curls

Okanagancook, I checked my notes and apparently I cooked them at 400° F for 20 minutes on convention bake. Wow, I had forgotten that I made these!

@Kim Shook your meals look great. Sorry to hear Mr. Kim’s family is not doing well. Wishing them all the best.

@RWood thank you very much for the explanation and the progression of photos. It is great to see how you went about making this cake! I did not even know that such substructures were available for purchase. I'll be checking out the Innovative Sugarworks videos that you mentioned. Doubt I'll ever make something like that but I'd love to learn more about how it is done.

Another nice sourdough discard recipe from King Arthur Flour, this one for pizza. Crust was browner than it appears in this photo. https://www.kingarthurflour.com/recipes/sourdough-pizza-crust-recipe

Lentils & sausage from Melissa Clark's "Dinner in an Instant". Not the most beautiful plate but it was quite tasty.

Sourdough bread with walnuts, dried cherries, and dried cranberries baked in the CSO using the bread setting. I liked the inclusions but did not know how many to include -- will increase the amount next time I bake this loaf.

@RWood that dino cake is amazing!!! How did you go about designing it and figuring out how to make it stand without toppling? Now, I'm going to post a pic of some brownies that I made... decided to make them in tartlet pans so they were a bit dainty and easy to nibble on. Tasty but not the WOW of a dino cake!!!

Cheese, vegetable slicing (zucchini, eggplant, potatoes, etc). I would also be concerned about the safety issues of attempting to slice a frozen log of dough.

Got some stones for my CSO and tried baking one of the bread recipes in the CSO manual. Lessons learned: - only use one stone so that the bread has more room to expand - preheat the stone before baking. If you don't preheat the stone, it keeps the bottom of the loaf from baking as quickly at the rest of the loaf. - deploy a foil shield to keep the top of the bread from burning - if you turn a loaf of bread upside down to bake the bottom of the loaf it may cause the loaf to collapse - even if it isn't pretty it will probably taste good I'm looking forward to trying this recipe again but with a few tweaks. Nice soft and tasty loaf of bread. Looking forward to baking this one again when the tomatoes are in season.

@pastrygirl looking forward to seeing your artwork!

Looks cool! I just checked Notter’s recipe for casting sugar and these are his ingredients for a 1,650 gram batch: sugar 1000 grams water, cold 450 grams glucose syrup 200 grams food coloring optional he heats the mix to 320 F / 160 C I recommend browsing thru Notter’s “The Art of the Confectioner” for inspiration — he has a whole chapter on sugar casting.

Then I would recommend the 6 kg mol d’art or the Bakon MTD 123 mini. If you can find then in the used market, even better. https://www.heritageparts.com/medias/BKN0007.pdf?context=bWFzdGVyfHBkZi1tYW51YWxzfDUyNTYzNnxhcHBsaWNhdGlvbi9wZGZ8cGRmLW1hbnVhbHMvaGQyL2gwZS84OTUwNDkyMzY0ODMwLnBkZnxkZGY5N2Q2NDA2Y2I3Y2U4Zjg0NjA4OWU0MGE4ODdjY2FmODAxYzU1YzgyYWM3Y2E5YjJlMzMxZjczNTYwN2M2 Hopefully a few more folks will chime in. Have fun with your chocolate making!

Sounds like a very challenging weather situation! Does your display have to be chocolate or sugar? Does it have to be edible? I’m thinking gingerbread for edible or some sturdy non-edible constructed thing that is decorated with images of your chocolates and pastries.

@drbrenner please tell us a little bit more about your chocolate making plans. How much experience do you have? How many chocolates would you like to make in a day? What sort of chocolate will you be using (dark, milk, white)? Are you hand dipping, molding, enrobing? The more details you can provide the better chance that someone can provide some helpful suggestions. If your just starting out I don’t think you need any of the suggested options... just a bowl and a microwave or melted chocolate and a slab of marble. Please let us know more about what you do and what you want to do with chocolate.

liamsaunt and @Kim Shook my condolences to you and your families.

Interesting set of experiments for the Cacio e Pepe pizzas. Thanks for documenting this @Chris Hennes.

@rotuts keep your eye out for your commission check. I just ordered a used copy of Lettuce in Your Kitchen: Flavorful And Unexpected Main-Dish Salads And Dressings. Thanks for the recommendation!

Indeed that is what I would think too but so far CI is providing his sourdough content for free and without website registration. They probably just wanted more website clicks.

@weinoo thank you for linking to this older sourdough topic. When I thought about trying to make sourdough bread I found the eGullet sourdough bread course but I did not find the content you just linked too. Happily going down that rabbit hole of a topic! The Cooks Illustrated author, Andrew Janjigian, wrote about moving from an equal parts refreshments to another ratio (1 part starter:2 parts flour:2 parts water) once your starter was active on his quarantiny starter blog. Sadly the content on his blog and in his instagram posts was pulled (suspect he is dealing with some legal issues with CI). Very interesting to read about the eGullet recommended refreshment ratios from the 2009 topic that you linked to. In case anyone else would like to access go down a rabbit hole the eGullet courses (they can be difficult to find). Here are a few links:

Another week, another loaf of sourdough. This was last week's loaf... tweaked the previous recipe by adding some whole wheat flour and upped the hydration from 72% to 74%. Will not be making a loaf this week... have a bit of bread in the freezer that I want to start using up.

Interesting question. My guess is that it would just give your bread extra lift and may mellow out the sourdough flavor just a tad. Would be an interesting experiment... bake two loaves (one with sourdough & yeast / one with just sourdough). If you like, I can mail you some commercial yeast.

My standard fudgy brownie recipe -- using Valrhona unsweetened chocolate. Not as rich or dense as the Paul Young brownie recipe but still very rich and chocolatey.

Sourdough discard drop biscuits -- tasty and quick. Another great recipe from @wordloaf / Andrew Janjigian. https://www.cooksillustrated.com/articles/2388-quarantinystarter-recipe-sourdough-discard-drop-biscuits

Sourdough Discard Flapjacks recipe from Andrew Janjigian / @wordloaf on Instagram (recipe included on Cook's Illustrated website a few days after the Instagram post). Served with coffee and maple syrup. https://www.cooksillustrated.com/articles/2343-quarantinystarter-recipe-sourdough-discard-pancakes

As Jim and others have noted, peach can be a very subtle flavor. I tried a peach pdf once, it didn’t taste very peachy. I tend to use other fruits for pdf. Now I just eat peaches or if I have a lot of them, I make peach preserves. But definitely experiment, perhaps you will figure this out. It would be great to have a tasty peach pdf!