andiesenji

It is probably one of the Casron line - the stove top pieces have the name on the bottom. This looks like one of the "gratin" pans and is about the right size.

I was going to spell out the method of making Fig Paste but I found this page with a recipe that can be multiplied easily. And if you want to vary the flavor, you can take part and add to it some brewed Lapsang Souchong tea to achieve a smoky flavor that is fantastic with sharp cheeses. I don't use ramekins - I put the paste in small jam jars - I give a lot away as gifts. I do the same thing with quince paste.

Just sayin' - If you want the enhanced "oven spring" of bromated flour that is one solution, if you can't find it.

Since all the articles about potassium bromate linked to cancer in rats, several manufacturers are no longer adding it to products. There are several vendors on ebay that sell it - so you can add it to first clear flour or other high protein flours.

I used White Lily for decades but after it was purchased by Smuckers and the milling moved from the Tennessee mill, the quality went down significantly. The same thing happened to Martha Washington. I use Odlumss Cream flour and Odlums Self-Raising flour. It is an Irish product.

I forgot to mention when I noted that I use the "natural compressed sponges" - I put them through the dishwasher routinely. I load the dishwasher, use the sponge for necessary clean up, scrubbing any stains in the sink, stick the sponge in one of the saucer spaces in the upper rack and start the cycle. When I had the commercial dishwasher and used a lot of sponges, I put them in a mesh bag, clipped it to one of the trays that held plates, cups or ?? and started the 90 second cycle - it had a heat that boosted the temp to "sanitizing". I then hung the bag on a hook over the sink to dry. It has become so routine, I didn't even think about it until I ran a batch of dishes last night. I also put my scrubbers, brushes, bottle brushes and dish mops through the dishwasher. I use the latter on items that don't go into the dishwasher.

It IS of excellent quality but I, and most other hobby bakers, can't use 25 pounds of flour at a time. I like a variety of flours so being able to buy the "good stuff" in 5 pound bags is a huge plus. That's why I like this supplier so much. Back in my catering days I bought my flour from a commercial supplier in 25 or 50 pound bags, all purpose, pastry flour, first clear flour, whole wheat, rye and Italian 00 pizza flour. I had the roll-around bins and a commercial oven (Blodgett 10 tray).

I have rarely, in all my 78 years, had a problem with "food poisoning" from cross contamination except on one occasion when I ate a salad at the home of a Tupperware host and later learned that she had cut up a chicken and then cut the lettuce and other salad items on the same board without sanitizing it. Everyone in the party became ill, except for one pregnant woman who was in the stage where she couldn't stand the taste of tomatoes and onions. That's how we knew to question the salad. I didn't get as ill as most of the others. I attribute this to growing up on a farm where I was exposed to a lot of pathogens. I can remember eating a sandwiches on horseback with hands covered with horse sweat and who knows what else. We all ate fruit without washing it. I would pull carrots out of the ground, wipe off the dirt with a handkerchief and eat them while out in the kitchen garden. (We used rotted chicken manure for fertilizer) I got sick once from eating a lot of unripe plums and again from eating unripe pawpaws. My grandpa's cook was a fanatic about keeping the kitchen clean. It was mopped after every meal was prepared. There was always a big pot of water boiling on the stove and dish cloths and cleaning cloths were dipped into it and wrung out constantly. Those women had to have had hands like asbestos. Boiling water and white vinegar was the choice for cleaning the big kitchen work table and the "counters" on the Hoosier cabinets. And the sink was scrubbed with Fels Naptha soap. Everything in that kitchen was CLEAN! I had this discussion some twenty years ago with a doctor who was a friend of the doc for whom I worked. He was sitting in my office waiting for Mike to come back from surgery so they could go to lunch. He was an infectious diseases specialist and he wondered how I had gotten through the severe flu season that year without a sniffle when everyone in the office, including my boss had suffered with it. I noted that I last had a severe bout with flu twenty years before - I think it was the "Swine flu" epidemic in the late '70s and since that time never had even a mild case of it. And then I asked him about my resistance to gastric problems from food borne illnesses when others had far worse symptoms than me and often I had none at all. He opined that I probably had a very strong immune system and that I had been exposed at the right time of life, after my immune system developed. He said he had come across people from other countries who had a remarkable ability to consume questionable foods and never develop symptoms. In fact, his brother, who was an anthropologist, routinely ate and drank things in remote areas in other countries and never became ill, while he himself had problems with foods at fairs and festivals.

