tino27

Uh, oh ... am I doing something wrong? When I make steel cut oats, I toast them slightly in a dry pan, add the appropriate amount of liquid (which usually comes to a rapid bowl when hitting a dry pan), slap on the lid and turn the burner down to the barest simmer for 18-20 minutes. No stirring at all until the end when I add in any salt or other goodies. Is my oatmeal not being all it could be?

Try not to use too much bench flour when you are shaping your loaves. If the two seams have too much flour, they won't stick to eat other. When sealing a seam, I also use the heel of my palm to firmly press together the seam. This is usually enough pressure to completely seal it. Finally, always bake the loaf with the seam side down. If the seam is up, it's more likely to split.

azureus/lperry -- yep, that seems to be what I have. Thank you!! Any thoughts on long term preservation? My neighbor has a ton of these and doesn't know what to do with them.

I didn't want to cut into the only one that my friend gave me (in case I get that camera working again), but I just called and asked my neighbor and she said that the seeds were white. Does that help?

Caveat: I'm sorry, but my digital camera is on the blitz. As soon as I can get a photo, I'll post one on-line. My neighbor gave me a basket of goodies from her garden and amongst them was appears to be a chili pepper. It is a bright orange-red and is about the size of a habanero. However, it also has these "wings" or "petals" (3 of them) that come out of the side of the pepper and point upwards towards the tip. My neighbor had no idea what it was other than she said when she nibbled just the outer flesh, it was sweet, but when she got to the veins and seeds, it was very spicy. I've looked up photos of habaneros and scotch bonnets and other than the size and color matching, nothing had these "wings". Any thoughts on what I might have in my possession? Could I have a habanero with a natural mutation to it? Feel free to post any links to photos you find on the web as that may help narrow down the pepper. Also, other than using them in cooking right now, any thoughts on what my friend could do to preserve all of these chili peppers (she has a ton of them)? I thought about pepper jelly, but wasn't sure if there might be other options, too. Thanks!!

I don't want to hijack the topic either, but I will say that for bread, time = flavor. An overnight rise in the fridge is a very common way of adding flavor to the finished product. Good luck with your baking.

Thanks, but I'm still not sure, then, how to deal with chiantiglace's posted formula (100%, 50%, 33%). Your formula hits on with the chart, but chiantiglace's doesn't (at least not as I'm understanding the formula); yet it seems to be acceptable. How is that? Thanks, Starkman ← I assume you are talking about the 40% vs. 50% difference? Every reference I have come across has listed 40% for fresh->active dry conversion. Some people may use 50% because it is easier in their heads to divide an amount in 1/2 (50%) than to try and multiply it by 2/5 (40%). Honestly I think it may just be more convenience than anything else. That's one of the nice things about fresh->instant conversion: simply divide by 3.

Yeah, the event I am planning for is a couple of months away. I think that doing a test batch is an excellent idea.

Marlene, what kind of shelf life do you get when you freeze them?

I am planning on doing a homemade gnocchi dish for an upcoming event. I love to make the gnocchi from scratch, but obviously it's a bit of a time consuming process and you more or less have to boil them within a very short period of time after making them. Because I will need to prepare a large number of servings I was trying to wrap my head around how to do this. So here is what I was thinking. After shaping the individual gnocchi, I would lay them out in a single layer on a sheet pan and freeze them uncooked. Then I would transfer to a freezer bag for storage until the event. At the event, I simply throw them, still frozen, right into the boiling water and then cook them until they float. I am prepared that they might lose a minimal amount of texture, but unless this presents a major problem, are there any other tips or tricks or problems anyone can foresee? By the way, my gnocchi recipe is fairly standard: riced cooked potatoes, AP flour, eggs, salt & pepper.

Since the sacks you get of instant yeast are hermetically sealed, I simply leave unopened sacks on my pantry shelf (where it is cool). Once I open a sack of instant yeast, it immediately gets placed into an airtight container and placed in either the lower portion of my refrigerator or my freezer. Doing this I have been able to use the yeast for months after the expiration date. I suspect you might even get a year past the expiration date. You do not need to bring the yeast to room temperature first. For 1000g of flour, you are more than likely adding about 6-7g of instant yeast and anywhere from 600-800g of at least room temperature water. So that 7g of yeast will warm up very quickly. The thing about bread dough and yeast in particular is that it is a living thing. How fast the yeast multiply depend on hydration of the dough, the ambient air temperature, and the age of the yeast. I'm not sure where you are posting from, but here in Ohio, the air temperature has dropped from an average high of 80 deg F to 60 deg F. Let me tell you, that will greatly affect how fast the dough rises. As to how to deal with the issue, I would definitely NOT add more yeast to compensate. That will only lead to your finished breads tasting too "yeasty". If your kitchen is cooler, you have two choices: give the dough additional time or find a warm spot to rest the bowl with the dough in it. I've often employed an electric heating pad in the past if I was pressed for time. You could also pre-heat your oven for a very short period of time at it's lowest setting and then place the bowl in there after turning off the oven.

