tino27

A truer statement has never been said.

I did the same thing and came to the same conclusion. Not bad, not great. I do like Hardee's fries, however. Crispy on the outside without being greasy. As for posing nude, good for her. How many other models have done the same thing? As for marrying Salmon Rushdie, good for her. Whether she is his intellectual equal or not, sometimes it is interesting to see a couple who on the surface seem like a mismatch. Clearly THEY know why they are together, so why would anyone else care? I sometimes think that the people who live in the glossy magazines and in the electronic boxes we like to focus on so much are often treated as one-dimensional people. In reality, they are as three-dimensional as all of us reading this forum. As long as what Padma is doing isn't hurting anyone else, more power to her.

While I have plenty of my own alcohol-fueled concoctions, if I were to share lack of culinary genius, it would have to be my friend, Matt, who wins the honor. I came down to the house kitchen (fraternity house) late one evening to discover Matt, beer in hand, staring down at an omelet pan sitting on the flattop with eggs still runny as could be. I asked him what he was making and got the response, "Thhissh ish beer shcrambled eggsh. But they aren't cooking. I even added MORE beer." I realized two things: 1) Matt was serious drunk and 2) The flattop wasn't even on. No wonder they weren't cooking. So I suggested he use one of the burners and he just kept repeating, "Naahhhh, that won't work!" Finally, I decided to give a brother a hand, walked over and put the pan on a lit burner and within 30 seconds, he had his beer scrambled eggs. The look of utter amazement on his face was priceless, like I had just shown him the fabled city of Shangra-La or something. Naturally, he failed to remember any of this the next day when asked.

I'll triple the recommendation on giving yourself plenty of time. The website does not do the place justice as it is absolutely enormous. And the wonderful thing is that you can find not only hard-to-find ethnic items, but some really great deals as well. The last time I went, I only had about 90 minutes to look around and still didn't manage to get to every nook and cranny of that store.

Michael Symon.

Eliza, it depends on how much you are scaling up the recipe. If you are doubling or tripling the recipe, you are fairly safe to scale the yeast in the same amount. However, if you are scaling the recipe by a factor of 10, say, you wouldn't need 10 times the amount of yeast to get the same result. In fact, the dough might be too active if you did that.

slkinsey -- Why no salt? Because of the long 5 day retardation time? When you go to eat the final product, isn't the pizza crust a little flat tasting without any salt?

But is that 340 grams of dough, or 340 grams of bread?

I think it's one thing to shill for a product you have never used (or eaten in this case). If she can honestly stand there and say that she has fond memories of the burger growing up, then I have no problem with that. I mean, even in the world of fine dining, there is considerable disagreement to what is the ultimate culinary experience. If Padma was shilling for Le Bernardin, would it be less egregious because it is Le Bernardin and not Carl Jr.'s/Hardee's? Not everyone likes the food or the experience at Le Bernardin. Just like not everyone likes the food or the experience at Hardee's. Which is why choice exists.

Oh, good, no one has mentioned the convenience food I happened to find. Today. On April 1st. Squeez Bacon. I don't know whether to laugh, cry, or swallow that little bit of throw-up that just made it's way up. Plus it's got a shelf-life of 12 years without refrigeration.

Having not been to Spain myself, would it be too much of a stretch to assume that Spanish grocery stores stock fresher yeast that might be used to verify if it was the SAF that was the problem? You might be able to either rule out the yeast or narrow in on it as the culprit.

At the same time, the contestants seem to be in this "Comedy of Errors" in terms of the decisions they keep making. I'm glad it's not another Hell's Kitchen type of screamfest (and not the laughing kind), but when I watch this show, I feel like I'm watching the Hindenburg burn up, over and over again and just can't look away.

Egg salad with capers and/or chives Hummos with roasted red peppers, alfalfa sprouts, and some red onion Goat cheese (cut with cream cheese for spreadability) and duxelle (mushrooms, shallots, herbs) Are you going to assemble the sandwiches right before you serve them or earlier in the morning? I'd be worried the bread might go stale (or soggy from the fillings) if you make them too far in advance.

