).

This had zero effect on oven-spring. In fact, when I achieved great oven-spring in the past, I never raised the temp at all – I just stuck with 425 the whole way.

(2) I started adding ice cubes to the base of the oven, and sprayed the loaves a few times to keep surface temp low and to allow for maximum spring.

Zero effect. Again, before I achieved good oven-spring with no water or steam.

(3) Proofing. I tried a whole bunch of variations on proofing time. The last time I tried there was a ton of CO2 in the dough peeking out from the top.

Zero effect.

I even went further to:

(4) New Yeast. Maybe my yeast was too old? Bought new yeast.

Zero effect.

At this point I am completely clueless as to what is going on. Is it the winter? Low humidity in the house? What in the world is the deal with my oven-spring? I haven’t even mentioned my problem with crusts yet, since the two are related – crap oven-spring won’t yield a good crust, in my opinion. So first things first.

Any ideas?

Happy New Year

Chris — Sun, 01 Jan 2012 13:23:11 +0000

Happy New Year, Everyone. My new year’s resolution is to get back to my blogging. It’s been a busy six months. I’m going to see if I can get this thing back on track!

Ethics Assessment

Chris — Thu, 01 Dec 2011 01:06:33 +0000

Anyone out there have any good information sources on assessing ethics in the classroom? If so, let me know!

Are the Chinese Heartless? Well, No…

Chris — Fri, 28 Oct 2011 01:31:42 +0000

A few days ago Andrew Sullivan had a post up about the recent terrible video taken in China of the small toddler who was hit by a car and left for dead in the middle of the street while passerby (many of them) did nothing, not lending a hand, and basically ignoring the horrible scene. Sullivan linked to a few explanations, one of which (George Conger’s) was that the Confucianism discourages a Samaratan ethic. This is an interesting topic (somewhat complicated, I think) but on the face, Conger is pretty much dead wrong. I wrote to Sullivan by email and he posted by response (I was the first “reader” of two commenting on the issue) today in a post, here. I’ll reproduce my reply below (I think my 15 min are now up).

No, Confucianism does not discourage a good Samaratanism. Here’s Mencius (Confucius’ immediate successor) on an topic clearly relevant to the shameful recent story (and to your commentator’s claims about guanxi):

“If people witness a child about to fall down a well, they would experience a feeling of fear and sorrow instantaneously without an exception. This feeling is generated not because they want to gain friendship with the child’s parents, nor because they look for the praise of their neighbors and friends, nor because they don’t like to hear the child’s scream of seeking help.” Instead, Mencius argues that this feeling of compassion (ren) is innate in a person, and that as a result, all people have a mind that cannot stand to see others suffer. Moreover, Mencius argues, “…without a mind directed by compassion one is not human.”

Clearly here Mencius is suggesting that by nature as humans we are not driven by guanxi, but by compassion for fellow humans. This is completely consistent with a Good Samaratan ethic.

Now, of course, both Confucius and Mencius would agree that it requires effort to make sure that one’s innate “heart” is cultivated so that what it feels results in action, and they would also agree that most people unfortunately do not do this cultivation work. It is very clear that if Confucius and Mencius had seen that video, they would be ashamed and proclaim that all of those people had lost their humanity.

College as Philanthrophy

Chris — Tue, 25 Oct 2011 01:14:30 +0000

I read this piece a while back at the Chronicle and liked it – I came across it again tonight while looking for something else. It’s well worth the read!

Op-Ed Response to Kathleen Parker

Chris — Sat, 08 Oct 2011 14:21:01 +0000

This op-ed appears in the Springfield News-Leader in response to Kathleen Parker’s national column from Oct 2, using ACTA studies and findings from _Academically Adrift_ to wag a finger at colleges for failing students.

—

Kathleen Parker argues that colleges are failing to teach basic skills (critical/complex reasoning, writing and communication). I agree that that these skills are essential, and share her concern that college students are not learning those skills at an acceptable level. Parker’s analysis of the problem (drawing on misleading studies by ACTA) is that schools lack quality general education curricula, and so should create them.

