tino27

I'd reconstitute them in boiling water and then cut them up and use them along with some nice fresh mushrooms and make a mushroom risotto. If you're feeling particularly adventurous, use barley instead of Arborio rice. It's absolutely delicious.

In general, using a cloche to cook bread isn't really that much different than just using a pizza stone in your oven. You'd still transfer the dough using a pizza peel. If you have an extremely delicate bread, you might want to do your final proof directly on the peel (with some course corn meal or flour between the dough and the peel). I normally proof my free-form breads seam side up on a heavily floured towel and then flip onto a floured peel to get them into the oven. I have never tried putting fully proofed bread into a cold cloche/oven and then heating it, but my gut instinct says that this wouldn't work how you are hoping it will.

Yes, you would put your fully proofed bread into the heated cloche.

I can't speak to the chicken or fish issue, but as for the bread, DEFINITELY pre-heat. The whole point of a cloche is that you have completely surrounded the dough with a evenly radiating material. And make sure you start the cloche in a cold oven. I'm assuming yours is earthenware. If you were to put the cold cloche in a hot oven, the temperature differential could crack it.

Thought this might answer a few questions. Norovirus Information Seems like a nasty little bugger.

I just checked out the recipe in question ... HOLY COW! No wonder you never had the dough come together ... it has over 100% hyrdration. 390 grams flour with 442 grams of water ... those are usually numbers you see when you want to create a sponge, not a dough. The focaccia dough I normally make has about a 70-72% hydration level. As someone suggested earlier, the recipe seems to be wrong. I'd also agree with checking out Bread Baker's Apprentice by Reinhart ... he has a lot of good recipes, although I've found that his doughs tend to be wetter (maybe I am using a different kind of flour than he did when developing the recipes), so I've had to cut back on the water / add extra bread flour to get things to turn out right. Good luck.

Anything with high fructose corn syrup. Anything with partially hydrogenated oils. Salad dressings. Mayonnaise. Bread. (In a pinch I'll buy a loaf, but the first two items still apply) Marinara/Meat sauces for pasta. Gnocchi. (Homemade is just so much better) Canned chili. Hummus. Actually, make that all dips in general. Heat-and-eat meals.

Fortunately, 11 batches in one day is the exception and not the rule. However, in a given week, I will normally go through between 3 and 4 batches of bread. Then again, this weekend I am baking bread for holiday baskets ... 6-7 batches in two days. :grin: One of these days, I'll actually make enough profit from the bread baking to be able to afford the Hobart. Of course, then the question arises of where to put it in my home kitchen.

I'll chime in her as I currently use the KA Pro 600. I actually bought my first one (uh, oh -- here comes the bad news ) back in August. As my avatar suggests, I make a LOT of bread. Almost immediately I noticed that whenever I was kneading a tougher dough, little metal shavings would inevitably find themselves on top of the dough hook attachment (the part that you attach to the post). Granted, the shavings never went into the dough itself, but I had to be extra careful when removing the bowel and the hook from the mixer to make sure my bread didn't end up "enriched". It wasn't until I went to cream some butter and sugar and suddenly metal shaving DID end up in the mix that I hit my limit. Since the mixer was still under warranty, I took it back to Williams-Sonoma and they gladly replaced the mixer with a new one. The new one doesn't have this problem. And I made 11 batches of bread in one day for Thanksgiving orders after getting the new one. That being said, neither the previous mixer or this new one gives me utmost confidence. It just seems to strain too much. The mixer has gotten warm, at worst, but has never tripped a thermal shutoff. But it just *sounds* like it's making too much of an effort. The first chance I have to snatch up a used Hobart 5 qt. mixer, I would certainly seize the opportunity. If you are using it primarily to mix up cookie/cake/whipped cream and an occasional batch of bread, I think the Pro 600 fits the bill well.

