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Lemon and poppyseed muffins this weekend. These are great muffins, really light and fluffy with a great balance between the sweetness and the lemon flavour. It's a pretty easy recipe, there's a bit of planning involved resting the batter overnight but it'll now be my go to recipe for muffins.

Made some real progress this weekend, tried the bâtards again, tweaked the recipe a little (leaving out about 20ml of water) and, due to circumstances, left the dough to ferment a bit longer. I'd have been happy if I'd bought these at a real baker - can't believe I made them! Really great texture, soft and light, the crust could have been a little crisper so that's the next thing to aim for but I'll be very happy if I can consistently make bread like this. This is a real revelation of a book for me

Mitch, no problems with the oil at all, I just did the same as I do for my cast iron skillet, put a tiny amount on and polish it off as much as possible then give it some heat. After an hour or so of pre-heating there was no smoke or smell at all from the steel. Michael, the IR works great, the steel is actually a fair bit darker now than in that shot (sort of blue/black colour) so it seems to cope with it fine.

I didn't manage to find the chain but I got some rocks from the garden, it works really well. Plus it gets you some really funny looks from your other half! It is four strands in the plait, we were just messing about with off cuts from squaring up the dough but I actually quite like them

Since getting Modernist Cuisine at Home I've been lusting after one of the baking steels they describe. Unfortunately shipping to the UK would have meant a large on would cost over $200, plus import duty. Ouch. After a bit of ebay trawling I managed to find a steel company locally who could do 12mm (1/2") thick mild steel plate in a variety of sizes. Got my order in and within a couple of days was the proud owner of a 25lb lump of slightly rusty metal! Thankfully I'd read a really helpful post over on pizzamaking.com about using vinegar to clean the residue off these sheets. 24 hours soaking in a tray of that and cleanup was a doddle, a quick scrape down with some wire wool and a good wash in hot soapy water and I was ready to go. I'd read differing opinions on seasoning but decided to do it as the bare metal was starting to show rust spots within just minutes of coming out of the water. For the first batch I used the "neapolitan" dough recipe from MCH, it's a very easy dough to make and seems to give pretty good results. Bake times were around 3:30 after preheating my steel for an hour or so and using the broiler on full whack. The steel was reading about 700-740F as the pizza went in. There's still a fair way to go in getting used to this setup and how to get the most out of it, but so far, these were the best tasting pizzas I've ever made The plate as it comes: After a good clean up: Raw: The end results:

So, my next adventures with this book were croissants and the plum tart. Both were really fun to make, I had to fudge the croissant recipe a bit as I made it too late last night to bake them before I went to bed. After shaping them I put them in the fridge then brought them out again for an hour this morning before baking. I don't think this was a good idea! they didn't really rise and although they had a great flavour they were far denser than they should have been. Should have known better than to go against what was in this book! The plum tart could probably have done with 5 minutes less in the oven as it's a bit darker than I would want. Overall though I'm happy with what I've learnt. Piping needs some work: Disappointing inside of the croissants:

To answer my own question, I found this place on eBay: http://www.ebay.com/itm/290979602828?ssPageName=STRK:MEWNX:IT&_trksid=p3984.m1497.l2649 Got two (one's a present) 350mm square 12mm thick steel plates. They were pretty coated with a grubby rusty substance when they arrived but a 24 hour soak in normal vinegar got that off with no effort at all. A good wash in soapy water and an hour or so seasoning in the oven with a thin layer of oil and they were ready to go. Made my first batch of pizza yesterday and will be posting more about it when I get the pictures sorted, suffice to say they were the best I've ever made. Couldn't be happier with the steel. Especially as each one cost just over £30 delivered, compared to over $200 for the equivalent from bakingsteel.com.

I have silestone countertops (similar idea to caesarstone) and find that stuff like turmeric and coffee will stain if left for more than a few minutes. Was really upset by this at first and got the installers back to look at it, they just told me to ignore the instructions and use regular cream cleaner like Cif. I've been doing that for over five years now as it works a treat. Surface is as good as new and nothing stains it.

