slkinsey

If you want it to stay the same, you need to reheat it in the water bath (not strictly true, but true as a practical matter). That said, getting things just up to temperature is pretty fast if they're already cooked and don't need to spend time at temperature. Also, a lot of the time you can reheat certain things CSV via more conventional means and still keep the benefits of SV cooking. I occasionally use SV chicken breast in omelets and things like that, and they seem to keep their SV juiciness and tenderness through the reheating with the eggs (probably what this means is that they wouldn't be fully cooked if I were using raw chicken in the same recipe). IMO, it doesn't make much sense to cook-and-chill SV at home unless you are (1) planning on reheating in the water bath; (2) planning on serving the food cold; (3) it's something hammered through like SV duck confit; or (4) it's something you always planned on cooking partially SV and partially via conventional means (this is something that Keller does a few times in "Under Pressure" -- cook, say, veal breast a long time SV to convert the collagen without drying it out, then later on cooking it to a more conventional "doneness" to finish it for service).

I've thought of retarding the bulk stage instead of the loaf stage, which I imagine is probably better. But, since I have to work my bread making around a work day and bake in the evening, I'd have to shape the loaves after I got home from work and would end up baking them at midnight or something like that.

I'd put it somewhere else, but built-in if you can. Often people with separate built-in ovens will have the microwave on top of the "oven stack." The problem with putting it over the stove, IMO, is that since you have a recirculating hood, you will be guaranteed to get kitchen grease all over the microwave.

Parchment is 100% necessary for ciabatta, I think. How else to do it?

Lisa: What hydration are you doing? I usually do between 67% and 70% for a boule (which I am also doing sourdough, with the expected consequences as to fragility) and don't have any troubles with deflation unless I misjudge and overproof. Do you slash? I find that it's really the slashing that seems to deflate a fragile dough much more than inverting. I don't do the dutch oven method at present, but I could envision inverting the banneton onto parchment, slashing the dough and then using the parchment to lower it into the dutch oven without flopping it in there.

Yea. I'm not fond in general of non-inverted boules. Something about them doesn't come out quite to my aesthetic sense.

So you proof seam-side down and don't invert the dough for baking?

Parchment? Don't you find that the parchment sticks to the dough?

The difficulty is in finding an oval banneton.

My experience is that, unless you are cooking in enough oil that there is a layer of oil in the pan including exposed areas not covered with food, the whole smoke point thing is a red herring. I've heated a heavy copper pan on full heat for 10 minutes, then thrown in a tablespoon or two of unfiltered, dark yellow-green extra virgin olive oil immediately followed by mushrooms or onions or whatever, and never got any smoking or off flavors. So long as the food is there to suck thermal energy out of the pan through the oil, there shouldn't be any problem. I only turn to high smoke point oils when I know I'm going to be using enough that there will be significant areas not covered by food (e.g., if I'm putting a high-heat surface sear on a single large piece of meat).

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.