Chris Hennes

Oh, literally numerically summed together, I see, I misunderstood. Yes, you're right.

Panaderia Canadiense, I think just the opposite is being suggested: 52°C is quite warm, basically the maximum temperature before you start killing the yeast. It's probably the absolute hottest you could go, and will give you the fastest possible rise time. I don't quite follow Lizz's question, however: to make the final mix wind up at 52°C you will need to use hot water, so that when you mix it together it comes down to 52, I'd think. I'm a low-and-slow sort of guy, though, I never try to minimize rise time like that.

Another thanks to everyone who has reported bugs: a few more updates— Why haven't I been receiving e-mails about my topic subscriptions? The upgrade process erased everyone's e-mail preferences, unfortunately, and defaulted them back to not sending you any notifications. I've just reset them to send out the default e-mails, but I suggest you take a look at your notification options page to make any changes, so things are set up the way you want. You might also want to test it out by following this topic —just click the "Follow this topic" button at the top of the page. What happened to the list of topics and forums I am watching? You can find it by clicking on your username at the top of the screen and then selecting Content I Follow.

How to a get to the first unread post of a topic? The easiest way is to click on the small circle or star icon to the left of the topic title: if the icon is solid, it means there are unread posts (the icon is a star when you are participating in the topic). You can also click the small down-arrow that appears to the right of the title when you move your mouse over it to get a preview of the topic: the box that appears will contain a link to the first unread post. I am out of attachment space! Not anymore you're not. As part of this upgrade we've increased attachment space to 100MB for participating members and 500MB for donors. How do I format a post from my iPad? Unfortunately due to a bug in the software the advanced editor is not available on the iPad, you have to use plain BBCode. Our software provider says this is scheduled to be corrected in the next version. Why do all these personal messages say "deleted" when they are still there? The software is telling you that the person you were talking to has deleted the conversation, so you can no longer reply to it (hat tip to Kerry Beal for figuring this out).

Are you doing fruit pies, or what?

In general it's best to salt burgers either right before grinding or right before cooking: if you salt earlier you have to be particularly careful not to overwork the beef, since the salt increases its ability to bind to itself. If you salt before grinding make sure you don't overwork the beef while forming the patties. There are even those who advocate salting after cooking, but I find that only works for thin patties.

I'm partial to paulraphael's formula here. I do change up the beef blend sometimes, but I always use 0.75% salt and 0.25% black pepper.

Thanks to those of you who have sent me feedback so far, I appreciate your comments and your assistance in tracking down the various bugs we've run across. Here are a few answers to some common questions: Where did the Help menu go? The link to the help files is now located at the very bottom of the page, to the left side. How do I insert images in my posts? The easiest way is to attach them to your post, and then use the "insert" function to place them where you want them. For more information, see the Posting Help Page. How do I get a list of active topics, like the old home page? You can still easily get a list of recent active content, and in fact our software provider has added a ton of customization to the page, including the ability to limit the display to just a subset of the forums. You can get there by selecting "View New Content" at the top of any eG Forums page. I'll continue updating this topic as questions come in, thanks again for all the feedback.

On Saturday, May 5, 2012, the software running eG Forums was upgraded (to IP.Board 3.3.1 3.3.2, if you are curious). Those who have visited before can see that this resulted in a major overhaul of the appearance of the forums. In addition to changing the way the forums look, there are a few changes to the way things work. First, when posting you will notice a new editor interface turned on by default. This new editor works much like a normal word processor (e.g. Microsoft Word) and hopefully makes formatting your posts easier. For those who prefer to edit the BBCode markup directly you can toggle between modes using the lightswitch button in the upper left corner of the toolbar. Next, we've disabled further uploads to ImageGullet: any images that are there already will continue to be hosted, but in the future we ask that images be put into posts either as attachments, or linked to from another image host. Finally, the new version of the software supports more extensive social networking options: you will notice a number of places around the forums where you can opt to share content with Facebook or Twitter, and if you choose to link your accounts you can easily update your status by clicking on your username at the top of the screen. Of course there are myriad additional changes: click around and explore! While the software provider and the Society for Culinary Arts & Letters have tested the software extensively, there will of course be some bugs in the new version: if you run across anything that doesn't seem to be working correctly, please send me a message. Thanks!

