HowardLi

Here is the ingredient list: Biga 11 ounces bread flour 1/4 teaspoon instant yeast 8 ounces water Dough 16 1/2 ounces bread flour 1 teaspoon instant yeast 10.7 ounces water 2 teaspoons table salt However, I am multiplying the recipe by 1.5x to get a little more out of it. It will be split into 2 loaves.

So I put together the biga for CI's Rustic Italian Bread last night, and was almost at the end of the allotted time for room temp resting (3 hours), but fell asleep before I could put the biga into the fridge. I got up pretty early and put it into the fridge but it was sitting at room temp for almost 8 hours and it had more than doubled in volume. Should I keep the same amount of yeast in the rest of the recipe, reduce it, or increase it? I really can't afford to throw out the biga now.

For instance, 1. if you boil food in water, the heat is applied completely by conduction. 2. if you bake food in an oven, most of the heat is by conduction from the food making direct contact with hot air. 3. if you are at an outdoor bonfire, you can still be burnt even the air temperature is - 60, really freezing cold, because you are being roasted by IR radiation. 4. If you broil food, that is mostly IR cooking. Microwave heat is strange, it is neither conduction nor radiation. The food cooks itself. dcarch Fair points. Rephrasing... What radiant heat isn't IR? Still seems like a tube oven to me. Most radiant heating is through absorption of IR, or rather, most radiated electromagnetic energy happens to be in the infrared part of the electromagnetic spectrum. Ah, to clarify dcarch's second point, solid foods are heated internally through conduction, but when baking, convection heats the outside of the food.

Perhaps bamboo mats would work to facilitate handling of the potatoes? And why microwave them?

Naan is supposed to be brushed with butter after it's taken out of the tandoor, IIRC.

That would probably do it. But, if there were a cylindrical section designed into the body (which it appears not to have) one could go all fancy-like and use a shaft collar for clamping, welded to an extra-large stainless steel clip.

I don't wish to be a d-nozzle but this is an irresponsible post. Liver from animals such as polar bear and walrus is dangerously high in Vitamin A. Do not consume any part of the liver from animals you are not culinarily intimate with!

In Toronto, authentic fried rice is usually not brown. That's fortunate because I prefer it pale yellow.

dividend, would like to see the recipe for the pork shoulder if you don't mind.

This is moot anyway as long as you have a can of Barkeeper's Friend.

You don't cut through bone at all iirc, just a bit of cartilage and flesh. That's right. If you do it the Pepin way, you don't even cut through cartilage, you just cut through sinew and flesh You still need to go through cartilage between joints, the way he does it.

How does one typically increase the longevity of wood fuel for smoke production without increasing creosote content?

What do you mean exactly? I mean that you described at what point you'd have the PID controllers call for "on" but you didn't state when they'd call for "off". Without setting the "off" parameters you'd have an overheat. It might have been an oversight in your description instead of in your plan, of course! Yes, certainly.

What do you mean exactly? The other option I was thinking of was instead of using a hot plate as a source of humidity, I could duct in a small external humidifier and run the smoke all the time as a constant source of heat.

Would such a system ever reach stability with the two interacting sources of heat? Could adequate ventilation (heat loss) ensure that both kick-on when needed?

I've done some research and it looks like the factors to control are dry-bulb temp, wet-bulb temp, and RH (or any two of the three). The amount of smoke seems to be fairly easy to control, e.g. lots of it is fine. So far, the system is as such: - There is a smoking chamber constructed from some material safe and robust enough for the intended application - The smoking chamber has some mechanism(s) adjustable such that heat loss is a controlled factor (damper vents, etc) - The dry-bulb and wet-bulb thermometers are Pt100 RTDs. - Both thermometers are at approximately the same height as the food. - There are two PID controllers controlling one solid-state relay each - PID #1 reads the temperature of the dry-bulb thermometer inside the smoking chamber. - PID #2 reads the temperature of the wet-bulb thermometer inside the smoking chamber. - There is a pot of hot water inside the smoking chamber, resting atop an electric hot plate. - External to the smoking chamber is a smoke generating system, consisting of: -- A modified charcoal chimney of sorts, to contain the smoke-generating fuel and facilitate ash collection -- An air conduit between the charcoal chimney and the smoking chamber; its intake is underneath the wood pile of the charcoal chimney and its discharge is to the smoking chamber -- An AC motor-powered fan inside the air conduit between the charcoal chimney and the smoking chamber; this fan sucks air towards the smoking chamber - PID #1 powers the electric hot plate through its relay when the dry-bulb temperature drops below a certain point; when this happens, the pot of water heats up and eventually raises the relative humidity - PID #2 powers the fan through its relay when the wet-bulb temperature drops below a certain point; when this happens, oxygen is pulled through the wood pile and both heat and smoke enter the smoking chamber Any thoughts?

Surface finish is probably a factor as well.

Here's an interesting article 27426.pdf

Thomas Keller is pretty definite about excluding many green vegetables from sous vide, though his concern is in part preserving color. He prefers "big pot boiling" where one cooks just to the point of tenderness in a gigantic, very salty pot of boiling water, then plunges into ice water to arrest the cooking. This was one of the better home cooking lessons from The French Laundry Cookbook, reprised in Under Pressure. One can easily overdo the saltiness with the wrong vegetable; I ruined English peas this way once. It's fantastic for many applications. I'd try slicing greens rather thin, and seeing if I could live with the texture this way. Of course Italian vegetables aren't done till their color resembles army clothing. Go for 185 F sous vide, you aren't serving skycraper food? In for a penny, in for a pound, I should say. Or at least I should start saying that more often, anyway. All salted solutions should be described with weight fractions - anything else is horsepoppy.

Sounds like it would be faster to pass through an OXO 8" strainer rather than a colander. I imagine certain types of soups would clog the gold mesh filter very easily without a decent prefilter step.

The caramelized carrot soup was way too sweet for me.

How long can a dough develop gluten at room temperature before it can no longer be shaped and baked

I'm talking about the kind of dough that's got enough water in it to be extremely sticky, and yet, not enough water to stretch easily. How best to handle these by hand? I looked at Reinhart's video on YouTube with the pouring of the dough and the oiled surface, but e.g. the rustic Italian bread by CI isn't pourable at all and is very, very sticky.

The style of connection is not mandated by the thermocouple type. The type is only an indication of what conductor alloys are used. You can have multiple types with the same connection. Again, wikipedia and McMaster-Carr are very useful resources here.

Really? http://www.onsetcomp.../adapters/smc-k Yes.That is a subminiature connector. The only relevance it has to type K is that it is colored yellow per the ANSI standard. You still have to connect the wires with the two screws, so wouldn't you technically be able to hook up any thermocouple you please?