chromedome

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.

I've bought and worn out several of the older 3-pound Black and Decker machines Andie mentioned (the B2300 IIRC) and even more of the smaller version that makes an upright loaf (the B2200). I've also had a couple other brands, all of them from Value Village or other thrift stores. They've all lasted me at least a year (the B2200 B&D machines usually develop a leak around the spindle over time), which was plenty long enough for the minimal $$ I spent. I can't tell you how well they bake, because I never baked in them. My current Zojirushi was a Kijiji find (the Canadian version of eBay Classifieds, and MUCH bigger here than Craigslist). It was well used for the first few years by its previous owners, but then they got interested enough to graduate into handmade, artisanal loaves and the machine gathered dust afterwards. That's how I was able to nab it for under $50. That one I *did* bake in, just to see, and it turned out a perfectly fine loaf of sandwich bread. I still only use it regularly for mixing, though.

LOL "My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father..."

It's one of our staples around here. Baby leaves, mature cooking leaves, or even frozen...I go through a lot of it. Right now I'm gearing up to make a batch of savory custards for my GF, who is Atkins-ing in the hope of dropping a few pounds before Christmas. At least a few will contain spinach.

Well, Nunavut is a whole other story to be sure. I have friends up in Whitehorse, and they pay pretty steep prices for groceries. I'm sure Amazon/Whole Foods will expand over the next few years, at least to the other million-person urban areas (Montreal, Calgary, Edmonton). Won't be a factor for the rest of us anytime soon, though I can't complain...we at least have IKEA as close as Halifax now. (I was trying to come up with something funny using the acronym, to the effect that coverage in Canada was currently A/WFul, but it just didn't seem worth the effort)

No, not a surprise. Though it does leave most of the country well outside any reasonable definition of "local delivery area."

Well...they have a presence in Vancouver and Toronto. That's not entirely the same thing.

HC's taste for scrapple in the morning ("Smells like...victory...") has brought equally enthusiastic supporters and detractors out of the woodwork in the past. I haven't had the pleasure myself, scrapple not being readily available in Atlantic Canada, but I'm partial to fried slices of leftover haggis so I suspect I'd enjoy it.

I'd replace my KitchenAid with a countertop Hobart in a heartbeat.

The biggest and best piece of advice I can give you is to invest in a kitchen scale, and to weigh the ingredients in the recipes you already use. Most serious bread-makers think of their breads in terms of a "formula," or each ingredient's percentage by weight. Typically this is expressed as a percentage of the flour, ie the flour is 100% and everything else works from that. It's typically your hydration -- the amount of liquid as a percentage of your flour -- that determines the dough's stiffness, though other ingredients always play a role. I find bread machines don't play very well with wet or "slack" doughs, so I haven't really pushed the envelope in that direction. I would suggest your hydration for a successful bread machine loaf probably falls in the 60s, give or take, and that's probably where your existing recipes will fall once you weigh them and do the math. Personally I use mine just for mixing (which every machine does pretty well) and bake conventionally in my oven. If I'm experimenting with something other than a fairly conventional loaf, I usually mix by hand or make a small batch in my KitchenAid (small because it's useless for anything larger). Edited to add -- the whole point of this pre-caffeine ramble -- that once you know the ratios of your existing recipes, which are proven to work in your machine, you can improvise all you want by observing the same ratios and then tweaking the ingredients from that starting point.

The jelly-ish bit was indeed the fatty belly, which some cherish and some trim away (I'm in the cherish camp). If your salmon has been in the freezer for a while the belly fat is where off-flavors will turn up first, so you may well have had a piece that was nearing the end of its useful storage life. Salmon is rather like turkey, in that it can become dry very quickly once it's cooked past a certain point. When that happens, I generally advise re-purposing the salmon into fish cakes, or some kind of a salad bound with mayonnaise or your preferred equivalent.

Oh, for sure. It wasn't meant as a serious survey of the current literature, and it's also not especially pertinent to the topic of organic vs non-organic (I'd forgotten to check the subject before posting). That being said, I should think that determining the most bioavailable forms of nutrients and supplying them in a closed system should be entirely within the bounds of what's currently possible. I know the Dutch are doing seriously intensive growth within enclosed greenhouse environments, in both soil-based and hydroponic systems, and I'd be surprised if they aren't also looking at atmospheric tweaks and their effect on growth, productivity and nutritive content.

It's at least something. A couple of towns in my native Nova Scotia proudly proclaim that they're exactly halfway between the North Pole and the equator, which is perhaps even sadder.

Very large country, relatively small population. It adds a lot of km for a modest payback. My daughter runs into this all the time, ordering big-girl clothing (when your bra size gets into the second half of the alphabet, you can't just get 'em at Walmart).

I had a friend years ago who wanted to name his band "The Kosher Cheeseburgers," but he didn't think enough people would get the joke (starting, first and foremost, with his bandmates).

I've just put mine in as well. I suspect your climate is not that different from mine, despite your balmy southern location. Maybe tomorrow, if I can get my act together, I'll show you pictures of my fall-planted garlic vs. my spring-planted garlic. It's quite an eye-opener.

Meilleur Ouevriers de France. Master craftsmen, in this case chocolatiers. It's not an easy distinction to earn, in any field.