MelissaH

This is my favorite lasagna. I usually do the variation with mushrooms, basically following it mostly verbatim (except that I usually build the lasagna in a glass pan, and skip the part about broiling at the end. Despite CI's warning about using only Italian fontina, I've decided that I don't really care for it, so we either use fontinella or mozzarella. Shallots can be scarce in these parts at this time of year, so I'll often sub plain old yellow onion of the kind that is grown in my area. And we don't usually have whole milk on hand; 2% works just fine).

I'm not sure if it's good or bad that apparently the sales cycle through, and many of the books that are currently cheap are ones I bought previously when they were cheap.

I think you may need to return to Joule (or Revel) on your own, so you don't have to share!

I soooooo wish I had the spare cash lying around to spring for one!

In my experience, if you half-fill the lasagna pan with hot tap water, add the noodles one by one, and let them soak about 5 minutes, you don't need to worry about it. When the 5 minutes are up, take the noodles out and place them on a clean kitchen towel in a single layer. Dump the water out of the pan, towel it dry, and you're good to go.

...$40.36 poorer.

About five years ago when we were visiting Seattle, we ate at Revel, which is a sister restaurant to Joule. Our meal there was amazing. Looks like Joule delivered for you just as well.

I'm totally intrigued by the idea of "butter fruit" in desserts. My only experience with it, as such, is hearsay: a friend was told by a woman from Brazil about a blended drink made from avocado, Maria cookies, milk, and ice.

If you're not wedded to the idea of a traditional lasagna, Cook's Illustrated did a tomatoless spinachy version several years ago. They're heretical enough to use cottage cheese spun in a food processor with an egg rather than ricotta, but somehow it works. They also use no-boil noodles, but soak them in hot tap water for a bit (and then let them rest on kitchen towels) so they're hydrated before going into the oven, and just need to heat. I've started using that technique for most of my lasagnas.

We got a nasty surprise when we were on sabbatical in Belgium. We decided to cook lentils for dinner one night, and although we boiled them for hours, they stayed unpleasantly crunchy. The next time we were at the supermarket, we explored the bottled water, reading the labels to find one with low calcium and magnesium. Once we started using that to cook lentils and other beans, we had no more problems (other than those associated with hauling bottled water from the supermarket to our flat).

You could also mix in a bit of honey or maple syrup. I really like the packets of Justin's almond butter with maple.

I haven't gotten to reading about the recipes yet, but is there any specific reason they give for using osmotolerant yeast? The recipe didn't look particularly sugary or fatty to me.

When it happens, be sure to buy a lottery ticket that day!

In my hands, that would be an easy way to make any dish no longer vegetarian-friendly!

I, too, use scissors to snip my dates into pieces. I've also learned that spraying the blades with non-stick spray, or wiping them with a light coating of oil, before I start can help keep the dates from sticking to the scissors.

I always forget how much I like dates until I eat something made with them. They aren't sexy, or beautiful, but oh man they're delicious. Bonus: they're so sweet that you don't usually need to add as much sugar to whatever they're going into.

You're reminding me of a past experience, where the airline (which one is no longer in my memory) neglected to tell me that they'd cancelled my flight from Tucson to wherever hub I was going through. I got to Arizona without a problem, but realized that there was an issue when I tried to check in on line for my flight home, and no flight from TUS to (hub) was listed, just (hub) to Syracuse. Apparently the cancellation had happened weeks if not months before, yet they never bothered to notify me! Nor did they ever tell me how I was supposed to get to the hub for my flight home. Since then, I've gotten anal about checking flight arrangements that are made way in advance, to make sure I don't get stuck again.

We have dug into the loaf, and are quite happy with it. I didn't realize at the time that my teenage infatuation with Pepperidge Farm sandwich bread was really a pullman pan infatuation. I'll be making this one again!

Five minutes with a 10-minute release was perfect. This was inspired by a post Google found for me but went off the rails early on: marble-sized potatoes were pressure-steamed for 5 minutes followed by 10-minute release to parcook, then smashed. I left the sugar and salt out of the lemon-dijon sauce, and tossed about 2/3 of the sauce with the smashed potatoes on the sheet pan. Broccoli florets got dumped onto the other half of the sheet pan and tossed with the rest of the sauce. I salted the potatoes more heavily than the broccoli, slid the pan into a 350 °F convection oven for 10 minutes, stirred the broccoli but didn't touch the potatoes, spun the pan around, and put it back in for another 5 minutes. I then grated gruyère on the plate just before serving (no parm on the sheet pan or anywhere else). It was a winner. The potatoes were good, but I'm thinking about a whole tray of the broccoli roasted with the sauce as a Thanksgiving side.

I can give you the ingredients, as published in the book: 350 g bread flour 315 g whole wheat flour 320 g plain kefir 120 g water 6 Tbsp (85 g) butter, melted and cooled 60 g honey 14 g instant yeast 30 g flax seeds 26 g sunflower seeds 20 g sesame seeds 20 g poppy seeds 20 g fine sea salt And I can tell you about the changes I made: When I fed my starter which is half water and half flour by mass, I fed only 120 g of it. The rest (210 g), which would ordinarily be discarded, went into the dough, subbing for 105 g of the bread flour and 105 g of the water. The WW flour I had was King Arthur white whole wheat, so that's what I used. I didn't have kefir in my fridge, but I did have plain full-fat (5%) Greek yogurt. I used about 200 g of yogurt, and made up the rest of the weight with more water. I was using a European packet of yeast, which contained 11 g. I didn't worry about the rest, figuring that even unfed sourdough starter (which I added mainly to have somewhere for it to go other than the trash, and to get a bit of extra flavor and keeping qualities) might boost the rise a bit. And if not, it would just take a little longer to rise. The dough seemed quite happy in my nice toasty utility room, where the water heater and boiler for my house's hot water heat, are located. I don't particularly care for flax seeds, and thus I don't have them in my house because I don't use them and then they go bad and I wonder why I bought the buggers in the first place. So for my seed mix, I used 25 g each of toasted sunflower seeds, raw pumpkin seeds (pepitas, the green ones), and toasted sesame seeds. No sea salt. I used Diamond Crystal kosher. For all that it matters. This recipe makes enough dough for a long pullman pan.

What about mirin? Does anyone have a source for non-cooking mirin (without a wallop of salt added) that will ship to me in New York State? I'm not close enough to any major city with a Chinatown, nor do I have plans to travel to one in the near future, to easily replenish my supply.

Bargain prices seem to be cycling through Joanne Chang's baking books. Up currently is Baking with Less Sugar, for $2.99 (US Prime).

Pullman loaf with sesame, sunflower, and pumpkin seeds. Recipe heavily influenced by one in Cenk Sönmezsoy’s new book The Artful Baker.

Amen to that!

We have a bag of the marble-sized potatoes. I was thinking that I'd parcook them and then smash, season, and crisp them to use like croutons in a potato soup tonight. You think maybe in a steamer basket, 5 minutes with quick release? Or less time with a 10-minute release?