Alteon

Crosspost from the "Energy" Community. Seemed too good not to put here.

I tried my hand at making a starter years ago and it went poorly. I was gifted some starter earlier this week and have been bulking it up in order to bake some bread this weekend. The starter is MUCH better than any of the ones I've ever made, so Ive had high hopes all week that my sourdough will actually come out decent this time.

I've been following this recipe, and it's been going....not well. Everything was weighed to the gram, including the starter, and "lukewarm" water was about 80ish degrees. The dough is so unbelievably sticky that I can barely scrape it off the sides of the bowl.

Is this normal? It's been years since I've done this so I'm back to questioning everything. I'm planning to just drop the whole thing into a Dutch oven and cook it, but I understand that I'm deviating from the recipe. My Dutch oven cooks were just so much better.

Cna anyone provide a better recipe for just a basic sourdough boule that you've had decent success with? I'd really like to continue baking bread, but I know for a fact that I'll wind up giving up again if I have too many failures (I think I baked 8 different times a few years ago, and I gave up because they were always so dense, and flat.). Really want something with a good, fluffy, stretchy crumb.

Any advice or questions would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

A University of Virginia professor believes he has discovered how to create a freeze-ray device, inspired by the Batman villain, Mr. Freeze. Rather than being a weapon, this device is intended to cool down electronics within spacecraft and high-altitude jets.

A tiny, hard-working bacterium -- which weighs one-trillionth of a gram -- may soon have a large influence on processing rare earth elements in an eco-friendly way.

"Traditional thermochemical methods for separating lanthanides are environmentally horrible," said Buz Barstow, assistant professor of biological and environmental engineering at Cornell, the corresponding author. "It's difficult to refine these elements. That's why we send rare earth elements offshore -- generally to China -- to process them."

Source: https://lemmy.world/instances

Not sure how useful it is yet, but it sounds like with some AI and proper cameras you could use it to completely repair certain components. Theres something similar to this using electrochemical plating to repair microfractures throughout a component - only downside is that it takes like weeks to do it properly (I'll see if I can dig up the paper later)

Looking for some ideas for friends and coworkers. If anyone can think of anything cool, I'd love to see it.