dougal

Amazon UK are still expecting to dispatch my order on the 4th of October.

Thank you for sharing that information. Its what makes eGullet worthwhile. The book looks to have lots of good stuff, but glancing through a couple of the chapters, there are a few typos and such. A lot of effort has clearly gone into the 'look' of the thing ... I look forward to studying it properly!

Really, its much simpler (and thus quicker) to use a cheap eBay PID controller module (with autotune) rather than to build and program such a thing yourself, even starting with the Arduino platform. If you aim for a heated waterbath with base heat (in the style of the Sous Vide Supreme products) rather than a circulator that can be used in any pan, you make things much simpler for yourself. A non-shallow bath with well-spread base heat doesn't need constant stirring/agitation/pumping. The modular approach leads people to buy rice cookers and such -I have a 7 US Gallon tea-urn {water boiler} - as the bath + heater element (thereby taking out a lot of mains electricity + water safety/sealing/robustness concerns). Naturally, its important that such a unit be completely dumb, totally lacking its own electronic smarts. A crude mechanical thermostat is no bad thing, since it can be set a little high and used as an over-temperature safety cutout. I'd suggest you find a water-heating-vessel, a Solid State Relay (eBay again?) and a PID module that both works with your choice of immersible temperature probe and has an SSR drive output. Go with that and get cooking. THEN, if you have partitioned the hardware appropriately, you could swap in your homebrew Arduino-based controller to command the SSR in place of the bought-in module anytime you wanted to experiment. One possible benefit to a homebrew design could be the ability to use multiple temperature sensors, distributed around/throughout the bath, and have the controller 'intelligently' deal with non-uniformity in the bath. However, since the optimum PID terms are going to be different for stirred/unstirred conditions, this could be creating a significant control problem. But maybe that's what you are looking for?

Hmmm ... I find it a bit intimidating actually. Also somehow, I felt it was written as "Volume 2" and I wondered what I might have missed by not seeing Volume 1. I felt late to the class! Learning resource? Its format is closer to pure "recipe collection" rather than "technique tutorial followed by usage examples". But, yes, the recipes are immensely detailed. The specification of US-specific ingredients (Wondra, etc) was recognised, and alternatives suggested. The UK edition even gives metric weights. It would be an impressive-looking gift. But, in a 'French Laundry' sort of way, the illustrated perfection, and the number (and detailed prescription) of the instructions combine to give an "on a pedestal" impression. I suppose its about baking cakes to be displayed ... on a pedestal. A half-way house between this and Nigella's utterly approachable cake book (tongue in cheek title: "How to be a Domestic Goddess") is Eric Lanlard's "Home Bake" http://www.amazon.co.uk/Home-Bake-Eric-Lanlard/dp/1845335716/ which I have found both instructive and approachable. He worked for the Roux brothers for 5 years before becoming an independent celebrity patissier; he knows his stuff. BUT its nothing like as impressive as a gift!

No your single stack is not FIFO. The first plate into the stack (on the bottom) is the last one out, not the first. Your last plate in, on the top of the pile, is the first one out. Hence your stack is LIFO (last in, first out), the exact opposite of FIFO! FIFO is what you would like to be happening, and it isn't! I saw an advert for a squeezy sauce bottle that promised FIFO instead of LIFO. Using the sauce in rotation, rather than letting some go very old in the bottom of the bottle is more critical than with the plates. The FIFO bottle (using the oldest, first-in, sauce first, rather than the newest, last-in) has a nozzle on one end and a filler cap at the other end. http://www.nisbets.co.uk/products/productdetail.asp?productCode=CF949 Regarding the plates, I'd suggest, just occasionally, taking approximately the bottom half of the stack out of the cupboard just before you empty the dishwasher (when the stack is small and light), and put the old bottom ones back on the top of the pile after you've stacked the newly washed ones. Do it at random occasions, moving a variable number of plates, and you should randomise the stack order, thereby evening out the usage.

Announcement of a new book by Blumenthal, due October 2011 in the UK. (Amazon UK are taking pre-orders, currently at £21.) From the publisher's blurb, it sounds like it might just be 'MC for the rest of us'. Hey, it has a section on sv! And at 432 A4-sized pages, its not going to be lightweight. http://www.bloomsbury.com/Heston-Blumenthal-at-Home/Heston-Blumenthal/books/details/9781408804407

Well, you can see galvanic corrosion between stainless steel and carbon steel, but I strongly doubt that would matter in this application, since the parts are not stored in contact with one another and so are only in contact for a brief period during use. My blade actually IS stainless, it's just the plates that are carbon steel. My presumption had been that it might be to do with matching the hardness of blade and plate, rather than galvanic concerns. This. Just a little added convenience. And there I had been thinking that it was about additional bearing support ! Always good to learn something!

There are plenty of European sources ... (though it sounds like Chris won't need them) ... ... however, somewhere along the way I have picked up the message that one ought to be sure to run a stainless blade when using a stainless grinder plate. Anyone got any input on this? Fact or fable?

