Smithy

No, I think you have the ratio inverted. Looking down the notes on the NYTimes web site I see that Bittman provided weight conversions for the recipe: 345g water / 430g flour = 80% hydration. I was using the original volumetric recipe, so just now I got out the scale to see where mine came out: 388g water / 462g flour = almost 84% hydration. It is a VERY slack dough. Next time I'll try weighing the ingredients, now that I've found those notes again.

That's where my cooking magazines go, to the magazine rack. I hope none of my dinner guests ever figures that out!

Yesterday I made another loaf of the no-knead bread. It was not scorched this time, but was also not without incident. I used a silicone trivet inside the pot to protect its bottom, and perhaps prevent scorching the bottom of the loaf. It seems to have worked on both scores, but the loaf didn't rise as well as before. Was it because of the trivet, or because I had tried letting the loaf rise in in a truly (trust me on this) well-floured tea towel, and it still stuck? It went into the pot not as a cohesive loaf, but as a blob with an extra little topknot thrown on after I wrestled a final mini-blob off the towel. Still, the crumb is pretty good and so is the flavor. Breakfast this morning was a break from the usual yogurt and oat crumble. The first slice was just toasted bread, with butter added after toasting. That butter went right through the holes, it did! The second slice was more substantially treated.

Thanks to @heidih's comment here and @Margaret Pilgrim's reply in the next post, I've tried the NYTimes no-knead bread twice. As usual for me, there are bumps along the way. I scorched the bottom of the loaf the first time (see here for a photo). Last night, knowing I needed to protect the bottom of the loaf and, preferably, the bottom of my enameled cast-iron pan, I tried putting a silicone trivet in the bottom of the pot. I worried somewhat that the silicone would overheat, but the trivet and the pot seem to have escaped unscathed. The first time I tried this, I let the loaf blob proof in an oiled bowl before sliding it into the preheated Dutch oven. This time, based on something I read somewhere here, I tried letting it rise on a very well-floured tea towel to be dumped straight into the pot from the towel. That was unsatisfying! Loaf stuck to the tea towel. I eventually got most of the blob into the pot, but that extra handling may explain why it didn't get the rise the first loaf had gotten. Either that, or the silicone trivet made more difference than preventing scorching. Still, this was among the most open-crumbed breads I've made. It's worth continuing to work on. Top, bottom, crumb: I love it when hot butter drips right through the holes.

Yes, and I've been quite pleased with it. I bought it (on Amazon, where else?) back in 2014: the Starfrit 093474 Swizzz Prozzz Chopper. Unfortunately it's no longer available, but there are others like it. It operates on a pull-string that rewinds, reminiscent of a salad spinner or an outboard boat motor. ("Pull harder! I'm sure it will start!" is the all-too-frequent joke around here... ) This set has a wicked sharp chopper blade that I've used successfully for things like pesto and last night's salad dressing. Here's an old photo of pesto I've made in it. The photo was taken at an intermediate stage, before the nuts were added. How finely it chops is largely a matter of how many times one wants to pull the cord, but nobody will confuse it with a Vitamix. I've whipped cream and made mayonnaise in it using the whipper at the bottom right of this collage. It also works pretty well as a small-scale salad spinner, say for freshly-washed herbs.

A less expensive option is to cannibalize one of those flexible plastic cutting boards that often come in packages of 3. I took one that had seen the dishwasher once too often. It makes a pretty good pot cover. If I'm really worried about a good seal I lay more rigid objects onto it to hold the edges more firmly in place.

