The epic road trip: moving Barney across the continent

So there are some things that Barney doesn't like:
- Fluctuations in temperature
- Fluctuations in humidity
- Movement

And all these things were going to feature strongly in our road trip... so to prepare for the trip I dried some of Barney out for backup. Then we set off with Barney in his original form, packed into my lunchbox with a couple of cold packs. We took him out every night to rest in the fridge, and then during the day he would stay in the lunchbox. He was unfussed through the whole trip! I fed him a few times, but mostly I just used him to bake like I usually would.

The first oven we came across was at the Swagman’s Rest apartments in Alice. It was a gas oven but hardly heated to a temperature high enough for baking. Shaping into rolls made sense then, and they did cook through though hardly browned after more than an hour in the oven. 

The second oven we baked in was at the Airbnb in Adelaide. This was a pretty standard oven and probably was hot enough. Unfortunately he was over-proofed and these rolls ended up being too crusty and flavour-wise on the too sour side.

Third time lucky, we stayed in an Airbnb just across the road from St Kilda beach. Here we were able to make a real loaf of bread, though he got a bit burnt probably from uneven heating of the top coils. The other loaf came with me to piano quintets, and was baked in the lovely cellist’s kitchen. Her oven was having problems with the temperature control, but she had a real casserole dish, so it worked out really well. What a beautiful thing to eat with quintets!

Baking by eye was also really fun! I usually weigh my ingredients and so don't pay too much attention, but this was a great challenge to see how it would work when just eyeballing it. I found that once the dough was formed / proofed a little bit it felt too dry, but then it was too late to add more water!