mamster

It's a total hole-in-the-wall. I'm not even sure what the name of the place is; my best guess is "Frites: Belgian Fries." The guy behind the counter said the owner used to live in Europe and missed Belgian frites when he came back to the US. We spoke a bit about potato varieties. They tried Yukon Golds, he said, thinking they would be like the Dutch-invented bintje variety used in Belgium, but the color and texture were wrong. They ended up using russets. I'm wondering whether actual bintjes are grown locally and whether they would be enough like the potatoes grown in Europe. (The guy at B. Frites uses them, so I'm optimistic.) I may talk to the potato wizards at Alden Farm and see if they can help. As you can tell, while I liked these fries and they were very close to a real pommes frites experience, the potato is not exactly what I envision as frites heaven. I wanted the roasted red pepper chipotle sauce, but they were out. I got barbecue instead. They have ketchup, a couple of flavored ketchups, mayo, flavored mayo, and others I'm forgetting.

This sale was a while ago, so it's probably not $20 today. I think it was probably $10 off. You can get a much cheaper waffle iron that that--our previous one made two waffles at a time and was bought at Target for $7, but it sucked.

LEdlund, I looked at our waffle maker, which is cheap and has a plastic exterior, but it doesn't seem to have room for anything to drip in between the metal plates and the plastic. It's the Toastmaster Family Waffle Baker and we got it on sale at the Bon for $20. Its biggest flaw is that it does an imperfect job of browning the corners of waffles. Cook's Illustrated tested waffle irons for the April issue. Their recommendations were the Villaware Uno Classic Waffler ($90) and the Black and Decker Grill and Waffle Baker ($57). I'm sure they're great, but that seems like a lot to spend on a waffle iron, and I like waffles.

I mentioned the Cook's recipe in my column -- I tried it and didn't like it nearly as much as the recipe I gave, although it's easier.

I wonder if that's the first link ever from eGullet to SGD. Back when I worked in a yeast lab I used to use that site every single day. stovetop, if you're asking what we mean by the Gosselin/Reinhart method, basically you quickly mix a dough with cold water and instant yeast and stick it in the fridge overnight, then bake it in the morning. There's no room-temperature rise and no kneading. It's weird that it works so well.

That would be great, chromedome--thanks!

Damn, I knew someone was going to bring up the Gosselin direct-method baguette, and you're right, it's wonderful. So maybe I'll try steering my dogma back to what Fat Guy said and say that making a good loaf takes time. Of course, as soon as I say that, SethG is going to come up with a great bread made in 90 minutes. I was the one saying that ciabatta and other breads made with commercial yeast preferments can be absolutely fantastic, but that, personally, if I think of the best breads I've ever had, most were wild yeast breads. It's not a far-and-away difference, though, by any means, and when you need ciabatta, only ciabatta will do. Same goes for banh mi. -Pigdog

Johnnycake batter is made with johnnycake meal, which is coarse ground white flint cornmeal. They're very thin and crisp and (in my experience) very difficult to make well. John Thorne has a piece about them in Serious Pig, and there are good illustrations of johnnycake making in Artisan Baking Across America. Susan, if you have any johnnycake tips, I'd love to hear them.

Imagine waking up and being offered homemade waffles, light and crispy, with butter and syrup. See? You will want waffles. . . Waffles. * * * * Be sure to check The Daily Gullet home page daily for new articles (most every weekday), hot topics, site announcements, and more.

Okay, I got the Polder, and I like it. It's nice and loud and feels solidly built. I will wear it round my neck like a talisman all my days or until someone markets a really good timer.

Yes, I was talking about lean breads. Seth, I was the one defending commercial yeast against Fat Guy's cruel and unwarranted attack. But I still think we're getting hung up on the word "sourdough." I mean, pain poilane is sourdough. It's not very sour, and they sell a squillion loaves a day in Europe. No, it doesn't outsell baguettes any more than Grand Central outsells Wonder Bread in Seattle, but I'm not convinced that Europeans fear sourdough.

