Reading, Writing, and Sourdough

  I am consolidating my Blog and a new Website If you want to continue to receive occasional email posts of book and bread reviews, you'll have to travel to  https://www.ericpallant.com/blog . On the right side panel, you'll need to fill in your name and email. It's a two-step process. You'll receive an automated email asking if you're serious about this and have to reply YES before you start receiving new notifications of posts. Of course, if you already receive too many emails, buzz over to the new website , take a quick look, and then don't sign up. BONUS . On the blog, you'll see a review for one of my favorite books of the year, Deacon King Kong by James McBride.

 It is such a simple looking bread: ciabatta, the Italian word for slipper. Maurizio Leo's recipe in The Perfect Loaf  contains ciabatta's signature addition of olive oil in the dough, but it is also made with freshly milled Khorasan, aka Kamut, flour. Khorasan is a region of Iran; the flour is is golden in color. The bread when it emerges from the oven has a thin, crackly crust and an open crumb. As toast for the next couple of days (Maurizio's recipe turns out four loaves) the rewarming intensifies its slightly nutty flavor, its external crunchiness, and internal chewiness. My son Isaac is the King of Sandwich. He thought to slice the ciabatta along its equator, fill it with spicy barbecued, pulled chicken, and top it with homemade cole slaw (Isaac is also a Slaw Master.)

  As part of my ongoing attempt to learn the American history I should have been taught I continue to read histories of Blacks, Indians, women, workers, and immigrants. Among the eras I have heard about, but knew comparatively little is Reconstruction, the period immediately following the end of the Civil War. The simple description is the North won the war. Foner's encyclopedic description of the decades that followed strongly suggest that though the America was reassembled, it was not reunified, and that the battle over emancipation and the rights of Blacks to vote freely and fully participate in the economy of the nation has still not been won. In many ways, the South lost the Civil War, but won its battle for White Supremacy. Witness the 2021 southern legislatures forbidding the teaching of Black History in schools (derogatorily called Critical Race Theory when in reality it should be called American History) and ongoing attempts to limit access for Black voters. I digress, tho...