Not got round to trying it yet but this, from Ideas in Food, is on my Evernote list.

I've made pilaf a few times since reading this article. The advice about putting the pan into a couple of inches of cold water at the end of cooking has always worked perfectly with my stainless steel lined Al-Clad pan. It comes off in one nice piece and clean up is a doddle.

Cheryl, they look amazing, I think I'm going to try them this weekend. Chris, what temperature do you aim for with this method?

Hi Rob, could you share a link to who you got this from on ebay? What, specifically did you order? How has it been since you got it?

Thak you! Can't recommend it highly enough, there's a fair bit to read through but it all makes sense and the recipes really do work well. It's the details like the precision of measurement and the steam generation that set it apart from all my other baking books. Let us know how you get on!

Only that I used a mix of chillies instead of straight habaneros. The end result has a really, really good flavour and has been used on everything I've eaten today (ham sandwich, cheese, new bread recipe, steak sandwich, pancakes...!) I think I may try a bit more chilli powder (or possibly just more habaneros) next time as I could take it a little hotter. I'd be interested to know how hot the original is as I've never had the pleasure of it, what does it compare to?

I got this book a few weeks ago and have been absolutely loving it. I've never really made bread that I've been happy with before but it's made all the difference to me, it feels like I've still got a long way to go but things are finally starting to click - I love the attention to detail, the way that the whole process is discussed at such length, it makes it a lot easier to understand what matters and how to control things. So far, I've made a sourdough boule, some pretty rough baguettes and today a bâtard. The flour I'm using seems to need a little less water than the recipes suggest as the baguette/bâtard doughs have been quite hard to handle, but the taste has been a world away from the usual stuff I've made. The main difference seems to be the tiny amounts of yeast used compared to recipes I've used before. Bread finally tastes like "proper" bread rather than the strange approximation I'm used to. I did a search to see if there was a thread on this book already but couldn't find it, mods feel free to merge it if there is.

I've been growing some chillies on the kitchen windowsill for the last few months and today made Chris Amirault's version of Inner Beauty. Wow! What an amazing sauce. I had one habanero plant, one with some generic finger chillies and one with some Numex twighlights (not heard of these before, nice little purple/orange fruit, pretty hot). Kitchen smells great, and now I've got three bottles of really tasty hot sauce

Hi John The Andrew James one looks like a rebranded version of the one I used to have. It only cost about £35 but died fairly quickly. I'd look elsewhere. The one I got as a replacement is the foodsaver model from Lakeland: http://www.lakeland.co.uk/15349/FoodSaver it's a similar price to the one you linked and is much much better than my first one. A lot more robust, pulls a better vacuum and can even vacuum seal canisters. With any of these generic channeled bags will work fine, I get mine off eBay.

I made the chefsteps thick cut fries last weekend and they were amazing. Have to say I was skeptical about the benefits of triple cooking prior to doing these, no longer! Well, well worth the effort (it's not that much in reality, just an extra step in the sous vide). They were far an away the best fries I've ever had.

Have you tried olive oil instead of the butter? I've recently made an orange olive oil cake which has an amazing texture/flavour.

Nice What dough recipe are you using there?

Definitely more like charred meat than just a smoke flavour... Maybe I'll try getting some meat scraps really charred then infuse them in oil... Will try this too, cheers EDIT - found this description which I'll give a go too:

I ate at Simon Rogan's new restaurant in Manchester last week and had an amazing dish of ribeye tartare. What I liked most about it was that the meat was cut fairly large for a tartare and had been dipped in charcoal oil so it had an almost grilled flavour. I'd really like to try this but a google search doesn't seem to turn anything up. Is this something that can be bought or can anyone suggest how to make it?

My first stab at SV corned beef was WAY better than I'd ever managed with traditional methods. I did the equilibrium brining method from modernist cuisine, 7 days in brine with no possibility of over salting. Followed by 15 hours at 79.5C. It was perfect, really moist and tender but sliceable. Very happy with it.

it means no worries...

I love the fact that in safari the back button now makes an instant jump back to what I was viewing, no pointless reloading of the page. Much better.