Wholemeal Crank

I did a batch in a heavy stainless stockpot, and it worked ok, but the 8-quart pot I used was a little too big, and the loaf spread out a lot. I'd be careful with the ones that have aluminum layers in the base--wouldn't crank the oven up to 500 with one of those inside.

Extra yeast will just decrease the rising time, but your cooler apartment will increase the rising time, so between the two, it may be a wash. I'd look carefully for the bubbles and check the video for a reminder of what the ready-for-shaping dough should look like. I made my last batch with twice the yeast, but with a long refrigeration step to retard, and the result was quite tasty, although it probably needed more than 31/2 hours to proof after being shaped straight from the fridge. It's flexible enough to accomodate all of your changes.

I just tried the bran he recommended originally for the first time, and was impressed by how well it worked. And bran did fly about as I upended the towel into the hot pot, but was easy to clean up--not a starchy or glutinous mess like the semolina or cornmeal has been. And I'm using 100% whole wheat flour, and my loaves have plenty of flavor. I think the flavor is almost as good as I get with sourdough, except that there is no sour component--good deep wheat flavor, but not tart--and the overall preparation fits much better into my schedule than a sourdough. I'll put up with some flying wheat bran for that.

My first loaf with the bran--I'd been using semolina--was a lot easier to clean up after than the ones using semolina--the bran doesn't soak through and turn to glue like the semonlina, and forms a nice barrier between bread and towel that holds even when damp. No muss, no fuss. And still a nice crust. Even a pretty crumb. <a href=" title="Photo Sharing"><img src="http://farm1.static.flickr.com/137/341264316_15e57583a2.jpg" width="500" height="333" alt="Inside (bread)" /></a> And I'm getting plenty of flavor with 100% white whole wheat flour in a 20-22 hour rise.

You may end up with a heavy but tasty loaf that you'll end up finishing yourself rather than sharing proudly. Not a major problem.

It will probably be somewhat denser, but still mighty tasty.

We used to get a sack each of pecans and walnuts from my grandfather's orchard each year, and IIRC they seemed to keep pretty well in the shells, months at least before they would all be shelled and frozen, but in recent years I've had more problems with walnuts bought in shell and already gone off than pecans--even when buying this years' nuts in the fall.

That does seem like the obvious answer, but I can remember more problems with nuts purchased raw from the supermarket than those that were already toasted. Maybe the toasting just hides the incipient rancidity.

While contemplating a sad batch of cocoa muffins, spoiled by some nuts that were just a little off (freshly opened bag, stupidly didn't test before tossing them in), I found myself wondering whether toasting nuts affects the rate at which the nut oils go rancid. Does toasting reverse rancidity? prolong the time nuts can be stored before the oils go rancid? simply cover up the taste of a slightly off nut? or none of the above?

Having too much fun with this.....just found this thread, 5 loaves or so into my experiments with this recipe. I've been making this with 100% whole wheat flour--mostly hard white wheat. I'm getting very tasty breads, whether or not I've added a bit of sourdough starter with the liquid, which is what keeps me coming back to play with it. My first loaf was 450g wheat, 400g water (weighing 1 5/8 C water as carefully as I could, it was 399g). Less water made a heavier loaf. Up to 75 g sourdough starter (about a 60:40 water:flour ratio) has been ok (still using the 1/4 tsp yeast) but the starter did not add much to the already excellent flavor of the loaf. The crumb has been mostly a bit on the gummy side, baking to 205 degrees internal temp; increasing baking time with lid off at lower temps to get to 210 degrees without scorching has simply given a thicker, heavier crust (I like crust but it has gotten a bit unpleasant). I will try taking the lid off earlier to avoid that next loaf. Haven't gotten really pretty oven spring yet. I've been coating the towel or linen with semolina flour, and that keeps the bread from sticking to the towel, but even after drying out completely afterward, the towel ends up stiff--not just a bit floury. I'm looking forward to trying the oiled bowl next time, or else the one bowl/no shape technique described above. Haven't quite decided which one. My father, who has been making this with white flour, says he got better results with a little extra water than with less water--better rise. His best loaf was proofed warm with a water bath, given an overnight retard in the fridge in the middle of the first long rise, shaped and risen in an oiled bowl, covered, and baked in a preheated cloche. I've also made this with my niece (9) and nephew (7) over thanksgiving, and the only problem was finding a way to split the labor so that they each got to do part of it. Has anyone tried adding fats to the dough? Or did I miss that in my headlong rush through 11 pages of posts?

