I have been procrastinating about starting from seeds. But there is no time like the present. Especially inspired by the recent thread about it.
Anyway, I have seen some people talk about heating pads. But, would it work OK to just put the the seed tray on top of the refrigerator?
It is getting towards winter here, in another month. And I only heat the room where I am personally located. It can get rather cold in the kitchen at night.
Note that, my local climate is OK for spinach, broccoli, etc, to go outside during winter. They just grow slow.
The best results I've ever had was this year when I took some unusually-hard-to-sprout pepper seeds to work, planted in a Tupperware container and put them on the back of my computer monitor during the days. I took them off at night and removed the lids and let them cool off and breathe. I got almost 100% germination in about a week and the seedlings are now strong and healthy. Last year the same seeds took almost a month to get maybe 10% germination and the seedlings were weak not a single one survived. The bottom heat was the only difference.
On top of the fridge is probably pretty good; it depends where the condenser coils are.
Last year I got about a 50% germination rate on all seeds when I put them in a drawer under our water bed. This year with a hot pad and grow lights I'm getting about a 90% germination rate. Different plants have different needs.
I start my tomato and pepper seeds placed in a piece of damp paper towel placed in a small Baggie and put on my cable box. After about three days or four days, they've begun sprouting and then I plant them in starting mix. They've always been successful this way. Even if the little sprout has grown into the paper I just leave that little piece and plant it with the sprout in it.
Hmmm...seeds, I guess. Never made no-knead bread. A friend of mine used a bread machine, but I don't know if that qualifies for "no-knead".
BTW - the Chinese, who were way ahead of us on much* -- the peasants channeled the heat from their household fires into pipes that ran under the ground and provided nice heat for germinating seeds.
of course they're STILL ahead of us on environmental pollution, summary executions, imprisonment for free speech/writing, and now contaminated pet food. There were recently articles in the media about how that plastic waste melamine had been used to bulk up "protein" for years to unwitting users in China itself. One can see how they could get away with it in a totalitarian state, but it's hard to excuse exporting this stuff to the U.S.
Hard? Not at all! The ******* Administration has CUT the FDA inspection resources, while we are importing four times as much food as in the past. (Foreign food exporters laugh behind their hands, knowing how easy it is to dump bad food in the U.S. because of the dearth of inspection resources.)
Somehow that equation doesn't work out. But wait! It is more important -- rather than adequately fund the FDA -- to use our money to kill our soldiers in Iraq, kill innocent Iraqui civilians, AND enrich the Halliburton-type contractors as well as our private mercenary armies** doing business Over There.
**Which number almost as many as the "official" army figures quoted by the Pentagon.
Persephone wrote in news:CO2dnfpyStAjJaXbnZ2dnUVZ snipped-for-privacy@adelphia.com:
germination
Nope. No bread machine or long bouts of kneading needed for this bread. It makes fantastic bread, too. Here you go:
Best-selling cookbook author Mark BIttman is the creator and author of the popular New York Times weekly column, "The Minimalist," and one of the country's best-known and widely admired food writers. His flagship book, How to Cook Everything, is currently in its fourteenth printing and has, in its various formats, sold over a million copies.
Mark is also a regular guest on the ?Today? show and NPR's ?All Things Considered? and has also appeared on countless national and local radio and television shows. He has been profiled in this country's leading newspapers, including the Boston Globe, Washington Post, and Los Angeles Times.
No Knead Bread ? Original Recipe Yield: One 1 1/2-pound loaf
Time: About 1 1/2 hours plus 14 to 20 hours? rising
3 cups all-purpose or bread flour, more for dusting
1/4 teaspoon instant yeast
1 1/4 teaspoons salt Cornmeal or wheat bran as needed.
In a large bowl combine flour, yeast and salt. Add 1 5/8 cups water, and stir until blended; dough will be shaggy and sticky. Cover bowl with plastic wrap. Let dough rest at least 12 hours, preferably about 18, at warm room temperature, about 70 degrees. (This is where the computer monitor comes in handy.)
Dough is ready when its surface is dotted with bubbles. Lightly flour a work surface and place dough on it; sprinkle it with a little more flour and fold it over on itself once or twice. Cover loosely with plastic wrap and let rest about 15 minutes.
