 by Angela Petty My gift to the world is bread. It’s not my only gift, and I don’t claim to be a better baker than anyone else. It’s simply a practice I choose, to fold meaning into my life. To eat well, live well, and share. For years I’ve been leaning into the same solid loaf. I’ve anguished over sluggish winter rises (with dinnertime deadlines!), mistakenly over fermented hot dough, and learned to tinker with time, temperature, and ingredients to achieve that toasty crust and soft, chewy interior. I’ve come to trust the process of baking bread. Why bake bread? Baking warms a winter home. Its sensory steps —stretching wet dough between fingers, watching dough rise, breathing in the smell of crystallizing sugars in a hot oven —calm the nervous system. Its few ingredients are affordable, and the home baker can choose quality, locally grown flour. Lastly, humans have been nourished by naturally leavened bread for 5,000 years! Traditionally, fermentation was practiced intuitively. Rather than following a strict structure, the rhythm of the dough was deeply intertwined with the rhythms of the baker, the seasons, the home. This remains true today. Sourdough bakers guide a living process. And the microbes at work are unique to their particular environment (even if your starter originally came from elsewhere), producing a bread that is unique to your home, schedule, and taste. All that said, following a recipe (and taking notes) is essential when first learning the craft of bread. We’ll start with two recipes in one. The basic outline (unbolded) is for a yeast dough. Consider this recipe training wheels for learning to “read” dough. For sourdough, you’ll follow the same process but with added steps (bolded). And, you’ll need a starter culture. To keep a jar of starter fit and happy, you have to regularly discard some and add more flour and water. I take my starter out of fridge hibernation a couple days before I want to bake to discard/“feed” morning and night until it’s nice and bubbly. But wait, did I say discard? Don’t throw away that precious starter or your levain! I “feed” all of my discard into a separate container then fry it up as a pancakes (with a pinch of salt) to eat for breakfast before I mix my dough. You will need a tub or bowl (clear allows you to see rise and bubbles), basket (or bowl), tea towel, wooden spoon, bench scrapper (or knife), plastic spatula, and dutch oven (or baking sheet). After you’ve practiced the basics, read on for a more technical recipe in grams, notes, and variations. Basic No-Knead Yeast Bread and Sourdough Ingredients 3 1/2-4 c flour + more for dusting/shaping + more for sourdough levain 2 t salt 1 1/2 - 1-3/4 c water 1/4 t dry active yeast OR 1/2 of levain mixture Process 0) Overnight levain: Mix 1 T active sourdough starter with 1/2 c water and 3/4 c flour. Let sit overnight or about 12 hours before mixing dough. 1) In a large bowl, mix ingredients with a wooden spoon, then your hand to form a sticky dough. 2) Cover and let dough rise until it has doubled in size (12 + hrs). a) During rise, stretch and fold the dough over itself in bowl 2 times (1-2 hours after mixing and 3-4 hours after first fold). 3) Shape into a round and let rest on a floured surface about an hour. a) Shape again and place the dough upside down in a floured basket (or bowl lined with floured cloth) for a second rise 2-5 hours (or overnight in the fridge) 4) Bake at 450 degrees in a preheated, floured dutch oven (or baking sheet) about 20-30 minutes with the lid on and then 20 minutes with lid off until the crust has browned.  Beyond basics: Sourdough in Grams Ingredients Levain 1 T sourdough starter 100 grams flour 100 grams water Dough 100 g levain 350-390 g water + 25-35 g water 500 g flour 10-14 g salt Process and technique:
Notes
Variations You can use these same recipes to make olive bread, rosemary bread, seedy bread, a porridge bread, and more. Mix add-ons into the dough in the initial stage, or when you add the salt (in sourdough). Consider the hydration of your added ingredient and how that will effect how much water your dough needs. I like to add cooked grains such as oatmeal, quinoa, or rice to make a porridge bread. You can also experiment with replacing part of the flour in your dough with a non-wheat flour such as rye or corn flour. However, you will need to use majority wheat flour as other flours do not contain gluten protein. The no-knead yeast dough can be used as a pizza dough as well (and theoretically the sourdough dough too). I like to keep a tub of yeast dough in my fridge (for up to a week) and take out a small hunk to make a mini pizza or fresh toaster oven roll. Bread is as free and flexible as you make it. You can take a bread project out and about (to perform folds throughout the day), travel with your starter and bread gear, and easily make dough with kids or friends. Share, enjoy, and eat well! Bibliography Forkish, Ken. Flour Water Salt Yeast: The Fundamentals of Artisan Bread and Pizza. New York, Ten Speed Press, 2012. Hamel, PJ. “No-Knead Crusty White Bread.” King Arthur Baking Company, January 1st, 2016, https://www.kingarthurbaking.com/recipes/no-knead-crusty-white-bread-recipe. December 24th, 2024. Robertson, Chad. Tartine Bread. San Francisco, Chronicle Books LLC, 2010.  New Date: Saturday, August 8, 2020, 9:00am – 2:00pm
Cancelled: Saturday, April 11, 2020, 9:00am – 2:00pm Cancelled: Saturday, May 30, 2020, 9:00am – 2:00pm Wayne Morse Dog Park, 595 Crest Drive, Eugene Join the Friends of Wayne Morse Dog Park and help take care of our beloved dog park. Projects include renovating and painting the historic perimeter fence, filling holes around the park, and much more. Please bring a pot-luck dish to celebrate the formation of this new stewardship group. Tools and gloves provided. To RSVP or learn more about the Friends of Wayne Morse Dog Park, contact Steve Piercy, Adoption Group Co-Leader, [email protected]. Plastics collection events have been cancelled until further notice due to the COVID-19/Coronavirus. To receive updates about future events, subscribe to the Friendly Flyer.  Friendly Area Neighbors (FAN) are invited to recycle their qualifying plastics at the next FAN Plastics Collection event. This event is run by volunteers of the FAN Sustainability Team.
