IndyRob

The gold standard seems to be 90 seconds in an Old World oven that was started in the morning for service later in the day. This, along with 12 hours of dough development produces a product that is light and airy, but with a wafer thin char and the requisite 'leoparding'. But with three days of cold dough development and 4 minutes of bake, our home oven pizza can get pretty damn close.

I still think the baking steel in a home oven can't be beat for indoor use. I'm addicted to YouTube pizza oven videos. I love the possibilities. I love the outdoor oven builds, I love the new tech. But I can do a better Neapolitan style in my oven on the steel than I've ever seen come out of one of these ovens. That's not to say that they couldn't beat mine, they could easily, but they generally don't. And what I want now is to do an 18" NYC style. I can't do that in my oven. 14" max. And that's bigger than pretty much all of these.

I've been 'tinned fish' curious since Anthony Bourdain went to that place in Spain in his show. But I didn't think that meant I should go to my grocery and buy some fish in a can. The whole point was that Spain has some exceptional examples. The Eater article does not mention any brands. In fact, it actively avoids it. (in one case, for our protection, she says - but wouldn't we be better protected if we knew what not to buy?). At a specialty shop... One of those options is a $44 tin of sardines, which my colleague Robert Sietsema notes were “skinned and deboned laboriously by hand,” with a mild flavor and dots of gold leaf to really drive home the luxury vibe. He “vastly” preferred a $15 tin, and noted that he didn’t see much distinction between these extravagant tins and plain ol’ supermarket sardines. Why would you not tell us what, precisely, those products were? Okay, I get it. Maybe you're just commenting on the cultural fad. But it's not a fad in Spain, is it?

I'm just skeptical because I see so many labels advertising 'Gluten Free' when that type of food has no relation to anything that would have any gluten. I think I've seen it on a bottle of water. Okay, maybe that was just a joke.

As long as we're not talking about a flour fried chicken, I'm curious as to what seasonings would not be gluten free. Especially in a rotisserie chicken.

Huh. I thought a site with a name like foodsafetynews.com would somehow expand, or drill down on a Consumer Reports article. But it just uses it as a source. That doesn't change anything, but I just found it odd.

I was curious as to whether they'd try to emulate white meat or dark meat. White meat for the presumed healthiness, or dark meat for flavor. It looks like they went with white meat. I'm only assuming they had a choice.

Yeah, you need to catch it before it deliquesces.

Interesting. I wondered how the word would relate so I did a search... The Disgusting Details of Deliquescence If it’s worth it to you to get a little technical to learn even more about how mushrooms turn to muck, this section is for you. Is this the proper context? I'm not sure. (https://blog.mycology.cornell.edu/2008/07/01/the-dish-on-deliquescence-in-coprinus-species/)

Never trust anyone who can use the word 'deliquesce' in a sentence. But even worse, one who finds a reason to do so.

I bought some of these the other day because I wanted to make some proper onion rings and not have to worry about making proper burgers at the same time for a weeknight meal. It worked pretty well except that we had plates with a huge pile of onion rings with a couple of little sliders hidden somewhere beneath. Microwaved bread works when you would normally have steamed bread. Like a steamed hot dog bun (or a slider). You just need to wrap the bread in a paper towel and give it a short burst. Just gives it a little steam. The paper towel keeps it from getting sweaty.

I don't think this has anything to do with the warning, but there was an interesting factoid on (I think) the Netflix Series Cooked... If you have only flour and water and eat the flour and drink the water, you will be dead in about two weeks. However, if you mix the flour and water, allow them to ferment, and bake it into bread, you can live on it indefinitely. I'm not sure if that's true, but I believe that was what was claimed. Edit: I took this as a nutritional claim, not a food safety claim.

I use a baking steel and that was a big step forward. I'm happy with my neopolitan style pizzas, although leoparding is out of the question. I really don't have much desire for something like an Ooni unless it can make big ol' NY style pies. My oven will go to 550, but I've found 500 to be adequate. But the characteristics of your particular oven are paramount. 500 in oven A can be totally different from 500 in oven B. Sometimes you may want to make use of the power of the bottom rack/heating, or with another, take advantage of the broiler. If you're new to pizza making, and have a Trader Joe's nearby, I'd recommend purchasing their fresh doughs for a consistent starting point.

This was one of the best changes I've made. A stack of plates don't need much height, so if you add some shelves you can get a lot more useful space.

This is true. In fact, I suffered this in silence while watching The Great British Bake-Off. But then I came across a 9-page topic of opinions on which culinary terms should be banned. It seemed like a good place to file my own opinion (and not without some agreement if I look back at the original post's likes). But it could be a Britishism that falls hard on my American ears.

I guess I was thinking about encountering this in a more current usage. I'm not really arguing that it's wrong - i.e. that it can't be a noun - just that it's not a good usage in the sense I was referring to, and is generally unnecessary. "I love her baked goods", to me is preferable to "I love her bakes". As I said, the latter grates on me. But that is an opinion.

