Category: Fighting Dharma


  • Yeast for a Panasonic machine Low salt I had tried, with the machine I had before the Panasonic SD-YD250 bread machine (acquired in 2016), to use less salt than the recipe says. For a reduction of salt by 50%, I followed the rule of thumb of reducing salt and yeast equally by weight. For low…

  • I bought a Panasonic SD-YD250 bread machine in 2016. After some setbacks, I put it aside. I came back to it and spent time troubleshooting the main problem: the right amount of yeast for bread in this machine. Reviews at Everyday Sandwich and Make Bread at Home describe and illustrate this machine.  Like other Panasonic…

  • Bread Machines

    Introduction Purpose Bread machines came on the market about 1986, and became popular outside Japan by the late 1990s.  My first bread machine was a Black & Decker B1561. I replaced it with a Panasonic  SD-YD250 in 2016, and a Zojirushi Virtuoso (the 2016 model, the BB-PAC20) in 2020 [Updated]. A bread machine is a…

  • Nutrition Labels

    Labels Sodium The idea of a low sodium diet is to consume less sodium. Context In the view of corporate executives in the capitalist economy, product labels are part of the narrative of a product – it is space paid for by the manufacturer .  Industry likes to control the narrative.  Miller Lite, in commercials “tastes…

  • Flour Flour, whether refined and milled fine or coarse, is the ground product of grains. It contains plant proteins and starch. Starch is the carbohydrate in bread, and the ingredient thing that makes it food. Starch consisted of complex molecules of glucose and more complex sugars. The molecules react when exposed to water. Starch begins…

  • Dry Yeast

    Introduction In 1999, Beth Hensperger, in her Bread Bible said that the yeast on the market for the home baker included cakes of fresh yeast and a few types of dry yeasts: The use of fresh yeast (yeast cakes or compressed yeast) in home baking was rare by 1999 – recipes or formulas that mention…

  • Dietary and culinary theories abounded – and still persist, that salt is adds flavour and should be used in cooking nutritious and tasty food. Salt has been added to food as necessary preservative e.g. ham, sausage, olives, cheese, soy and other sauces. It has become a normal practice to put some salt into any dish,…

  • Salt

    Open-ended This post is dated 2018. It has been written to be updated. Salt Salt Salt (sodium chloride) is a chemical agent used to cook or process food. Saltiness is regarded as one of 5 main tastes. (Scientists have not, as of 2018, identified a distinctive taste receptor for salt.)  Sodium is an essential nutrient,…

  • Almost all my rides in 2017 were on my Trek FX 4, in Victoria, logged with a Cateye device. I logged 1,802.4 Km. I have several rides with Mike who had moved to Victoria. I had one ride in Portage la Prairie Manitoba on a trip east in September. I went to the Island festival…

  • My rides in 2016 were on my Trek FX, logged with the Cateye computer. I set the road bike aside for some maintenance. My logged distance, all rides, was 1,355.1 Km. I took a weekend trips by car to Duncan for the Island festival in July, and to Salmon Arm for the roots and blues…