paulraphael

That's interesting, and suggests that n-zorbit might not be identical to generic tapioca maltodextrin. There are a couple of other uses for n-zorbit. One is to keep powders powdered ... like when trying to make flour out of oily nuts. If you throw some zorbit in with peanuts before grinding them, you get peanut powder instead of peanut butter. Same with almonds, macadamia, etc... It can also be used as a kind of super emulsion stabilizer--though technically this probably isn't an accurate description. For example, brown butter ice cream is difficult to make, because the butter fat cells have been damaged during the churning process. Butterfat emulsions are much less stable than cream emulsions, so ice cream with significant quantities of butter tend to "break" and get grainy. N-zorbit can be used to turn the brown butter into a solid ingredient, which disperses easily into the ice cream base. The result is smooth and stable, and the flavor release is excellent. I'm sure there are other uses out there. Things like this interest me more than edible powders.

This is about the long fermentation time, which isn't unique to no-knead recipes.

Yes, except I think the lower the oven temp, the wetter the dough needs to be. Bread in general is improved with high hydration doughs for the reasons Mitch mentions. Pizza is an extreme case, because it's thin, and because we like to brown and char the crust. In a very hot oven (a legitemate wood-fired pizza oven is typically 800 to 900 degrees F) baking time is a couple of minutes or less. The crust can char in the time it takes for the middle of the dough to just set ... so you get the neapolitan ideal of a crisp outer curst and a tender, airy inner crust. In a typical home oven, you'll be limited to 500 to 600 degrees F. Baking times can be as high as seven minutes. That's plenty of time for standard dough to dry out and toughen. Very high hydration helps prevent this.

I think the easiest approach is to lightly oil a sheet of parchment while it's on a peel (i use flat cookie sheets for peels); stretch out the dough and build the pizza on the parchment, and slide the pie, parchment and all, onto the stone. If the parchment insulates the crust and reduces char, the effect is minimal. There's no need for bench flour or cornmeal. Working with wet dough becomes easy (I use up to 75% hydration, depending on the flour). An option I haven't tried is the self-releasing aluminum foil. Regular foil, even well oiled, is a disaster. I love Jim Lahey, but not enough to pull a hot stone out of the oven.

That was my favorite bit of product placement in all of top chef. completely botched and completely honest.

Are the others in your co-op in NYC? If so, I have some ideas for you.

Who's your farm? I might try to include them in an upcoming beef tasting event. For my tastes, that's the best way to do it. Keep the cows in the pasture longer, and finish on grains (not necessarily corn, and ideally with grass still in the mix) to fatten them up. Some of the best farms, like Prather Ranch in California, keep the cattle in the pasture their whole lives, but supplement their diet with grain at the end. It's worth mentioning that ALL cattle are grass-fed for the first year or so of their lives. What's at issue how they're fed for the last few months. "Corn finished" or "grain finished" are more accurate terms than corn-fed. Also worth mentioning that grass-fed doesn't always mean pasture-raised. Farmers have lobbied to have all kinds of things considered grass, including hay. Think about the climate in any farm's region ... you can be pretty sure that in New York State and Montana, the cattle aren't roaming the pastures and eating grean grass in February. They're probably in an enclosed barn for much of that time, eating hay. You'll get greener tasting beef from Southern California.

Mony Python was skewering food descriptions decades ago. This is for "Crunchy Frog" : "We use only the finest baby frogs, dew-picked and flown from Iraq, cleansed in the finest quality spring water, lightly killed, and then sealed in a succulent Swiss quintuple smooth treble cream milk chocolate envelope, and lovingly frosted with glucose."

The trouble with the grass fed vs. corn fed debate is that it falls into a false dichotomy, where the only available choices are pristine, pasture-raised beef vs. abused, industrial feedlot-raised beef. This presumes that all cattle finished on grain are the products of filthy and inhumane factory farms, which just isn't the case. There are plenty of small to mid-sized artisinal farms all over the country that choose to raise their cattle humanely and without hormones and antibiotics--and to finish them on grain. If you want to compare the results of grass finishing to those of grain finishing, then compare beef from similar quality farms. Otherwise you're engaging in a meaningless debate. On another topic, there's a good reason producers of grass-finished beef choose not to have their meat graded: it's usually too lean to even make the Choice grade. Very little of it would even make Select. This doesn't mean that the meat is poor quality, but it does mean that it will be utterly lacking in one of the qualities (succulence) that people raised on grain finished beef often value.

Dave, have you ever been able to get a ceramic knife truly sharp? Like in the same league as a good steel knife?

or plain carbon steel, blue/black steel, etc ...

That's a good point ... I was thinking about cast iron. I have to be a lot more gentle with my carbon steel wok.

A well applied seasoning can handle almost any scrubbing you throw at it. I'd stop short of steel wool or ajax. Most of the mythology about handling seasoned cast iron with kid gloves comes from people's experience with improperly seasoned pans. They thing the greasy film left after cooking is the seasoning!

