jackal10

None of the above replies mention the increase in the property price. Most restaurants are, for the investors, disguised property speculation, with the restaurant keeping the place warm and increasing the reputation of the neighborhood. Thus expensive restorations make sense. One place I know was let on what appeared to be an astronomical rate. It turned out that the mother company also owned the building so it was, effectively paying itself and taking our the profit from the restaurant tax free. Further, since it owned other nearby properties it set a precedent for their future rate reviews. How places not on a long lease or freehold manage I don't know.

Mention should be made of the current view that trans-fats are evil, but saturated fats have been redeemed, especially if you eat garlic and drink red wine... Butter and Goose fat are particularly beneficial, and good to cook with.

Polish, and hence some US cuisine is very sweet. For a long time commercial food was loaded with sugar and salt, but modern health (and taste) has reduced these.

Its OK, but now a little dated and nothing that is not done elsewhere. Lots of pictures, and I use the roast onion icecream recipe.

Stinking Bishop

Baguettes. I was particularly pleased with the crumb texture.

No picture, sorry. but I made a delicous Sussex Pond pudding. I really reccomend it! http://www.offthebone.net/?p=99

You might find it easier to put the dough on silicone baking paper when you shape it. That way you can handle the dough on the paper and put it in the oven still on the paper, You need less flour on the couche and the peel and it doesn't stick. You can then go to even higher hydrations - I've used 100%

Use soft pastry flour 9% protein or so. Ciabattas were developed with European flours in mind...

I-am-not-a-lawyer but I would start with the restaurant. They have a duty of care not to poison their customers, and you have a contractual relationship with them. They in turn may sue their suppliers, but that is up to them. More liekly they will try and settle, for exsmple with a free meal...

Don't. Use sourdough that is naturally pro-biotic and anti-bacterial. A good sourdough loaf will keep for at least a week, and dry before it molds.

Time to start planning the vegetable garden for this year. This year the innovation is an 5m x 5m extension to the fruit cage, mainly to grow sweet corn, salad, and brassicas annd the like that otherwise the loacal pigeons, pheasents and squirrels will devour before I do, I'm going to divide this into 4 strips, and prectice the usual rotation. 1: Legumes: broad beans, then cabbage; Purple podded pas, then CCA lettuce 2: Solanace: early spuds, tomatos, peppers, then endives, chicory, overwinter garlic; 3: Brassicas: Sprouts, PSB, savoys, rocket, chinese mustards, kohl rabe, kales etc 4: Other: "Trinity": Sweetcorn, mini pumpkins, dwarf beans Plot 2: Squashes, pumpkins, zucchini, sunchokes; leeks Plot 3: A: pemament Asparagus, Globe Artichokes B: Hamburg parsley, baby carrots, more potatoes C: Garlic, Shallots, fava beans, pole beans Not growing onions, since I can buy oerfectly good ones, and they don't need to eaten straight from the ground. Any other ideas?

I have drunk Singapore Slings in the Long Bar of Raffles Hotel in Singapore. Very pink, very sweet, and rather disappointing. The Long Bar is quite short, and now just a tourist destination, Sad.

Brandade with truffles, or even a little truffle oil is excellent, and a traditional Christmas dish is the south of France. There are many many ways of preparing salt cold, just as with fresh cod. Poached or baked with onions and tomatoes is good, as are West Indian dishes like salt cod with ackee (breadfruit).

Freezing starter is bad news. It deteriorates quite quickly frozen. For long term archival storage you do better to dry it, by spreading it thinly on clingfilm and letting it dry at room temperature, then powdering it and keeping it sealed.