Parker is wrong – in many universities quality curricula already exist. She’s also wrong to think of a curriculum as a conveyor belt that transports students through appropriate subjects until basic skills have been passively assembled. In fact, this passive understanding of education actually helps to create the very problem she is so worried about.

Rather than seeing a college as a factory that passively produces individuals with basic skills, I believe we should view it as an ancient Greek agora or “marketplace of ideas.” A curriculum structures that marketplace of ideas by creating a learning space in which ideas can be encountered, arguments and perspectives exchanged and debated and in which basic academic skills, habits and virtues can be acquired. The success of that marketplace of ideas, however, requires the active efforts of a great number of people.

At the core of the marketplace of ideas is the dynamic interaction between teacher and student. Passionate teachers foster excellence through challenging assignments and readings, by stressing oral discourse and by demanding the highest standards of critical reasoning. In turn, passionate students seek excellence; they demand difficult courses, papers and readings and attack those challenges with vigor. When either side fails to play their exacting and active roles, passivity emerges and the marketplace of ideas dies. Learning stops.

A flourishing marketplace of ideas also requires parents to push their children to seek out what is difficult, to stress learning far more than grades. It depends on trustees and administrators who support institutional practices that encourage quality liberal arts learning, and on a community and society that stress the value of lifelong learning as an excellence. When this support is absent, it is clear why: the conception of education as a factory is unfortunately present. The inevitable result: the marketplace of ideas becomes hollow and ineffectual.

Like Parker, I end with a “provocative charge and a call to arms.” However, I’m not demanding quality curricula – they already exist (at Drury and elsewhere). Instead, I ask that each of us, in our different roles, reflect on what we must actively do to assure that the agora — the marketplace of ideas — comes alive. Only then will the critical skills and academic excellences that both Parker and myself esteem, flourish.

Chris Panza is an associate professor of philosophy at Drury University.

Brooks on Them Youngins

Chris — Fri, 30 Sep 2011 23:12:30 +0000

I’m not a big fan of David Brooks’ writing and/or thinking. Still, you have to give credit where credit is due, and he has a point in this piece on ethics in the modern world:

Mengzi on Human Desires

Chris — Thu, 25 Aug 2011 16:34:34 +0000

I was working ahead this morning, drawing up some notes for my Values Analysis (introduction to ethics) course. Reading through the very short Mengzi 1B5, I found that I had a few questions about what Mengzi was saying about human desire that hadn’t occurred to me before. I’ll outline shortly what I’m thinking of below.

In Mengzi 1B5, Mencius is talking to King Xuan, who is notorious in the first book for being not the most ethical guy, and also a bit of a dunce. In quite a few of the first passages in the book, you find Mengzi trying to explain to the King the source of his problem – both in terms of ethics and in terms of his desire to be a ‘true king’.

As anyone who has read this passage knows, King Xuan starts off by pointing out that Mengzi’s teachings are excellent, a recognition that earns a rebuke from Mengzi, who asks “then why don’t you follow them?” The rest of 1B5 consists in the King giving his excuses for why he doesn’t practice what he thinks it is right to preach. Essentially, Xuan says that he has weakness of will. He knows that the doctrines of Mengzi are right, but he’s just too weak and can’t stop his desires for wealthy, women, and food from overwhelming his knowledge and leading him to act selfishly.

Mengzi’s replies to each of these excuses is to point out that the common people love all of this stuff too, and so basically if the King simply recognized that loving food (say) was not inconsistent with facilitating the pursuit of food by the people, he would be a true King. Instead, the King seems to wrongly think that these desires are zero-sum, so that facilitating the pursuit of these desires for others would mean that he couldn’t pursue them fully for himself. My typical way of reading 1B5 stops there – Mengzi is trying to get the King to see that these really are excuses, and not very good ones, for failing to be benevolent. As soon as he can “clear away” these wrong desires from his practical reasoning, his true heart will shine through.

