HungryC

No, don't add dough. Add flour and water; stir to ensure all of the flour is hydrated, then leave it at room temperature for 24 hours. Discard a portion of it, and feed it (just flour and wter) again. Keep it on a daily feeding schedule until it will reliably double at room temperature in 4-8 hours. Wiping down the sides of the container each time you discard/feed will allow you to "see" that it has doubled...you can feed it bread flour, all purpose flour, or even whole wheat or rye (or a mixture, if that's what you like). Once it is reliably doubling, you can reduce the feeding schedule, provided that you refrigerate the starter. I keep my 100% hydration starter in the fridge, and I feed it two or three times before I plan to bake. It survives happily for weeks without feeding. I have neglected it for as long as 3 months (I was able to revive it) and I inadvertently gave most of it away a few weeks ago. I had just smears of it left clinging to the container, but I fed it anyway and the culture was still around. After 2 feedings, it was a big happy bowlful again. When feeding it, try to feed it equal parts by weight of flour and water (which makes it 100% hydration). Various recipes call for starters of varying hydrations, and converting it to the percentage you need is simple if you start with 100% hydration starter.

If the starter was only 4 days old, then it was likely far too weak to raise a loaf of bread. Just because a starter is bubbly doesn't mean it has a sufficient yeast population to raise bread. I'd keep feeding that starter daily for at least two weeks before trying again. In my experience, the initial bubbling within 2-4 days is NOT yeast, but leuconostoc or other bacteria that mimic yeast's bubbling. When the starter reliably doubles in size within 4-6 hours after feeding, you know it's sufficiently active to raise a loaf of bread.

Dansko for me, in the lower-heel styles. the Pro clogs are favored by some, but the heel is too high for me & my aching lower back. The women's Arcadia line fits me best: http://www.dansko.com/Womens/Footwear/Collections/Arcadia/

How tightly sealed was your container? I'm baking 2-3 Tartine loaves a week as of late, and I've noticed that the dough "sweats" a bit at room temp when in a tightly covered container. At times, I ferment it in an open bowl, covered by just a towel. Other times I used a tight-sealing Cambro container...when my kitchen is on the warm side, I'll definitely see some water collecting on the underside of the lid and running down the sides of the container. I (perhaps wrongly) assumed it is just ambient humidity condensing inside the warm container--in the more open container, the moisture doesn't build up.

The New Yorker did a profile of her a while back: http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2011/05/09/110509fa_fact_fortini I'm not in the target demo for her blog...the food is at the (mediocre) community-cookbook level. Nothing wrong with that, but I don't need to get it from someone 1,000 miles away when I can talk to my neighbors. But kudos to her for managing to swing a blog, a book deal, and now a TV show. Just 'cause I don't enjoy her faux-folksy food & tone doesn't mean she won't find a wider audience on TV.

On the homemade front: pralines made w/fresh pecans, gateau de sirop from this season's cane syrup, freshly dried file for gumbo. Wild teal ducks...

Can't help you with the proof box, but I'm teaching a basic yeast baking class to adults right now. 2.5 hours isn't sufficient to do much start-to-finish baking in class, so I figured out a few workarounds. In the first class, we focus on mixing, kneading, proofing, and shaping basic white sandwich bread. It allows students to get their hands into the dough, and they brought home the shaped breads to bake in their own ovens. (Alternatively, you could bake the breads after class and the students can pick them up later.) For tonight's class, the students will start off learning to shape a lean dough (I made the dough yesterday; "classic french bread" from Reinhart's Artisan Breads Every Day). Then, they'll shape a sweet braided, filled bread dough I made yesterday (it is the raspberry filled braid from Hensperger's The Bread Bible & required an overnight rise), which has a second rise of just 45 minutes. While the shaped loaves rise, we will mix a low-yeast, stretched & folded french bread dough. Once mixed, the dough goes into a rising bucket & is refrigerated for up to 4 days. Again, they can take it home or if you see them again within the 4 days, they can do the shaping/baking within the 4 day window. Third objective for the class is to discuss wild yeasts & begin a wild-yeast sourdough culture. In the third class, we'll do an enriched focaccia, again from Hensperger, that takes just 1 hr 45 minutes, so we'll do it from start to finish in class. Will also do pizza shaping. All of this is a long-winded way of saying that you can combine kneading, shaping, and baking in the same short class if you pre-make some of the dough. Let the students mix & knead the dough, then have the same dough premade at later stage. They can move on to shaping & then you can have some lecture time while the shaped dough proofs. Good luck...

I don't think this is a very accurate description of the choices. It's more like: Leave work at 5:30 so you can pick up the kids by 6:00. Unless you've got a fully stocked pantry and have planned menus and done all the shopping for the week, stop at a market to pick up the items you need to make dinner. 20-40 minutes later, get home, give the kids a snack so they stop whining, and start dinner. 30-60 minutes later, serve dinner. So you're eating some time between 7:30 and 8:00. Clean up the kitchen. OR Leave work at 5:30 so you can pick up the kids by 6:00. Stop at the drive-thru window of the fast food place on the way home. 20-30 minutes later, get home, serve dinner. I'm not saying that the second choice is better, but it's very much more convenient. For people who don't truly enjoy cooking, it's even more tempting. This is a perfect example to support my point about basic home economics training. If a person is running a household with children in addition to working full time, surely this person has figured out that he/she MUST shop on a weekly or every other week basis: why would you choose to continually stress yourself in the area of meal planning? You need to have a regular rotation of simple meals, with all of the ingredients on hand, and you MUST get those kids into the kitchen to help. I was raised by two working parents who did not feed us fast food. I learned to cook, mostly as a latchkey kid assisted by older siblings, following the lists left for us by our parents. We knew how to make basic dishes before we made it to middle school. There is nothing wrong with scrambled eggs and rice for dinner, accompanied by steamed broccoli. Or red beans and rice and a tossed salad. I and most people's older elementary school-age kids can prep and serve such meals in less time than it takes to stop for takeout. So many people have deeply rooted food insecurities: purchased food is somehow better, more American, more aspirational than beans & tortillas/eggs & rice/tuna casserole/other basic simple cuisine. They want to outsource cooking, just like they've outsourced nail care and car cleaning (two things almost no one paid for in my suburban 70s childhood).

