dough you know what i mean

I'd normally be putting a film review on the blog today, but the Love Film scheduling means that this weekend I was without a rental (I only get 3 a month - it's a legacy thin from when it was Amazon rental) but also of course I didn't watch any of my bought DVD films because I was so busy watching all the telly recorded.

So instead I thought I'd talk about last night's second attempt at roll making.

It had the same basic outcome as the last time - the dough that came out of the machine was very sticky and I had to add extra flour and knead that in, in order to be able to form it into the roll shapes.

The problem was I don't know if that was because I messed the recipe up again or not, because what I tried to do was tweak the recipe. The last lot of roles was too much - I mentioned they used a lot of flour and that resulted in really big rolls that were too much to really eat in a sensible fashion.

So what I tried to do was halve the recipe, only the measure are such that that isn't easy to do. I mean, what's half of 3 & 1/4 cups? 1.5 cups and 1/8th of a cup is the answer, but that's not easy to measure. That means I could easily have botched the recipe again.

The other problem was that my timing wasn't great - last night I had quite a complicated dinner to cook as well. If I'd really been thinking I'd have just done a normal loaf, but I wasn't and so ended up adding more effort into an already hectic schedule.

So, for example, if I'd really been thinking about it I'd have actually only made the dough into four reasonably sized rolls, rather than the 6 half sized ones I did. But with me dashing about I didn't think, so I made that error.

However, I'm actually fairly convinced I got the recipe about right, but still it gave me the really sticky dough. I mean, the end result was okay, but the super-sticky dough makes it quite a complicated process. I'm therefore coming around to the idea of maybe not doing rolls as frequently as envisaged, owing to how messy the kneading is. I could maybe do them just for the weekend or something.

I've been continuing to watch Saki and it's Mah-jong related antics. I've still got the very strong feeling that if I properly understood Mah-jong then I'd enjoy it a little more, but I can still get the general jist as it's quite well done.

One of the interesting aspects of the show is that Yuri (basically lesbianism) seems to abound. Like 75% of all anime, the series is set in high school, and if the series is to be believed, it would seem that if a girl is interested in Mah-jong she's also interested in the contents of her fellow female team-mates knickers.

Not that there's anything wrong with that of course (No, Sir), but it does get a bit silly at times.

The other interesting thing about it is the way they depict the games of Mah-jong. It's done like one of those Beyblade/Pokemon tournament battle anime, with all like special moves. Lightning forks are everywhere and we keep slipping into a kind of virtual representation world where the characters are engaged in physical combat.

But it's for Mah-jong. Which is closer to chess than karate. The clever thing is that it manages to strike a good balance between knowing this approach is silly and also taking it seriously that really works.