# jmillar

cfd etc.

## Pizza dough

500g strong bread flour 1tsp yeast (~1%) 350g water (70%) 4g salt (~1%)

Here's a pizza dough recipe which makes a Neapolitan-style pizza dough which I did Friday-Sunday. It takes a while but is quite tasty. It's a mashup of some chefs I had been watching, like J. Kenji Lopez-Alt and Binging With Babish.

Put the flour and salt into a bowl

Add yeast to warm water and make sure it bubbles. This is to make sure the yeast is alive before you put any more effort in.

Add to the flour and mix until combined.

Then knead on a counter for about 10mins. It's a really wet dough so this is quite difficult, but try not to add too much flour, because the ratio is quite important. It should get a bit easier with time, so stick with it. Then form it into a ball and put into a large bowl coated with olive oil.

Wrap with plastic wrap and leave at room temperature overnight. It should be much bigger and bubbly and smell beer-y.

Separate into four evenly-sized balls and cover again in individual containers (if possible – I only had two glass containers and I'm a bit funny about leaving stuff in plastic for too long). Put in the fridge for at least 12 hrs and up to a few days.

Use your fingers (not a rolling pin) to shape the dough balls into pizza shapes with a bit of flour or semolina on the counter. Put your favorite toppings and bake at the highest temperature your oven goes for about 6minutes.

## Using config files as an interface for non programmers

I sometimes write small utilities for colleagues with limited programming experience. I have come to realise that if the user can't interface in a 'non-programming' way then the code will just not get used. I've looked into tkinter and PyInstaller but there's issues with permissions and significant overhead for what is generally a relatively small bit of code.

Config files using yaml and the corresponding python library provides a way of providing easy interfacing. I used this on a recent project which plotted data on top of engineering drawings. The user can export the drawings using the CAD software's print dialog and then copy those settings into a config file:

imgcfg:
widthpix: 3000.0 #pixels
heightpix: 2000.0 #pixels
resolution: 300 #pixels/in
border: 3 #pixels
scale: 8 #sclaing factor


This is short, human readable and easily editable. Will see if this leads to better engagement.