slkinsey

gfron1: Is your bâtard more like a short, thick baguette or more like an elongated boule? I guess I'd call what I baked above bâtards rather than baguettes, and they aren't ideal for toasting in my slice toaster. The boule slices much better for that (although perhaps 5% on each "skinny side" of the boule isn't great). On the other hand, something that is more like an oval boule is very good for slicing and toasting.

I usually pull out the steam half-way through the baking process. I am still refining that, actually. I've been leaving in the heavy slate that I normally use for pizza, but am thinking that it may be too much stored heat for something that needs to bake for more than 120 seconds. So I'm going to swap out the slate for regular "baking stones" when I bake bread. I'd like the Dutch oven method, but don't currently have anything small enough. Maybe it's time to get that medium-sized Staub?

Lisa: For steam, I have had good results bringing a 1 qt straight gauge saucepan to a rolling boil on the stove and then putting it in the preheated oven on a corner of the baking stone, where it continues to boil until it is removed. I put the saucepan in the oven maybe 5 minutes before I put in the bread.

There are a few reasons the "500 gram of flour" boule is a common shape to make... First, it's difficult to find rising baskets in any other shape. Second, rising in a basket is very convenient if you want to retard the formed dough. Third, this is a size that bakes well in a home oven. I do make other shapes from time to time, but these can be considerably more trouble to retard in the refrigerator. You definitely want a sheet pan and some kind of couche, and then you have to figure out some way of wrapping the whole thing in a plastic bag without having any of the plastic touching the exposed surface of the bread. Here are some sourdough baguettes I made the other day: I've had pretty good luck with ciabatta as well (although I find that this one needs a fast rise once it is shaped, so I don't retard it). Although it can be more convenient for sandwiches, I've never done any breads in a loaf pan. Have been meaning to get a pullman pan to make square sandwich bread.

Here's an other question: Is "clean slices" necessarily a desirable quality? I, for example, usually prefer the surface of my bread to be somewhere between slightly and highly irregular (nothing is sadder than an English muffin cut with a straight edge).

You're already getting as depression in the blade near the bolster? You've had this thing for what, two months? This is one consistent knock on electric machines: They remove a lot of metal.

Is it just me, or is the bacon-worship thing starting to get a little tired? I mean, I like bacon as much as the next guy. Scratch that, I probably like bacon more than the next guy. But it seems like bacon-worship was the "everything with 10 cloves of garlic" of its era.

That goes back to my earlier three rules about using classic cocktail names: It's okay to reference the name of a classic or famous cocktail if, and only if: 1. It is a minor tweak, house formula or specific signature iteration of the classic, but within the accepted range of formulations for the classic (or family of classics); or 2. It is clearly evolved from and fundamentally related to the classic, and it is important to make that relationship clear; and 3. You absolutely cannot come up with a better name.

Exactly. Anyone who goes to a lot of trouble to get a knife paper-shredding sharp isn't going to want to dull it up cutting into a loaf of bread.

If it's a hard crust, it's a lot harder than most anything you would ordinarily cut with a chef's knife. Knives sharpened to an acute angle could potentially chip on a hard crust. It's usually possible to find a decent, reverse scalloped, offset handle bread knife for under 25 bucks.

I think it depends on the crustiness of the bread. Store-bought bread, even the "artisanal" ones, tends to have a fairly soft crust. This cuts well with a regular blade. Home made hearth breads and "baked today" bakery hearth breads tend to have a more crackly crust that cuts better with a serrated blade (at least until the crust is breached).

There are two major elements to the dearth of truly great beer stores in NYC. First is the fact that liquor and wine stores are not allowed to sell beer. So, unless someone wants to open a beer-only store (not likely in Manhattan), the beer inventory is competing with other inventory, and probably being stocked by someone who is not a major beer fanatic. Second is the price of real estate. Storage costs money. The greater the number of brands you stock, the more rent you have to pay. NYC already has very few stores with a decent selection of liquor, and liquor has the advantage over beer of (1) having more profit per square foot of storage space; and (2) being nonperishable so that you can keep a less-popular bottle of booze around for years without having it go bad. I agree that Pioneer has a pretty good selection of beers, especially for NYC. But I also acknowledge that it's a pretty pathetic selection of beers compared to most any large liquor store in other cities. The reality is that you could probably replace every single liquor store on the island of Manhattan with the Spec's Warehouse Store in Houston, and end up with better selection of just about everything alcoholic.