Oops! NOW I see what you meant. That is very interesting.

Why?

I'm guessing you would place the perforated pans on top of something else to catch the drips? I can't imagine cleaning up sticky syrup that has dripped onto shelves or other products below the cakes would be much fun to clean up.

Sorry, I forgot to add in my previous post that I think it surprises a lot of people that you can cook really quality meals out of their pans and using their stove. I've had so many people tell me that they could never cook as well as I do because they don't have the Henckel knives and the Calphalon pans. Then I show up at their home and use their own equipment to cook them something tasty and show them that good equipment can make you a better cook, but even with crappy equipment, technique will take you pretty far to being a good cook.

I have no qualms anymore about bringing my knife roll with me when I cook someplace other than my own kitchen. And when people find that I cater on the side, they almost expect that I'd have my own knives with me. The one thing I have started keeping in my car is an extra cutting board. I don't know when glass cutting boards came into fashion, but they should be banned. Completely. I will agree that it can be frustrating missing some of the other basics: instant read thermometer, salt, pepper, proper tongs, a wooden spoon (that one threw me -- doesn't EVERYBODY have at least one wooden spoon?). I've found that over the years if there are spots that I cook at often (my mother's, grandmother's, friend's cottage), I tend to "gift" a lot of the equipment that I use there. That being said, these people also tend to be open to learning something new, so I'm always willing to help them learn a proper technique or use a proper tool. Imagine my surprise when I got a call from my mother at Christmas time asking me what temperature to cook the ham to using the instant read thermometer I had given her for Thanksgiving!! But there are definitely impromptu situations where I don't have any tools with me and have to use what the host has. Best policy: don't complain because there is nothing that can be done anyway.

You realize, of course, that your 9.25x12.75 pan actually gives you 0.9 sq. in more area than a 9x13 would?

Or Irish.

If you use quarry tiles, make sure they are UNGLAZED!! No need to kill your guests with the wrong kind of tile. I agree about adding thermal mass and a long pre-heat ... it will ensure a very evenness in temperature. I keep a full-size pizza stone in my electric oven no matter what I am baking and it works very well.

I hate to say it, but I learned from my mil that you can in fact wash plastic disposable dishes and utensils in the top rack of the dishwasher. I know, because she reused all the plastic plates and forks from her daughters wedding several times. (I'd get in trouble for throwing them away...) ← All I have to say is

The flutes were brought in by the event planner (not my caterer friend). Did we wash them? No. Were they reused? I hope not, but I don't really know.

So, I'm helping my friend cater a swanky mother's day brunch hosted at this fabulous house. They rented very nice china, a silver-plated coffee urn, you get the idea. The event planner decided that they would start the brunch with mimosas for all of the attendees. Instead of renting champagne flutes, she decided to buy the cheap disposable plastic ones. Fine, whatever. As people finish their mimosas, my friend and I collect the glasses and toss them in the garbage bin. The ladies have now mostly moved on to eating the brunch items that we've placed in the main dining room. The event planner, who just now has a small chance to come back to the kitchen (and our staging area), walks in with her champagne flute and asks what we did with the rest of the used flutes. After telling her that we threw them in the garbage, she shakes her head back and forth and says, "Oh, no, no. I think we'd like to use them again. Please retrieve all the ones you've thrown away." I look at my friend, the caterer, and she looks at me. I wait to see what she says (it was her event after all). "Certainly!" my friend says. And so she and I spent the next twenty minutes digging through the garbage collecting used plastic champagne flutes. 1) You're willing to rent fine china and silver plated coffee earns, but too cheap to rent real champagne flutes? 2) You can't put the plastic flutes through a dishwasher, they'd melt. You're telling me that someone is going to HAND WASH 75 plastic flutes? 3) You're actually going to ask people to dig through the garbage for you ... for used plastic glasses? It's not like someone's diamond ring was accidentally thrown away.

LOL!! What on earth does that phrase mean?

You probably only need to worry about things with eggs or dairy in them.

Randi, check out this link for cooking with Saran wrap ... clicky