And bread

I finished off batch No.762 for breakfast on Monday. Made on 7th November and this loaf, having been through the freezer, was dry but entirely eatable, with home-made standing much better than most bought as far as that goes, with factory white going stale very quickly.

Making just one loaf at a time would avoid the freezer, but a batch every week (or more) would soak up too much time, so two it is.

The stump above, maybe five inches wide by two and a half high, was what I started breakfast with. Interesting distribution of bubble size in the first snap, with the usual layer of smaller bubbles at the bottom. The pale contact surface with the buttered and floured tin can be seen in the second snap - sloping down to the right for some reason and with the butter coming through quite strongly in the fresh product. The upper crust tends to lift away from the side crust but this is not very visible.

Very visible in the split tin white loaves of old from a baker, sometimes to the point of a mushroom effect. Maybe the split, by opening the loaf up, makes for more rising in the oven?

Batch No.763, which weighed in for the first rise at 5lbs 14oz, turned out very well indeed. It did very well on its first evening out and is still doing pretty well 36 hours later. To the point of taking two slices for breakfast, instead of my usual one.

Turning to the matter of trolleys, after reaching No.1000 in September, activity has diminished, changed but not ceased altogether, and I can now record making 100 further sightings in the following couple of months, of which about half resulted in capture and return. 

Not comparable with previous sightings as the rules are now slightly different. So, for example, Dar Al Zaad, a grocer in Old Malden (aka Worcester Park) scored three on account of the new-to-me trolleys outside the shop - which would not have scored in the olden days.

By number of sightings, rather than by number of trolleys. Pivot table will do both together, but the result needs tarting up for presentation, which I did not bother with this morning.

By age of trolley; work in progress. Most trolleys from Wanzl, the vast majority, have a little plate screwed to the side of the frame telling you all about it, including what I take to be data of manufacture. 

With M&S Epsom looking to have taken a good size batch of new trolleys in March of this year. Sainsbury's trolleys are usually rather older. Lots of possibilities for still further tables. The pivot table feature is easy enough to use and apt to encourage quantity rather than quality.

Some of the older plates are more or less illegible. 

Some trolleys have passed through the hands of refurbishers who put their own plate on and some are maintained by Wanzl themselves, most of which last carry an additional sticker(s) on the other side of the frame.

A bit more design work needed on the worksheet concerned, after which there will be a bit of tedious retro-fitting. A reminder that one should always pilot serious surveys!

PS 1: after a mild enough night, snowing gently outside as I type this.

PS 2 for accountants: I have just read at reference 1 that they knew about accounting years in what is now Iraq maybe 5,000 years ago. A trade with a long if not illustrious history.

References

Reference 1: Archaic bookkeeping: Early Writing and Techniques of Economic Administration in the Ancient Near East - Hans J. Nissen, Peter Damerow, Robert K. Englund, Paul Larsen (translator) – 1993.

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