Have you thought of maybe steeping the cardamom in the cream for 15 to 20 minutes before continuing on with the recipe? Maybe giving it a chance to bloom before combining with the sugar and the eggs. I also think that freshly crushed cardamom would be the way to go over powdered. As with most spices, once you powder it, the essential oils dissipate quickly.

Part of the problem I discovered when rolling sushi ahead of time for a party was that the nori just doesn't stay crisp (it absorbs the moisture from the rice) and gets extremely chewy by the time you are serving it. If I serve sushi at an event now, it is done a la minute. I agree with the other posters about individual sushi kits with pre-portioned ingredients. You may also want to have some less authentic, but more kid friendly fillings around just in case you have some wary eaters.

My guess would be tradition. The last head baker I worked for used only fresh yeast (while I prefer instant in my personal breads). When I asked him about this preference, he certainly knew about other types besides fresh, but that was what they taught at his culinary school and that was what all the bread formulas were already written to use, so that's what we used. Isabelle -- Are you sure you used the right ratio from fresh:instant yeast in your white bread? Could there also have been a temperature or humidity difference between the two batches? I am often baking at someone else's house and many times the only yeast available is something other than instant. As long as I convert the amounts correctly, the breads always take similar amounts of time. When I teach bread classes, I always bring all three types to class to demonstrate to students that they shouldn't feel locked in to only one type of yeast if others are available.

They are interchangeable in recipes, but not a 1:1 ratio. The problem with fresh yeast is that unless you are baking a lot of bread (as in a bakery), it can be prohibitively expensive when compared to dried yeast (either Active Dry or Instant). At my supermarket, a 57g block of fresh yeast is roughly $2-$2.49, depending on the day. That will give me roughly 3-4 batches of bread (9-12 loaves overall). At Sam's Club, I can buy 2 one pound hermetically sealed sacks of instant yeast for $4. Because instant yeast is more potent, only 1/3 the amount of fresh yeast is needed. So, assuming 20 grams of fresh is needed per batch, only 7 grams is needed for instant. 454 grams per pound / 7 grams per batch = 65 batches of bread per pound of yeast. Plus, you can keep your dry yeast in a sealed container in the fridge for quite a long time (I usually go through a pound of dry yeast in about 9 months or so). Active Dry doesn't use the same 1/3 conversion that Instant does, but it is close. As far as quality of the finished product, I've never noticed a difference when switching between the two. As long as I do the proper conversion ratio from one to the other, my recipes have always come out fine.

Methinks this might be for three reasons, really. 1) Form factor of a mobile device. Designing a good UI (user interface) for a handheld device is often difficult to do correctly. 2) Longevity of device. Assuming the devices were wireless, you would have to maintain a consistent connection to a base station. This would most likely require wi-fi (most likely) or something like Bluetooth. Both of which are a pretty consistent drain on the battery. 2a) To make matters worse, you'd want to ensure the security of those transmissions and/or prevent unauthorized connections to the base station. Encrypted data means more data to transmit which drains the battery even quicker. 3) Durability. Dropping an order pad from waist height doesn't do a whole lot of damage. Most mobile devices that haven't been ruggedized don't fare as well. All that being said, I would actually find it kind of cool to find a place that did this. Not to mention if the UI was done correctly, you could allow the server to associate several people's meals under a single check. This way, when you and 7 of your friends go out together, you could get all of the "which check gets which entree" silliness out of the way during the ordering process.

While my tip certainly won't increase if you manage to remember the entire order, it will certainly decrease if you get it wrong. To me this is no different than your business associate who attends meetings and never takes any notes. Some people just have the knack for chunking information very efficiently.

I, too, love sriracha. It goes on just about anything Vietnamese. I also have a spicy peanut sauce that I serve with chicken that uses it. I've used it at parties before with chicken strips that were skewered and baked. It is essentially: * smooth peanut butter * peanut oil to thin out the peanut butter * sriracha * ginger * sesame oil * soy sauce * rice wine vinegar * lemon juice * salt There is no real recipe, just add things to taste. Be careful with the sesame oil as that is a very strong flavor. A little bit goes a long way.

