Bread Baking and Salt

I have been baking bread for years now, at least several loaves every other weekend. I’m to the point I don’t look at a recipe anymore it’s simply memorized.

Last week I baked two loaves and as always have to try a piece of warm from the oven bread! Something wasn’t right about the taste, it kind of tasted like it was just flour and water baked. A very flat taste.

Hmmm what went wrong???

I do stage all the ingredients on the kitchen counter-top first, then measure and add to the mix. Then I remembered,,,, I forgot the salt! The recipe calls for one teaspoon of salt per loaf and this little bit of salt makes an unbelievable difference in the taste of bread.

I baked two more loaves yesterday making sure I had the salt added and sure enough the taste was back to normal!

Moral of the story:

Always have the recipe in front of you as this could have been disastrous if I were canning 70 quarts of meat and left an ingredient out that was key to flavor.

Solar Panels Arrived

The solar panels arrived yesterday 9-30-13 by UPS, 10 days after ordering. The boxes were beat up and looked like I’d have some broken glass inside but they were fine. Panel size: 40.8 x 20.7 x 1.38, Weight: 16.3 lbs. each. First impression is these are a good quality panel and well worth the price of $149.00 each, delivered free.

The protective cardboard shipping sheet that was on top of the glass.

An edge view of the cardboard shows it is ½ inch thick honeycomb structure.

Here’s what the cells look like. They are actually black but the flash of the camera makes them show up blue.

The rear side of the panels.

Panel Label.

Panel connection box and pig tails. Users have no access to the panels connection box just the pig tail connector.

I wanted to test the voltage of the panels because if they were bad I could send them back right away. So I leaned them against the windshield to get some sun on them. Don’t make fun of my paint job, typical of GM. A new paint job will happen after the panels are installed. My must do list is getting too large and just trying to keep up is wearing me out!

The open circuit voltage spec’s are 22.0 volts.

My reading was 20.6 volts however it was a hazy sky and the panels were not angle optimized towards the sun. I have no doubt they will perform to their specifications.

I had to order the mating “MC4” power cable connectors from Amazon ($24.00).

Now I need to figure out how to mount the panels to the roof…

More to come!