polack

These codes would have made a lot of sense in medieval towns, when a fire was REALLY catastrophic. In a suburb with widely spread homes, there should be more tolerance and self-responsibilty. All in all, commercial ranges are pretty safe. The most endangered items are your fingers and your hairs when turning on a 35KBTU burner. A pro-style-stove is definitely less dangerous than a rifle. "You have to take my Molteni from my cold hands..." ← And one of the reasons that those ranges are safe is because of codes that not only pertain to the structure but also to the stove itself. When I redone my kitchen I looked at getting a commercial Viking or Wolf but had to rethink because they couldn't be near cabinetry, ended up with a DCS for home use. Oh yes I had to add a couple grand onto the price of the stove. Polack

Talked about this question on a previous thread and never got a good answer. The question is, when it comes to shelf life of meat in the display case, i.e. when it's experation date is up, what do they do with the meat? We talked about how long meat could hold up in the frig. before useing it and feeling safe when you do use it. I never see meat in the local grocer store go on sale because the date is about to expire and I often wondered what they do with it. Polack

I would recommend Rytec Kutec's book on sausage making. This book has all the basics in curing, sausage making, pickleing and whatever. The good thing about it is, it has a host of recipes to get started with and the directions are quite simple to follow. When I first started making my own sausage and dry curing different products, I used his book and got a lot of good pointers. Since then I've changed recipes and came up with a few that have stuck with me for last 15+ years. You probably can find his book from www.sausagemaker.com, and any book supply center. Polack

I've seen over 700. farenheit on some of the web sites.

I've seen Nancy Silverton put parchment paper on the top of the bread and after 15 minutes she removed the paper and rotated the bread for even baking. I tried it when I made a loaf and it was successfel for me. I also used Jackal's idea of putting a cast iron pan in the oven for the water steam bath, and didn't open the oven until 15 min., when I removed the parchment and rotated the bread. Polack

Pia and Ingles, this was an excellent thread that took me back some 40+ years on my visit to Italy and Sicily. The only trouble was I was in the Navy and really didn't have the oppertunity to see and taste the foods of all of your wonderful country. Polack

I agree with andiesenji on the electrolux assistant. I have the older KA liftup 5kss that has failed on me twice making sourdough bread. Although easy to fix, with easy to get parts availability, I feel it should be more sturdier than what it was. Polack

The chili's will be up to you. What I like may not be the same as someone else, it's a recipe that will get you started and you can adjust accordingly. To me the vinegar is one of the key ingredients in chorizo, many sausages start out with the first key ingredients, pork, salt, pepper, garlic, and a host of spices that are popular to each country. Hey the Polacks, Italians, Spanish, Mexican, and whatever country start off with the aboved mention and spice it accordingly and give it a name that's unique to that country. Polack

See if this will help 5 lb. course ground pork butt 1/2 tsp cumin 1/2 cup red wine vinegar 1/2 tsp corriander 1 large chopped onion 1 tsp dry mint leaves 5 cloves of garlic 1 tbsp oregeno 1 tbsp salt 1 tsp basil 3 tsp brown sugar 3 tbsp chilli powder 2 cups of water hot pepper- add your own to your taste I like making just about all my sausage with good lean pork butt. There's usually enough fat on the butt to make just about all sausages happy. Stuff in hog casings, 32 to 35 mm will do fine. I like fresh sausage in thinner casings. Polack

I sent a post to the Spanish forum below, check on it you may get an answer. Polack

She uses her country white bread recipe which is made with her starter, goes through some girations and walla, a good baguette that will rival any local bakery. I could remember being in the Navy back in the early 60's in LeHarve, France, sitting on the beach most of the day and building quite an appetite, on the way back to the ship we got all of our available money, stopped off at a local bakery and got a couple of baguettes, got a couple bottles of wine and started our way back. Little would I know that 40 years later I would be interested in baking bread and of course making that famous baguette. Well I just hope that the outcome will be a success,and of course some smiles from the people that partake. Polack

Boulak, That was an excellent post that definitely needs some photos to show your ambition, bread making. I would think that bread, just like any other food or drink item, would be in the hands of the taster, what my liking is not necessarily the liking of someone else. You mentioned lines of people waiting to be served didn't mean that place had the greatest baguette. This week I plan to make some sourdough baguettes to see what the comparison is to the local bakeries. I plan to use Nancy Silverton's recipe and hope for the best, would there be any adjustments I should make when making the baguettes? Polack

I am finally about to have my chance to try woodcock. A local restaurant got a few in, which they are holding for me. I'm going tonight. I shall report back on my experience. ← This past year, while hunting in northeast Pennsylvania, I did notice quite a few woodcock in the woods. Years past had limited quantities and you would be luckey to see a very few throughout the spring turkey and fall small game season, hope that is a sign of their comeback. We cooked them the same way we would cook dove, breasts only in a tomato sauce, I would be interested in other ways. Polack

I'm still partial towards the Electrolux mixer, I like the design and I've heard nothing but positive remarks on it's performance. Now on the other hand I was down the parts center for a hose for my dishwasher and the parts guy says it's very difficult to get parts for some foreign products, I don't know if it includes Kenwood or Electrolux. So go from there. Polack

Greetings artisanbaker, I will make a detailed posting this weekend after I have unpacked the materials and notes from this trip. I also have over 140 digital photos. If I can figure out how to post them, I will include some of the better ones. It was a great trip and I am excited to share it here. ← Chop, chop, Boulak I'm anxiously waiting.

