saluki

I found that my yogurt got both thicker and less sour when I lowered the temperature. I take a big soup pot, fill it with a water bath at 105°, put in my Mason jars of milk and starter (also at 105°), stick the whole thing in a small cooler, and walk away. ← Do you not heat it to 180F first? I started the first few batches using my crockpot but they turned out kind of slimy. I then read some threads on Chowhound where it said you needed to bring the milk to at least 180 to denature the protein, otherwise the texture is stringy and slimy. I now have using one bowl and the microwave but always make sure to reach 180 and haven't had the problem since. Could there be another reason for the texture issue? ← I did heat mine to 180 F but still a little slimy. Also, after boiling mine keeps forming a skin on top. Do you just skim it off?

The author says no chance of harming the yeast with ice water plus bread has better texture. Serious Eats has a few of the recipes so, I will try them before buying the book. link There is supposed to be a terrific whole grain bread in the book called Crusty seeded cracked wheat pot boule. If I could find and make that recipe successfully I would buy the book without hesitation.

I've been using a variety of no knead methods Bittman/Sullivan, Artisan bread in 5 min, and CI's method. This week, I ran across another method from Kneadlessly Simple: Fabulous, Fuss-Free, No-Knead Breads by Nancy Baggett. It seems to use instant yeast and ice water. Has anyone used her recipes? If so, how did they compare with the other no kneads? If you bought the book are you pleased with the recipes? I am curious to know if the ice water is worth trying.

I saw what looks like a very good recipe for XO sauce from the Lantern restaurant in Chapel Hill. Link for XO sauce

KA Diastolic is what I used. I also realized that the KA flour that I used is their Artisan variety. I'll have to remember to force the flour into the slashes next time. Love the LaBrea bread (I've only been successful with the Silverton grape starter once). After all these months of experimenting with sourdoughs---I like your adaption much better You might enjoy watching how Nancy Silverton handles the really wet dough here: http://www.pbs.org/juliachild/meet/silverton.html

I sooooooo agree. I used your formula this week and had my most successful bread to date. (only addition was some fresh Rosemary and grated lemon zest). I think the malt powder from KA has definitely helped. I have no problem with moving the larger boules since I am letting them rise in a frying pan on parchment paper sprayed with a non-stick cooking spray as suggested in CI. I just transfer them on the parchment paper onto the pizza stone. I peel the parchment off as soon as the bread comes out of the oven an put it onto a cooling rack.

The night we were at Ken's my sister, who keeps Kosher got the pan fried flounder which I have to say was very good. She also ordered the bright yellow vegetarian fried rice--I'm suspecting turmeric may have accounted for the color. After having the batter fried oysters, I think any oyster dish there has to be a winner........ I wonder if I go into Ken's and ask the waiters for "Chinese French Fries" they will have a clue what I'm talking about? My mouth is watering looking at those dishes. The fried rice at Zhi Wei Guan looks delicious. I'm very picky about fried rice. I definitely have to put that on my list--Zhi Wei Guan is one of the few restaurants in Chinatown that I have not tried. Guess I'll be looking at their Pork Chop dish too.

Those fried clams looked so delicious I asked for them when I went to Ken's Seafood last week. Was that on the regular menu or was it a special? When I asked the only deep batter fried item they said they had was batter fried oysters. I got two of the batter fried oysters--very good....plus the clams in black bean sauce--very good and gingery. Can some of you who have been to Ken's list some additional dishes you've liked? Also a question--My sister ordered some vegetable fried rice. It looked very nice since I don't like my rice with soy sauce. I was however, surprised by its extremely yellow color. I've never run across it in a Chinese restaurant. Any guesses? Could it have been saffron?

Ooops! Sorry Heartsurgeon for the much overdue response. I hope you've been having success with your breads, despite the lack of support on my end! 1) Convection is a wonderful way to go with the bread. Just be careful to adjust the temp, down by about 20 degrees. If your oven is too hot the crust may turn a gorgeous deep brown before the crumb is fully baked. 2) Yes, you can certainly use malt or beer in the breads. It is a wonderful flavor and the beer will even jump start the "sour" or "fermented" character. The amount you use will somewhat depend on your personal preference for the flavor you are going for. In my experience the dough made with high levels of beer does not store for the full two weeks. I found myself adding a new batch of ingredients to some of the old dough after only 7 days. I'll be curious to see what you think. We are busy writing another book and we will talk more about these options in the next one. Thanks Zoë ← Zoe, I was wondering if you have tried using Lambic beer in the bread. I remember reading that Metropolitan bakery in Philly uses starters made from grapes and such. I was wondering if the addition of this kind of beer would work along those lines. I was considering investing in a bottle of Lindemans Framboise. Any thoughts on how this could work out in your recipe?

Where did the show go? Am I missing something? I don't see a listing for it next week either. Any info?

Thanks Zoe, I'll try painting it as it comes out instead. The temp of the instant read thermometer was quite high and it was a deep brown color so I know the bread was done, so maybe painting at the end will do the trick. Susie

Question- I've been making the rye bread recipe and its turning out very nice but the crust is not like I get at a Jewish Deli. I used the cornstarch wash.--What am I doing wrong? Also, does anyone know if Clear flour is any healthier than AP?

