Chris Hennes

I haven't had it personally, by the Yama Blanca out of Death & Co. is pretty well-regarded. They used Dolin, but NP should be a reasonable sub.

I hadn't made anything from Hensperger's The Bread Bible in ages, but this week for no apparent reason I took it into my head that I wanted to make the Honey and Seed Bread, a straightforward milk-enriched, commercially-yeasted affair with millet, poppy seeds, and sesame seeds.

I stretch the dough, not roll it, but in my experience there is a relatively narrow age window in which a sourdough crust will give that style of inflation. Plus, of course, you have to be making a thinner crust style, which I only do a fraction of the time. So it's not that I am aiming for one particular result or other, I am mostly just accepting the variety that comes with a naturally leavened dough prepared days in advance. Right now my idea of a "varied diet" is different styles of pizza each night!

It's probably my imagination, but I feel like my rosemary was 3" taller this morning (it rained heavily overnight), so I made a very herb-heavy pie tonight. I made a pesto from rosemary, thyme, black pepper, and garlic, smeared that on a thin crust, topped with crushed tomatoes, then olives, and finally fresh mozzarella for the last 30 seconds of the bake. You've probably already gathered that I love olives... this pizza was excellent.

The last bit of finocchiona cut into strips, chunks of cheddar under the tomato sauce, and a bit of Parmigiano post-bake.

Olives, pistachios, gorgonzola picante, on a sourdough crust with 5% local OK corn flour. Sauce is a can of fire roasted diced tomatoes, pureed lightly in the food processor, with salt, pepper, and red pepper flakes.

I've never had potatoes on pizza, and the idea had never really occurred to me. But I thought I'd give @Ann_T's Greek pizza a try tonight. I went with a thick pan style because that's what I was in the mood for. Sourdough, of course.

Another relatively simple one tonight: same sauce as last night, but then a layer of homemade finocchiona, and hit with fresh mozzarella post-bake.

Tonight I swung to the other end of the pizza spectrum: That's a sourdough crust (of course), baked on a steel, topped with fresh mozzarella and a few scraps of leftover cheddar. The sauce is a can of fire roasted diced tomatoes, a squeeze of tomato paste, salt, pepper, and red pepper flakes.

After eating pizza for dinner for the last six days straight, I switched things up tonight: Those are Peter Reinhart's recipe from Bread Baker's Apprentice. The caramel is maybe the best I've ever had on a sticky bun.

I thought that might be your reaction. In truth, it was... OK. Tasted like one of Dunlop's Sichuan noodle dishes, but crunchier. I ate it, but I probably wouldn't make it again. It was also sort of ridiculously spicy, you have to use a lot of chile oil to get reasonable coverage.

Inspired by Fuchsia Dunlop's Land of Plenty, tonight's pizza was a (now two-day old) sourdough crust topped with sauce of chile oil and sediment, light soy, sesame paste, and chinkiang vinegar. To that I added peanuts and the spine of a cabbage pre-bake, and post-bake the rest of the cabbage and some toasted sesame seeds. Pre-bake: Post-bake: Slice:

Tonight for dinner I made a pizza with gorgonzola, Brussels sprouts, and walnuts: probably more typical as a salad than a pizza topping, but I'd guess I'm not the first to make this combo. It was delicious. For the crust I used a simple sourdough, no frills. Pre-baking Post -baking (dressed with a cold salad of Brussels sprouts dressed in sherry vinegar and olive oil):

These are the Modernist Bread sourdough recipe with toasted sunflower seeds added (and omitting the bran). The final proof was at 13°C/55°F for 16 hours.

@lindag funny you should mention that! @heidih was just giving me crap for not posting anything recently, since I've been a baking madman for the last two weeks, so I figured I'd post tonight's dinner, a pan pizza made using Modernist Bread's Focaccia (aged four days in the fridge) as the dough: Pre-Bake: Post-Bake: Slice:

And on my last visit: it's a really cool hotel. Good drinks and a good view at the top floor bar don't hurt a bit!

Who are you calling "imaginary"?! We prefer the term "complex"!

Nice idea: summers are tough for me (work is very busy) but STL is close enough for me to come for just the weekend. I think you can count me and my +1 in for at least dinner at Bulrush. Later in the evening is better since I’ll be flying that day.

I don't think it misses it at all - they are specifically focused not on producing a specific flavor profile, but on reproducing the profile you like. So as @weinooputs it, if you like dreck, then their advice will help you make the same terrible espresso every time! IMO you can gloss the math sections of the paper and still get a lot out of it, it's really interesting work.

...and here's a link to the full paper: Systematically Improving Espresso: Insights from Mathematical Modeling and Experiment Their research was conducted with the goals of reducing waste (e.g. using only as much coffee as is actually needed to produce a good espresso) and to improve reproducibility once you have decided on your own personal preferences for a flavor profile. There appear to be a couple of big takeaways in this research. In general, Use less coffee (15 grams instead of a more typical 20g) Use a medium grind (rather than the typical fine grind) That said, in the press release the authors point out:

Another writeup of the research that @liuzhou posted above (this one is a bit more technical, without being unapproachable): https://arstechnica.com/science/2020/01/the-math-of-brewing-a-better-espresso/

Although I've had both Beyond and Impossible as ingredients in other dishes before, last week I finally actually had a burger made with the Beyond product. I actually ordered it because it seemed like the "safe" option compared to getting a beef burger (I was at a national park and the restaurant was not exactly Michelin starred). I got a 1/3-lb cheeseburger with lettuce, onion, and tomato. There was some kind of aioli involved: unlike with the Whopper, however, this burger was a much thicker style. Although the extras helped, it was clearly a Beyond burger with accoutrements, not a sandwich that happened to involve some Beyond stuff. Now, I didn't actually try the beef burger at this place, but the Beyond Burger was better than I would have expected the "real" version to be: flavorful enough, juicy enough, and well-textured for what amounted to a well-done burger. It was, as expected, "safe."

I've received word that Larry Gober, a.k.a. @joiei, died in his sleep yesterday afternoon: he was diagnosed with stage 4 esophageal cancer in October. I knew Larry away from the forums as a fellow Oklahoman, a passionate barbecue advocate, and the kind of guy who would randomly mail me fresh corn flour because "he knew a guy." We'll miss you, Larry!

If the recipe was really from the 1830s it can't have been baking powder: the first baking-powder-like product didn't come around until 1843, and it wasn't really widely available until the mid-1850s. See this interesting Smithsonian Magazine article for details. @gfron1, how confident are you in the date on that recipe?

Yes, that's my go-to lasagne recipe, though like you I only make it about once per year. I love his suggestion of layering alternating spinach and plain noodles, the slices are striking: