Search Results for '("C'

[RiversideLen]

I use a pizza stone, which I preheat for about an hour at 500 degrees. I roll out the crust in between 2 sheets of parchment, lightly oiled (it makes a difference). I reduce the oven temp to 450 or 475 before putting in the pizza, I use a peel and slide the pizza with the bottom piece of parchment, I set a timer for 3 minutes and then gently slide the peel just a little under the pizza and use a gloved hand to slide off the parchment. This might sound involved but it's not. The pizza continues to bake directly on the stone with no dusting flour or cornmeal. It will not stick to the stone at this point. If I'm using mushrooms I always sauté them first to remove the excess water (there is plenty in mushrooms) and concentrate the flavor (even with canned mushrooms). I always pre cook the sausage to reduce the grease and excess moisture.

Aaron, to reduce the Boboli effect, reduce the yeast, by a lot. The reduced yeast works but it needs more time, so make the dough early in the day or earlier.

[aaronatthedoublef]

I've been experimenting with pizza. It was too soggy for me, especially the center of the pizza and especially with veggies or sausage or pepperoni.

First, I modified the crust and subbed out some of the pastry flour for bread flour. This made the dough more elastic but it was still soggy in the center. The amount of whole wheat/flax/white flour is the same I've just increased the gluten.

So I par-baked the crust for about a minute. But that created the Boboli problem (do Bobolis still exist?). Everything just sorted of floated on top of an already cooked crust and did not mesh well. It did not taste the same but it did eliminate the dreaded "soggy bottom" problem.

Then I par-baked and docked the crust. This was much closer to my unbaked crusts in flavor and much crisper.

I par-bake on parchment but then after I top the crust I just go right from the peel to stone. I was putting a bunch of flour on the peel which stayed on the crust AND made a mess in the oven. So then I tried lightly dusting the bottom of the crust before I topped it and leaving a small edge hanging of the end of the peel. That fixed the flour problem.

I have at least a couple more things. I want to dock BEFORE I bake to see if it makes a difference. Also, talking to some tavern pizza makers they bake on a pan I forgot to ask if it was hot or cold when they put the dough on it but if it is hot I will have to top the dough then slide it on to a hot pan. Some oil on the pan may crisp it up too. In college we sprayed pans with oil then baked the pizzas most of the way in the pan and took it out at the end for a few minutes on the deck to crisp up. But these were more like cake pans and the pizza was more like Greek style.

I have a few different recipes too so I may play around with those but I do not want to change too many things at once.

No pizza making for a while as we'll be out of town and then it will be Passover.

I also made matzah at Sunday School yesterday. We had pre-K through 6th grade come in and mix, roll, and dock dough. The entire process of making matzah, from adding the water to the flour to finishing the bake is supposed to be 18 minutes or less to prevent any rising. We also slid the matzah on to pans that had been heating in the oven. It was a little daunting until I realized it's not really too different from using a stone.

[Mike Nolan]

This page says male and female pepper fruits don't exist, though male and female parts of flowers do exist.

peppers info

I have a book on knife skills (Knife Skills Illustrated by Peter Hertzm), it recommends cutting the top and bottom off bell peppers, then slitting it so you can open it into a somewhat rectangular form. Cut off the innards and the pith that connects the innards to the shell (I have a looped Exacto blade that I use for this, although sometimes I use a bird's beak knife), and then you can cut it into even strips or dice it. You can dice the bottom and cut off the useable parts of the top and dice them as well, just make sure you get the pith out of the top, it is bitter.

I've been told that one of the differences between home cooks and professional kitchens is that in a professional kitchen a bell pepper is almost always roasted over an open flame briefly to char the outside before it is cut up, that allows the somewhat chewy transparent outermost layer to be peeled off.

[Mike Nolan]

When I make potato leek soup, it usually takes more like 120 minutes from start to finish. There's some overlap, I can prep and sautee the leeks as the potatoes are cooking, but 3-4 pounds of potatoes in cold stock (or cold water) will take close to an hour to be fully cooked.

And that doesn't factor in the time it took me to make the chicken stock I use. That's another half hour of prep time, 3 or more hours of cooking and another hour waiting for the stock to cool enough for straining, chilling it for storage in the refrigerator and freezer and pulling the meat of the chicken bones. (Sometimes I do that after the chicken has cooked for about 2 hours, by which point it is fully cooked, putting the bones back in the pot for another 60-90 minutes.)

My favorite chicken stock/soup recipe says to boil the chicken for as long as you can stand it or 3 hours. It DOES start to smell good after about 45 minutes.

I usually make croutons ahead of time, too. Not counting the time it took to make the bread, it takes 15 minutes or so to dice it, and 90-120 minutes in a 200 degree oven to dry the cubes out. I usually do that before I start prepping the potatoes.

I saw a note on another site the other day complaining that the time estimates in most recipes are always WAY TOO SHORT, because they tend to assume, among other things, that you have all the mis en place, um, in place. Cooking times are often understated, as are resting times.

Most experienced cooks look at a recipe and add in extra time for most of the steps.

[Mike Nolan]

Found this link on another site (a photography one, of all places), and thought folks might find it worth reading:
Anatomy of a Bell Pepper

I can't speak to its scientific accuracy, though.

[cwcdesign]

I have been out of pocket for a while. I had my physical on the 21st and on Tuesday I had an allergic reaction to the pneumonia vaccine I had at my appointment. Ended up in the ER and got pumped full of prednisone and Benadryl. It took a few days to get back to normal, but I had the weekend off to celebrate my weekend. Nathaniel my elder, got engaged for my birthday! Will is moving to Dallas tomorrow- I’ll take him to the airport after work.