I don't think you can say that neglecting a starter will make it change its characteristics faster. If anything being kept cold in the fridge will slow down reproduction, and make the change slower. However build up of acidity and waste products will also affect the composition, but then you don't know how the original was maintained. For example one baker I know, who made very tasty sourdough, just chucked a lump of today's dough into an unsavoury bucket of ancient dough under the bench, and used that next day to start the next batch. Unless you can reproduce exactly the conditions of the original, including the same flour composition, micro-nutrients in the water, ambient organisms in the bakery, and the same temperature conditions and feeding regime, then your starter and bread flavour will be different. Personally I'm not a fan of keeping the mother culture in a tub on the counter and refreshing it everyday unless you are baking everyday. Unless you refresh completely starting from a small inoculation I think you build up too much acidity and side products for a happy starter, and the rapid continuous growth must lead to more changes. For home use I think you do better keeping it in a jar in the fridge, using a small amount to inoculate the preferment sponge, fermetn that for 8 -12 hours at 80-85F and when the jar is looking a bit empty to ferment up a completely new batch from a small inoculation (say 10g mother to 500g flour and water).

In that book, quoting work by M.J.R. Nout and T. Creemars-Molenaar (Chem. Mikrobiol Technol Lebensm 10:162-167) on the stability of two dutch wheat sourdough starters consisting of Lb. sanfrancisco and Saccharomyces exigus against ordinary bakers yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae they showed that the bakers yeast had disappeared in two fermentations. In another study the same authors could denmonstrate that a mixed initial sourdough population of Lb. plantarun, Lb brevis, Lb buchneri, Lb cellobiosus and the yeast Torulaspora delbrueckii was reduced to a microflora consisting of Lb. sanfranciso and Torulaspora delbrueckii after 7 weeks and 20 dough refreshments, even though Lb. sanfranciso was not present in detectable quantities initially. The conclusion is that a mature sourdough culture is pretty stable stuff, but the exact behaviour and flavour will depend not only on the culture but also on many other factors, including the local temperature and feeding regime, flour ash content, oxygenation, dough and stiffness.

Chopped Liver

If you ask at the SFBI, I expect you can. Sourdough cultures have had surprisingly little scientific study, and don't feature a lot in yeast libraries and the like, although individual bakeries may keep their own library. The Handbook of Dough Fermentations (Kulp and Lorenz) ISBN 0-8247-4264-8 is one of the few text books on the subject, but a lot of it is about rye sours. It would be surprising if the culture did not adapt to local conditions. With a new generation roughly every 20 minutes, evolutionary adaption happens quite quickly.

I think Artisanbaker baker is right, and that there is truth in all three. A sourdough culture is complex, with perhaps tens of different strains of lactobacilli and yeasts. Additional strains are present in the air, water and flour you feed it with - your bakery is not sterile. The temperature and feeding regime will be a little different to its origin, Inevitably the balance of strains will change and evolve to those best suited to your local conditions. Species that are favoured by your temperature and feeding regime will outgrow those that are not, and strong species from your local environment will find their niche in the mix, perhaps outperforming an imported species. Certainly I have noticed that when I get a new starter from another baker, it evolves over about a month. The starter I normally use seems robust and stable. If I bring a starter from San Francisco the characteristic taste goes over a week or two, and it ends up similar to (but maybe slightly more or less vigorous different) to my normal home starter

Marmite Gentleman's Relish (Patum Pepperium) Cheddar Cheese (melted or not)

2 water:1 rice and the lid off

Method? Formula?

Sad, sad. You really are the subject of the Puritan propagandists. Taste is an evolutionary mechanism that helps us distinguish what is good for us: if it tastes good it probably is good, provided you stick to natural products. Duck fat is a natural product. Its only when manufactured food came along with trans-fats, sweetners, corm syrup and the like that these things got screwed up. The chloresterol and saturated fat is bad for you is doubtful anyway, once you take trans-fats out of the mix. If you remove fat from the diet you die of other diseases instead.

Yes, omit the yeast, otherwise you are making yeast bread with whatever sourdough flavour you happen to add. To recap: Sponge step: 200g flour 100g water 10g mother starter ferment 12 hours or more at 85F Dough 400g flour 320g water 10g salt Pinch Vit C mix and leave 4 hours then mix with the sponge starter Bulk ferment 2 hours at 85F, shape gently, then prove at 85F for 2 hours or overnight (or more) in the refrigerator Bake with plenty of bottom heat and steam in the first minute. The technique of baking in a pre-heated casserole with the lid on for the first half of the bake works well for home ovens. - see the minimalist bread thread.