jackal10

For a white wine substitute I like elderflower cordial with a slice of lemon. Water and lemon is OK. Old fashioned real lemonade is nice, if not too sweet. Red wine substitutes are harder. Plain red grape juice is OK but tends to be too sweet. Being a geek, I'm happy to drink black coffee throughout the meal.

Buy a copy of the "Good Fod Guide" or Time Out http://www.timeout.com/london/restaurants/ I like New World in Gerrard Place for Dim Sum, Sabras in Willesden Green for Gujerati food.

You could run a car on some californian 15%+ fruit bombs I've had recently - unmodified...

You are getting creosote. The smoke is being generated at too low a temperature. I expect the outside temperature was low, and the smoker not well insulated. Next time a) Use more air b) Wrap at lest the bottom part of the smoker in an old balmket

Stehen: The blow-outs are typical of baking from cold. Unless the loaf is evenly made and scored the extra oven rise will tend to blow out the centre. You might find letting the dough warm up some before you bake helps, however this will make the dough less stiff, and you should allow less intial proof time as the dough will prove somewhat warming up.

Traditionally dough should feel like earlobe, but I guess you can apply other other parts of the anatomy... You can handle we sticky doughs with a little oil on your hands and worktop. Much better than flour, as even a little flour pickup will change the nature of the dough. Use flour only for the shaping stage.

I use a professional grade robo coupe food processor, but even that struggles. You need a motor rated about 300W/kg of dough, and a blade that can spin at 500rpm or better. I have also used a professional spiral mixer on fast, You need to mix the dough until it starts sticking again after the "pickup" phase. You were right to add the Vitamin C. It oxidises an enzyme that otherwise weakens the gluten.

Westlers give a different version of history: http://www.westlerfoods.com/funpages/funhistory.html and they make a Jumbo Dog

Its a chip butty - from the butter, an essential ingredient However let me proudly present Westlers, Britain's No 1 Hot Dog. Pretty well universally if offered a Hot Dog, this is what you will get, from a tin. Note the serving suggestions. As it says "7 out of 10 hot dogs eaten outside of the home are from the Westlers stable! The biggest range from the biggest brand on the market includes many different sizes, from standard Hot Dogs through to the favourite Jumbo Hot Dogs! These are ideal for Mobile and Static Caterers, Fast Food outlets and Sporting events....Products are ideal for: Cinemas Theme Parks Stadia & Sporting Events Pubs, Bars & Bistros Leisure Outlets For the contract range (with chicken) "Contract Hot Dogs Currently supplying 75% of UK local authorities, Westler Foods Contracts Range has the widest range on the market,...Westlers Contract range has been developed specifically to cater for the demands faced by those catering for children." http://www.westlerfoods.com/products/hotdogs.html Read it and weep...

Shalmanese: Looks good. The wetter the dough the bigger the holes in the crumb. You might find a little oil on your hands and workbench instead of flour will let you work with these wet doughs. AndrewB: If its fermentable, that is if it has starch in it, then you could make a sour ferment from it. However none of the alternatives you mention have any gluten in them to give structure to the loaf. You can make gluten free loaves, but they usually involve something like Xanathan gum to replace the gluten, as are not terribly satisfactory.

I appreciate Mr Maw's generous words, almost as much as his girth.. However I should point out that the National Dish, for those of us over a certain age, is http://www.nigella.com/ As for sandwiches, do not ignore the wonders of the hot bacon sarnie...

Wholemeal can be treated like a soft flour. I'm getting good results with high intensity mixing (mix on high speed until the dough goes from pickup to sticky); then shape green and a long proof.

The steam has to hit the relatively cold dough in the first minute or so of baking. After that the outside of the dough has warmed above 80C/130F and the starch become fixed. Painting or spraying the dough with water before it goes in the oven gives some of the same efect, but its not really the same as superheated steam condensing on the dough surface. Steaming 10 mins into the bake is relatively pointless, and will also cool the oven at a critical phase

If its a 500F, then the crust look light...have you checked your oven temperature with a thermometer? Maybe you should bake a little longer. Its he burst of superhot steam at the beginning that gelatinises the outside of the dough. You need something like a cast iron pan with plenty of heat capacity that you pre-heat dry and then into which you put the water so it almost instantly turns to hot steam. Steam after the first minute or so is not the same at all.

