Recipe: German Küchle

One of the traditional baked goods in the Southern part of Germany: so-called Kuechle.

Recipe:
500 g wheat flour, 50 g sugar, 60 g butter, 2 eggs, 220-250 mL milk, small quantity of salt, yeast.

Prepare a yeast dough, knead it thoroughly, let it rise, knead again, and finally form small round pieces, about 15 pieces. Let rise again for 15 minutes.

For baking, heat oil (better: clarified butter) to 175-185 degrees C (ideally, use a thermometer). Then, with fingers covered with some oil or butter, pull the kuechle into shape and bake floating on the oil, turn around once the color of the 1st side is right, bake the 2nd side, then take out and put on some kitchen paper to soak-off the residual oil. Cover with some powdered sugar. Eat fresh, or freeze.

HP 8659B Spectrum Analyzer: mostly, the known issues

Mostly, the well-known issues for this 8569B: a bad fan, a bad 5.2 V supply capacitor (see the 5.2 V rail ripple below!), some issues with the display adjustment, and a bad control assembly with contact broken off. The control assembly, interestingly enough, somebody else had fixed some part of it before, from the handwriting, an American.
Still some minor issues with the Z axis control (brightness control), but this will be fixed soon, and then the analyzer will be thoroughly tested and will find good use again.

Harvest Highlights 2018: Two-continent gardening

Believe me, it is a challenge to have two gardens, one in Germany (allotment 44), one in Japan (behind the house), but after all, some good harvest results this year.

A good year for peaches in Ludwigshafen, Germany!

Many jars of jam of German blackberries, and other kinds of berries…

Japanese experiments – starting with radish, tomato, cabbage, beans, and EDAMAME (soy beans that are harvested green).

Edamame harvest… great with some beer!

Boil for 5 minutes in salt water, then cool down quickly with cold water and eat slightly cooled (don’t eat the shells!).

Pizza and Baguette Oven: From China, to Japan

One project for my new Japanese residence – a deck oven, to prepare pizza, baguette, and other baked goods, not only for myself, but also for friends, colleagues, etc.

Surprisingly, ovens, even regular household ovens, are virtually unknown in Japan. All is centered around microwaves and rice cookers, or fish grills, but nobody seems to need anything more than a small toaster oven. Well, for me, a well-working oven is absolutely essential for survival, to bake bread, pizza, and lasagne.

A deck oven, in contrast to a convection oven, transfers heat by contact and radiation more then by moving hot air around. There is a lot of science behind this, but we can leave the detail explanation to baking experts, anyway, if you want to bake a good baguette, bread, or pizza, you need a deck oven (which can have metal or stone floor – this one has metal, which is quite good for fast heat up and easy cleaning).

How to get a deck oven in Japan – it’s not easy, unless you want to pay thousands of dollars for a top brand professional imported German deck oven, or some high end Japanese equipment. Fortunately, China is close-by, and after some weeks of waiting, customs formality (You really want to import food processing equipment for use in Japan??? How come???), the big box arrived, about 100 kgs of metal and insulation. It is well build, some small shipment damage, but nothing that can’t be fixed, and it is recommended to inspect such equipment anyway, before you use it. It is from the Honglian company. YXY-10 gas deck oven, which can fit one large tray 50×60 cm easily, or three pizzas.
It has full electronic control of the heaters, digital display, high voltage pulse ignition, separate regulation of bottom and top temperature. All heavy duty. You can use steel or aluminum trays, or bake directly on a pizza mesh on the floor of the oven.

A lot of parts for little money!

Clean out the dirt and residues from manufacturing before using it. Anyway, it is a good idea to run it for a while at high temperature to get rid of all the oils and chemical residues.

Still some more work to do before firing up, electric supply installed (oven designed for 220 Volts – I also want to operate it in Germany later, but Japan has 100 Volts only), but the gas supply system (LPG) still needs some work, stay tuned!

Moving to Japan: Busy times…

Recently, not so much activity in the workshop, for a simple reason – I was moving to Japan. Still keeping the German main workshop, it is only a temporary work assignment, but temporary can mean two or three years in this case. Anyway, Japan is a great place and this move is to the real Japan, Ube, Yamaguchi, not some expat community in a big international city.

With the help for kind colleagues and the big enterprise, all has been set up in the meantime and life is carrying on along the usual path…

The Japanese house, it is of traditional style, which means, it is hot in summer and cold in winter, but at least you get a better connection to nature, and it is a very healthy life to have fresh air and wind moving trough the big open windows rather than to sit in a hermetically close skyscraper.

Not to miss, the Japanese garden!

… Vegetable garden …

The temporary workshop – I can’t go to such far away places without at least a phase noise measurement test set.

My latest acquisition, an electro-mechanical device called “Toyota Aqua”, aka Prius C – very good fuel efficiency, thanks to its hybrid drive train. Sorry, no service manual for this one but it’s great to explore the beauty of Yamaguchi Prefecture.