Patrick S

Great idea. Fear Factor could use some capsaicin, too. I mean, eating the bugs and cow guts was entertaining for like 15 seconds, but now its soooo 2004. I want to see someone douse their eyeballs with capsaicin. Or give themselvs an enema with it. Or something equally painful and entertaining. I'd switch channels to watch that.

Made some banana-flavored marshmallows last night using about 3.5t artificial banana flavoring and some gel coloring. Overall I'm happy with the flavor. They taste a bit like banana laffy-taffy --which I like-- but there is a very subtle, slightly unpleasant aftertaste. I used a store-brand banana flavoring, which may or may not be to blame, so I'll eventually try out a different flavoring.

Very creative and attractive stuff, Wendy. I wish we got to see more of the work you do.

Distillation is probably the most widely used method, but its certainly not the only one. Chemical solvents like hexane, or super-critical CO2, are also used, as is the cold-pressing method, where the oils are literally squeezed out.

Blow-torching marshmallows is always a rewarding way to use up your propane. For maximum enjoyment, pontificate on the virtues of propane in a Hank Hill voice while you do the toasting. Example: "Nothing roasts marshmallow like clean-burning, energy-efficient propane, I tell ya what."

Patrick, if you really don't want to slide the pizza, you might try putting your pizza on a sheet of parchment paper on back of a half-sheet pan, and then sliding the paper (with pizza on top) onto the stone. I'd worry that the time spent heating the metal between your stone and your pizza would be detrimental (if only slightly) to your end product. Sliding pizzas off a peel can be scary, but it is also thrilling! And not so hard once you get the hang of it. Edit: and heat the stone for a long time. Preheat for an hour or more if you can. ← It's okay to use parchment in a 500 degree oven? I've seen pizza dough recipes that say to do just that, but have never tried it because I thought that it would catch fire or crumble or something.

Wow. Can I come to your next birthday party? Obviously you've put a lot of work into baking that stuff, and everything looks like it turned out great. Great work, Thornado!

Question for more experienced pizza bakers: can you put the pizza on a very thin metal sheet and set the pizza+sheet on the stone, versus sliding the pizza off of the sheet or peel directly onto the stone? For me the first wat seems much easier -- I don't have to worry about pushing the pizza off the (small) stone, and I only have to keep the oven door open for a couple of seconds. Also, what are some guidelines as far as preheating the stones? For instance, for a 1/2" stone, how long after preheat should you wait before baking?

I have cooked food, though not pizza, on thoroughly pre-heated limestone slabs many times when camping (cooking food on top of hot limestone that had been heated by flames), and I cant recall ever seeing any of the slabs cracking, much less exploding in such a manner that would have warranted eye protection. Since I can get them for next to nothing, I think I'll buy a slab of marble and try it myself. If it cracks, then I've lost a few bucks. If not, I've found a cheap pizza stone.

Yep, that's Herme's lemon cream. Easily one of the best-tasting substances in the known universe.

Sure, but thermal expansion is only going to be a concern if it is sufficient to actually break the stone. So even if soapstone is superior in this regard, will marble or granite break due to thermal expansion when subject to the temperature changes of a typical oven? If not, you could use these materials in the place of soapstone. I don't know one way or the other, which is why Im interested to see what happens. JohnnyD, why don't you do a test run using a cheap frozen pizza or something, and see what happens? Maybe put a baking sheet below it in case it cracks.

What is it about soapstone that makes it uniquely suitable for baking? Did you try marble at some point, and if so, what was the problem? I was kind of hoping Johnny would experiment and let us know how it worked.

Thanks for the recipe, Allan.

I could tell you for sure if I could see it closer. But if I had to guess from that picture, I'd guess it was granite, and that the black flecks are mica crystals. Check out this picture of El Capitan granite from Yosemite, and compare for yourself. ← From memory it looks very close to the "pierrade" we had at home. Do you think it would make a good pizza stone? ← I really don't have enough experience with pizza stones to say one way or the other. Sorry! I've only used a commercial pizza stone made of cordierite. But I would assume that the relevant properties of granite are similar enough to other stones that it could be used as a pizza stone.

Just copy the picture URL. Then press the IMG button. This will insert and image tag, that looks like this: [img]. Then hit ctrl+v, which will paste your url, so now you have this: [img]http://forums.egullet.org/uploads/1112304993/gallery_19495_1025_209291.jpg Now, hit the IMG button again, and that will close the image tag.

I had a little puree left in the fridge, so I tried out Kew's recipe. I only had 1C puree left, so I added in a pack of strawberry Jello. Its pretty tasty. I gave a lot away at work today, and everyone seemed to like it. I'm not sure what I think about the addition of cinnamon, but I don't strongly dislike it. In the strawberry cake thread, I tried 3 cake recipes. Had I tried this one in that thread, I would have rated it 2nd. Thanks for the recipe, Kew!

Here are a couple of recipes. Let us know if you try either of them. Chocolate Fondant Gianduja Chocolate Fondant

I could tell you for sure if I could see it closer. But if I had to guess from that picture, I'd guess it was granite, and that the black flecks are mica crystals. Check out this picture of El Capitan granite from Yosemite, and compare for yourself.

I've eaten rare chicken before, but that was only because I can't grill worth a damn (I thought the chicken was done). That was before I discovered the joys of cooking thermometry. To be honest, I don't really know of any hard data on prevalence of Salmonella etc in duck versus chicken, but I would suspect that the incidence is similar. Ducks and chickens are closely related species and both are typically raised in large-scale farms with plenty of oppurtunity for contact with pathogen-carrying droppings.

From my google search, it seems firebrick can be a variety of different materials, from clay to silica (e.g. sand). My understanding is that firebrick is typically not very dense and is not meant to 'hold' heat (i.e. has a low heat content), while I think what you want for your pizza stone is something that holds a lot of heat, to stabilize the temp inside the oven.

Do you have acces to cinder blocks or a bunch of bricks? You can make a rectangular 'pit' with blocks, with the spit resting on the blocks.

I don't have a degree in geology, but I have studied geology for several years on my own, and would not be much concerned about the this possibility. Slate and marble are both sedimentary metamorphic rocks -- slate is the metamorphosed version of shale and marble the metamorphosed version of limestone. Metamorphosed rocks have been exposed to high pressures and or temperatures, and thus have very little internal pore space left, and thus very little capacity to hold water. I find it highly unlikely that any small amont of water held in pore spaces in these rocks could present any kind of health risk. EDIT to add that there are also very few places in the US were groundwater contamination is so bad that the small exposure you'd recieve from a pizza stone (probably >1ml) would produce an adverse effect.

Maybe you could rig something up with 4 or more smaller tiles on top of a baking sheet. You'd have to find some way to keep the surface level though.

It definitely would. Measure for measure, oil is going to make your cake seem much more moist.

While very true, this is a general issue with raw meats. It doesn't address why we shouldn't eat rare (inside or out!) chicken and what the difference is with another bird, like duck. ← What makes you think that chicken and duck are any different, in terms of how they have to be prepared? Are you under the impression that rare duck is safe while rare chicken is dangerous? If so, why?