scott123

Since you're going to Whole Foods anyway, try the chunky peanut butter out the machine. It's about the same price as the jar and the taste is superior.

This is freakin awesome!!! *rubbing my hands together* oh boy am I going to have some fun with this stuff!

I frequently utilize gelatin to bump up the body constituent of my stocks. None of my recipes require a white stock, so I brown everything (even chicken/skin) religiously. I also reduce the heck out of my stocks so they cool faster/take less freezer space. With all the browning/reducing, I get maillard reactions up the wazoo. 9 times out of 10, I end up with a stock with slightly too much flavor (in proportion to body) so I break out the gelatin. Works like a charm.

Thanks for the ideas. How do you make homemade nut milk? My bread pudding came out delish. Either the soy milk works just fine or the bourbon, sugar and vanilla covered it up really well. My fiance, who says he doesn't really care for bread pudding, ate about half the pan as a taste test. I wonder if you can get nut or seed milks to thicken into a custard or otherwise behave like real milk??? ← To make nut milk, you toss water and blanched raw nuts (either almonds or cashews) in a blender and then blend until smooth. More water = thinner, less = thicker. If memory serves me correctly, if you blend it enough, it should become nice and milky, but I think some people pass it through cheesecloth. Nut milks, as far as I recall, act very similarly to milk in cooking. You definitely don't want to boil them (unless you add some sort of stabilizer), and simmering might be iffy as well. But keep the heat to a minimum, they should be fine. Because of the gentle heat involved, I think they'd be fantastic in custard or bread pudding. Blended raw cashews (cashew paste) play an invaluable role in North Indian Cuisine as well.

Ditto (except for the gaming part) Ace K is marketed under the brand names Sunnett and Sweet One. Polydextrose is a useful ingredient in low carb ice cream as it's a freezing point depressor. If you were making confections with polydextrose, erythritol, sucralose and ace k back in '97, I'm very impressed. I'm working with that stuff now and I consider myself on the cutting edge of low carb cooking.

As vegan of about 3 years, here are some ideas I came up with for replacing milk: Blended soft tofu - you can't use too much of this, but overall it's a lot more 'milkier' than soy milk. Better color too. Almond milk - homemade is better than the watery/sweetened stuff in boxes Cashew milk - homemade Coconut milk - it really depends on the recipe (and your willingness to consume fat) As an Atkins follower for about 1 year, here's what I've picked up recently: Whey protein isolate/calcium casienate (the two milk proteins). Although they won't be even close to real milk, they will give you a dairy like taste. Can you handle cultured milk products? Buttermilk and sour cream is fairly low in lactose.

Pathmark clear plastic bottled water - $1.19 Poland Springs clear - $1.59 Pathmark is superior. Poland Springs has a odd kind of sweetness to it. SR bacon is good - as far as supermarket bacon goes SR sour cream is excellent, although there's almost always another brand on sale that's cheaper. Axelrod's is my favorite (thick). Friendship is way too soupy these days. When I was eating regular ketchup, SR ketchup wasn't bad - not as good as Heinz, but good for the price. SR Monterey Jack/NY State Extra Sharp Cheddar - excellent How about Trader Joes? Is Trader Joes a local chain?

Nullo, that seems to be a universal complaint about carbquik - phenomenal for biscuits but once you try something else, it's just too biscuity.

Only 3 minutes less? Were the quarry tiles you were using fairly thick? Gas or electric oven? How long of a preheat? ← Yes, I was also surprised about the "only 3 minutes less", I was expecting a bit more. The quarry tiles I was using before are the plain vanilla pretty thin variety.I usually set my electric oven to its highest setting (550 degree fahrenheit) and preheat for at least an hour. The stone/tiles is placed on the lowest rack, which is about 2 inches away from the heating element. ← Highest setting, an hour preheat, lowest shelf and what could be twice the thickness of stone... and yet only 3 minutes less. Hmmmmm... that is very strange. Maybe it's possible that the fribament stone is engineered for less heat retention/better results with bread. If you want to trim that time down a little more, toss some quarry tiles on the rack above and create a ceiling.

Only 3 minutes less? Were the quarry tiles you were using fairly thick? Gas or electric oven? How long of a preheat?

Did you wash the stone before you put it in the oven? Even if you dry the surface, residual moisture on the inside of the stone can expand too quickly and cause it to explode.

Yes, the material the stone is comprised of plays a role in it's ability to both retain and transfer heat. But the thickness, imo, plays a much larger role in relation to thermal mass. A stone is not like a frying pan, with the heat coming from somewhere else and the 'container' being just a conduit for that energy. Stone baking isn't about middlemen. It's about preheating a thick enough stone for a long enough time so that the stone itself becomes the primary heat source. The pre-heated stone contains the necessary energy to bake the pizza. Sure, the oven is pumping out some BTUs that are resulting in some addtional convective/radiative energy, but the lion's share comes from what's in the preheated stone. It wouldn't brown that much on top, but a pizza should be able to baked on a preheated stone with the oven turned off. As the stone get's thinner, the less thermal mass it has, the less heat it is able to retain, the more of a middleman it becomes, the more dependent it is on the energy coming from the oven's heating element. Thin stones = middlemen = inefficient, slow baking = good for bread/thick crusts Thick stones = major players = wham bam thank you mam = good for thin crusts

Nullo, the thickness of the crust you're striving for is a huge factor in choosing the stone. Since you mentioned Dominoes thickness in a previous thread, I assumed that was still your goal. Thin crust - thick stone (thermal mass) Thick crust - thickness of stone less important.