A clam bake is more of a process or an event, isn't it? I was referring to the singular use of 'bake' as a product, or 'bakes' as a collection of various products.

These are just the steps to any fried chicken. It's downright lying about the crevasses.

I don't think we should expect them to do anything. But I do think that we'll be more likely to, to put it crassly, consume their content, if it is more relevant to our situation. I think one of the factors that got Jamie Oliver into trouble here is the fact that in the UK, energy costs are through the roof. As an American, I don't even factor in energy costs when cooking a meal. But eggs, for instance, have tripled in price over the last couple of years. So yeah, I really am interested in frugal cooking. Historically, some of the best dishes have come out of the lowest classes. Using the cheapest cuts to the best effect. That is the best form of cooking.

I was looking around for a Christmas present and happened across a packaged collection of hot sauces. That seemed like a good idea, but upon closer inspection, it seemed like it was a generic mix of fiery labels with no indication of whether the contents of the bottles differed in any way. So I thought perhaps I could curate my own collection. But I'm not a hot sauce aficionado. So I guess I could use some help here. I'm looking for 5-6 selections, with high availability (too late for mail order). I think the selection begins with the classic Cholula, perhaps a direct competitor, and a few others to offer some diversity. Can anyone suggest a collection? Thanks, in advance.

It's a west coast thing? I did not know that. Edit: I just tried to think of a west coast grocery and came up with Ralph's. I checked their site and there it is. But to add insult to injury it's labeled as Kroger, but in the despicable form factor of the hippie communist stubby butter contingent. I'm not sure if our country can survive this.

What's up with Trader Joe's butter? (not the awesome french butter they used to stock, but the everyday TJ butter) I found that they've become my cheapest butter option and went there to buy. The package was an odd shape. Not the normal four quarters of butter. But not the European style package either. I had to double check the weight to make sure it was 1lb. Check. I got it home and opened the box and there were four mini sticks of butter. Like, 5/8ths of a stick long. But they're thicker. I verified on a scale that they were each at least 4oz. The butter is good, but why would they do this?

With all the recent hullabaloo regarding changes at Twitter, I've been exploring one of the highly publicized alternatives; Mastodon. Mastodon is a distributed Twitter alternative that runs on many different servers (also called instances) that are all federated and share content. Moderation falls to each server, which initially must implement a based set of policies, but optionally may also expand on those to create a more restrictive environment. In addition, servers may also block (defederate) other servers if they find them problematic for any reason. The software is free and open-source and is supposedly pretty simple for any technically minded administrator to set up and get going. Servers can be general use, corporately controlled, purpose driven, or interest driven. In addition, many people are setting up personal servers of their use or for family and friends. This leads to the primary criticism of Mastodon. Sign up is easy, but it's hard to know who to sign up with. There are thousands of servers. As all servers are responsible for local moderation, it made me think about eGullet which already does moderation. If eGullet would set up a server/instance, it could be an easy choice for many of it's users (and attract new ones). Alternatively, I think it would be possible just to link eGullet membership to the Mastodon server. Either way, it would be interesting to integrate eGullet into Mastodon's 'Fediverse'. If such a thing happened, you could log into eGullet.social and have three tabs: Home (everyone you follow), Local (all eGullet member posts) and Federated (the general Fediverse). Beyond that, it's pretty much like Twitter without 'The Algorithm' that serves you posts that it selects for you. You can click on Hashtags to see that activity and search for other stuff, but no ads and no AI interference. I think mastodon is still proving itself and there still are some unanswered questions, but in my view, it's a very interesting implementation. And one that would allow the reach of eGullet to expand beyond these virtual walls. Who knows, Jimmy Kimmel might 'Boost' (like a re-tweet) your post. Anyway, this is not a recommendation, and full-disclosure - I've never owned a Twitter account, so all my comparisons are suspect. But I just think it might be an interesting prospect worth kicking around.

Sorry if that came off as harsh, but I just think that when people try to elevate traditional staples, it just doesn't work. If it did, then that new way would become the new traditional staple. Now, it's one thing if you're truly going for a true variation - say, by using buckwheat. But that would be, in my view, a buckwheat pancake. But I don't think people (at least in America which I think is where we're talking about if the subject is pancakes) are really looking for multigrain examples. I looked around and Denny's does offer a '9 grain' pancake (IHOP and Perkins apparently do not offer anything similar). But it exists among all the Banana or Chocolate Chip varieties. They all seem to be more about the buttermilk than the flour. Edit: I guess I'm just feeling protective of the traditional American pancake. Actually, I prefer crepes, myself. And if you want to whip your egg whites to create an incredibly fluffy pancake, I won't argue about calling it a pancake. But it's not really in the tradition, is it?

IMHO, the whole point behind pancakes is that they're cheap and they're good. If you try to elevate them with specialty flours it ain't gonna work. It's a GD pancake. Yes, some are better than others, but it's not about exotic ingredients. It's about learning how to do it properly over time.