chromedome

My late wife was a supertaster, exceptionally sensitive to bitter and tart flavors. Those are some of my favorite ingredients, so it was something of an adjustment.

I'd trip over that more often than the three inquisitive kitties and my 100-lb canine shadow.

Nice. My hometown of Halifax is rich in Lebanese food, thanks to the 70s diaspora, and I always try to grab some when I'm there.

We have that too, and a folding step stool, but the slide-out platform seems neater and more convenient. It might never happen, but it's something to dream about.

Yeah. I'm 5' 7" myself, and on tiptoe can get anything that's not at the very back of the very top shelf, but she only comes up to my shoulder. For her it would be a game-changer.

If you want to play seriously with alternative flours, it's best to have a small bag of gluten flour on hand as well (you may find it sold as "vital wheat gluten"). A spoonful or two of that will make up for any deficiencies in the structure and crumb of your bread.

Host's note: this topic was split from A Small NYC Kitchen Reno 2017. That's useful. I don't know what you'll be storing in yours, but I can assure you that mason jars and cans add up the pounds faster than you'd think. My diminutive GF was very excited the other day to see a photo of kitchen cabinetry with a slide-out shelf at about knee height, purpose-built to stand on when reaching things down out of the higher cupboards. That's now number one with a bullet on the list for the kitchen in our putative future dream home.

Got my first-ever batch of sauerkraut fermenting in the basement. A 2 kg batch, which seems pretty adequate for a first attempt. No pic, because...well...sauerkraut.

That'd be a pretty spectacular formatting error.

One of my pet peeves is when those "3-ingredient" or "4-ingredient" recipes include something like "2 envelopes of instant onion soup," or "1 box spice cake mix." That's not one ingredient, people. It's anywhere from 6 to 20.

You misunderstood me, I'm afraid. I was agreeing with you that if you're doing it right, the pleasure of being "surprised by new revelations" won't stop any time soon. In my case, the big epiphany came when I moved to Vancouver after growing up in rural Nova Scotia and Newfoundland. Vancouver's a fine food city, and I was overwhelmed by all the new flavors. That's what led to me going to culinary school, some 20 years later.

I totally get this, Scott. I'm a pragmatist, and don't belong fully to either camp. I think all of us who are passionate about food and drink have one particular hill we're prepared to die on, and Neapolitan pizza is yours (or one of yours, anyway...I don't know you, and you may have several more that haven't come up in conversations I follow). FWIW, I think that Neapolitan pizza now exists as its own clearly defined "thing," and that to my mind the various tweaks and riffs are "Neapolitan-style," or "Neapolitan-influenced," or what have you, as opposed to "Neapolitan pizza" per se. And speaking as a guy with 20+ Linux distros sitting on thumb drives and optical discs on his desk, open-source software is an excellent analogy.

Not if you're doing it right...

Why, the usual confrontation of tradition vs. innovation, of course. What else? To put it another way, we had equally passionate, thoughtful and intelligent people debating sharply divergent opinions, with some asperity - we've all had this debate before - but without unnecessary rancor or ad hominem attacks. Also, with an audience open to hearing and evaluating new arguments, should any be discovered. I'm always good with that. Of course, it's worth bearing in mind that today's tradition was yesterday's innovation. Tomatoes themselves are a relatively recent addition to the Mediterranean canon, and it's not hard to imagine a few-centuries-ago Neapolitan pizzaiola sneering at a red-topped flatbread and declaring "Call that thing whatever you want, but it's NOT pizza!"

I saw one of those in Value Village once and was sorely tempted, but they were pretty corroded and ultimately that decided me.

Well, you know...food, electricity...

LOL It's more than I've ever paid for one, but I drive disposables by choice. Also I'm a cheapskate.

Depends how well he wields that axe, I suppose.

In the cooking classes I hold regularly at a local supermarket, they've heard me say "in a very...LARGE...bowl..." so often that it's become a catchphrase.

Yeah, I should have been clear that I was facing a time constraint that day. As Andie says, you can recover from a surprising number and variety of errors if you have the time.

It was a farmer with six fingers...

FWIW, your "dark but not burnt" is my "exactly right" for this kind of bread.

Just FYI, one of the first batches I made in my Zo came out exactly like your ill-fated first loaf. It was, indeed, because one of the paddles wasn't seated properly. In my case, because I was using the dough cycle, I was able to salvage the properly-mixed portion of the dough. RE your soaker, my Zo beeps several minutes into the kneading cycle to let me know when it's time to drop add-ins into the dough. I'm guessing that would work, if yours has the similar feature.

I have two tucked away in storage, awaiting a) my next move, into a place with a kitchen that could accommodate one reasonably, and b) the absence of too-smart toddlers who are sneaky with chairs and step-stools, and have an insatiable curiosity about Papa's sharp and shiny kitchen things.

Yeah, it's great for distracting a toddler long enough to eat your own (uncontaminated) eggs in peace.