That might be right, but reading the passage this time made me think that Mengzi might have a different (or additional) point. Each time Mengzi replies to the King, he uses a passage from the Odes to show that in the past, exemplary Kings shared their love (say) of food or wealth with their people by assisting the people in acquiring those things.

By pointing to an exemplary King from the past each time, I wonder whether what Mengzi is saying is that true love or fondness for X has, as a constituent part, a love or fondness for the fondness for X. So it’s not just that the King fails to see that his fondness for wealth (say) is consistent with facilitating the fondness of others for wealth, it’s that the King isn’t really participating in a human desire in the first place because in his situation all he is oriented towards is X itself as opposed to X and the fondness for X. It could be that the references to the past are meant to point this out: that true fondness is a love for the fondness itself. And there’s no way to be fond of being fond for X if you fail to facilitate that pursuit of X for others when it is within your power.

This reading is perfectly consistent with my other one, but it adds a very different point to it, essentially suggesting that having a human desire is by nature having a desire that has the aims of other people as a part of its targeting. Human desires are, by nature, communal desires.

Seed Culture FAIL

Chris — Wed, 17 Aug 2011 21:52:59 +0000

Okay, I’m getting a little frustrated. My last few breads weren’t too good. Heck, my very last bread that I made a day or two ago came out bad – and that’s my “go to” bread! I seem to be in a bread funk. If I were a gambler, people would say that I’m in a heavy “drawdown” period trying to dig my way out. Anyway, the bad bread luck continues. This latest sourdough bread requires a “seed culture” that takes four days to cultivate. Everything good for the first three days. Day four? No rise whatsoever, and it is supposed to triple in size. Now I have to start over. This is not good.

I don’t know who the bread gods are, but I have clearly angered them.

BBA #28: Pugliese

Chris — Mon, 08 Aug 2011 02:43:40 +0000

More croutons, dammit.

I don’ t know what the deal is lately, but I just can’t seem to fire up a decent loaf of bread. In this latest challenge, Pugliese, I was hoping to wind up with something good after last weeks bad Potato Rosemary Bread (which also wound up as croutons) experience.

No luck.

Oddly enough, I did get a bunch of good pictures of this bread (artificially staged with some cherries to get a nice color contrast).

It’s alright, I guess. I have the stuff I need to make salads tomorrow, now I have the croutons.

(Posts from fellow BBAers, such as Jim, are here)

I’m not even going to write out the typical post I usually do here, because I was very disappointed in this bread, and I have no clear idea where things went wrong. Instead, I’ll just mention what did go wrong and then mention some issues I had along the way. I’ll then put up a few more pictures, since they did actually come out well.

The Problem:

What was the problem? Well, the bread tasted like ass – that was the main problem (can it get worse?). Really – it just didn’t taste very good. In addition, the bread was very dense. Which is surprising, given how hydrated this dough was. It also didn’t rise very much at all. So it tasted bad, it had the absolutely wrong texture, and it failed to rise. I did say that it photographed well, right?

What Went Wrong?

I’m not sure.

First off, I did goof on the biga. I made it at 9pm, and the instructions are to leave it out for 2 hours, and then to refrigerate it. I fell asleep. What can I say? I have two little kids. By 10pm I’m half on the way to being in a coma. Anyway, this resulted in the biga being left out all night. Whether this was part of the problem I wound up with, I can’t say. My typical go-to recipe from Carol Field has you make an overnight biga that is left out all night, so clearly this process is used. It just wasn’t the process for this bread. Was that the problem? I’m sure it made a difference, but I can’t imagine it led the bread to be as bad as it came out.

Second, I didn’t add the optional mashed potatoes. Was that it? I can’t imagine it would be.

I can’t think of what else could have been responsible. Everything else went just fine. That said, it did seem to me that the bread never really rose that much in the proofing stages. It rose, but not like a normal dough tends to rise. I let the dough rise exactly the time it was supposed to, in each stage.

Basically, nothing seemed to go right here. Why? Your guess is as good as mine.

Some More Good Pics

Why did I pick cherries? No reason, other than that the colors offset the bread.

and this one