Just loafing

I inquired of Roger's Sugar, one of, if not the, main players in Canada, and was told we have no growers of organic sugar beets yet, although it could be done. Are there any in the States?...

Welders gloves get our vote for yarding bread pans out ... flexible, sturdy and cheap. And when we do wear a hole through a finger (of the glove, that is) ... off they go to the shop for another life as work gloves. Don't find them as handy for cake pans or muffin tins ... we generally use pot holders for those. I had a pair of the neoprene-like mitts for which I paid something like $50 ... they wore through in a few months and the makers weren't too gracious about honoring the lifetime guarantee. Told the store where I'd bought them that they wouldn't replace them another time if I were using them in a commercial kitchen. And I didn't find them as flexible as the welders gloves. We did have several of those heavy-duty "professional" oven mitts, but we wore holes in them at a crucial spot in pretty short order.

Good luck ... I don't even necessarily want "white" organic sugar ... I'd just like it to be ground up a bit finer so it would dissolve better in baking. I'd also like it to be consistent ... one bag I get is coarser, the next less so. The finest grind I've found is from Florida, but I can't get it up here on Vancouver Island in bulk. The bulk available is from Paraguay or Brazil. We use it mainly for muffins, banana bread and brownies, so a stronger flavor isn't an issue and I always mix the sugar in with the wet ingredients no matter what the recipe indicates. One thing that coarser sugar is very good for, though, is sprinkling on the top of fruit pies. Susan

Since we now oil a lot of pans a day, I buy depanning oil by the 16L, but I used to make my own from canola oil and liquid lecithin which I bought at a health food store. The only problem was that straight lecithin is kind of a messy substance which stains dreadfully if slopped on anything. I also mixed up pan goop with it (flour, oil and lecithin). Don't use a Misto however ... never found one that worked for me, although I like the idea. Susan

The reason for white margarine was a protection for the dairy industry which didn't want margarine masquerading as butter. When colored margarine did become available (without using those nasty do-it-yourself color jobbies), it had to be a golden color, again unbutter-like.

I don't think I'd pay $19.95 or whatever rather large price was on them originally, but at half-price, they are a great gimmick ... way easier to use than string! Got mine in Home Hardware in small-town Parksville, Vancouver Island. Susan

My limited experience with 7-minute frosting is that it isn't a keeper ... it deflates, weeps etc. overnight. Looks great, and tastes good, slathered on a cake mid-afternoon for serving after dinner, but the next day ... not. Susan

Lots and lots of soap and water. I used to mix up my own pan oil and added lecithin to it ... what I saved DIY as opposed to buying it from a wholesaler was probably used up in dish soap. Have you discovered that it stains like fury? susan

Try your local thrift store ... I got a Braun for about $5, or maybe it was $6.50 ... at the Sally Ann which we've been using in a commercial kitchen situation, for two or three years now. Cheers, Susan

I bought a DLX four years ago after wrecking my thumbs kneading by hand for what was then a minil bread operation for our corner store. The learning curve was awful, after I put down $900 Cdn for the machine ... there's a couple of my anguished posts on the Yahoo mixer-owners site. I did persevere and used the DLX to make batches of six 2 lb loaves for about a year, until we bought a wholesale bread operation which came with a 20-qt no-name mixer, soon replaced by a 30-qt Hobart. I still use the DLX to do small batches of a couple of specialty breads ... Kamut, 100% rye and a fancy-dancy multigrain. I have also used it more than successfully for cakes, cookies, pumpkin pie fillings and so on. Do not be misled by the 450-watt designation and compare that to KA or the other planetary mixers. A DLX is like a spiral mixer, in that the bowl rotates, but the arm stays (more or less) stationary. It is a very heavy duty mixer and the 450 watts is more than enough. That all said ... if I had it to do over again, in my situation of being a micro commercial operation, with no longer time to have my assistant go through the DLX learning curve, I would have looked for a 12 qt Hobart ... but I repeat, that's based on my particular (peculiar???) situation. Susan

For lots of info on the DLX and Bosch machines, check out the mixer-owners group on Yahoo. Pros, cons, ins and outs are discussed at great length, and participants are always eager to help. Susan

Of course you can't go wrong with a Hobart ... but whatever you end up with, try to have it with a spiral dough hook, rather than a J-hook. I was reminded of this today, using my old 20-qt Taiwanese back-up mixer which has the J-hook , to do a small amount of white dough. My 30-qt Hobart has the spiral dough hook, which seems to work way better. Susan

I've seen recipes for sourdough everything from pancakes to chocolate cake and cookies. We make sourdough banana bread with ginger, but no dairy, which comes out very well. An added bonus is that the dough keeps very well in the cooler ... obviously the starter keeps on working because the rise is better after a couple of days. Susan

I have used grated potato to start a starter ... but I wasn't as precise as some, ... grated raw potato, stirred it into equal parts of unbleached white flour and water, let it sit out on the counter for a couple of days, feeding it water and flour every few hours, then when it got a good bubble, put it in the frig and fed it daily, then every few days. I assume the potato is the same function as the apple ... providing some starch/sugar to kickstart the yeast from the air. I have also made a Kamut and a whole wheat starter from scratch, without the use of potato. I am now working on a rice flour starter which would go better if I paid it more attention. Susan