When most professional bakers use the term "sourdough," they mean a wild-yeast starter or bread made from such a starter--not just one made in San Francisco or one with a pronounced acetic acid taste. Bourdain's friend was maintaining (okay, forcing Tony to maintain) a sourdough starter. Sure, you can seed a starter with yeast from a variety of natural sources (flour, grapes, other grains, and so on), but we're still talking about a couple dozen species of unicellular fungi and their bacterial pals. There is, as you would expect, much debate over just how much local variation there is in these populations, but there is definitely some, and that's responsible for some of the difference in taste between sourdough breads made in different places. The basic point here is that there are three ways to make bread: straight dough with commercial yeast, sourdough, or commercial yeast with preferment (or a combination of the latter two). Two of those methods can produce great bread, one of them can't, and most bread nuts would agree that the world's best breads are sourdoughs--meaning wild yeast breads. Incidentally, my favorite style of beer (lambic) is also a wild yeast product. I love those little guys. Yeast cells, not Belgians.

Is bread in Vietnam really that good? I've never been there, but I guess I had the idea that it would be mostly light and fluffy banh mi, which is perfect for sandwiches but not the sort of loaf you want to tuck into with a little butter. That's what the bread in Laos was like, but I realize Vietnam could have a much more diverse bread scene.

FWED, I've wondered about the Magic Mill, and also about this very expensive mixer made by Bosch, which seems specially geared toward making bread. I've been using an old KA K45, and I know it's going to explode one of these days. The Bosch is also available in an in-counter model. Now that would be cool. Until it broke.

Oh, that was just too easy.

I think FG is right, sort of, and for an extended and loving explanation of why wild yeast makes better bread, read The Bread Builders by Daniel Wing and Alan Scott. That said, there is a lot of excellent product made with commercial yeast or mixed-method, and not all of it is made with efficiency or the bottom line in mind. The best bakery in Seattle is Grand Central; I guess it's our equivalent to Acme or Tom Cat, in that it turns out a lot of bread and manages to keep quality high. Last year I toured their factory with head baker Robert Holland and we walked through how their various loaves are made. Some of the loaves are made with 100% wild yeast, some with 100% Red Star active dry yeast, and some with a mixture of the two. An aside: you could tell Robert was a pro because he could not stop himself from fondling every rising loaf we came across. When we got to the sourdough starter, which is fed several times a day and lives in a big plastic trashcan, he dipped his finger in and licked it clean, and encouraged me to do the same. It was quite delicious. There is nothing stopping GC from using levain in all of their loaves. But their biggest seller is the Como loaf, which is basically an Italian-style loaf made with a large percentage of preferment (biga) and no levain. At the other end of the spectrum, they make a sour white (not that sour, really) with nothing but levain. Both loaves are excellent, but I like the Como better. I'd argue that the more important difference than sourdough vs commercial yeast is bread made with preferment vs bread made without. Among other advantages, preferment gives time for flour-dwelling bacteria to get in on the action, like in a sourdough loaf. Down in Portland, Ken's Artisan (the bakery Jim Dixon profiled in his Beard-nominated piece) makes three breads that I buy whenever I'm in Portland: the levain-based Country Blonde (white) and Country Brown (pain de campagne, which I'd put up against Poilane any day), and also a baguette, which I believe he bakes twice daily. The baguette was the first of Ken's breads I tried, and I could tell right away how serious he was based on that. It's good bread. (It's a baguette a l'ancienne style, not Wonder Bread, obviously.) So I won't hesitate, Monsier le Gros, to stand with you and say that most bread out there is crap, but I'm not convinced that sourdough/commercial yeast is the key distinction, except in that only serious bakers are going to bother with sourdough at all.