Okay--I'll do better with the hydration in the next batch. Thanks Rob- for the assistance in posting pics.

Thanks, Marc, Tino and Zoe, I just baked my first bread using your book. And although I didn't know about the hydration issue so the dough was not as moist as on your video; I am still amazed. Aside from being the most beautiful bread I've made in a year of following the Lahey/bittman recipe with Steingarten modifications---It was also the first bread that tasted wonderful without being toasted. Bread was 205 degrees. Holes were a bit smaller than Lahey, but it had a wonderful flavor. I used a six inch Banneton for the rising from Fante's (a suggestion from your site); And I used a baking cloche. Also, I sprayed the banneton with a canola spray before dusting it. Instead of regular flour I used rice flour for dusting. I also sprayed the knife with the oil before making the slashes, since I've had problems with that before and CI had made that suggestion. I had the dough in the fridge for 3 days before I used it and I let it rise outside the fridge longer than 1 hr and 40 min because my house is 63 degrees. I inverted it onto parchment cover pizza peel since in a year of Bittman bread I've discovered my aim leaves much to be desired. Preheated cloche to 500 degrees for three quarters of an hour--turned it down to 450 and baked it for 25 minutes with lid and on the parchment--last 5 minutes without lid. I have pictures but don't have the vaguest idea of how to post them or whether you have to be a premium member to post? I'm very excited to try the rye and keep experimenting. Wonderful thread.

Okay my clear flour has arrived and I'm ready to experiment. But, before I start Can anyone tell me what per cent protein is Clear Flour so at least I would have some gauge as to what hydration I need in the rye bread recipe? Any help would be appreciated

Tino---Thank you so much. I've been using the Bittman/Lahey recipe for the past year and was using a My Weigh KD7000 to measure in grams, but all the conversions were already done by one of the posters on the No Knead thread for that recipe. I had not a clue how they were how they were figuring it out. I'm now good to go with the formula

While I'm waiting for my clear flour to arrive I mixed up a batch of the master recipe using KA bread flour. I decreased the amount of flour by a quarter cup as suggested in the book. I am noticing compared to your video my mixture is not as moist. It rose beautifully and is sitting in the fridge with many holes. Can you tell me approximately how much water for KA bread flour or KA AP flour assuming I'm using 6 1/4 cups flour. I'm mathematically challenged and 81% hydration just doesn't compute.

Just received my copy of the book from Amazon today and picked up a couple of 25 cup Reynolds Casual square containers with a vent from Target. A few questions please If I want to use fresh Rosemary and put it into the initial mixture--Can it still be kept in the fridge for up to two weeks? Also, if I use a baking Cloche do I still put water into a pan underneath? Lastly, I ordered clear flour and medium rye from KA. If I use clear flour instead of AP to make rye bread how much water do you think I should use?

For anyone who has been using the Aerogarden--I'd like to ask which of the seed kits did you enjoy the most? Also, since the seed catalogs are coming and I find the master gardeners kit outrageously expensive--Do any of you know how to make a makeshift gardener's kit that could be used with the aerogarden? Also what kind of nutrient could be used with it and where could it be obtained? Thanks PS: Sorry about the size--didn't know it would be this huge.

Cook's also has a rye variation using 1 5/8 cups (8 oz)of AP flour and 1 1/8 cups rye flour (7 oz) +2 TB caraway seeds---- the rest of the ingredients are the same for the liquids as Almost No-NK 7 oz water; 3oz mild lager and 1 TB white vinegar. Yeast is same as NK. Salt is 1 1/2 tea. When they get to the two hour rise they are also taking the hurling it into a hot pot and see how it plops, out of the equation by spraying a piece of parchment with non stick cooking spray and letting the dough rise on the parchment in a ten inch skillet. They spray the top of the dough and loosely cover it in plastic to rise At the end of the rise they slash the top and transfer the parchment into the hot cast iron pot----no flipping

I haven't seen the CI issue yet - did they tinker with the salt? Really, I find that just adding an extra teaspoon of salt makes a huge difference (but I can't seem to help also adding some shaved Asiago or Parmesan and some chopped rosemary, too). I made two loaves yesterday, one in my Romertopf and one in a round Corningware casserole. I've been adding just a little less water than the recipe calls for, and just turning the dough into the hot pot at the end of the 18 hours. Both loaves turned out fine. The lager and vinegar additions sound great - I'll try that next. ← the cooks illustrated amount of salt is 1 1/2 teaspoons 7 oz water 3 oz mild-flavored lager 1 TB white vinegar rest is the same---I haven't made it yet. I'd love to hear results others are having.

I have brought them from the NY places and had them cold next day. Still bangin' Has anyone tried the place across the street? The place is named "Sports Bar" and I hear the bird is better there. ← It is really hard to imagine Chicken better than Soho's. While I was awaiting take out I noticed several orders being packed to go ahead of mine. They were really careful about it so, I guess they are used to take out I don't know if I'm imagining but there seemed to be venting in the box. I would call ahead for a takeout order as this process seems to be a little labor intensive, so I don't know how many orders they could handle without getting backed up. If you are right about Sports Bar; Cheltenham Avenue just may be the best kept secret in the city for Fried Chicken.