Thanks for the compliment on the plates, @Darienne. We bought them in Tucson a year or two ago. Under other circumstances I'd have gone back to that shop this trip for a few other items, but that's off the table now. Anyway, I was laughing at your comment about the cardinals, not about your compliment! Yesterday, after we relocated, we set up the camp stove on the picnic table that comes with our site. This site has neighbors a touch closer than in the previous site. They're very nice, as were the previous neighbors...but instead of playing loud radio music for an hour or so in the evening they leave their outside televion on alllll day, whether or not anyone's watching. Oh well, it isn't loud. (Yes, there really are RV's with TV hookups on the outside, with TV's hooked up to them. The Princessmobile has 4, count 'em 4, TV hookups (living room, garage / dining room, bedroom, and deck outside) but only 1 rarely-used TV.) The compensating factor of this site is that it is the only spot with a small lawn, and with two citrus trees. They're both blooming at the moment. It's the smell of every spring to me, and I'm delighted to be near it. Last night's dinner was a happy combination of my darling's favorite "Super Burgers" and a broccoli salad recipe taken from Feast of Eden, a Junior League cookbook I picked up used a year or so ago. The steamed broccoli is tossed with a dressing made from sun-dried oil-packed tomatoes, anchovies (don't tell my darling), garlic, a touch of lemon juice all whirred together, then mixed with grated parmesan. My original notes said "strong flavors" so I was careful to balance it against assertive food. The burgers are assertive. They also aren't very photogenic. My darling puts his between sliced bread. I load mine with mayo and mustard, but apparently forgot to shoot that stage, not that it's exciting. The broccoli, now, that's exciting and pretty. It's funny: the salad dressing was supposed to be whirred in a food processor. After all these months of not having easy electricity, I find myself reluctant to go to the trouble of fishing out an electrical appliance when I have a small hand-operated processor available. It doesn't do as fine a job at chopping, but it's less fuss than climbing a step stool and unpacking this cupboard to get at the processor. My sister commented that this kitchen is one giant jigsaw puzzle. She's probably right.

It isn't supposed to be, for fear of exposing one to the embedded fibers. Nonetheless I thought I'd read it somewhere. Last night I used a silicone trivet for the same purpose, inside the pot. I was a bit nervous when I removed the lid to dump the loaf in - thought I might have overheated the silicone - but the trivet seems none the worse for wear. It does seem to have protected the pot's interior; certainly it kept the bread bottom from scorching. I have yet to cut into the loaf to see whether the crumb was affected.

Is this the cooker you mean? If I were to order one I'm not sure what I'd get rid of, but I too don't want to wreck my enameled cast iron Dutch oven. Even though I bought it on blow-out sale for $30, it's become indispensible when we're traveling.

Someplace around here I saw that someone uses a Silpat cut down to size as a pot liner, to protect the bottom of the pot. I can't find the reference. I wonder whether that helps enough to protect the pot, and whether the dough still gets the oven spring it needs?

I'm very glad I remembered souvlaki a week or so ago and made it. It was good, but there were refinements I needed to make. Yesterday I discovered I hadn't thrown away the last of the bamboo skewers, so it was a good time to do chicken using the same marinade and technique. We used the barbecue grill instead of a campfire. This time, I made the pilaf I'd wished for last time around, and added the remaining marinade to it. Delicious! The perfect foil, IMO, for the chicken. It was also a good way to work a green vegetable into our diet. We've been slack on that lately, and we're both feeling the lack. We've moved to the other end of the same campground due to an imminent construction project. It's funny how such a small move can make a big difference. A grackle, with its amusing series of creative creaks, cracks and whistles, no longer dominates our soundscape. Now, it's a cardinal. I didn't even realize we had them here. Here's another gratuitous flower shot. This is quite the contrast to our home, which received about 6" of heavy, wet snow yesterday. No, we really couldn't hurry home even if we'd been planning to try.

Tonight it was my darling's turn to pick the food. "Could we please have Italian spaghetti?" he asked. This, in our family, means Prego (only Prego!) Italian Sausage and Garlic pasta sauce, with hot Italian (mama mia!) sausage, over cooked spaghetti. Nothing difficult, but true to form I've complicated it from his original. When we met, his system was to buy loose Italian sausage, crumble and cook it in a pan, drain it, freeze in clumps on a baking sheet, and store in the freezer. When the mood took him he'd (a) take out a handful of the sausage from the freezer; (b) cook a bunch of pasta; (c) microwave the pasta sauce -- in the open jar -- and then mix the sausage (I don't remember how he warmed it), the cooked pasta, and as much of the jarred sauce as he wanted. Then he'd put the jar and any leftover pasta in the refrigerator for another time. At the same time he was developing this system, before we'd met, I was learning to cook pasta sauce from scratch. We've met in the middle with this hybrid: we buy the sauce he likes; I tart it up with onion and garlic and wine and chunks of mama mia, and it all goes together. There is a funny thing about this sausage: the brand name is something like Arizona Fresh. It's made daily. I bought a 10-pack of those made-that-day sausages and froze them. A month ago. Incidentally, I like yesterday's no-knead bread even better today, toasted, with butter. That is a wonderful recipe. One good thing about fiddling around in the kitchen is that it helps distract me from the noise of the campers next door. Nice folks, with wonderful children, but they do love their couple of hours of loud radio while they're at their campfire. They don't keep the noise going to unreasonable hours, but we still haven't adjusted to having near neighbors.