Sorry to sound like a pleb ... but I vastly prefer margarine (I use non-hyrdogenated canola) to shortening in sweet baked goods. And, of course, Tenderflake lard, which is now also non-hydrogenated, for pie crusts. Tenderflake is a Canadian brand. Susan

I make (wholesale) organic sourdough breads which are unique to my part of the world. I am sometimes asked if I sell my starter ... I actually maintain five different ones. My answer is no, but I'll be happy to discuss with you how to start your own and it's not difficult to do if you persevere. Susan

Thanks for the feedback, folks. Andiesenji ... I found the Oreck last night ... it might be worth a try, certainly Oreck vacuums are good ones. And the Winnipeg branch of Oreck Canada will ship to me free. My only reluctance with a Sunbeam style stand mixer that can be used off the stand is the weight ... darn ... I sent one to the SallyAnn a few years ago! susan

I have a small bakery operation ... we use a 30-qt Hobart and an Electrolux DLX for bread dough and a hand-mixer for sweet goods ... muffins, brownies, banana bread and the like. For the size of batches that we do, a hand mixer has been enough, except that we keep wearing out our toys. A Braun lasted me quite awhile, then the gears went so it only runs on high ... and can't be repaired. A couple of Sally Ann specials had problems, mainly with the beaters which broke ... replacements are the price of the mixer. My latest was a Cuisinart which lasted three months before the plastic bits that hold in the beaters stripped ... and won't be repairable. And, of course, the warranty is void in a commercial application. Has anyone used the new Bosch hand-mixer or have any suggestions for another industrial-strength make? I could resign myself to buying cheap ones and replacing them frequently, but my green side doesn't like to keep throwing things away. Or I could invest in a stand mixer. (Our batches aren't big enough for the Hobart and I don't have any attachments except the dough hook ... and it and the DLX are in use for bread at the same time we are doing the sweet goods.) thanks, Susan

Congrats! That loaf looks really nice. Mine never have that dome ... your loaf is not exactly light and fluffy, but for 100% rye, it's as near as it gets. How did it taste and did you like the texture? susan who is going to bed to get up at 5:45 a.m. to make about 100 loaves of sourdough including 6 or so 100% rye!

Your loaf looks similar to mine, except that with 100% dark rye, mine are a much darker, browny-grey. (Sounds appetizing doesn't it?) If I've done the conversion correctly, you baked your loaf at about 350F which is similar to mine, but I would never cover it, unless for some reason it seemed to be overbrowning and then I'd just cover it loosely. That could well be the problem with the texture ... the dough needs to be able to release some of its moisture as it bakes. My loaves always shrink as they bake, but they are never (touch wood) sunken in the centre. So I would leave the next try uncovered and I would lose the steam as well ... the dough doesn't need more moisture. My loaves are always dense and moist, so much so that we no longer even try to slice them on our commercial bread slicer. The slices actually "pill" and the blades get really gummed up. However it slices nicely with a chef's knife ... bring on the lox and cream cheese! Susan

Timtune asked: I only have medium ground rye flour and whole rye grains on hand. Will that suffice, if i convert the grains to chopped grains and just use the medium ground one, with the absence of white rye flour? Oh, btw, how is the consisitency like? solid or ciabatta dough like? I'm using organic dark rye flour with a cup or two of cracked rye added. I was using half and half dark rye with an organic rye from a local farmer who milled her own, but she is out of grain now. Your medium rye should make a somewhat lighter bread. As for the consistency ... it's solid and dense ... very far from ciabatta. Susan

MacDuff wrote about his rye bread having an 18-24 hour repose in a warm place before baking it at 225F for four hours. I make 100 per cent sourdough rye ... but I don't do the long bake at a low temperature. Tried that ... ended up with doughy, ugly bread at the waste of a lot of propane. Now I bake it at the same temperature as the rest of my eight varieties of sourdough ... somewhere between 350 and 400F, depending on how my ovens are handling on a given day. A loaf of 100% rye scaled at 2 lbs 2 oz comes out resembling a brick, but the texture is good and those of my customers who love it, keep coming back for more. (I think it wants cream cheese and lox.) My formula is pretty simple ... about equal weights of rye sourdough starter and water, with enough rye flour to give a consistency I've learned will work. It's thick, almost solid, doesn't clean the sides of the bowl and has to be spooned out of the mixing bowl ... doesn't look as if it would ever rise, but it does. As it bakes, it tends to shrink ... as opposed to spring. It's not my favorite dough to handle, but it has a following ... susan

Hills also has musk ox ... a very lean, delicious meat. Apparently the Inuit get special licences to go out and bag musk ox and do the preliminary handling ... then the carcass is finished in a government-inspected facility. Had it once in a previous life at a fund-raiser for a Canadian culinary team ... recollection is that the team manager was a VVI instructor.

My very first food in London (in about 1969) was a Wimpy burger ... my recollection is that it made McDonald's fine dining!

Doesn't seem to be any shortage of canned pumpkin up here on Vancouver Island. Safeway had a special this past week (leading up to our Thanksgiving this weekend) of $1 a 14-oz can and now has the big cans for $1.99, an excellent price. I tried using a real pumpkin last year to make puree and decided it wasn't better enough in pies and muffins to make all the schmozzle with it worthwhile.