I'm sure there are a gajillion recipes out there for Mac & Cheese, but the basic method I was always taught was that you need to make a sauce Mornay (basic Bechamel with the addition of grated cheeses) and mix in the cooked macaroni in that. If you tried to use the cheese by itself, the consistency doesn't come out correctly. I think the other trick is to add the cheese a little at a time to the Bechamel, allowing it to incorporate fully before adding the next handful.

To add on to what srhcd said, wheatberries come in different varieties. Some berries have less protein and are used to make "soft" flours. The terms soft and hard are related to the amount of glutenin and gliadin (which combine to form gluten in the presence of water) present in the ground flour. More gluten is better for bread, less gluten is better for biscuits and cakes. All Purpose flour is a blending of flours to try and hit the entire spectrum of use. Like srhcd said, "Self-Rising" could potentially be applied to any milled flour with the addition of a leavening agent.

The one reference on Google I found when I was searching for the shelf life of thawed puff pastry said that you could refreeze it if you originally thawed it in the fridge, but that the final product wouldn't be as good. So, I'm not sure. If it were me, I'd just wrap it well, and stash it as far down in your fridge as possible until you're ready to cut and bake.

I would think the only problem would be how long puff pastry can last after it has been thawed without going bad. I would think overnight would certainly be okay. Making them today for Sunday, if you were that pressed for time, would probably be okay, too. As long as you kept the rolled dough well chilled.

Personally, what I would do is to thin the goat cheese with 2% or whole milk until it is a spreadable or pipeable consistency. Then, whip some heavy cream until it forms medium peaks. Fold in the whipped cream, 1/3 at a time, taking care to deflate it as little as possible. Sweeten to taste. Spoon into serving glasses, top with some caramelized pecans and a couple of slices of Granny Smith apple. Or maybe a drizzle of some caramel sauce. I think you are trying to combine different texture and flavor sensations -- salty, sweet, sour -- crunchy and creamy.

I'll throw in some ideas to your questions as well ... 1. Hydration Level - I generally hydrate my focaccia's to about 70-72% (that is, for every 1000g of flour, I use 700-720g of water) because I am trying to promote hole formation. Generally when I am kneading the dough in my KitchenAid mixer, the dough won't be sticking to the side of the bowl, but it will stick on the bottom of the bowl. Regardless of the hydration, the windowpane test is always a valid way to test for enough gluten formation. From what I can remember, my finished dough is not as dense as play-doh. 2. I, too, am a big fan of instant yeast. I almost never proof the yeast unless I'm worried that it might be past it's prime. When I do proof the yeast, I generally do it in 115 deg F water that has a little starch added to it. Instant yeast has the added benefit of being viable for quite a long time in an airtight container and stored in the fridge or freezer. 3. Like UnConundrum said, it does become a feel thing. For my fairly dense honey whole wheat loaves, where air pockets aren't a necessity, I don't have a problem almost fully degassing before shaping. For my French breads and focaccias, I'm a lot more gentle with the dough when I shape them. That being said, when I am doing multiple fermentations (two rises before final shaping), when I degas the dough between the first two fermentations, I usually do a pretty thorough job. I use a folding technique where I fold the dough from the outside edge of the bowl to the center of the dough. Hope that helps a little bit. Good luck with the baking.

Might this also be caused by an irregularity in the pan's density at one specific spot (especially since it is at the edge)? Maybe it is happening with the chocolate one, but because of the darker color, it just isn't noticable.

Since my kitchen rarely gets above 55 deg F during the winter, I will also take the pre-measured cream cheese and cut it into 1/2 - 1 pound blocks, put in on a microwave safe plate, and nuke the cream cheese on the LOWEST setting (I usually do 10%) for about 2-3 minutes. This is usually long enough to bring the temperature up to about 75-80 deg F.

