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Leaders are Bakers! It’s All About the Yeast.

Leaders are Bakers! It’s All About the Yeast.

My baking skills are marginal at best. I can follow a recipe to bake a loaf of bread, but if it doesn’t rise properly, I likely won’t understand why. Skilled bakers on the other hand know the secret to preparing a fully risen and delicious loaf of bread. They recognize the importance of a small but powerful ingredient…yeast. And they can perform consistently by making loaves that look and taste identical, time after time.

As a leavening agent, yeast makes bread rise and adds taste and color. It is simply a fungus that loves eating sugar. (Don’t we all?) The yeast mellows and conditions the gluten in the dough so that it will evenly absorb the increasing gases and hold them in the mixture as it’s kneaded. This expands the volume of the bread, making it rise; and improves the flavor, texture, grain, color and eating quality. But for maximum effectiveness, it needs to be stored at the proper temperature and humidity. And when making the bread, the water must be warm when yeast is dissolved, and the other ingredients cannot be too cold. (more…)

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How To Survive a Lion Attack…at Work

How to Survive a Lion Attack….at Work

Hopefully we all know never to get in a cage with a lion, or to stroll through an African safari in a lion’s territory. But what happens when a lion finds us and sees us as prey?

While researching some information recently, I came across a video on how to survive an attack by a lion. Curious, I stopped to view it and was struck by the advice that the normal reactionary “fight or flight” response was useless. A human is nowhere near strong enough to fight a lion, nor able to outrun one. Lions can climb trees faster than us, and literally smell our fear.

The advice instead centered on new ways of looking at the problem. In short, knowing how to read the lion’s behavior to determine its intent, using your body language to minimize being considered a threat, how to intimidate the lion and protect yourself. These are the best possible alternatives for people who find themselves in the crosshairs of a wild and powerful animal. (more…)

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