Seven, I think think you've partially seasoned that pan. There's more to seasoning than polymerized fat; theres also the carbon that comes from some of that fat burning. This what makes seasoning black, and what makes it slippery. The most efficient way to do it is to find an oil that's very high in polyunsaturated fat, and that has the smoke point printed on the label. The unsaturated fat molecules are the ones avaliable for oxidation, so using the right oil lets a thin coating produce a much more substantial finish. Corn oil isn't a bad choice; grapeseed, safflower and sunflower are probably even better. If you can get a brand like Spectrum that tells you the smoke point, then there's little guesswork. Set your oven for about 25 degrees higher than the smoke point, put a very thin coat of oil on the pan, and open a window. Give the pan 30 minutes or so; it will turn very dark. Repeating once, should do it; twice definitely will. I assume the surface characteristics will be similar to seasoned cast iron. But I have no idea how durable the finish will be in comparison; cast iron has the right porosity to hang onto the coating tenaciously. The other question is, do you want this? A seasoned surface, in my opinion, gives you a more specialized pan. It's great for eggs; it's handy for fish and other delicate protein if you want to be lazy with technique; but otherwise it just gets in the way. It retains and transfers strong flavors, it can discolor light colored sauces, and the dark surface makes it harder to tell how browned your pan drippings are.

I've never seen aluminum that's been seasoned in the manner of cast iron. In my opinion this would be a less versatile surface than bare aluminum, because it adds the idiosyncrasies of polymerized oil/carbon and is still somewhat reactive. And the recommendation from the Lincoln site to season stainless steel is just bizarre. Good example of Steven's observation about cookware company credibility.

What do you like?

My biggest hesitation with aluminum fry pans and sauté pans is warping. Nothing subtle ... I'm talking about bulging, wobbling, smash-back-into-shape-with-a-hammer distortion. I've had this happen to every plain or anodized heavy aluminum pan that i've used for sautéing. And with at least one saucepan. Counterintuitively, It doesn't happen with clad pans. The aluminum oxide layer that prevents corrosion is vulnerable to both strong acids and bases. Once a pan starts pitting, it seems to continue to pit. The pits in the bottom of my calphalon saucepan (started as innocent dings when an ex commited some attrocity with a fork) are now craters. I've heard mixed opinions on whether the oxalic acid in BKF can halt this process. Just yesterday I picked up a couple of used aluminum half sheet pans on the bowery for $2 each. One of them had clearly been through the dishwasher ... it's a moonscape of little pits. I'll be curious to see if they grow and turn the thing into lace.

My 20 qt stockpot gets used no more than once a month. Bare aluminum. No issues with oxidation, save for the ones it would have if used daily.

I've had good luck with plain aluminum for things like stock pots that don't get used for especially acidic ingredients. I haven't liked it for saucepans and sauté / fry pans. I get deep pits, and sometimes a slight metalic taste in sauces and in deglazing liquid. Steven's right that it's the restaurant standard, at least at the low end and middle. I've had plenty of great meals that were cooked in $15 commodity aluminum pans. The off flavors and colors might be purely symptomatic of the types of food I've cooked. And the pitting might happen because I keep pans longer than most restaurant kitchens do. Line cooks beat the bejeezus out of those things. They're probably reduced to scrap metal from abuse before anyone even notices pits and craters in the surface.

How much time do you find it takes to get tender (but not falling apart) short ribs if you're cooking in the 135 degree range?

Well, yes, a millimeter of copper will do more good than a millimeter of aluminum, in terms of improving dispersion without impeding responsiveness. But a tenth of a millimeter of copper isn't worth much at all unless you're writing the ad copy. Companies like AC seem to include just nominal thicknesses of copper ... enough to let them say there's copper in there. And to raise the price. The thermal differences might be measurable, but I seriously doubt they'd be noticeable. Incidentally, gold isn't an especially good thermal conductor. It's lower on the scale than copper. Silver is the only metal I know of that's higher.

This Taylor kicks some some serious thermopen butt. Normally sells for $90, but I've seen on sale for less. Has a thermocouple AND a remote IR sensor. Takes regular batteries. Waterproof. And it's the only thermometer I've owned that's lasted a year without breaking (and still going strong).

I was just looking at 10" aluminum core fry pans. At Sur La Table, AC stainless is $100, Demeyere Atlantis is $199. I'm glad the other pieces don't exhibit this big a price premium. And I'd agree with anyone who says the AC copper core pans are a ripoff. I would only consider the stainless and the MC2. MC2 will heat more evenly and have more thermal mass; stainless will be more responsive and will work with induction.

You might like the NOLS Cookery.

Collagen breaks down at temperatures above 140F or so. But at temperatures this low it takes a very long time. I have minimal sous vide experience; doing conventional braises, a melting texture can take 12 hours or more even at 180F. I believe there are advantages to lower temps and longer times; particularly if you can bring the meat to temperature slowly. Time spent below 120F increases enzyme activity and aging effects. It can also give the beautiful effects of meat that's bright pink in the middle in spite of being well done.