I'm thinking about making my own extracts and would like to use grain alcohol to do so. I'm having a hard time finding it in liquour stores, and when I do, it's ridiculously priced. Anyone come across a good deal on it?

Thermal mass is a thin crust pizza thing. The thicker the stone, the more heat it retains. The more heat it retains, the faster the pizza cooks, providing you with greater oven spring, increased moisture retention, and a more flavorful char. For those NY style thin crust enthusiasts like myself, a pizza that cooks in 3 minutes is better than one that cooks in 15. The crust is chewy yet fluffy and tender at the same time. But hey, there are many paths to pizza bliss. For recreating a Dominoes type of pizza crust... well... I have to confess that I worked at Dominoes... for a full 15 minutes ;) During those treasured moments, I definitely recall seeing a conveyor belt. I'd wager to say that a Dominoes Pizza never came in contact with stone. Maybe if I'd degraded myself for a few minutes longer, I'd know exactly how Dominoes pizza is made. I guess I'll have to live with that :) Seriously, though, I think the bottom line is that once you leave the thin crust realm, it's really more about breadmaking than it is about pizza making and thermal mass/retained heat/speed become less of an issue. If you cook a thicker crust pizza too quickly you'll end up with raw dough in the middle. Dominoes certainly isn't Sicilian, but it definitely isn't flimsy either.

Nullo, I may have sour cream next to my guac. I may even dip something in one and then the other, thus combining them in my mouth. But to purposely combine the two in the bowl? Nooooo... not happening :) I must admit that of all the ways one can adulterate guac, sour cream does seem the least offensive to me. I'll give you that.

I can just see the billboard "Wylie's Pasta, now with 10% MORE blood coagulant."

Nope, nothing but more avocados.

As big of a fan I am of cheap workarounds, I just can't get behind the unglazed quarry tile idea. Pizza/bread making involves quite a bit of thermal shock and they aren't built to take it. If a piece of these cracks off and get's in your bread, it will wreak havoc on your teeth. Sure, there's an okay chance the tiles will never have a problem, but even a small chance of a tile cracking and a shard ending up in your bread is just not worth it. Fire tiles are made to handle extreme changes in heat and they only cost a couple dollars more. Better to spend those couple dollars rather than risk hundreds of dollars in dental work. Besides, unglazed quarry tiles are usually no thicker than 3/4" (most I've seen are 1/2") - for recreating Vulcan Oven style pizzeria pizza, you'll want thicker than that. Nullo, the secret to good pizza crust is intense sustained bottom (hearth) heat. Are you using a cookie sheet with good conductivity? Are you placing it on the bottom rack? Is the bottom element bright red when you put the pizza in the oven? A pizza stone/fire tiles will give you the most authentic results, but if all you're looking for is a properly cooked crust, then these steps should give you success.

Achiote (annato) is very distinctive. I just walked over to a jar of seeds and popped one in my mouth. Here are the notes I'm getting (from strongest to weakest): Red Bean (not the Asian kind) Green bean (strong vegetative quality) Brick/Clay (as if you took the smell of brick and made it a taste) Tea (astringent) Slight floral note (almost an earl grey kind of thing) barest hint of Cinnamon That's raw, mind you. Cooked, I don't have that strong a memory of. I think the cinnamon note is enhanced, but that's as much as I can recall. I was thinking that paprika might possibly work, but after tasting it, I'd say definitely not. I think paprika became a candidate due to the psychology of the colors being so similar. The taste is very different, though. And then of course, you have a slightly gritty textural aspect that will be hard to match.

Molasses contains a good deal of sucrose, along with a small amount of glucose and fructose. All three of these are suitable yeast foods. The one clinker in this equation is that molasses is more acidic than white sugar. Yeast is not all that happy in acidic environments. I don't know if it's acidic enough to make for unhappy yeast, but it might be. Nullo, now that you know for certain that your yeast is fresh and you've incorporated the right kneading process, you might want to try an attempt without the initial yeast proof/packet of sugar. It's quite possible that the kneading was the ticket to success. If you do get good results without the proof/sugar, then I'd just add the molasses with everything else.

Here's an excerpt from the definition of 'Hispanic' from the The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language: Fourth Edition. 2000: Even if you replace the term 'Hispanic' with the less offensive, 'Latino,' you're still, as far as I'm concerned, taking far too broad of a stroke culinarilly/culturally. I'll be happy to talk about the surge in popularity of Mexican food. Or the popularity of Cuban food. Or even the African influences in both. But Cuban/Mexican food lumped under one umbrella with a potentially offensive label like Hispanic? No effin way.

Andiesenji, thanks!

Is setting it 'on top of the soil' just to allow the exposed are to dry up? Could you set it anywhere? Or does the exposed area need to be touching soil? Is the window for warmth? What temps does Ginger like? How fast does ginger grow? Is this pot method a way of preserving ginger you buy or does it actually yield enough ginger to provide a supply?

That's smart! It's a root, so bury it in the root cellar. Thanks! ← Technically, it's not a root. It's a rhizome ;) As far as freezing it goes, I puree it, sautee it in oil and then freeze it in ice cube trays. That works well for me. I wouldn't freeze it raw, though. I use frozen galangal because that's all I can get my hands on. If I could get it fresh, I would, as I don't like the effect freezing has on it (spongeyness).