Norm Matthews

When we had a Cuban recipe for lobster, it made me want to do lobster again as I usually have it (not that I usually have it). So when Charlie asked for a crab boil dinner a few days ago, I thought it would be a good time to use lobster instead of shrimp with the crab legs. Only I broiled the lobster separately.

Through the KC Star newspaper I have been getting free NYT recipes. Yesterday was one titled American Itallian Meatballs. It had ricotta and Romano cheese as well as parsley, garlic and egg. Cherlie said it was good but liked our regular recipe better. I made two loaves of French bread this morning. One went to make garlic toast for today and plans for tomorrow is to use the other to make Bahn Mi sandwiches.

@Tropicalsenior I enjoyed the first video a lot. What I liked the most was number 7 "Sourdough should" Like people telling you what sour should be or else it isn't "real" sourdough. I think @MaryIsobel should watch it too as it addresses "my sourdough died" as probably a mistaken diagnosis of the reality of the sourdough condition. The one on preferments left me more confused about what it is and if it ever isn't something, if you know what I mean. I want to keep the bake wth Jack so I can watch the other episodes..

@Tropicalsenior Thank you. I will look at the videos later today

My son and I went to a Cuban restauant a couple days ago. He wanted to order a Creole Lobster dish for us to share but changed his mind when he found out it was $60.00. He ordered a Cuban sandwich and I ordeered aa appitizer of three empanadas. We shared both. While we were waiting, he looked up the lobster recipe on his phone and asked me if I could make it with lobster and shrimp. I said I would and made it yesterday

@Tropicalsenior Wow! Your breads look very good. I have not been able to get good slash marks on my only-sourdough starter breads. I did not know the term was preferment. I just called it aged yeast. A long time ago I read that commercial yeast cannot reproduce itself as the hybrid it was made, and will revert back to wild yeast if kept alive by repeated feedings. I don't know if that is as true with newer instant yeast or not. When someone gets some sourdough starter from me, I tell them "it's not a pet, it's ok if it dies. It isn't hard to start another one. I have not been in touch with other sourdough bakers before now. I didn't realize there are so many of us. Up to now it has just been trial and error for me.

@ElsieDKAF used those measurements by volume. I used those too until last month when I visited more recent sites to get some different recipes. They say to use equal parts by weight and those measures by volume are fairly equal by weight. ( I don't imagine a pioneer woman in a sod hut on the prairie used a scale to get weight exactly down to the gram) I like the consistency of that mix better. The flour depends on your taste. AlaMoi used buckwheat. That sounds good. I tend to use all purpose flour because it is neutral compared to others and you can use other flours in your recipe with it if you want something different. I did use instant or rapid rise yeast but now I am trying to develop my skills to handle making more varied recipes using just the starter. In the future, if I need to make bread for an occasion and i absolutely need it done it a couple of hours, I will use the recipe with instant yeast added. I use the starter for the taste and the yeast for dependability. Come to think of it, the two new recipes I tried, used starter and used baking soda and baking powder for the levening. Isn't that more or less the same thing?

@haresfur and others, I did not expect people to want to copy me. I expected a heated discussion calling me names and decrying my methods. I have read that some bakers age their yeast on a regular basis. It gives the bread it makes a more complex flavor. It is not real sourdough but to me it does resemble sourdough very much. I did not mention the details of aging yeast but you should use 1 cup of dechlorinated water at room temperature, 1 1/2 cup flour and 2 tsp. yeast. Every day pour out half and add back the amount of water and flour you discarded, and in three or four days you will have yeast aged enough to use in a sourdough recipe. If you use just flour and water, without yeast, it will start to ferment on its own from natural wild yeast that is present everywhere, in about a week or two and you will have real sourdough starter. Using commercial yeast is a quck start way and some people will tell you it isn't real sourdough but I can't tell much, if any difference and using it with the addition of store-bought yeast will give you a good tasting loaf of bread and be more predictable. @Maison Rustique The first sourdough I got in the mail was dehydrated and it revived well. If you did not use high heat to dry it, it should revive and be as good as before. I kept it alive for sevral years and refrigerated without feeding it very often it when I did not plan to use it again for a while. You can also freeze sourdough starter. Just don't get it hot.

Not copper. The bread pan have is steel. The pictured one was from King Arthur, but I bet you can find one on Amazon for less

@ElsieD Maybe you could try the recipe called King Arthur Flour Rustic Sourdough Bread. It is very reliable and I didn't attempt to keep sourdough going in the last year. What I did was to mix equal amounts of water and flour with a two teaspoons of commercial yeast, feed it for two or three days then use that "aged yeast" in place of actual sourdough in the recipe. It makes good bread. I bake mine on a double French loaf pan and brush them with egg and sprinkle with sesame seeds just before they ot into the oven.PS that recipe also uses store bought yeast to assure a quick and good rise without relying on the sourdough or aged yeast for anything but flavor.

Thank you. Your post made me realize that I forgot to post the recipes for today on the blog. They are there now.

I thought I had been making sourdough bread for around forty years. I thought. Maybe I was fooling myself. The recipe was called King Arthur Flour Rustic Sourdough bread. It says it is sourdough bread and it is from King Arthur Flour for goodness sake. But here is the the problem. The ingredients are sourdough starter, flour, water, salt, and sugar and yeast. Yes store bought yeast. I read somewhere years ago that you can make sourdough starter using store bought yeast because it is a hybrid and cannot reproduce itself in its hybrid form but will revert back to its original wild yeast form. I had heard that when commercial bakeries made sourdough, they used the starter for flavor and regular yeast for dependability. Now I don't know if that is still true today as it might have been a while ago before fast rising yeast was developed. I found conflicting opinions on whether or not that is cheating. If I have sinned, forgive me. I want start doing more stuff with my sourdough starter besides the same loaf I have made since forever. It was easy, dependable and everyone, I mean everyone likes it. Now that sourdough has become popular, there is more information about it out there and also the recipes are easier to find. So I started fermenting flour and water to get 100% wild yeast. I made three starters. One with whole wheat flour, one with AP flour and one with rye flour. They all started and I grew them all for a while. I ended up keeping the rye starter but have been feeding it with AP flour since then, so now it is just white flour starter. In the pictures, the round loaf and the French bread loaf are the same sourdough recipes I have always used but without any yeast other that what was grown in the new starter. The recipe is one cup starter, 1 1/2 C. water, 2 teaspoons saltr, 1 Tablespoon sugar and about 5 cups of bread flour. I say about because, since everything else was measured by volume, 5 cups isn't always exactly enough. This time the dough was a little wetter and stickier than normal which means it had higher hydration and so the air bubbles are a little bigger than before. The round loaf was baked in a preheated cast iron Dutch oven. The recipes for the sourdough apple fritter bread and the sour dough pancakes with the notes and that came with them are at my blog. I am not sure I am allowed to post them here. I think the fritter bread would be improved with the addition of chopped pecans. The blog address is at the bottom of the page. I welcome your thought and comments.

I was going to make these chicken thighs with a garllic and lime butter sauce, but I opened the package as I was getting ready to make it, I discovered that I was given boneless, skinless chicken thighs instead so I had to change plans. Both recipes are together on my blog. This one needed a crispy skin and we had it with baby bok choy, snow peas and rice. The other one was sauteed with wine and vegetables.

We had Arroz con Pollo for dinner. Charlie loves anything with chicken and rice.

@rotuts Thanks again. If I ever see it again I certainly will. I don't see flat iron steaks very much any more and they are good too.