What about the Gramercy Meat Market? I heard that they have people from the defunct French Butcher? Also, maybe Jeffrey would cut you one?

The starch retrogradation trick is something that Jack Lang covered in his eGCI Potato Primer back in 2003. Lots of other good information there, although many of the pictures appear to be broken.

That's not too different from the USDA code: But there is plenty of room in both sets of criteria for pretty dismal animal welfare. Again, small farm is likely to be much more important than organic certification or labeling. I think the general rule of thumb is that, if it comes from a megagrower, it's probably not great. I'd feel much better about the welfare of chickens I bought from a not-organic farmer who maintains a flock of around 100 animals than I would the welfare of certified organic chickens raised on a megafarm.

Magictofu: What makes you think that there are necessarily animal welfare benefits to meats that are labeled "organic?" There is nothing preventing someone from raising "organic" chickens in a battery farm every bit as odious as Tyson's, so long as the chickens are fed "organic" feed.

Daniel, are you talking about a pork loin or a pork tenderloin? I have a hard time believing it would be possible to have a 10 pound tenderloin.

Pork tenderloin can actually be quite delicious cooked SV to low temperature. Which is just about the only way it's delicious.

Exactly, Mike. Small farm is WAY more important than organic in my book. purplechick, small local farms are a much better indicator of the way the animals have been treated than organic. daisy17, it is against the law to give hormones to chickens. Batard, the EWG's list and the recommendation to "buy these organic" fails to account for several things. Most notably, the fact that plenty of organic fruits and vegetables are treated with organic pesticides (many of the allowable ones being far more dangerous than the synthesized ones). And, no less significantly, that "measurable pesticides" does not equal "present in meaningful quantities." It is especially noteworthy that the list makes no differentiation as to the relative "badness" of the pesticides identified (most likely because, whenever actual doctors and epidemiologists have been interviewed about the amounts and kinds of pesticides found, they say that the amounts are far too minute to be any concern). In addition, the way the list is presented is misleading. It is not the case that strawberries at 90% have nine times more pesticides than some vegetable that rates out at 10%. It just means that they were able to detect some measurable quantity of pesticides on 9 out of every 10 strawberries. It could very well be the case that some fruit that they rate at 20% has a much higher concentration of pesticides on that 20% than the concentration present on worse-rated strawberries.

It's not clear to me that the rep is being entirely forthright. My recollection is that the new NP is definitely more up front with the herbs.

Keep in mind that "organic" doesn't equal "no herbicides, pesticides or antifungals." It just means that you have to use "naturally occurring or derived" herbicides, pesticides or antifungals. Copper sulfate, for example. It's not often difficult to identify the produce that has not been treated with herbicides, pesticides or antifungals of any kind. First of all, these won't be found in the "organic section" of your local supermarket. Second, they will usually show evidence of having been eaten by pests, attacked by funguses or various other blights, etc. The stuff that looks more or less the same as the "regular" produce, but just costs twice as much? That stuff was treated with herbicides, pesticides and antifungals.

For that money, you should be able to get a reconditioned clip-on laboratory recirculating water bath heater that you could use with any vessel you wanted. I don't understand paying $483 US on a non-recirculating PID heater with size limitations.

Here's the only reason to ever pay full retail for All-Clad or to pay a lot for a nonstick pan: If you buy it from Williams-Sonoma, they will replace it if it "breaks" at any time, no questions asked. All you have to do is bring it back and say, "this isn't nonstick anymore" and they will give you a replacement. I have a friend who has done this through several generations of All-Clad nonstick pans.

. . . people smoked in bars?

I suspect that many of the seemingly mundane things that never turn out as well at home compared to a restaurant are due to the fact that we're reluctant to use the massive amounts of fat that restaurants use. Take that chicken parm. Now try cooking the breaded cutlets in an inch and a half of hot fat.