I think Bittman's preaching the truth: eating out used to be a treat, adventure, or celebration for Americans. Today, restaurants have become home meal replacements. The nutritional and resulting health care costs of this seismic shift will be an enormous economic burden in the coming decades. If you have time to wait in line at a fast food place, you have time to boil an egg and make a piece of toast. Can we PLEASE get home economics (the food kind: budgeting, shopping, meal-planning, basic cooking) back into the curriculum? Apparently schools need to take it on as parents are failing their kids woefully in this department.

RE: black vs light colored enamel, I like the lighter colored stuff. Easier to tell when it's clean.

I've always gone the bubble-wrap route myself. But why toss it away? Unwound from the beverage packaging, it is easily re-rolled and stored for future use (eBay sales, etc). I have a bunch tucked away, with the wrapping paper, gift bags, and scissors.

My fallback is something that's already cooked: I have a freezer full of chili, gumbo, bean soups, etc. Most of these are easy to "stretch" a bit, go well with bread/crackers/chips on the side for the hungry ppl who always want more, and can be bolstered with a salad course to start.

Spot on about the regional specialties....here in south Louisiana, we have a fine charcuterie tradition, but everything is either hot-smoked (tasso, andouille, etc) or made for immediate consumption (boudins blanc & rouge, headcheese). No air-cured stuff in these parts: while we do get a few cool-enough stretches in winter, it's always humid and we have insects that would give the old-world masters nightmares.

Jeff Foxworthy did a bit quite a few years ago on "the cleaning power of ranch dressing"....smear ranch dressing on item to be cleaned, and 1,000 people will magically show up and lick your car/boat/house clean.

Basic homemade pain perdu starts with stale french bread---I'm talking about the airy south Louisiana version that's like a bahn mi roll--sliced thickly and dipped into a milky egg wash, then quickly cooked in a little butter. I like it fairly dry on the inside, so I don't soak, I just give it a quick dip. Fresh nutmeg grated into the egg wash is good, as is a little vanilla extract. I serve it sprinkled with chopped pecans and drizzled with Steen's cane syrup.

Depending on the strength of your culture, it should be fine for a day or two. The problem is not whether the yeast will be sufficient to raise the bread, but rather that it will become increasingly sour.

That's why I use the Cento passata...it is seedless, yet not watery like most chopped or crushed tomatoes.

once well-established, a culture can be surprisingly resilient. If you're not feeding it every day, then the culture should definitely be refrigerated. But the feeding schedule is determined, in part, by the sort of bread you're baking. I routinely use a starter fed 7 to 10 days prior when building the leaven for Tartine bread. It doesn't matter that the starter isn't freshly fed, I've learned, because of the 1)small proportion of starter (1 T) used in the leaven, and 2)the leaven's 8-12 hours rest at room temperature. The dough itself goes for 8 hours at room temp, so the wee yeasties have plenty of time of grow. On the other hand, if I'm baking a "faster" loaf, the starter needs to be refreshed much closer to the time of use. Below: Tartine loaf whose leaven step was made with a starter that hadn't been fed in 2 weeks, and a photo of the open crumb.

The very thought of a $20 pizza makes me appreciate my local napoletana vera joint (not yet certified, but working on it) that turns out a perfect pie for $11-14. Sometimes I forget how (relatively) inexpensive food is 'round these parts.

Cento does sell DOP certified San Marzano tomatoes....though not in my preferred, reclosable glass jar packaging (the passata is indeed not DOP). Price for the DOP Cento is around $5 for a 28-oz can.

I'm not sure that's a legitimate San Marzano tomato product. I'd be interested to hear a careful reading of the label. The passata label says "certified San Marzano tomatoes" and product of Italy prominently on front. (Not all Cento canned tomatoes are San Marzano.) Link to Cento brands San Marzano page: http://www.cento.com/sanmarzano/sanmarzano.html I'm a big fan of the passata; I use it straight from the jar as a pizza "sauce", and it is dead-on for a Roman-style "pizza rossa" topping. ETA: picture of a pizza w/Caputo 00 crust, passata, and fiori di latte (slightly overcooked the cheese)

A smaller feeding along the same ratio is fine. I keep my starter at 100% hydration (fed w/equal parts water & flour) because it makes the math easier....if I need to build it into a different hydration, it's lots simpler than converting.

Wow--you need to find a less expensive market. Cento's San Marzano tomato passata is around $3.50 for a 24 oz glass bottle, and King Arthur flour is less than $5 for 5lbs (even higher-gluten bread flour, though if you want KA's 00 clone, you'll pay a bit more per pound). If it's the cheese that's breaking the bank, well, pizza marinara (with nothing more than sliced garlic and a sprinkle of oregano) is better than a chees'd up pie any day

I have a stainless steel sink, and coffee stains it. My better half is perpetually tossing out the dregs of his (sugared) coffee, or leaving a sprinkling of grounds, and I expend much Bar Keep's Friend getting the brownish stains out of it.

I think it's a mechanical solution to salt clumping. Standard salt will definitely clump in a shaker in humid climates. The rice grains seem to prevent big hunks of salt from forming, and furthermore, you can vigorously shake up a salt & rice filled shaker to make the salt flow freely again.