ElsieD

I went to Costco today and looked for the peeled garlic. I couldn't find any so I asked at the service desk. They do not carry it. What they do carry is chopped garlic in what, if I remember correctly, were 1.2 kg jars. The label said it was "grown, harvested and processed in California" but I didn't get any. It said 1/2 teaspoon was equal to one clove. I have tried jarred garlic in the past and was never impressed by it although I might be persuaded if anyone said this was worth buying.

Key chris, I used 259 gm of bread flour, 153 gm water, 69 gm starter and 4gm salt. First rise was 4 hours, they were proofed for 3. Baked at 385 Convection for 45 minutes. Kitchen is about 22 degrees celcius.

Specific questions for Ann:This is all very interesting. When you add the flour and water do you leave it out of the fridge until it has double and then put it in the fridge? And you mix the 60 grams of the discard with 225 gm each of flour and water and mix that in with 1000 gm of flour for a loaf (or two) of bread? General question - anyone? Finally, I tried to make a "mini" sourdough loaf yesterday that came out of the dense side. Is there a limit to how far down you can scale a loaf? I applied baker's % when scaling. Or maybe I didn't let it rise enough? When I poked the dough the hole slowly filled in about 80% so I thought it was ready. At that point it had been in the banneton for 3 hours. Edited to fix typo.

How long do you leave them in? I have been using the pressure cooker to do mine which works well but I do it that way because I am not sure how long to cook them sous vide.

My SIL actually has live silkies on their hobby farm so I am familiar with them. Kosher chickens are readily available here as are halal. T & T carry chicken with head and feet attached.

Anna, now you have truly gone and done it. My MIL gave me a recipe for sausage rolls many years ago and while I made them once when she gave me the recipe, it (the recipe) got filed away and I had forgotten about it until now. I am off to get some sausage meat and will made these for supper.

Oh my goodness, Anna, that looks so good! Is that on PC puff pastry? (If it is, I just happen to have some in the freezer.)

Yum. Looks good.

I can't remember where I read this, but I think it had to do with ice cream. It said to add the vanilla AFTER the custard had cooled, because heat is harmful to vanilla. Hopefully, wiser folks than I will chime in.

Cakewalk, looking forward to the recipe. Shel_B, I would appreciate that. And KennethT, I always used regular peanut butter like Jiffy or Skippy which is of course, already sweetened. Maybe that was part of the problem?

I have a friend who has just had surgery for a serious health issue. I want to make him a batch of his favourite cookies. I used to make peanut butter years ago but stopped when I found all the recipes I tried to be cloying sweet. Would anyone have a recipe they would be willing to share that showcases the peanut butter rather than the sugar? It would make my friend very happy and he could use a bit of happiness right now. Thank you!

I made butter today following the instructions on Andie's blog and using the Thermomix. It turned out great. I had just shy of a litre of cream and got 12 ounces of butter. I used Maldon salt which I squished in using my gloved hands. Very nice clean taste.

Ciabatta. 95% hydration.

I got this the other day. I plan on printing it out and keeping it handy. I thought it was very well done.

As far as their online membership is concerned, and unless they have changed the way they do things, access to many of their recipes required an "upgraded" (read more money) membership. I got so frustrated by that I quit the online membership. At that point I had already stopped buying their books and had given up on the magazine. I have online membership to other paid websites but they don't suffer from the incessant marketing that is now a hallmark of the CI one.

Darienne, I too have owned many of CI's cookbooks and I agree with Honkman that they use the same recipe in many of their books which is one of the reasons I stopped buying them. However, if you don't own ANY of their books it is likely worth buying as I have found their recipes to be, well, not exactly exciting but they are foolproof.

I have really enjoyed your description of your Swedish Christmas. Thank you for taking the time to do this and I look forward to your Easter account.

Thank you Melissa and Tyler for responding. I am making some now and have just made one, cooked it up and ate it to see what it was like. It has some "chew" to it but I don't know if that is because I maybe overprocessed the dough or if it has an egg in it as Tyler suggests. In any event, I am going to make enough for supper then put the dough and filling in the fridge. If we like them this way, I will make the rest tomorrow. If I don't like the "chew" I will try to make a different dough.

Ditto.

I use these whenever we don't feel like making our own pasta. I use the Barilla brand which is an egg pasta imported from Italy. Here it comes in a 500 gram package. I like this brand because the sheets are thinner than most other brands and that, plus the egg content results in what seems to me to be a more tender pasta. They work beautifully.

This is probably only of interest to Canadians but we watched the first episode of season 2's Chopped Canada. It was abysmal. The judges act like juvenile idiots and the host is smarmy. And the contestants - surely they can do better? I know a chef who tried out for the show. He was not accepted and when I asked him why he replied "I didn't have a good enough sob story". Seems the producers have that as a requirement to qualify for the show so the contestants can go on ad infinitum about how they are doing this for their dead mother or grammy or whomever who died 20 years ago. I get cross just thinking about the 45 or so minutes I wasted which could have been better spent watching or doing something else.

Where is the Costco garlic grown?

Staples has the Brother M labels. Don't know how well they stick though.