jedibob5

Man, what a delightful little game. I guess it's not really "little," being a first-party Sony title and all, but it feels like a breath of fresh air compared to just about every other AAA-published title as of late. Cohesive, intuitive, and fun mechanics, whimsical environments with lots to explore, and not a single microtransaction in sight. Well-deserved Game of the Year.

I've been making these sourdough bagels for a couple of years now, and they are just incredible. The sourdough tang plays great with the everything seasoning, and it absolutely blows away anything I've had from a grocery store or deli. This recipe is adapted from a Reddit post by a u/978nobody, but I've made enough changes to it by this point that it's kinda my own thing.

Ingredients:

• 200g active starter
• 750g bread flour
• 360g water
• 15g honey
• 10g salt (go to 15g if not mixing the everything seasoning into the dough)
• Optional: ~2 tbsp everything bagel seasoning, adjust to preference, plus more for topping. Other mixins/toppings can probably be used as desired.
• ~1tbsp baking soda
• Spoonful of malted barley syrup, can also use brown sugar or molasses
• Optional: One beaten egg or egg yolk for brushing

Add starter, water, honey and salt to a large bowl and mix to combine, then add the flour and everything seasoning. Stir with a large wooden spoon until a shaggy ball of dough forms. Cover with a damp towel and let autolyze for 30 minutes, then, to quote the original recipe, "knead like crazy until your arms are tired." I've found it's pretty difficult to get this dough to fully pass the windowpane test, so I just knead until I can stretch it pretty thin.

Once kneaded, cover the bowl with a damp towel again and bulk proof until 1.5x size. I highly recommend setting a bit of dough aside in a small covered jar as an aliquot to track the rise. This usually takes me at least 6-8 hours, which I've read is because adding mix-ins to sourdough makes it take longer to proof, but it's worth the wait. If the weather is cold, I usually put it in the oven with the light turned on to make sure it's in a mildly warm environment.

Once proofed, split the dough into 8 roughly equal pieces, and shape into bagels. Place onto a baking sheet lined with parchment or greased foil, cover the whole thing with a wet towel, and put it in the fridge to cold ferment overnight.

In the morning, preheat your oven to 425 F (220 C), and set a large pot of water on the stove to boil. While it heats, stir the baking soda and malted barley syrup into the water. Once boiling, add the bagels 2-3 at a time depending on the size of your pot, and boil for 1 minute and 30 seconds, flipping them over halfway through. Return the boiled bagels to the baking sheet.

Once boiled, brush the tops with the egg wash and sprinkle with a generous amount of everything seasoning if desired, then bake until golden brown, 20-25 minutes. Let cool for at least 15 minutes if you want to eat some fresh (and who wouldn't?), but otherwise, let cool completely before storing.

Other notes:

• The baking soda/barley syrup solution has a tendency to foam up and boil over if it gets too hot, so make sure not to leave it unattended. The cold bagels tend to keep the temp manageable, but be ready to remove the pot from the heat for a bit if things start to foam up.
• When reheating, they're great toasted, but I've found they are remarkably resistant to browning, so don't expect much color. I can max out my toaster and maybe get a slight tinge of brown.
• They keep pretty well in the fridge if you want them to last longer. I put them in gallon bags with a bit of paper towel to try and absorb excess moisture. If you fridge them, I recommend slicing them in half first, as they can be pretty tough to cut through once they're cold.

Hope yall enjoy the pics! If anyone else decides to make these, be sure to let me know how they turned out!

What do you think they should call their next release?

The DLC may have had a buggy as hell release, but the soundtrack still goes hard AF.

What are some commanders that you would build in a heartbeat if they worked just slightly differently?

I've always lamented that Toshiro Umezawa's ability didn’t also apply to sorceries. Spellslinger isn't really a theme that's associated with mono-B, so Toshiro's effect is rather unique and interesting.

But then you look at Black's selection of instants, and outside of spells that just kill things, the selection is dire. There’s some card draw, a handful of niche/limited reanimator pieces, the odd ritual here and there, and an assortment of other odds and ends. There just isn't enough quality or volume to build a theme around anything other than just killing things.

The only way to incorporate actual wincons that are related to the theme of the deck that I can think of would be grinding everyone down with Blood Artist effects and heavy board control, and if you want to win with Blood Artist, why not just run Aristocrats instead?

If it were instants and sorceries, Toshiro would be able to do a lot more interesting things that otherwise couldn't be easily accomplished in mono-B. Breaking timing restrictions on sorceries might've been kinda problematic back in the original Kamigawa block, but these days there are enough commanders that can do that, to the point where it's probably not that big of a deal.

Any other commanders you wish worked just slightly differently?

I live in a pretty old house in the midwest, built 1929, bought in '21, single-story, ~1300ish sqft, and with a large, spacious basement. Every time summer comes around I've had issues with the basement getting MUCH colder than the rest of the house (like >10 degrees F difference), presumably due to poorly-insulated floors and cold air sinking. The HVAC is still capable of keeping the main floor at the temp set on the thermostat, but the temperature differential indicates it's working quite a bit harder than it really needs to be, and is probably wasting quite a bit of money.

I'm planning on getting an insulation specialist in at some point to go over options for shoring up the insulation, but I'm wondering if there's anything else I could do to recirculate air in the basement through the rest of the house - even with good insulation, I feel like the laws of thermodynamics would still result in a basement at least fairly colder than the rest of the house.

Is there anything I could look into that is reasonably cost-effective for circulating air from the basement to the rest of the house so my HVAC doesn't have to work so hard in the summer? Thanks

Why yes I have been playing a shitload of Pokérogue lately, why do you ask?

Wikipedia lists five composers for this game, so this is composed by one or more of: Koichi Nakamura, Hiroaki Tsuru, Mikiko Ohashi, Kunimi Kawamura, and/or Hitoshi Yamagami