I was taken there during the course of a 2 day job interview--it was terrific, and I hope I get the job so I can go back again! Good soup, interesting main course, very good vegetable side dish--snagged some really nice brussels sprouts from another diner--and a terrific dessert.

I've been in St. Louis for 8 years now, and I will probably miss Global Foods more than anything except the friends I've made here. It's an old grocery store converted into a multiethnic grocery. It has not just a few asian things here and some mexican goods there, but separate sections for greece and for lebanon; the phillipines are separate from china and indonesia and japan. Fresh curry leaves? Banana blossoms? Palm sugar? Cloth wrapped jaggery from india or piloncillo from mexico? Smoked green wheat (freekeh)? You name it, they've probably got it, and a better selection than the typical hole-in-the-wall ethnic market. It's so amazing that I take visitors on tours. My sister wondered if it would have passion fruit concentrate, to make the drink my niece grew very fond of during her stay with relatives in Ecuador. Not only was their passion fruit concentrate, they had three different brands, including the exact one my niece requested. It's an amazing place.

After a first quite unsuccessful attempt at macarons (heavy/gooey, nuts were damp out of the freezer), I found this thread and have been trying to assimilate the immense amount of often contradictoryinformation herein, along with browsing in selected cookbooks. A couple of questions: Re: leaving egg whites out to dry overnight: anyone know what the desired degree of water loss should be? Should one be looking for 5% decrease in weight, 10%, 20%? And if you're measuring the whites by weight or by volume, do you measure before or after this drying period? Also on the subject of moisture, if you were to substitute brown sugar for white sugar, do you need to dry the whites more to make up for the extra moisture in the brown vs white sugar? And regarding the texture of the ground nuts--several posts and recipes suggest sieving the nuts berore use: is this simply to make the cookies smoother and more delicately textured, or is it about the way the larger bits of nuts affect the heft of the meringue? If substituting other nuts for almonds, do recipes need to be adjusted for the different oiliness or moisture content of different nuts? And regarding baking temperatures, there is some controversy over whether they should be baked at low temperatures only (160-175 degrees); high temp (375-425) briefly then a cooling oven (opening oven door), or moderate temperatures (300-350 degrees) for the entire cooking time. (These variations remind me we used to make meringue cookies called "forgotten kisses" which were baked by putting the meringues in a preheated 325 oven and turning the oven off after a few minutes--again the hot start/cool finish to dry them.) The point seems to be crisp outside, softer inside. Does anyone know what the internal temperature of a perfectly done macaron is? This might give a more predictable target for doneness than time/temperature of the oven given varations in the density of various batters, the insulation of a particular oven (important for the "open door and let finish baking" or "turn off the oven after x minutes" techniques) and the humidity of the kitchen, etc.

coming upon this thread after a not-very-light or lovely batch of macaroons (first ever). I ground the nuts with the sugar in my food processor, but since they came out fairly heavy and gooey, it occurs to me my nut grinder makes light dry meal from almonds that I've used in cookies and cakes for years--any reason not to try it in macaroons? This is probably the swedish nut grinder mentioned above. I've had a couple of them. They look a lot like a rotary cheese grater, but instead of being handheld, are clamped to a counter or board. They have a drum that grates small fluffy bits from the nuts. The pieces are not flour fine--it does feel more mealy than floury, but softer than, say, semolina. Any reason not to use the "grated" nuts next time? BTW, here is the nut grinder vs a poppy seed grinder-- http://www.flickr.com/photos/debunix/sets/72157594393848112/

Thanks all for the suggestions. I'll let him know--thyme or oregano. That makes sense, since ajwain are parsely seeds.