Welcome! It's always nice to get new members, and it's especially nice right now when everyone is trying to physically remain separated. There are restaurateurs here, as well as outstanding professional cooks, and then there are enthusiastic amateurs and folks trying to learn. It's quite a mix. If you have questions about how to use the forums, or where to post, feel free to ask a host by PM - I am one - or ask in the Moderation and Policy Discussion forum. Who cooks at home? What's for dinner tonight?

We are still pondering the timing and route of our way home. Our usual next stop, near Tucson, seems to be available. Now that they've gone to allowing reservations it may be more problematic unless we also make a reservation. Our current campground continues to be available, but we'll have to switch campsites if we want to stay. Meanwhile, all New Mexico State Parks (which includes the Columbus, NM campground where we usually stay) are closed so our next stop after Tucson is a question mark. Two days ago I set out to try the No Knead Bread recipe from the New York Times (Mark Bittman's adaptation from Ken Lahey's book). I've been reading about it here since it came out, most recently in this post, but never gotten round to trying it. The dough was mixed and allowed to ferment two days ago; yesterday afternoon I did the shaping and baking. I'll get back to that in a minute. Thanks to an excellent dish posted by @weinoo (see here) I decided to do a skillet dinner using more of my precious Calabrese sausages, a red bell pepper, part of a jalapeno, the last of the celery heart, and a bag of baby potatoes. I love baby potatoes. These were getting along in years and needed to be cooked. The ingredients, and one intermediate step: Meanwhile, the bread: Yes, the bottom was scorched. I should know this oven well enough to know that I'll scorch bread bottoms using the recommended temperatures. Perhaps the thing to do will be to preheat the oven and cooking vessel at the required 450F, but then turn the heat down once the pot goes into the oven with the bread dough. At any rate, when the bread came out of the oven it had a lovely crackling crust and a very open crumb. And a scorched bottom. It was also difficult to get out of the pot. I had no way to pitch it out of the pot onto a rack without its bouncing onto the floor. The skillet was occupying the stove top while the steamed potatoes were browning, the rest of the ingredients were on the countertop, and there was no place except the edge of the sink to balance that hot pot so I could use a utensil to get the loaf out! Mayhem in the kitchen! I finally got the loaf out, fortunately without scorching the countertop. When I had a moment to take a breath, I took a photo of the carnage for your amusement. Dinner was a success. I needed that wine.

Congratulations, @MokaPot! Did you make it in that jar? I'd be interested to know your procedure / recipe.

Back before the holidays, a lifetime ago now, when I was planning holiday dinners, the dessert was to be a passionfruit panna cotta, more or less as shown here. Less rather than more, to be honest, because that lovely confection was assembled by a master. This was his version: For our Thanksgiving dinner I set out to try making this dessert as a first effort. Either I never got around to posting about it or it's lost in the clutter now. Forgive me if this is a repeat. I made it using persimmon puree rather than passion fruit concentrate, well, because that's what I had. The color wasn't anywhere near as intense, and it definitely needed decoration. We taste-tested and critiqued. I decorated with a drizzle of prickly pear juice. It was actually pretty good despite the appearance. It needed the passionfruit tartness. I ordered and received passionfruit puree from Amazon. The oat crumble wasn't crisp enough, so I made more in preparation for the Christmas visit from my sister. That visit didn't happen. By the time she came out a couple of weeks ago, we were into other things. So I still have a jarful of nice, crisp oat crumble. You know what? That oat crumble makes a pretty good substitute for granola on my yogurt. I'm going to use it up before bothering to make granola again. As for the passion fruit concentrate...well, maybe we'll just drink that.

That looks excellent, weinoo. Thanks for the inspiration; I think I know what our dinner will be tonight!

