Books Having a hard time getting back into War and Peace. Haven't gotten reinvested in the lives of characters, which is a problem since that's the crux of the book. Instead I've started into Marcus Aurelius' Meditations. I tried reading it ages ago, but couldn't get into it. This (Penguin Classics) translation is much better. Bread So. If I process in 2oz increments our miniblender can turn wheat berries into a rough approximation of flour. I did a 24 hour fridge ferment at 100% hydration (8oz 'flour', 8oz water, 0.15oz yeast, 0.15oz salt) and hot damn if I didn't get a loaf. Not a lofty loaf, to be sure, but still: a loaf. Not bad since I decided to try using soft wheat berries, which have less gluten than hard. It made me realize I've never tasted fresh whole wheat flour before. The next step is, I think, to try soaking the wheat before I blend it. It should result in more flavor (as the seed starts to wake up), and should make things easier on the blender as the bran softens. World Building I've officially given up on my playgroup ever getting back together in meatspace. If we do play, it'll have to be play by forum, as every day of the week sees someone working. So, I'm taking some of the world building I had done for the microlite campaign I had started to run before things fell apart, and I'm taking the opportunity to rework it to (hopefully) be more hard/low fantasy. I want to keep the races close to what they were, but I'll probably toss out everything else. I'm kinda interested right now in recasting the world and magic system as pantheistic. The plan is to release it as a CC0 setting on github.
The best I can come up with to describe it is: it's bitter in the way that toast is bitter, kinda earthy, but bitter not in an overpowering way. It was a moment of "Oh, so that's why people were willing to eat bread before the advent of white flours."