Well, my smoker has an optional attachment, a 'Cold Smoke Baffle' that supposedly allows you to cold smoke things like cheese, vegetables, etc, which too high of direct heat would hurt, I can always look into using one of these to do sausages, but from what I have read from others experience, they just set the temp fairly low on the smoker and there is no problem. ← Recommended temp. of finished product is 160 degrees. Let me tell you there's many ways to get your finished sausage, find one that makes the job easy and do it. You can go for days on end on how is the best way to make and smoke sausage, the only problem is that not everyone has the same equipment when making it. So look at the tools that you have and try it, after the first batch you can make adjustments to your process.

On the commercial side of the house they add binders too the sausage so it will keep approximately the same weight when it comes out of the smoker. You lose 10+% of the sausage weight when it's in the smoker so when someone is selling the sausage for a profit 10% could be a huge saving. Powdered milk will help in keeping the sausage from shrinking and keep its weight, one of quite a few add-ons. As far as smoking goes, I wouldn't recommend using the back yard smoker that cooks a barbecue, the heat would definitely be too high and overcook the sausage. Also when you're ready to start your venture, ask questions from someone that does it, it will save you time and of course wasting your hard work.

Pork butt makes some of the best sausage. Has the right fat content and lean meat.

I've been doing it for 15+ years, that's making both fresh and smoked sausage. When I first started out I used to get my meat ground from the butcher and would use an enterprise sausage stuffer to make the sausage rings. I would put them in a smoker that I built and smoke about 30 rings at a time. Since then I bought a used store grinder, another stuffer, and built a much larger smoker that's capable of handling at least 120+ rings. Let me tell you once you get started there's no stopping because the quality of the sausage is much better than store bought. I usually can get whole pork butt, that I grind, for $.99 a pound. The casings I buy are from the local supermarket and I usually get a hank for $10, a hank will do anywhere from 60 to over 100lbs, depending on the diameter of the casing. So as you can see for a little over $1.00 a pound, and some of your time, is what it would cost you to make sausage. Kielbasi is going for around $3.50 a pound around these parts and you won't get the quality like homemade. I would advise you to go to ebay and enter sausage stuffer and see what types of stuffers are available, and the cost of them. Yeh you can stuff with a funnel like someone has mentioned but if you do it that way you probably won't make sausage again. Also they have the stuffer for a KA mixer, but you need the grinder, and they want a pretty penny for one. So check for a used stuffer if you're serious and you won't be sorry. Polack

I was thinking of making one with a sourdough starter. When I feed the starter I plan on using it to make the bread a little faster as to not make it too sour. I was wondering how that would work, a pannetone made with a sourdough starter? Polack

Back in this area we have great kielbasi. There's still some small local stores that specialize in kielbasi and other sausage products. Matter of fact one small town has started a kielbasi festival and had some success with it. As for myself I make my own, both fresh and smoked and take a lot of pride in it's end result. The end result is good flavor and atta boys from the peole that eat it.

Around these parts, Northeast Pa., it's a custom to have pork for your first dinner of the year. Having chicken it's claimed, will have you scratchin for money all year, whereas by having pork it'll make you have a prosperous year. We had a pork tenderloin with mashed potatoes and gravy, potatoe-sage stuffing, smoked kielbasi, bowtie pasta with farmers cheese and sauted onions, green beans, corn, sour cream and cucumbers with scallions, salad, homemade sourkraut, topped off with just baked sourdough bread. This was topped off with a cherry cheesecake for desert. Now how was yours? Polack

I could remember when I made fresh pasta and had it drying on wooden dowels, across a couple of chairs. While it was drying me and my wife had to do some shopping, and upon our return we entered the house and my wife started to laugh uncontrolably, when I looked at what she was laughing at all I could see were little pieces of pasta left on the dowels. Here our black lab was home alone and of course she got a little hungry and ate the pasta, all of it with the exception of maybe a 3" piece on each strand that was hanging.

Right before the end of the ?exchange with new one? portion of my warranty expired, I set out to try to break mine (6qt pro). I was not successful. I tried mixing stiff dough at high speeds, tossing in frozen chunks of butter and creaming them, and overall just punishing the machine for no good reason. The frozen butter alone made the thing seize up and I could smell burning plastic and electrical parts. One particularly stiff batch of dough nearly had the mixer doing cartwheels off the counter. I eventually got bored and gave up. Although I had a new found respect for the machine. The thing didn?t break, but it?s not nearly what it used to be. There are some new squeaks and chirps and whenever I use the beater attachment at high speed it slaps against the side of the bowl. Yet it still mixes just as well as it ever did? ← Carp, They're pretty easy to fix so don't worry about it failing you after the warrenty expires. Most of the time it's the worm gear that goes, it's made to fail after so much pressure and it's pretty easy to change. I would say that if the armature burns up or the field windings around the armature goes it might be different story on cost of repair. That's why it would be nice to have a circuit breaker in the set, just like the old model has. By the way someone mentioned that they had oil leaking from the unit, well try storing it in a cool place and don't let the motor get super hot. The grease in the unit will start to liquify when that occurs.