Wow, here's the exact timer that I just broke, only with four timers instead of two: http://www.technika.com/Sper/s810015.htm If I don't absolutely love the Polder, I'm returning it and getting one of these. And here are some examples of the big analog controller timers I was talking about: http://www.technika.com/navpage/timecontrls.htm

I thought about looking into lab timers, too, but in labs where I've worked, we've had mostly the VWR-branded timers which sometimes had more features than a typical kitchen timer but broke just as often, and I don't like those rubbery chiclet buttons that don't have a satisfying click when pressed. In fact, I'd wager if you go into a typical lab, you'll find a drawer full of timers and no one will be sure which ones work and which ones don't. One day a coworker of mine opened a drawer and found some really cool timers--they were mechical analog timers, maybe 9" square. Huge, loud, unpredictable bastards. Another type of kitchen timer on the market that seems relatively new is digital timers with a windup mechanism--you turn a collar to set the time, but it's digital. This seems like a potentially clever idea, but the ones I've seen are extremely feature-poor in every other respect.

So what are the menus next week?

Have we ever had a thread on timers before? Ours just died, and while I already chose a replacement, I figured a thread was in order anyway. Our recently deceased timer was the West Bend Clock/Double Timer, which was the Cook's Illustrated editor's choice last time they reviewed timers, which was 1996. It was a pretty good timer--big digits, loud beeps. The only problem with it was the weak magnet, so I removed it and super-glued on a big magnet from the hardware store. This made the beep sound kind of funny (must have been tugging on the speaker) but at least it didn't fall off the fridge anymore. R.I.P., West Bend Clock/Double Timer. I would have bought another of the same, but (a) they don't seem to sell that model anymore, and (b) I wasn't in the mood to break out the superglue. So I poked around a bit and found the the current hip timer these days seems to be this one: Polder Electronic Clock/Stopwatch/Timer It come with a cord to wear it around your neck, and Amazon reviews allege that the beep is loud and the magnet clings to the fridge like a monkey. Also, it has a numeric keypad to enter the time (like on a microwave) rather than hour, minute, and second buttons. The only downside is that it only has one timer. I was stupidly trying to decide whether this was a deal-breaker, and then realized that if I like the timer, I can just get another one. Duh. It also costs less than the West Bend did. I couldn't find the Polder locally, so I ordered it from Amazon. Reactions forthcoming when it arrives. In the meantime, what's your kitchen timer? Digital or windup? Love it or hate it?

I'm pretty sure Bob's Red Mill has semolina in a bag. Whole Foods carries most of the BRM line, so I'd give them a try, or PCC.

Don't worry, pim. First of all, I can pretty much write "hello," "goodbye," "how old are you?" "where is your house?" and the names of a bunch of different foods. And my email client won't accept the Thai alphabet anyway. Frankly, I'm amazed it worked here.

I'm glad those characters came through, pim (see, the class paid off), and thanks for the point about premade sauce.

I might be able to help out here a little. Let's see if eGullet can reproduce Thai characters... The yellow soybean paste is เฅ้าเจี้ยว (dtow jiaw, both falling tone). Actually there's light (yellow) and dark (brownish), but the yellow is more common and used in ราดหน้า (raad naa, also both falling tone). I'm not sure what Thompson means by rinsing the soybean paste. In Bangkok I've seen bean paste used sometimes and not other times. It's not an essential part of the recipe; the only essentials are stock and cornstarch. That said, I like the bean paste. Oh, and people in central Thailand tend to say "R" as "L", which is why you sometimes see "laad naa" and something "raad naa" (or any number of other romanizations). It's spelled with the Thai letter "R" (ร), but language change marches on.

The importation of Italian mortadella is a relatively new thing--there was a to-do about it when they started importing it maybe five years ago. Although my food-related memories go dim before that, so it's possible it was just in exile for a time. trillium and tsquare, last time I bought pancetta at Salumi, a few months ago, they had two different kinds to choose from, one with the cinnamon cure (I'm pretty sure it was cinnamon when I got it, though they may vary it) and one more traditional which was better. Although even the cinnamony one was far from bad. My only complaint about Salumi's pancetta is that it comes with a pretty hefty rind on it, which I usually trim off.