The later ones - this one was installed in 1949 - had multiple smaller burner pipes that produced more heat nearer to the trays so things baked more rapidly. We had them at Dunwoodie when I attended baking school there and the trays had backs that kept stuff from falling into the innards of the oven so they were swept from the outside. They also had "kicker bars" so the doors could be opened by using a foot which was a help if one had both hands full of product.

And now a SECOND supplier is involved. http://www.foodsafetynews.com/2017/08/second-brand-of-papayas-recalled-in-outbreak-more-expected/#.WYXk7DtY7ZY

The view window on this one was at the end to check on the burner feed. It was in the access door at the end where, when it was stone cold, we went in to scrub the exterior of the burner pipe, sweep all the stuff off the trays and off the floor of the oven. When running at "normal" speed, it took exactly 12 minutes for a tray to make a full rotation and two rotations were enough to fully bake bread in pans. At slow speed a full rotation was 16 minutes and that was enough for unpanned loaves, rolls and etc.

I used to buy the biodegradable compressed sponges at Costco, I think they sell a bag with a dozen. However, I was in the discount FREIGHT place a few years ago and they had a box/case of the same product, really cheap so I bought that. I think there were 500 in the box - I still have a bunch, close to a hundred, in a jumbo plastic bag. I use them for 2 or 3 days and toss them into the compost where they break down rapidly.

This is in Food Safety News this morning. http://www.foodsafetynews.com/2017/08/papaya-farm-linked-to-deadly-outbreak-victim-count-hits-109/#.WYXJcTtY7ZY

That is how I began my work life. My mother owned a bakery in a Wisconsin village of only 1200 but surrounded by farms and lake resorts. I was fifteen when I started working after school from 4 to 10 and then 4 to midnight when I turned 16. After I graduated and went to bakery school, I worked from 9 at night to 7 a.m. with two 1 hour breaks while the bread was proofing and again when the sweet rolls and raised doughnuts were proofing. And about half the time I would have to take one of the delivery vans out at 5 a.m. to make runs to the local stores with our packaged breads and to the lake resorts with breads, rolls, sweet rolls, danish, coffee cakes and cakes. I had Saturday nights off because the bakery was not open on Sunday until the spring of 1957 when my mother decided to grab the after church crowd with bakery and deli items. I decided working seven days a week was not for me so that July I enlisted in the Army (WACS) as a baker but they had other ideas for me, after taking all the written tests and then some more advanced tests, I was sent to x-ray school. The few times I pulled KP during basic training, since I was an experienced baker, they put me to work at what I knew, instead of cleaning garbage cans and scrubbing the kitchen floors. This is a photo of me waiting for my mother to get out of the way so I can finish unloading the regular bread from the oven. She had something else on one of the trays and was checking on it. That is a 16-tray, core-fired Petersen rotating oven. The trays (shelves) rotated around the 6 inch burner pipe down the middle, just like a Ferris wheel.

I use the bread machines during the day to mix, knead and raise the dough then plop it into a plastic bag and into the fridge. I do my baking at night during the summer months. It usually gets cool here after sundown, not so much when we have the monsoon, like now, but cool enough to bake. I nap for most of the afternoon so I can stay up in the wee hours.

Did it taste okay? If sour, it can be used in baking, biscuits or scones or quick breads like banana bread or in pancakes or waffles. A couple of months back I left a half gallon of half and half out overnight. It was fine. I stuck it in the fridge and it remained sweet until I turned it into yogurt a few days later.

The one time I split a 50 pound bag of pastry flour with two other people, one of them bought it and divided it into 20 for me, 20 for them and 10 for the third person. I picked it up on Saturday took it home and dumped it in one of my big Cambro containers. The following Saturday I prepared to use it and it was full of weevils. That was the last time for that experiment. Ever since I have purchased only from legit vendors.