So I made him his favorite on Wednesday (his birthday is also coming up) which we call Chicken Juniper but is a 60s recipe known as Elegant Chicken - chicken breasts wrapped in bacon on bed of dried beef with a sauce of mushroom soup and sour cream, sprinkled with paprika and cooked low and slow. I have been frustrated making this recipe because the sauce has not come out right due to the changes in can sizes. So I decided to try something a little different this time, based on the original recipe which calls for 4 ounces dried beef, chicken breasts (I use 2 pounds chicken tenders to mimic the smaller size of chicken breasts in the past), bacon, one can mushroom soup and 8 ounces sour cream.

When I went to the market, I first looked at the weight on a jar of dried beef - turns out it’s 2.25 ounces, so I bought 2 jars - I’d only been using one), I also bought 2 cans of mushroom soup - I decided to use 12 ounces as the amount of an older can - when I weighed the soup from one can, I only got a little over 9 ounces, not even the 10.75 they claim. And, I left the amount of sour cream alone.

I ended up making extra sauce because I had a lot of soup left over, but kept the proportions I decided on - 12 ounces soup to 8 ounces sour cream. When I added, it was 6 ounces mushroom soup to 4 ounces sour cream. This is as close to the original as I have made in years. The sauce was as thick as I remember. Doubling the dried beef was also the right thing to do. I’m going to rewrite the recipe using weight so we can get it right every time.

[Mike Nolan]

I got 7 types of tomatoes, 2 types of eggplants and 2 types of melons started indoors earlier this week, I'm going to start a few more of those melons in 2-3 weeks and then probably plant one hill directly outdoors in May, in the hopes of getting melons that don't all ripen at once over about two weeks in August. I'm already seeing some signs of the tomatoes sprouting; I'll probably have cotyledons by next weekend.

I've still got 5 bays open on the seed starter trays, not sure if I'll do anything with them. If I had some fresh seeds I might do some basil, thyme or oregano, but my wife usually buys those from the UNL student plant sale around the end of the semester, along with all the flowers for her patio pots.

I ripped out the left half of the Aerogarden earlier this week, what hadn't bolted fully wasn't producing many edible leaves, and today I started a new lettuce garden, 3 varieties of leaf lettuce plus some more parsley. (Not that we use much parsley, but it is a good spacer and I don't know that we need 24 pods of lettuces, as my wife prefers iceberg lettuce these days and it is too big for an Aerogarden. I might set up a gravel drain system using some plastic tubing, but I think I'll wait until late summer for that. A friend of ours will take all the parsley I can grow, they eat it daily.)

The right garden can probably be picked for another couple of weeks, then I'll rip it out and start something over there, probably more lettuces and maybe some small herbs. (No dill!)

[Mike Nolan]

It's a rare day when we don't use it several times here, even if I'm not baking. My wife uses it to help her gauge her carb intake. (We have concluded that a good rule of thumb is that 50% of most breads are carbs, so 40 grams of bread is 20 grams of carbs.)

[Mike Nolan]

The last time we changed water heaters we found out that the city water system had changed the composition of their water, and a different anode was required. (Exactly who at the plumbing company knew this was unclear, the journeyman plumber they sent out didn't, nor did his supervisor, it wasn't until we ordered a water quality study from the state lab that we found out.)

Having the wrong anode shortens the life of the heater, because of the mineral buildup.

My older son tells me the tankless systems have a longer expected lifetime.

[RiversideLen]

Sounds like that guy is giving you the super economy model, Italiancook.

My previous water heater lasted about 30 years. The plumber who installed it advised me to draw off about a gallon of water a couple times a year but to be careful when the unit gets older because it's possible the spigot won't shut completely (it was plastic). So I did that for about 10 years but then stopped. It lasted another 20 (it was a Rheem). I think I replaced it 7 years ago with another Rheem. This one has a brass ball valve for maintenance but it doesn't have a knob, I have to use a screwdriver. This one advises to draw off a gallon every month. So far, so good.

Go on Youtube for some water heater maintenance info and tips.

[Italiancook]

I have a Mennonite recipe for excellent Butterhorn rolls that would benefit from scaling. I had bought an inexpensive scale for that recipe. When it arrived, I didn't want to dirty a bowl with the dough for weighing, and the scale was too small to hold a blob of dough. I gave the scale to a neighbor for his shop. I spent $72 on the pull-out display from KABC. It's now much less expensive (grumble grumble). The scale would hold a blob of Butterhorn dough for dividing, but I haven't made it around to the recipe yet.

KABC has an excellent blog about how-to use a scale.

[Joan Simpson]

I made the other half of the cake mix (lemon supreme) that my husband likes in a loaf pan and had the leftover icing lemon juice with powder sugar that I had refrigerated from last time so it all went fast.

[chocomouse]

We had Korean chicken (bulgogi) and salad; and my husband also cleaned out some leftovers.

[Mike Nolan]

I'm kicking the chili to tomorrow because it is much warmer than expected today (high around 70) while tomorrow it is supposed to be in the 40's with rain. Also, I have some other tasks on the schedule today.

[BakerAunt]

Well, it may not be a seasonal bake for the first day of spring, but on Sunday morning I baked wholegrain pumpkin loaves (my adaptation of the recipe here at Nebraska Kitchen) as five mini-loaves. I left out two for desserts over the next few days and froze the other three