A friend in a culinarily challenged part of the world says he has never seen ajwain in his local stores, so I was wondering if substituting one or several other more easily obtained members of the same spice family might be useful. The recipe is for a curried sprouted bean soup (Kwati) from Nepal, if that helps, and it already calls for cumin. I was thinking increase the cumin by the same amount, but would any combo of cumin plus a bit of caraway, celery seed, or fennel come closer?

From my limited experience--only two batches made iwth browned sugar--it didn't seem to affect the final texture at all; the batch made with sugar browned to a darker amber was softer, but I attribute that to my deliberately cooking it to a slightly lower temperature because the previous batch came out a bit hard.

If overheated sugar syrup didn't curdle the mixture, any other ideas on what did? This is something I've never seen in 20 years of using this recipe.

Thanks for the info. That's what I suspected--cooked but without lime, so it wouldn't have that typical tortilla flavor.

Thanks again for the very helpful comments. I wanted to minimize the temperature differential when I added the corn syrup to the burnt sugar--it was quite spectacular as it was, with the corn syrup warmed up a bit. But it was still at least a hundred degrees cooler than the sugar syrup, so it probably did not make enough difference to be worthwhile. It should be safe to cool the corn/sugar syrup mix a bit before adding it to the dairy (obviously not waiting for it to crystallize, but down to 200-220 degrees), right? And thinking about adding the butter after removing the pot from the heat: the butter has some water in it--isn't that going to alter the water balance and the final texture if I've cooked the caramel to a specific salt/water balance? Despite the less-than-perfectly shiny surface appearance, this is one terrific caramel. The texture is soft enough to work well with a chocolate coating, I got the burnt sugar just about perfect--a hint of bitterness that adds a bit of mystery to the flavor, and about a teaspoon of fleur de sel (I don't have an accurate scale for such tiny quantities) balances the flavor perfectly.

I tried again and this time let the caramelizing sugar go to a dark amber, and the resulting caramels have a nice hint of bitterness, but are still much richer than the typical sugar-only caramel. I changed the mixing order to reflect the suggestions above better, having the corn syrup and the butter, milk, cream and sweetened condensed milk heating in separate pots while making the caramelized sugar. I poured the heated corn syrup into the sugar when it reached the dark amber stage. Then I poured the mixture into the near-boiling dairy, and ran into a problem: it seemed to curdle--a very fine graininess formed that did not resolve during the remainder of hte cooking, and the finished caramel has a slightly rough surface compared to the previous batch. Might this have been an artifact of adding the sugar/corn syrup mixture while it was too hot, or did I overheat the dairy mix (a few bubbles appeared just before I added the sugar/syrup, but it did not ever come to a full boil until the mixture was complete) before it had all the sugar in it?

Beautiful and inspiring.

I think I was a bit too timid with the first batch--I let the sugar boil up to a light amber, then smelled a bit of scorch and pulled it off the heat. I foolishly forgot to leave the corn syrup separate from the other ingredients I'd heated to just shy of a boil in another pan, so adding the sugar syrup to that turned it into strands and lumps of hard sugar that gradually dissolved, and then I finished the caramels the usual way. Preliminary taste-testing of the pot and spatula reveals a perfectly good, but also quite ordinary, caramel. I need to be bolder with the sugar syrup, the salt, and this time I will reserve the corn syrup to mix the sugar syrup into, to see if I can avoid the crystallization step. Now I just need to find some volunteers to eat a couple of pounds of caramel, and try again.

That sounds terrific. I'll try it. And I will probably play with salt a bit too.