Thanks, @Shelby. I phoned a friend who is my age and who is my retired primary care physician. She and her husband are also sheltering in place in their winter home, in Tucson. He has asthma, and her elderly mother is staying with them, so she is taking even more precautions than I'd thought of: she wears 2 sets of clothes to the grocery store and peels off the outer layer after shopping and before reentering the truck; she double-bags everything and removes the outer bag before putting it into the truck. Of course gloves are involved. There's more, of course. We were laughing about the parallels between our employed years (sterile water sampling in my case, sterile treatment rooms in hers) and our current procedures. Like us, they aren't sure when they'll go home. Unlike us, they don't have a trailer to call their home on the way home. They're considering getting a small one so they don't have to stay in motels.

We braved the grocery store yesterday: a Food Lion, rather small, never our first-choice type of grocery store, but we were low on beer and justified the trip with the thought that it's better to shop in the less-populated places when we must shop. Still no TP, not that we need it, despite the sign restricting sales to 1 package per shopped. No bleach to be found. The meat and produce were as well-stocked as ever for that store. People were very good about keeping their distances. The checkout clerks wore gloves and worked quickly, doing their own bagging. My darling said, "wait, I can go out to the truck for our bags!" and I said, "no, they don't want us to bring them in." This was the first he'd heard of it. After we got diesel fuel and propane, we came back and unloaded everything. I wiped everything down before stowing. Then we went outside and enjoyed the fine weather. I'm glad we did; today is cool and cloudy, and there's a small chance of rain. All that fresh produce we bought...and in the end, I simply didn't want to cook! We both need more fresh vegetables than we've been eating. (I had lettuce on my sandwich yesterday.) Today I'll do it, I promise...but last night, it was leftovers premade dinners. Tuna noodle hot dish. No prettier than before. Just as tasty.

I had to look up menhaden, so the day is early and I've already learned something! I wonder whether either of them is as aromatic as the manure that gets spread on the fields where I grew up. Random thought for the day: is it a universal truth that natural fertilizers stink? (That may be another reason for the crystalline fertilizers I grew up helping to spread.) Hmm, OTOH compost doesn't stink. Discuss.

That reminds me, I have several packages of cornbread stashed away for testing. Bean stew is in the plans for sometime before we get home. Maybe I'll simply make some to test, and then make kayb's cornbread salad from it. Last night was the first time, in all this trip, we've used the barbecue grill. We're out of practice! My steak was quite good, but rare even for me. The good news is that I only ate half, and I'll be able to reheat the rest without overcooking it. He had taken the thinner piece, in a gallant gesture, so his was more done - perfect for his tastes. I had also made a tomato salad with chunks of finely chopped celery heart. Oil and vinegar to dress. Note to self: celery heart is better cooked then raw. These were raw. They didn't wreck the salad, but they didn't help it either.

I thought I remembered something like that from my German teacher! Do you remember the word your elders used for sweet corn, or was it simply not known in the Old Country?

That's why I wonder whether there's a regional linguistic difference in the grain names. I cited corn as an example because my best friend, who spent much of her professional life in various African countries, says that over there "corn" generally refers to animal feed, what we would call field corn. If you want to eat what we call sweet corn, you'd better ask for maize.

Sorry, there may be a Canadian vs. Yank language split here, like what Europeans and Africans call "corn" vs. what we Yanks do. What I know as oats look very different, both the wild and cultivated varieties. Tomorrow I'll add a picture of the wild oats growing around here. In the meantime, here's a good photo of the cultivated versions of wheat, rye, barley and oats. (It's copyrighted, else I'd show it instead of linking it.) I'm leaning toward the mystery grass being either rye or barley rather than wheat. I can try calling the Arizona Highway Department tomorrow to learn their standard roadside seeding mix. Unfortunately, given the Coronavirus lockdown situation, I doubt I'll get anyone on the phone. Tonight's dinner plans are grilled steaks and a tomato salad. I've made the salad, and am kicking back with a Kilt Lifter beer. My darling is on HIS computer, catching up on the news. That may be enough to put us off our feed! Edited to add: for those who want to really get into the weeds* here's a more detailed discussion of the differences. It's a PDF download, relatively small, apparently harmless, from the USDA. *I'd apologize for the pun, but it would be insincere.

That's a good question, and maybe it is rye. I've been looking around at pictures of wheat vs. rye, and gotten thoroughly confused, to the point that barley has also entered the arena of possibilities. Maybe I'll stumble over an answer, or someone else can weigh in. Since you're a master gardener I would trust your judgment over mine.