"Best" means different things to different people. Because its a compromise between price, performance, effort, time, skill (and thus skill-acquisition time) and maybe some personal factors. There is no one right answer. The original poster has just bought a first 'pro-quality' knife and is posting here to ask basic questions about sharpening. - Welcome to the forum, BTW. It seems reasonable to suppose that the poster is not working in a pro kitchen, and to respond accordingly. 1- Read Chad's excellent eGullet tutorial 2- Buy a very fine (grit) grade Ceramic hone (its a better-than-steel 'Steel'). EdgePro is one reasonable source. Use the hone anytime you like, but at home it shouldn't need it every single day. It doesn't sharpen your knife, it kinda polishes the cutting edge. 3- Be careful what you cut, and what you cut onto. Don't think of it as a cleaver for going through everything, including bone, crab shells, etc. Use a wooden (or possibly plastic) chopping board. NEVER cut onto a glass or stone surface. 4- Clean it quickly after use (and don't use abrasives, ScotchBrite, etc - at least near the cutting edge). 5- Store it so both the blade and all kitchen users are protected. That means NOT loose in a drawer without a blade guard! A magnetic knife-strip on the wall is cheap and popular with many. Knife blocks take up workspace and aren't easy to clean, but they are less hassle than a guard. Looking after your knife properly (as above) will dramatically reduce the need for 'proper' sharpening. Down to maybe every few months for a Wusthof in home use. But sharpen it more often if you like, its your metal you are grinding away. You might try to find find a pro recommended by a local chef or butcher's shop. Or learn to do it yourself - which the EdgePro makes pretty easy. I'd advise against using power tools on a 'good' knife. Apart from anything else, you'll remove much more of your metal than you strictly need to, shortening the life of your blade.

Memory! One thing that came back to me overnight was the magic word 'pentosan' (the name of some of the rye gum). Some of the story is explained simply here: http://www.joepastry.com/2009/rye_flour/ Excerpt:

Well, if you mean that you've never eaten a rye bread whose flour was pure rye, then you have missed out. I too have asked that, but its slightly off-topic here. {ADDED} A UK "Farmers' Market" crowd wouldn't want a baker to be adding a commercial additive including "rye flavouring" to a "rye bread", even if supermarket customers couldn't care less. Its the sort of motivation that (over here at least) sends people to Farmers' Markets.

The linen-lined wicker bannetons that I have do produce a very different (drier) dough surface. Before, I'd have thought that the dough was 'skinning', but actually, it does give a better baked crust and shape. Sanitary? I put them on a high shelf over the oven to thoroughly dry after use. No bad mould. No real evidence of improving the kitchen population of sourdough-type yeasts and bacteria either. The baskets don't get washed, ever. Just occasionally dusted and brushed around (by hand) with a spoonful of rye flour - anything that doesn't get held in the cloth gets dumped. Durability? Unless I do something like accidentally standing on them, they look like they'll last longer than me!

Take a look inside a loaf of 'ordinary' bread. Full of holes, right? And the holes were once full of fermentation gas from the yeast, right? Thing is, the 'crumb' of the bread is actually the stuff round the holes, that holds in the gas until the dough 'sets' during cooking. But the bubble skin has to be elastic to stretch (without bursting easily) as the bubbles expand and the loaf 'rises' during fermentation and oven spring. Gluten gives the dough that elastic strength. But Rye has essentially no gluten. So a pure Rye loaf is necessarily a very different thing to a wheat flour loaf. And adding gluten as an additive doesn't make a Rye loaf. You can make a very pleasant loaf (but not a rye loaf), by adding about 1% rye flour to your wheat flour. Even at that low concentration, you should be able to notice the very different nature of the dough - its much stickier! And the Rye's enzymes will actually work against the gluten - so don't use an unusually long (or retarded) rise/fermentation, or you'll be heading back towards brick territory. Right now, I don't recollect the mechanism, but an acid ferment does help Rye. Anyway, that's one reason for the synergy between Rye and 'Sourdough' acidic preferments and starters. Dan Lepard suggests that Rye loaves should be tightly wrapped (for example in greaseproof paper) for a couple of days before slicing. Baking a pure Rye loaf is a different skill using different methods (and does produce a 'denser-than-wheat' loaf), but fakery with additives really should not be going into a loaf for sale at a "Farmers' Market", should it?

Hmmm.

Just as a PS, a very important feature of most (all?) induction controllers is that they give dimmer-like control - the power distribution in time is steady, like a gas flame, rather than 'lumpy' like most ceramic/glass hobs/cooktops.