Friendly Area Neighborhood Plastics Collection Tuesday, February 25, 2020, 4:00 to 6:00 PM (before FAN Emergency Preparedness Team Skill Building Session) Washington Park Community Center, 2025 Washington Street, Eugene Qualifying plastics
Welcome to the "new normal" for plastics recycling. You are doing something good for our stressed oceans and the environment. Tips to prepare plastics and manage yogurt containers The photo below shows some of our rejects. Note the labels, foil rims, and odd items with no resin code (the number surrounded by three arrows arranged in a triangle). Some single use yogurt containers are oddly shaped, making them hard to clean and dry, especially when the yogurt residue hardens or becomes moldy. Fill them with soapy water and soak to loosen the gunk. Better yet, switch to bulk yogurt and fill a small container with a dollop of yogurt and top with your favorite fruit or granola. Best of all, make your own yogurt and never buy the single use plastics again. It's easy and safe.  
 by Jim Watson
A century ago Eugene's Mercy Hospital was located on College Hill (see blog post "Eugene General/Mercy Hospital"). To connect the closest College Crest trolley stop on Willamette Street to the hospital, stairs were constructed in 1910. Though both the hospital and the trolley disappeared in the mid-1920s, the stairs remain across Willamette Street from Civic Park. The stairs, perhaps the last of their kind, connected to one of Eugene’s trolley routes that was part of a streetcar system that was once described as the greatest for a small city in the United States. The pioneer railway is remembered for having employed Wiley Griffon, Oregon’s first black trolley operator. Gwynne McLaughlin spearheaded a project to paint a mural on the stairs to honor their history while preventing the graffiti that has plagued them. Muralist Ila Rose painted the mural in May of 2019. Questions? Interest in helping keep the mural in good shape? Please contact Jim at [email protected]. Black and White Images Property of Lane County History Museum. Used by Permission. Historical information compliments of Andrew Fisher.  Monday, January 20, 2020, 9:00am – 12:00pm
Westmoreland Park sports fields and in the surrounding Friendly neighborhood Add event to my Calendar Make a lifelong investment in water quality, carbon reduction, and provide shade: plant a tree! This MLK Day on Monday, January 20, 2020, volunteers will improve the environment, community, and economy by planting trees in Westmoreland Park around the sports fields and in the surrounding Friendly neighborhood. This is a family-friendly event. Rain or shine. No experience necessary. All volunteers will be entered to win a limited edition sequoia sweatshirt and other Eugene Outdoors swag. Tools and snacks will be provided. Property owners may request to plant a tree on their property, or in the right-of-way adjacent to their property, through Friends of Trees online. For more information about Friends of Trees, including how to join a tree planting crew to plant trees around Eugene or Springfield, to support the planting crew with hot soup, food, or beverages, or to donate, visit the Friends of Trees website.  The Eugene Carbon Free Challenge is enabling Eugene residents to learn more about their personal carbon footprint and ways to reduce it. Visit the Eugene Carbon Free Challenge (ECFC) website. This is a joint project of 350 Eugene, City of Eugene, and EWEB to help our neighbors begin to reduce our collective carbon emissions now as part of the Eugene Climate Action Plan. The ECFC team is working to reach as many residents, businesses, faith groups, and NGOs as we can from July to December 2019. The Carbon Free Challenge consists of a website where each user has their own personal account. After creating and logging into your account, you take an Energy Profile survey of your current energy consumption. The result of the survey determines your personal carbon footprint in tons of CO2/person/year. Your footprint is shown next to a range of where other countries per person CO2 footprints measure, as well as showing the global goal of reducing all human produced emissions to 2.0 CO2 tons/person/year. After learning what your CO2 footprint looks like, you can move on to choosing "Actions" from over 60 choices—ranging from Easy to Medium to Challenging—in terms of size and cost. Your personal carbon footprint always remains private information to you, but the Actions you complete are rolled up into "Team", "Community Group", and City of Eugene CO2 reduction totals which are viewable on the front page of the site as shown above. The Friendly Area Neighbors (FAN) Board viewed a demo of the ECFC website on Tuesday, September 3, 2019, to help our neighborhood understand more about the goals of this project. Now we need your help to engage more of your neighbors! You can join our community group "Friendly Area Neighbors" from your Dashboard, clicking the link "Join a Community Group", then start typing to find and select "Friendly Area Neighbors" as shown below.  You can also host a House Party to help with ECFC outreach, and the team will be glad to help you present this website to a gathering of your local street neighbors at a House Party you host. If you prefer to do the presentation yourself, that's fine too. They will provide you handouts and training as needed. Send email to [email protected] to get started.