No problem. When I say scaling out, I am referring to one thing explicitly and one thing implicitly. Explicitly I am referring to using a scale to weigh out my ingredients. Weighing out your ingredients is the absolutely surest way to ensure consistency from batch to batch. Implicitly I am referring to doing my mise en place for the recipe. For simple recipes, like French bread doughs where there are 4 or 5 ingredients, it isn't too hard to remember if you added all the ingredients. In more complex recipes where the number of ingredients can top a dozen, measuring everything out in its own little container is a great way to confirm you've remembered it all before dumping it into one big bowl. For the home baker, scaling out the ingredients the night before is more often than not just a way to avoid having to do math early the next morning before that second cup of coffee has kicked in. For the professional baker, towards the end of your shift you would scale out the ingredients for the following day's production. Then when the next shift started, whomever was working would just use your pre-measured ingredients. It's a way of shifting some of the work so you can hit the ground running. Whether you scale the night before or do it right before you make your dough, there would be no flavor difference between the two.

It is true that if the yeast comes in contact with the salt, it can kill many yeast cells. In a fully mixed dough, salt is present for at least two reasons: 1) Flavor 2) To retard the yeast from growing too quickly There are some other reasons why salt is important, but we'll save those for another time. There are two schools of thought on when to add the yeast. The first is to add all the ingredients into the bowl and then add the liquid (water). The other is to add everything to the bowl EXCEPT for the salt, mix and knead for almost the full amount of time and then add the salt during the last minute or so of kneading. This is called (or at least I was told it was called) the "delayed salt method" for hopefully obvious reasons. If you do the delayed salt method, you don't have to worry about killing any yeast cells because by the time you add the salt, there is a whole bunch of flour and water to keep the salt from directly touching the yeast cells. If you want to add the salt at the beginning of the process, my advice would be to add 1/2 the flour to your bowl, then add the yeast, then add the other 1/2 of the flour covering the yeast, and put the salt on top. And in fact, for the recipes that I do that does not call for the delayed salt method, this is how I do it and it always works just fine. One thing to note though is that unless you are scaling out your ingredients into your bowl and letting it sit for a significant period of time (like, say, overnight), the 2 minutes that the two might come into contact is probably going to have a minimal impact on the yeast. So if you are scaling and mixing right away, just placing the salt and the yeast on opposite sides of the bowl is probably all you will need to do. If you are scaling out the dry ingredients the night before, then you may want to make absolutely sure that there is no contact.

This brings up an interesting question that I've often thought about. If I am leaving you a substandard tip for substandard service, does it behoove me to explain the reason to my server in the hopes that he or she can improve? I don't make it a common practice, but I have in the past talked to my server at the conclusion of my meal and explained where I thought service might have been off. I always make sure I ask if they would like some constructive criticism before delivering my critique. I guess part of me also judges whether I think that my server would be open to this type of discussion before pursuing it.

You never actually specified what *kind* of yeast you are using. I personally buy instant yeast (different from Active Dry) that come in 1 lb hermetically sealed foil pouches from a place like Sam's Club. They are incredibly inexpensive and will last in the fridge or freezer for well after the "expiration date" that they print on the package (I've had some go for up to 6 months after the expiration date). Fresh yeast is a much more perishable product and must be used up fairly quickly, even if wrapped well and refrigerated. I usually won't bother with cake yeast if it's going to be around for more than 2 weeks from the time I buy it. You can proof your yeast with a bit of starch, either potato starch or flour. Water temperature is fine, although you ideally want to proof the yeast at 110-115° F. If you do decide to switch from one form of yeast to another, it is not a 1:1 substitution. PM me or post your request on this thread about what type you are going from and to and someone can tell you how to convert.

Two words: Heating Pad During the winter I use a standard heating pad for both my pre-ferments (poolish) and the final dough. Even the ones that turn off after two hours (for my poolish) are generally enough to get the yeasties going. You'll just want to use a container that is wide at the bottom instead of narrow (maximize the surface contact) for bulk fermentation. I use these containers I bought at Sam's Club and they seem to do the trick nicely. Plus they are graduated so you can see how much your dough has risen. You could also build yourself an inexpensive proofing box so that you could control the temperature and humidity a little more accurately, but that is probably more effort than you will need to correct this situation.