Just loafing

how about cost ... $89 worth of parchment paper (a box of some number of thousands of sheets) compared to the price of aluminum foil. And parchment paper is greener, unless you are prepared to wash and recycle your aluminum foil. Blessed is the day that I discovered parchment!

On an Iron Chef America, Mario Batali placed thin strips of lamb on a salt block and served them without cooking ... a kind of slightly preserved tartare, I guess. Grossed out one of the judges who had confessed to being lukewarm about lamb in the first place!

Thank you for posting this recipe. I'm sometimes looking for a way to use up whipping cream and the biscuits fill the bill. I prefer my baking powder biscuits, but my husband worked his way through several and the customers got the leftovers!

Rise and Shine (carrot) muffins seem prep-heavy to do, but my assistant turns them out pretty quick. I by bags of mini-carrots so no peeling and we do them in the food processor. likewise apples which we don't peel. We do have frozen apples which we use in pies, so we could use those and save a little more time. (Product of Oregon, same price as whole apple, no peeling etc.) I'd love a recipe for an oatcake similar to Starbucks, but not so sweet. Susan

I agree, that sounds like a lot of sugar. In fact, I'd leave out the sugar ... just go with the molasses for sweetness. Is your dough too slack? Don't be worried about using the exact amount of flour ... rather go by the feel of the dough. Depending on humidity, temperature and the flour itself, it may take more or less. Finally ... how thin are you slicing your loaf? Would thicker help? Good luck ... I like the sound of the recipe, we may have to try oatmeal bread just for variety.

Rye starter is the easiest to get going and keep going. I use mine twice a week ... feed it after use, then two or three days later, pull it out of the cooler, feed it the appropriate amount of flour and water depending on how big our bake is, put it in a warming place for 12 hours or so and it's raring to go,

I haven't read the "new" Fine Cooking thoroughly, but my first impression was that it's been over-designed. Odd choices of type face and in many cases a couple of points (type size) too small. I've been through redesigns of newspapers where we editors had to stamp our tiny feet and insist that the great design was unreadable, even if the graphics person, usually hired at great expense, insisted that graphically it was a wonder.

I'm a purchaser of eggs, not a producer, but in defence of chicken farmers ... when the price of flour went up, that also meant the price of grains for chicken feed was going up. As well. when fuel prices blew sky-high, it cost more to heat chicken sheds and to deliver the eggs, along with the cost of delivering the chicken feed. Now that fuel prices have dropped, maybe we'll see an easing ... I notice that the fuel surcharge has disappeared from a couple of my suppliers' invoices.

Maybe we've been lucky, but we've bought used and not had disasters. Look for auctions, restaurant supply places that sell used equipment ... sometimes they even give warranties. Another source to watch for is a franchise that is renovating ... we acquired a lot of stuff from a franchise that was first not doing scratch anymore, then had a mandated renovation. In those situations, the franchisee has to have stuff gone, either sold, given away or to the dump, when the reno crew is ready to begin.

Your shipper might be sending it in a reefer, so that it just stays frozen. We ship bread to a customer which expects it will arrive frozen, since there's a few days lag in our delivering it and it arriving at the destination. We clearly mark the boxes Perishable Keep Frozen. They go into the freezer at the freight forwarders, then they go from reefer to reefer to the destination.

Years ago, there was a restaurant in Kitchener, Ont. called the Charcoal Steak House. They did barbecued pigs tails. My recollection was that they were rather like eating chicken necks ... tasty, but not meaty. They were the local curiosity, though, there had to be at least one order per table of visitors.

I have two old commerical ovens whose thermostats are nearly impossible to use ... they are both set to be sort of 350F, depending on the wind, the humidity, the temperature indoors and out and how I hold my mouth when I turn them on. Mainly I use them for bread, (100+ loaves twice a week, 20 or so most other days) but we sometimes bake muffins in one of them, and pies. I use the system told to me by an old baker from the Prairies ... which was not to fiddle with the dial, but just deal with the oven the way it's heating on any particular day. I do have bricks on the floor of each, though, and that's probably why we get as good results as we do.

Okay, I have to ask ... what is a slider roll?

Plain old-fashioned mouse trap, but bait it with a raisin, which you can firmly stick on, so that the critter can't eat and run without tripping the mechanism. The most interesting mouse trap I've ever seen is the five-gallon pail. It involves a plank which the mouse walks out on to get the bait, the plank then drops and the mouse hits the water and can't get out ... if the water is at the correct level. Good for multiple catches in one night. My most frustrating mouse experience? On a boat, with a cat that loved to hunt, but wouldn't dream of eating a mouse. She'd bring them home alive, play with them a bit, get bored and let them go ... to take up residence in the bilge. We had a trap-line as well as a cat! (This was a cat which once caught a hummingbird ... I chased her down the dock, she jumped up on the deck, opened her mouth, the hummer fell out, shook itself and flew away!)