I will grant you better, but at least at the Ft. Worth location the other day they certainly weren't "just about as fast": the wait was comparable to Freddy's, Smashburger, or Five Guys—McDonalds delivers way faster. It sounds like I've got to actually try Wendy's one of these days... something about "Dave's Hot and Juicy" is less than appealing, I gotta say.

I've found their customer service to be second to none. I'd buy the SideKIC on that basis alone.

I finally got to an In-n-Out today (in Ft. Worth). I got two double-doubles, one Animal Style and one with mustard, pickles and onions. The toppings on the Animal Style were good: fresh, with a nice flavor, even from the tomato. The beef had good flavor, but doesn't deserve all the praise it gets, in my opinion. It also suffered in the texture category. Maybe it's just the new locations in Texas, but if this chain wasn't so famous I wouldn't have even bothered posting about it. It was good: it was NOT great. And the fries had a half life of about thirty seconds.

Whoa. How much does it weigh?

Just like composite flooring, it all depends on how thick the outer lamination is. I'd suggest it unlikely they'd have used a thick-enough laminate to support that: the thicker the lamination, the more likely it will be to split or buckle in the dishwasher.

From the product description: "Constructed of Wood Composite and Phenolic Resin Bonded to a Natural Hardwood Surface" As we discussed above, if you use a thin enough laminate surface as your outer layer, the wood won't build up enough internal stress to split. So while you can't build a solid wood dishwasher-safe cutting board, you can certainly build one whose cutting surface is wood, which is apparently what BadRabbit had.

True: even though In'n'Out is very regional, they do have almost 300 locations, it looks like Freddy's is under 100.

Honestly, I'm surprised that Freddy's doesn't get more play in the "best burger" discussion: they are very similar to Smashburger, but edging SB out in toppings-quality (not by a lot, but the utter perfection of those thick, crisp dill pickle slices is enough to put them on top in my book). It's not a "juicy" burger by homemade burger standards by any means, but it's definitely not dry considering the doneness level. As long as you're only comparing it to fast-food style burgers I stand by my ranking here (with the caveat that I've never had an In'n'Out burger). Of course, I've only had three of them, and all from the same location, so I'll be interested to know what others think. (No, I've never had the custard there: a burger and fries doesn't exactly leave me hungry )

I had the double Steakburger at Freddy's on Tuesday. I went back today to double check, and make sure I wasn't just dreaming. Wow. This is the best fast-food hamburger I've ever had. It had a fantastic Smashburger-like sear, double patties, lots of American cheese, and comes standard with raw white onion, mustard, and two long, thick, crispy dill pickle slices. The patties are cooked medium-well to well but retain a great juiciness, the sear amps up the beefy flavor, and on both burgers I've had the condiments have been applied in a consistent, balanced manner. The big pickle slices in particular set this burger above its peers. And to top it off, the shoestring-style fries were great too. It looks like those of you in the Northeast don't get Freddy's, but they have locations in most of the Southern US. Try them, see what you think.

Chocolate. At the last eG Candy and Confectionery Conference one of the attendees brought an experiment: she used the onion sugar from the Modernist Cuisine onion gratin recipe to make a ganache. It was... unpleasant.

My cilantro self-seeds like a weed. How are you trying to start it?

Actually, Shalmanese, I've found that if you angle the head right you can create some quite intricate patterns, not just an even spray

Looks great: how was the taste and texture?

Taco More— we had been warned that they didn't speak much English here, but it wasn't a problem for our server, who seemed reasonably fluent. At least, our order was more or less correct. And man, it was delicious. G'Raj Mahal was also excellent, far better than the other Indian place we tried (Teji's Foods): We ate at two of the three East Side King locations, all very near each other. The first was the location outside The Grackle, in the parking lot: The second was located behind the very divey-looking (but actually very hipster) Liberty:

Hey, when someone offers you a dozen free, fresh eggs, you take 'em. She gave me duck eggs last time (they have a bunch of different poultry roaming around). Besides, I like to play with my food.

OK, taking your advice, I just cooked up a couple sunny-side up: Alas, they taste... like eggs. I'm pretty sure that any subtle differences I may have thought I detected were my imagination, I doubt in a blind test I could tell these apart from chicken eggs of the same freshness. Still, there must be some fun things I can do with tiny eggs.