Using just enough flour to keep dough from sticking to work surface or to your fingers, gently and quickly shape dough into a ball. Generously coat a cotton towel (not terry cloth) with flour, wheat bran or cornmeal; put dough seam side down on towel and dust with more flour, bran or cornmeal. Cover with another cotton towel and let rise for about 2 hours. When it is ready, dough will be more than double in size and will not readily spring back when poked with a finger.
At least a half-hour before dough is ready, heat oven to 450 degrees. Put a 6- to 8-quart heavy covered pot (cast iron, enamel, Pyrex or ceramic) in oven as it heats. When dough is ready, carefully remove pot from oven. Slide your hand under towel and turn dough over into pot, seam side up; it may look like a mess, but that is O.K. Shake pan once or twice if dough is unevenly distributed; it will straighten out as it bakes. Cover with lid and bake 30 minutes, then remove lid and bake another 15 to 30 minutes, until loaf is beautifully browned. Cool on a rack.
No Knead Bread ? Optional Recipes
WEIGHT VS. VOLUME - The original recipe contained volume measures, but for those who prefer to use weight, here are the measurements: 430 grams of flour, 345 grams of water, 1 gram of yeast and 8 grams of salt. With experience, many people will stop measuring altogether and add just enough water to make the dough almost too wet to handle.
SALT - Many people, me included, felt Mr. Lahey?s bread was not salty enough. Yes, you can use more salt and it won?t significantly affect the rising time. I?ve settled at just under a tablespoon.
YEAST - Instant yeast, called for in the recipe, is also called rapid- rise yeast. But you can use whatever yeast you like. Active dry yeast can be used without proofing (soaking it to make sure it?s active).
TIMING - About 18 hours is the preferred initial rising time. Some readers have cut this to as little as eight hours and reported little difference. I have not had much luck with shorter times, but I have gone nearly 24 hours without a problem. Room temperature will affect the rising time, and so will the temperature of the water you add (I start with tepid). Like many other people, I?m eager to see what effect warmer weather will have. But to those who have moved the rising dough around the room trying to find the 70-degree sweet spot: please stop. Any normal room temperature is fine. Just wait until you see bubbles and well- developed gluten ? the long strands that cling to the sides of the bowl when you tilt it ? before proceeding.
THE SECOND RISE - Mr. Lahey originally suggested one to two hours, but two to three is more like it, in my experience. (Ambient temperatures in the summer will probably knock this time down some.) Some readers almost entirely skipped this rise, shaping the dough after the first rise and letting it rest while the pot and oven preheat; this is worth trying, of course.
OTHER FLOURS - Up to 30 percent whole-grain flour works consistently and well, and 50 percent whole-wheat is also excellent. At least one reader used 100 percent whole-wheat and reported ?great crust but somewhat inferior crumb,? which sounds promising. I?ve kept rye, which is delicious but notoriously impossible to get to rise, to about 20 percent. There is room to experiment.
FLAVORINGS -The best time to add caraway seeds, chopped olives, onions, cheese, walnuts, raisins or whatever other traditional bread flavorings you like is after you?ve mixed the dough. But it?s not the only time; you can fold in ingredients before the second rising.
OTHER SHAPES - Baguettes in fish steamers, rolls in muffin tins or classic loaves in loaf pans: if you can imagine it, and stay roughly within the pattern, it will work.
COVERING BETWEEN RISES - A Silpat mat under the dough is a clever idea (not mine). Plastic wrap can be used as a top layer in place of a second towel.
THE POT - The size matters, but not much. I have settled on a smaller pot than Mr. Lahey has, about three or four quarts. This produces a higher loaf, which many people prefer ? again, me included. I?m using cast iron. Readers have reported success with just about every available material. Note that the lid handles on Le Creuset pots can only withstand temperatures up to 400 degrees. So avoid using them, or remove the handle first.
BAKING - You can increase the initial temperature to 500 degrees for more rapid browning, but be careful; I scorched a loaf containing whole-wheat flour by doing this. Yes, you can reduce the length of time the pot is covered to 20 minutes from 30, and then increase the time the loaf bakes uncovered. Most people have had a good experience baking for an additional 30 minutes once the pot is uncovered.
As these answers demonstrate, almost everything about Mr. Lahey?s bread is flexible, within limits. As we experiment, we will have failures. (Like the time I stopped adding flour because the phone rang, and didn?t realize it until 18 hours later. Even this, however, was reparable). This method is going to have people experimenting, and largely succeeding, until something better comes along. It may be quite a while.
That's not really fair Persephone. Our ******* Administration is trying to catch up on environmental pollution (re: Clean Air Act, Clean Water Act, burn more coal and, build "nucular" acts), summary executions (if you are categorized an enemy combatant, you can bend over and kiss it good-bye), imprisonment for free speech/writing (if your not embedded, you are a target {Palestine Hotel, Al Jazeera, Giuliana Sgrena, ect.}), and now contaminated pet food (an acceptable fib in China where it is added to all animal feeds to improve scores on protein assays). What food products do we import from China? Does your butt fall off immediately or do you wait 10 years and get Type II diabetes or, twenty years and get cancer?
If we could just stop those "little Eichmans", maybe the world would stop being so mad at us. Well at least we won't have Halliburton to kick around anymore. They took our tax dollars and ran to Dubai to avoid taxes. I hope they grab Cheney before he skips out of the country. Can it belong before Blackwater and, Custer Battle come to a town near you? But I digress . . .
Using Susan's (The Cook) method (God knows where she stole it from but, she stole a good one.) of florescence lights on top and a heating pad (low) underneath, I am getting germination of pepper seeds in 5 days.
Believe me, I wasn't trying to go easy on our proto-totalitarian regime! I just hesitated to get too OT on this amiable NG. Unleashed, I could froth on for infinite bytes.
Small byte: At least SOMEBODYelse knows that our military deliberately targeted and murdered journalists from Al Jazeera and Spain. BTW, I understand a Spanish magistrate has now demanded that the US extradite the ?? responsible for the deliberate targeting of the Palestine Hotel (after Al Jazeera carefully gave them the exact coordinates, required by our military). This is the tip of the iceberg: "Non-approved" journalists were routinely turned back from entering Iraq; how many others were killed, one wonders.
The military, and their political bosses, sure learned their lesson! Allowing unrestricted reporting from Vietnam so outraged the public that it eventually ended the war, notwithstanding Nixon's sabotage of the Paris peace talks -- only cost another few thousand American soldier lives...chickenfeed...
Too bad they didn't learn that OTHER little "lesson" -- Never get involved in a land war in Asia!
Another name for fascism is "privatizing" the public sector, also called privatizing the profit and socializing the cost.
Why are so many Mexicans coming to work in the US? Look at the farm subsidies
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subsidized corn is cheaper than they can grow it. They have to do something to feed their families. Adios Chiapas, Buenas dias Rio Grand. It kind of reminds me of the enclosure acts in Europe
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, when the peasants were kicked off the common lands, where they could raise food and, were forced into the cities to become cheap labor.
It's not just foreigners coming here and taking American jobs it's also Americans choosing to send work out of the country to foreign workers. What's the difference?
The average CEO gets 600 times the salary of the worker?
I'm so frothed out, I can't even spit.
But I digress . . .
I still don't need to replace my driveway or septic line.
Everything seems to be germinating in slow motion. I've already planned out the next tray to germinate. Actually, I do two at a time and just rotate them in and out every 12 hours. But it appears that the plants benefit from being under the lights even after they have sprouted. I hope I can wait until I have substantial leaves on the trays I'm doing now because they are the heart of the garden, peppers and tomatoes. Ihave some zuchs and cucumbers that avoided my faux pas with the earlier germination trays when I fried most of my original seedling by leaving their trays in the sun for three hours with the tops on. Had a gentle rain last night, two days ahead of the weather-guessers estimate, so I won't need to water today.
It never occurred to me to use the top of the refrigerator! The cat used to like it up there when it could get up that high in his younger years. A great idea for us to try next season. In the sunny south we are already out in the field and greenhouse with most plants. temps in the high 80s today.
my first post to this group. I am really glad I found you!
And to think.....some folks think we gardeners are a bunch of boring old farts!
This part of the thread is only marginally OT for the group, I feel. What the b******s do, directly affects our food, both that we grow and buy.
Hey now, nothing like a good frothing up to get the juices flowing first thing in the morning. Gonna go hurt sumpthin' now... those little weeds and grasses in the new plot are gonna get it!
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