Please join us now in the work to reduce personal carbon emissions in Eugene and make your contribution to solving the climate emergency! All hands on deck!  Update July 18, 2019: Take the survey to provide feedback on the Central Eugene in Motion process. As our greater downtown develops, it is important for Eugene's transportation network to have safe and comfortable connections regardless if travel is by car, on foot, bike, bus, or personal mobility device. The Central Eugene In Motion process will explore planned and potential traffic changes with a focus on three key areas. City staff and the community will work together to identify existing transportation issues, explore ideas, and identify preferred design concepts for projects listed in the 2017 Eugene Transportation System Plan (TSP). Possible changes to streets may include removing on-street parking, adding bike lanes, changing traffic controls, or reducing the number of travel lanes. The three Central Eugene In Motion focus areas are:
The Midtown Willamette Street focus area is bounded by Willamette Street, 18th and 20th Avenues, and Amazon Parkway and High Street, most of which lies within FAN's boundaries. See the map for details.  In this area existing traffic patterns pose significant hazards for all road users. Between 2007-2016, there have been two fatalities and six serious injuries. Drivers colliding with people on foot caused both fatalities. Drivers colliding with people on bike caused four of the serious injuries, and two were from drivers colliding with one another. See the map for red and orange markers, some of which are stacked on top of each other. For an interactive map, visit bit.ly/fancrash.  With the expected increase in trips to the new Civic Park upon its completion, now is the time to start planning to make significant safety improvements. The City of Eugene will hold an event to launch the Central Eugene in Motion process.
Central Eugene in Motion Open House Kickoff Wednesday, July 10, 6:00 – 8:00pm UO Baker Center 975 High Street, Eugene If you are unable to attend this event in person, you can join the online open house at bit.ly/eugmotion. You may also contact Reed Dunbar, Project Manager, at [email protected] or 541-682-5727. The FAN Transportation Team will be actively involved with the process. The public is welcome to participate in our monthly meetings and in our online discussion group. FAN Transportation Team Meeting First Monday of the month, except January and September. Monday, July 1, 7:00 - 9:00 PM Billy Mac's Bar & Grill 605 W 19th Ave Eugene, OR 97402 friendlyareaneighbors.org/transportation-team The Eugene Drive-In had two different locations during its 40 seasons in Eugene. It opened at 2860 South Willamette Street on July 29, 1948. During the 1960's, while operated by Moyer Theatres of Portland, they began to feature first-run movies. In July and August of 1962, it presented a six-week run of "The Music Man". The theater closed, apparently for good, on September 11, 1962, when its listing dropped out of the Eugene Register-Guard. It had a replacement, though, because the New Eugene Drive-In had opened the previous July 22 at 1450 Henderson Avenue (in Glenwood). Beginning in the 1963 season, the New Eugene Drive-In, also operated by Moyer, reverted to the name the Eugene Drive-In. According to newspaper ads, while under the Moyer Theatres banner, it closed after 1987. Greg Giesy, long-time FAN resident, stated, "The drive-in theater took up most of what is Woodfield Station today. The screen faced into the hillside, and home owners above could pay the drive-in a monthly fee to have a speaker (that you normally hooked to your car window) wired in their living rooms so they could watch the movies with sound out their picture window." The demolition date of the theater is unknown. Its location, superimposed on a recent aerial view of Eugene, is shown below. There is still plenty of parking, and still plenty of cars, but the movies aren't as good.  Read more information about other historic and current movie theaters in Eugene.
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