The crust can be improved by a) Baking hotter, around 450F b) Steam in the first minute. ASssuming its a domestic oven, put a cast iron pan in the oven to pre-heat. When you put the loaf in, pour a cup of water into the hot pan (care:super hot steam), and close the door. You might want to remove or protect any class, like the oven light first.

That bread looks OK. What do you think is wrong? You can make good bread with AP flour. You also don't need to knead anything like 20 mins; 2 or 3 mins is more than enough. Best description I know is that pinching the dough should feel a bit like pinching an earlobe. I think your difficulty is elsewhere. Looks to me like your loaf is overproved. since the slashes on the top have not opened much, indicating little oven spring. Yeast activity is very temperature sensitive. You need the dough to be at 30C/90F (warm), so find a warm place to let it rise. For commercial yeast, maybe half an hour for the first rise, and and hour for proof, having shaped the loaf at that temperature. The loaf should "spring" in the oven, nearly doubling again.

Ahh...the Sage of Baltimore, spot on as always I think the question of what is a "proper" meal is a good one. One that (as Sidney Smith has it) that afterwards " Serenely full the epicure would say "Fate cannot harm me, I have dined today" A meal, that unless it happens at least once a day or so, one feels vaguely cheated and unsatisfied For me, this involves sitting down at a table with cutlery. eating from plates. It probably involves protein, preferably animal, but I realise that some people have restrictions. They probably want something green. Its not grazing from the fridge, although that has its own guilty pleasure. Its not food eaten on the run - that is just a stop-gap, not real food. Hot dogs are not real food. They are a snack. They are a way to pad out the expensive protein with lots of flabby carbohydrate. I suppose you could take the sausage and the trimmings and put them on a plate, with the bun on the side. You would quickly perceive the lack of vegetables or salad, the poorness of the roll, and the paucity of the sausage, unless you are very lucky or have several.

Yummy pictures Adam! I've never heard of kidneys, but in my version the meat must be best end of neck, including the bones. Braised red cabbage to accompany

P: Prawns Pork, peas, potato puree plums Q: Quahogs, queenies (clams), quorn, quinoa, queen of puddings

Most bread is 60%-70% hydration (weight of total water to weight of total flour) Salt and yeast each around 2% of total flour weight. A cup of flour is around 125gm, so your 3 cups is 375gm A cup of water is around 237gm yours is about 475g! If your measurements were accurate you would have more like a batter. I'm surprised you could knead it at all. 1 cup water in total is more like what you want for 3 cups flour.

There isn't a simple answer. Flour and water is a complex system, and a lot of the traditional books are just wrong. a) Its not primarily the mechanical work that develops the gluten, but time and hydration. You actually don't need to knead at all, other than to mix the dough. See, for example http://forums.egullet.org/index.php?showto...dpost&p=1091247 b) The exception is commercial bread where high intensity mixing is used to develop the gluten instead of time. You can't do this by hand. c) Its impossible to over-knead by hand d) The "window pane" test only works for white bread, Any bran present will puncture the film.

Ogden Nash has it: Candy's dandy, but liquor's quicker...

I guess the UK equivalent might be the bacon roll. Usually eaten standing near the vendor, but (and here is the important part) with a steaming mug of strong tea in the other hand. This effectively means it is not mobile food. A bacon butty, on the other hand (slices of white bread, butter, ketchup or HP sauce) is best eaten over the sink, in private. I am reliably informed that warm meat pies are what are eaten at half time at football matches. ("Who ate all the pies!" is the chant), maybe with mushy peas (minted) in a plastic cup... http://www.pukkapies.co.uk/

its also a doughnut, not a donut. Depends wher you put the punctuation. A cream doughnut can be crisp on the outside However a crisp cream doughnut is not a trademark.

The thing I find curious, and therefore wonder if it is symbolic of a deeper societal value, is how much US food is fast to eat, and eaten from the hand, often on the move; not just hot dogs, but also hamburgers, Po-boys, heros, submarines, bagels and other deli sandwiches, pizza and much BBQ even. This seems unique to the US. Does this reflect a hurried, grab it and go society, or one that treats food as fuel, rather than something to linger over in comfortable surroundings and company?