Are there any other signs of things amiss? For instance, does the cheesecake "souffle" too much when baked in the oven? Because of the eggs in the batter, most cheesecakes will rise slightly while cooking in the oven, but by the time they are cooled to room temperature, they have fallen back to their pre-souffle level. In the past, when the batter was mixed too vigorously after the eggs were added, this translated into a cheesecake that souffled and then fell in the middle as it cooled. Perhaps you are experiencing this souffle reaction and are cooking the cheesecake just long enough that it essentially "sets" the cake so that as it cools, it doesn't fall at all, thus leaving the holes. Just a theory though. You might also want to post your basic recipe and cooking method (don't give away any secrets ). Perhaps an eGulleter can spot the culprit.

That other eGulleteer would be me -- the lamb shank was absolutely delicious. Fall off the bone, it was so tender. It was served with a lamb jus, a roasted eggplant ragout and some creamy goat cheese. The goat cheese did a great job of bridging the richness from the lamb shank and the acidity from the ragout. I was also the one who ordered the roasted beet salad ... it was absolutely delicious. There were two types of beets in the salad, and while they were both sweet and delicious (and decidedly un-beet-like), one was like eating candy, it was that sweet from the roasting process. It was served with more goat cheese and some walnuts. I'm also looking forward to finally trying Lolita this Friday as well. There are 8 of us going, and we are all looking forward to trying the brand new menu. Hopefully we can get some fantastic shots of the new menu and put them up for others to see.

A couple of things to add to the conversation. Typically, wetter doughs produce better air holes. Also, baking the bread in a hotter oven helps out the ovenspring as well. As for oil, many have mentioned the role of oils/fats in bread doughs, but I don't believe anyone has mentioned this one. It's not just the presence of oil in a recipe, but WHEN the oil is added. If you knead the bread dough for several minutes and then add the oil, your dough will have had a chance to form gluten. Adding the oil later will coat the already formed gluten strands. On the other hand, if you add the oil at the beginning, the oil will serve to inhibit the formation of gluten. This is most evident in a bread like brioche -- where if you add the butter at the beginning of the process, the result is cake-ier. If you add the butter after the gluten has developed, the result will be bread that has layers to it (kind of like a good biscuit). The oil also helps to extend the shelf life of the bread as well. All that being said, I use olive oil in my focaccia and I add it at the beginning during the mixing process. However, I do a pre-frement (a poolish) with 33% of the flour for about 12 hours beforehand, so there is plenty of gluten formed by the time I mix up my dough. Plus, the pre-ferment adds lots of lovely flavor.

I can see how one would add this stuff to a finished product -- mayo, dressing, dips, etc. Could you also use this to finish off a pan sauce ... e.g, in place of using cold butter to mont buerre?

I agree with davecap about the parts of the bird lying next to each other in the roasting pan won't get as brown, so rotation will definitely be necessary. As for amount of additional time ... even though you are doubling the mass, you won't necessarily double the time. I would think adding 50% to the original time might be a good place to start.

I'm guessing you don't want to make pasteurized eggs on your own?

I did a pistachio creme anglaise for a dinner party a while back as an accompanying sauce that turned out marvelously. It was a light green color and had the pistachio essence in it. IIRC, I ended up adding homemade pistachio butter to the egg/sugar base of the creme anglaise until it was the right color/flavor.

I am also a big fan of the sabayon sauce as a topping, both savory and sweet. I tend to switch out the white wine for whatever compliments the dish I am serving ... Frangelico, Amaretto, Grand Mariner, etc. Some Amaretto and ginger juice in place of the wine is a fantastic pairing and served over a nice earthy dessert like spiced cake would be quite nice. When I first started making sabayon, I did have a couple that split as they cooled. I learned that out of the saucepan, they go into a bowl over ice to cool them quickly. The other trick was to give the sauce a gentle but thorough stir every couple of minutes or so. I haven't had one split on me yet since then. I'm also a fan of the added whipped cream to gild the lily even more. It has the most amazing mouth feel -- so light and airy, but full of flavor. In fact, I've served it like this in a ice cream glass with some fresh macerated berries at dinner parties before to rave reviews.