I'd vote for all-gas as well ... I've found gas ovens bake much more evenly than electric without the hot spots. The only disadvantage is the broiler, which I don't like on gas stoves. And ... if you are in an area prone to power failures ... you'll always be able to cook and keep warm.

That's more like it than "comfort food." Have you done this sort of dinner before? A little different than your seniors ... Cheers!

How casual do they really mean? If I were paying to have a chef cook a dinner party while I watched the proceedings, I'd want something that I wouldn't do myself, but might if I'd seen it demo'd. We were out for our birthday fine-dining recently ... I had a pork dish that was pulled pork and some strips of tenderloin on puff-pastry with a sauce ... I'd like to see how that was put together. It was served with a lot of mini grilled veg, including a little piece of corn on the cob. How about something with pork tenderloin or even individual beef Welllingtons which most people wouldn't try to do because of the puff pastry, but which as you know, isn't difficult. The beef might be pricey though ...

Have you tried freezing your extra milk? I freeze regular milk, although I've never tried condensed. If it works, you could even freeze it as single use.

Apologies if there has been a cheesecake discussion in the 79 pages ... haven't had time to search through them all. But here's what happened: My staffer was making a cheesecake for her mom's birthday ... using Dorie's recipe which she says she read and re-read to make sure she'd being doing it properly.. Ingredients included 32-oz of cream cheese and 1-1/3 cups of sour cream, heavy cream or a combination, three eggs and lots of lime zest. I wasn't paying a lot of attention to what she was doing, but the batter looked like cheesecake batter ought. However, as it was baking, it broke, like hollandaise might. A lot of fat oozed out of the one pan ... the smaller pan didn't leak, so the oil just sat in the mixture. The bigger cake apparently tasted good, but the texture was like scrambled eggs. I haven't made that many cheesecakes, but I've never had one break like that. Any ideas? I wonder about the amount of sour cream ... (She made another one that night, using a different recipe, and says it turned out great.) Susan

Very basic question ... would I find Sabra in a deli section in little tubs or is it something you get in bulk for resale? I'm in Courtenay on Vancouver Island where our deli mainly comes from the supermarkets ... Quality Foods and Thrifty's try, but it's not Vancouver. Susan

My inquiring mind wants to know why the 2L PC tonic is so carbonated that it's nearly impossible to open it the first time without having it all over the kitchen. Doesn't matter how careful one is to not shake it up even the tiniest bit. I know open it in the sink with a towel over it. Odd thing is, cans are no problem. For 99 cents/2L I deal with it!

I found a made-in-Italy flexible sprayer that fits on the tap ... cost about $10 from Lee Valley Tools and has lasted at least two years. It's not the same as a professional-kitchen one, but we wouldn't want to be without it.

We go with a packet being a level tablespoon, either instant or regular yeast.

I've been agonizing over re-pricing my organic breads which we wholesale as well as sell in our store ... sourdough, so there's nothing in it but flour, water and salt. My flour costs for white and wholewheat are up 50 per cent since October, spelt is up 25 per cent and rye 20 per cent. We'll have to eat some of it ... I just can't imagine anyone paying $5.70 retail for a 24 oz loaf of french-style sourdough, no matter how good it is! If it gets worse, as is predicted, we will talk to our wholesale customers about making the loaves smaller. Right now, the rye, wholewheat and multi are 32-oz which is a nice size loaf. The troublesome ones are the spelt, Kamut and 100% rye which are also scaled at 32 oz. but don't rise nearly as much. Smaller of those would look pretty small. (Oddly, Kamut is still the same price as last fall.) I use primarily Rogers and Nunweiller flours which are western Canadian millers, along with some from a very small local miller. I used to buy Dawn flours sometimes to support another of our suppliers and I like it (our Dawn flour is milled in Saskatoon, Sask.), but it's now $14/20 kg more than Rogers. The sun has set on Dawn for me. We also do non-organic breads, sweet goods, sandwiches and pizzas at our store ... they're hit by the hikes in non-O flour (almost 50 per cent) as well as dairy (western Canadian farmers are trying to catch up to the east), canola oil and eggs, not to mention the propane for the ovens. No supply problems so far.

I haven't tried dried spelt pasta, but I sometimes buy fresh spelt pasta and really like it. Considering that I usually have upwards of 40 kg of spelt flour around, I should be making pasta myself, but c'est la vie. Our (the bakery's) line for spelt and Kamut, is that it is not suitable for celiacs because it certainly has gluten, but that some people who are sensitive to wheat flour can do spelt, Kamut or 100% rye. I do have customers who tell me they can tolerate one of spelt or Kamut, but not the other.