I still do a fair amount of baking and while KAF is pretty good, they don't have the specialty flours that commercial bakers use. I discovered The New York Bakers a while back and have been very pleased with the flours that in my opinion produce better results than most flours for baking artisan breads, rye breads and etc. They also have fresh yeast in 1-pound blocks. They are in San Diego, so for west coast hobby bakers, the shipping is reasonable and quick. I placed an order on Sunday July 30, and it was delivered at noon yesterday, Tuesday, Aug. 1. My order consisted of 5 pounds each of the following Bay State Wingold Dark Rye Flour Bay State Fine Rye Meal Miller First Clear Flour - unbleached NYB Craft Flour Type 65 and 8 ounces of Fawcett's Crystal (Red) Rye Malt (whole grain) Total cost, including shipping was $53.76

That's a great price. One of my friends was vacationing in the "motherlode" country last month and sent me a photo of a cast iron skillet with a spider on the bottom and ERIE with a number 8 that was in a roadside junk store next to a convenience store. It was marked "25" so she picked it up and a couple of other things and gave the woman two twenties and got a ten back in change. She asked if she had overpaid. I phoned her because I did not trust myself to type on my iPad. That is one of the most collectible Griswold skillets and they sell for big bucks. Now she feels that she should go back and give the woman more money and is agonizing about it. In the meantime she is using it for cornbread. Since my friends were in Sacramento and decided they wanted to be fair, they drove back to the store where she bought the skillet and told the woman it was valuable and wanted to give her more money. She accepted $250.00 but refused more and laughed and said she had probably sold things that were worth far less than the selling price, so it all evened out in the end. She gave Lynn another skillet, a small one and gave Steve an antique wooden carpenter's plane - just because they drove all the way back. Honesty pays off!

That's true. The U.S. is the only country where eggs are washed, which removes the protective coating and causes them to "age" and the whites shrink more rapidly.

SCORE! Small "logo" 1939 to 1955.

Eggs should be fine. I often leave eggs out for two or three days when I am into my baking routine. It takes a while for eggs to spoil. And if they are unwashed farm eggs, they will last much longer. When my friend Sam brings me eggs, I rarely refrigerate them unless there are so many I won't use them up within a couple of weeks or so.

I've had one for several years because we used to have power outages periodically. As soon as it sounded, I would run down to the place that supplies mobile vendors and get some dry ice and stick it in the freezers.

Is there a Vallarta supermarket anywhere near you? They make the best corn tortillas, fresh every day and they are perfect for soft tacos, enchiladas, tostadas (fried in just a little oil in a skillet) & etc. They are my go-to tortillas for carnitas or carne asada - doubled...

I have also "invented" another simple cake which breaks all the "cake-baking rules" but it really works. It turns out like one of the semi-sponge "tea cakes" but without all the beating egg whites separately and so on. This ORANGE CAKE does not do the usual "creaming butter and sugar together" thing. In fact it is more like one of the "dump cakes" but with a difference. When I say it "FOAMS UP" Believe me it will run over the sides of the bowl unless you use a much larger one than usual. ORANGE CAKE You will need a LARGE bowl at least 4 quarts, or use a 5 Quart mixer bowl. Preheat oven to 350°F. Prepare a deep 10” cake pan or two 9 x 5 loaf pans - grease and line with parchment. 1 Can frozen orange juice concentrate - thawed. 2 Tablespoons grated orange zest. 1 8 ounce package cream cheese - softened. 1/2 Cup heavy cream 1 stick butter, melted and cooled till just warm if you use unsalted, add 1/2 teaspoon of salt to the dry ingredients. 4 Eggs, beaten In another bowl, measure the dry ingredients and blend with a whisk 2 Cups self-rising flour (I used Odlums Irish self-raising flour because I prefer it) 1/3 Cup sugar - I used raw sugar, use what you like 1 Rounded Teaspoon baking soda - make sure there are no lumps 1 1/2 Teaspoon baking powder Directions: Add the first SIX ingredients to the large mixing bowl. Beat until smooth, if there are a few tiny lumps of cream cheese, that is okay. Add half the dry ingredients and beat well - THE BATTER IS GOING TO FOAM UP. KEEP BEATING ADD THE REMAINING INGREDIENTS, 1/4 CUP AT A TIME until all has been blended. Pour immediately into prepared pans, filling to within 3/4 inch from the top edge and place on center rack in oven. Set timer for 55 minutes. Check internal temperature with a probe thermometer - it should be 205° F. if not, bake an additional 5-10 minutes. Place pan on cooling rack and allow to cool for 30 minutes then turn cake out and allow to cool for an additional two hours to fully set. I like it plain but if you wish you can “dress” it with melted orange marmalade.