They traveled pretty well to Bensalem. Only problem was keeping my hands put of the box while driving---- Very hard to do when it tastes like that. By the time I arrived home I had a half of a box left. LOL It was boxed to prevent sogginess.

I filed away this post in some corner of my head for the past year and finally had occasion to seek it out last weekend. We spotted two Korean places in the shopping center by the 7/11, wandered into both and asked if they had fried chicken. Neither place did and no one claimed to know of a place in the neighborhood that did. One place looked really good and our girlfriends would have been plenty happy to stay, but my friend and I stubbornly decided to walk around the block to see if there was anything else. We finally spotted a place on Cheltenham with large windows and brightly painted walls that seemed fairly busy despite being quite large. We stared and pointed at a group of Korean girl's table, much to their discomfort, trying to see if they were eating chicken. We went in, my friend went to their table to ask while I talked to the host. They did have fried chicken, although it wasn't the place mentioned above since it had only been open for a day. Close enough for us. The place had a very cool vibe...nearly everyone in the restaurant was a stylish 20-something Korean, and everyone seemed to be there more for drinks than food, although the foil-covered baskets of chicken were ubiquitous. A boisterous table in a corner were celebrating a birthday with a bottle of Johnny Walked black label and a lot of chicken...not a bad idea. The host was friendly and apologized that there were no menus yet in English and did his best to translate the menu on the wall, which didn't help very much. (I figure it's a safe bet that we were the first non-Koreans to eat there). Anyone read Korean? We got some soju for $12: and my friend got something called pocky maybe, a sort of ice cream soda involving what seemed to be a few pocky sticks and fruity pebbles. Looked tasty. For the grand opening, pitchers of lager were only $6(!) which washed down an order of spicy fried chicken quite well. (This was after we had dug in a bit already...) I've never had Korean friend chicken before and it's as impressive as the article in the nytimes suggested a few months back: super-light and crispy, w/o the heavy greasiness that keeps me from eating American fried chicken too often. I definitely wish I could get this closer to home in South Philly! The four of us split an order and were still somewhat hungry afterwards and wanted to try something different. We tried asking a waiter what else we could have and he suggested nachos. Hmmm...Instead I pointed at some noodles at another table and asked for those, as well as the white cubes that everyone seemed to have with their chicken. These were called "moo," I think, and tasted pretty much like kimchee w/o the sauce. The cold, sour and salty pickled radish would have been awesome with the fried chicken...wish we had asked sooner! The noodles came with conch and a spicy sour sauce that was pretty tasty. The conch was a little rubbery but it made pretty good drinking food as well. All in all it was a pretty great experience, and the kind of night I really enjoy...not really having much of a clue of what I was ordering and getting a glimpse of the way another culture eats and drinks w/o having to worry about the restaurant pandering to what they think we wanted to eat. Although the waiters had some trouble communicating, they were really excited that we wanted to try something we weren't familiar with and enjoyed it when it came. And it was pretty fun being the only table in the place speaking English. The only downside was that it was a little bit more expensive that we expected. The chicken was $20/order and the noodles were $25. Still, that's not bad considering those two dishes were more than enough to feed four of us, but with how addictive the chicken is I could easily put away an order by myself. I'd love to know where the other place is in the neighborhood up there to try it out. In the meantime I think I will be checking out the place at Church and Chambers in NYC one of the next times I'm up there. ← I stopped by Soho on Cheltenham Ave today and got an order to take out. What I asked for was an order of Fried Chicken Half and Half. It was 18 pieces --all wings and drumettes of what had to be the the best Fried Chicken I've ever eaten. I'd love to know what the secret is. 9 pieces were mild and sweet---and the other 9 had a spicy vinegar taste. I did not have to order the Moo separately. A nice size container came with the order. It was very definitely pickled square cut Daikon and was the perfect accompaniment. The 18 piece size was twenty dollars and worth every penny. I am permanently spoiled for any other fried chicken. The Chicken Seems to all have Bon Chon writter on the boxes. And the waitresses have that written on their aprons. The only thing the chicken needs is a good beer to go with it and that's only the spicy half. Soho itself, is immaculately clean and pleasant with quite a few clean cut young people having desserts. ----Now if only there were somewhere in Bucks county to get this. -----Just wonderful!

I just found a "Very Good" used copy of the Buwei Yang Chao book on Amazon for $1.80, so I ordered it. I also was able to request the Tropp book from my library. I am also keeping my eyes on the Kuo book and the first two Pei-Mei books. I guess that should probably get me started. Thank you to everyone for all the suggestions and help. Very Best, Alan ← I have to laugh. After Ben mentioned the Buwei Yang Chao I remembered I lost my copy when I moved---It was a small paperback and I spent days looking for it. So, I too ordered a copy last night. Mine from Ebay. Book was about 1.50 but the shipping was almost 4.00. Half.com has it too from about 1.80 to 44.00