Base flatness does matter to evenness of heating. On my (old) deDietrich you only had to raise the pan a fraction of an inch (maybe 1/8 inch?) to effectively stop the energy input. But its not mega-critical; most pans are quite happy cooking "through" a sheet of paper. This was advocated by some as a deliberate technique to catch the fat spatter during deep frying -- but, because it doesn't burn on to the cooker, its very easy to clean anyway. The microstructure of the metal matters, but it should be fairly consistent across the pan base. The old deDietrich could produce a 'doughnut' of nucleating bubbles in the base of a Le Creuset saucepan when bringing water to the boil quickly. ISTR that it was noticeable on the smaller rings, at high heat, with a wider pan ... it does still matter to match the diameters of pan and ring! Some current high-end deDietrichs have a large 'heating zone' (which might be what Mjx is recalling) - but I have no idea how even the heating might be (or why people might want to have plural pans without independent control). They had a "Continuum Zone', but now they have gone further ... http://www.dedietrich.co.uk/93cm-zoneless-induction-hob-the-piano-p-10001716.html Suffice it to say that I think that generalising globally across brands and models wouldn't seem like a terribly wise idea!

Indeed, but the question of just how much (or how little) is actually used becomes relevant because of the much longer cooking times that are often involved.

Because it takes such an age for a plant to become established, after which it should provide a crop of spears for many, many years (decades?), it seems like vandalism to try and eat the roots. I do wonder if there is a fundamental misunderstanding somewhere here.

Isn't there quite a difference between models? I have the impression that older models offered much less controllability. eg this 2200 on eBay UK - http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/VORWERK-THERMOMIX-2200-BLENDER-SMOOTHIE-MAKER-VITAMIX-/300578647092?pt=UK_Home_Garden_Kitchen_Juicers_Blenders_Smoothie_Makers&hash=item45fbe22c34 Just as with "the FoodSaver", it would be so much more helpful if people could give Thermomix model references!

I wouldn't strictly call the way that most of the little PID temperature controllers work "PWM", since the 'pulse' generally consists of multiple AC mains cycles. They work on a time window of something like 2 seconds, and power on for a variable percentage of that window. (Many SSRs will only switch on the zero crossing, thus quantising the available power output in 1/100th of a second increments {1/120th second for the US with 60 Hz mains}, hence a 2 second window gives my system a 200 {US 240} step output control.) Some PID controllers can display the output percentage - its an undocumented feature (in the good sense) of my N2006P, obtained by a long press on the Set button. Watch it when the bath is 'stable', and decide what the typical value is. My bath (with an 1800 watt element) runs about 8% at 55°C, so its consuming power like a 144 watt constant heater. Insulating a waterbath will indeed reduce its energy consumption, BUT, by reducing temperature extremes it also reduces the vigour of the (natural) convection currents - and so an insulated bath will particularly benefit from assisted circulation. A newly insulated bath will heat faster and cool slower, so your PID will probably want different settings for optimum control - retuning should be worthwhile. But if your heater is much more powerful than the insulated bath needs (so that the %-on-time would become very small), then even with forced circulation, control becomes a very difficult task.

People are missing important info when they just talk about "the FoodSaver". There is a vast difference in s-v suitability between different models made by FoodSaver Inc. I had a V475. I now (still) have a V2860 - bought new on clearance. Chalk and cheese difference for sous vide. The V2860 has a much wider (and more secure) seal, with a 'damp' setting (for longer sealing time) - and has happily handled all the various bags I have tried. The V475 was one-button-full-auto-only, whereas the V2860 can both pump (at variable speeds) and seal under manual control -- which makes it perfectly workable for bagging liquids/sauces/etc. All FoodSaver machines are 'clamp-type' rather than chamber machines, and so need embossed bags. My expectation would be that any high-end FoodSaver-branded machine should work happily with any reputable embossed bags.

Its well worthwhile to trim sinew & silverskin before trying to process the meat. The dog does not consider this to be wasteful. If you really want to grind the detritus that gets put into commercial sausages, you'll need a bigger/stronger/stiffer grinder. I'd rather have better sausages (and a happier dog.) And, despite the standard instruction to cut the meat into cubes, do try my suggestion of cutting it into strips of a thickness that can be suspended into the grinder's feed tube - the strips can be as long as you like. I think that Polcyn's recipes are distinctly American. Take a look at Jane Grigson's Charcuterie for some authentic French recipes (but be prepared to hold back somewhat on the nitrate for modern sensitivities.)

Iain, you are confusing (or at least comparing) a steel with a sharpener. As such, my guess would be that much of the advice about deburring and such is going to pass through you like a neutrino - not interacting at all. A great place to start learning about this stuff is Chad's tutorial, here on eGullet He expanded it (its not VERY long really) into a book. A ceramic "steel" is a good thing to have to maintain your knife edges (not to sharpen them!) Chad's article was probably the first I heard of the EdgePro Apex sharpening system. I now have one, and absolutely no intention of ever parting with it.

Thanks in anticipation!

Douglas, two questions if I may. 1/ Is it possible to estimate (put probable bounds on) that z-factor and thus give any approximate idea of the sort of time that might be required at 55C? 2/ The 'pasteurisation' time would be a minimum time, wouldn't it? Would there be any problem in going (considerably) over it? I'm thinking that since many folks would often be running their bath for a couple of days continuously at or about 55C, if there was space to tuck in some eggs, as long as you weren't in any hurry to make the mayonnaise for your grandmother, you should be fine, shouldn't you? But I'd have guessed (and its only a guess) that there wouldn't be much point leaving them in beyond about the eight hour mark.