[aaronatthedoublef]

I've never seen piperade before. It seems like, as Choco says, it would be good any place you used tomato sauce. When we make our own we also try to sneak in some spinach just to get some into our kids.

Peppers and onions (usually sweet sometimes hot) are pretty common here with Italian sausage. Fry the all together. Standard fare outside Fenway before a Red Sox game. Tomatoes would be good addition to that.

[aaronatthedoublef]

Mike,

I really wish you'd figure that out as I have watched that brief scene many times and the only thing I can get is they start with three strands and fold them in half to get six. I've pinged Wise Sons, which is the deli where they filmed this, a couple times. Maybe I'll have to see if they'll let me come out to San Francisco and learn it!

BA - what are malted wheat flakes? What do they do for flavor?

[aaronatthedoublef]

Made more challah yesterday. We were going to friends for a party and we needed a hostess gift. My braid was better than last time but still not where I want it. I am trying to do a four braid from the middle out. I don't remember where I saw the middle out braid technique but I like it because it tends to keep the middle of the challah plump. But it was for three strand not four. So I need to practice this some more. I did not take any pictures unfortunately.

The husband kept smelling the bread then telling everyone else to smell it. I think the apple cider adds a lot to it even if it's in the background. I need a better apple cider though. This one is good but not as good as the local stuff the store used to have.

[aaronatthedoublef]

Thanks for the pie dough Mike.

My impression was that whole meat like steak could spend a little longer in the danger zone than ground meat. I know at Shake Shack they make the burgers in the morning and keep them by the grill in a refrigerator until they cook them. So they come from cold right to cooking.

I let steaks warm up some but I've never let it sit at room temp for four or five hours. And we would have advised customers against it at WF. We always offered to pack things in ice, too as did the cashiers and baggers.

I've seen several chefs say that a could chef can cook a steak to well done without leaving it burned to a cinder. I've never seen it done and my family likes medium rare so I aim for that (and I usually get medium).

[aaronatthedoublef]

Okay... sorry too many posts but one more with a question...

Lots of recipes for things where butter is cut in - pie crust, biscuits, scones, etc. tell us to not over work the dough. But with things like biscuits and scones where we want layers that are visible and that require multiple folds. Even with pie crust, when I make it at least, it never completely comes together until I have it out of the bowl and "utz" as my mom used to say.

With yeast doughs I can let it rest and the gluten relaxes. Can't I do the same with pie-biscuit-scones? I usually chill them and let them rest before I bake them anyway...

Thanks

[aaronatthedoublef]

I bought from Vitacost and it was easy and fast. I bout 2x5 lb. of BRM pastry and 2x1.5 lb. of semolina. Shipping was under $8.95, YMMV.

I ordered Monday and it was here Friday.

[aaronatthedoublef]

Happy Birthday and congratulations on your 50th. That is fantastic!

I made challah on Friday. I was working on converting my recipe from volume to weight and calculated the hydration without thinking about the oil, eggs, or sugar so it started out super wet. I decided to see how it would turn out. I like the wetter bread. It's really soft. And I think it will be easier next time I'm teaching kids to make challah because they tend to add a ton of flour as they shape and this will absorb it and still be wet enough to stick together.

At the last minute I decided to make a four strand braid and obviously need some practice on that. I made rolls which were huge - 7 ounces - and we used them for hamburger buns. No egg wash since this was mostly practice. We had some people over photographing our house (long story) so I cut the loaf in half and gave them each a half.

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[aaronatthedoublef]

I've never order from Webstaurantstore so I don't know. The shipping charges I have had for flour tend to be about $1/lb recently so I would guess they would need to be in this range to be competitive.

If I want SAF yeast, Webstaurant and KAF seem to be the places I can order it from and no one is selling it locally anymore. Don't know why by Red Star and Fleischman have take over and they work find but I wanted some of the gold yeast for sweet doughs.

If you just need cold bags, the grocery stores by us all sell insulated bags that work very well, especially if I add an ice pack. And here they cost about $5 per bag for the expensive ones. They would hold multiple, 9-inch pies.

[aaronatthedoublef]

Just saw this! BA - I have used our pasta maker to roll out cracker dough. It is only about six inches wide so I need to roll out six or more sheets of cracker dough as opposed to three bigger sheets. I think I started with 100 g of dough if I remember correctly.

Plus it needs extra flour to make sure the cracker dough didn't stick. Between the extra rolling and the extra clean up the pasta maker did not appear to offer me any benefit over my rolling pin.

Now a sheeter that is a foot or two wide could handle an entire batch at once!

I remember a "Good Eats" where Alton Brown used a pasta maker attached to an ironing board to roll out strudel. It was long and strudel dough is not wide so it was perfect. We just installed an ironing board that folds away into the wall - like a Murphy Bed ironing board so maybe something like that for Mike's fold-away sheeter? The problem with the foldaway ironing board for this is that it is smaller than a standard model - shorter & narrower. Plus with the cabinet it weighs over 100 pounds so installation is not trivial.

I have a milestone birthday next month and while I might be able to justify the cost, I have not place to put it and if it is a big project to take it out it won't be used very often. My family gave me a panini press that I am not allowed to leave on the counter so it is almost never used. Take it out, set it up, wait for it to heat up, make panino (or panini), then wait for cool down, clean up, put away... it's easier to just make hot sandwiches in a pan on the stove. Not as good, but much easier.

But a Murphy Bed sheeter arrangement would be cool. You would still need to be able to break it down and clean it easily.

I went to a local bakery for the first time and she rolls out all her croissants by hand. She said it takes her four days to make them.

[aaronatthedoublef]

Just looked at Webstaurantstore and they have a TON of BRM stuff.

It's large quantities but you may be able to find what you are looking for there, too.

They only had WW pastry flour and not regular pastry flour, enfortunately.

[aaronatthedoublef]

I made bread. Had a good rise then it spread in the oven and is sort of flat. Maybe it was over proofed.

I made it over the course of 24 hours. Normally I do it over three days. I wanted to tame the sour flavor and that worked.

[aaronatthedoublef]

I'm with you Mike. Walmart is trying to our Amazon Amazon and has become a "marketplace". There is no oversight. I've seen five pounds of flour for outrageous prices like $50+.

I am also buying less from Amazon for the same reason.

[aaronatthedoublef]

BA, it appears you can still find BRM coarse grind. Here is a search response for it. I've ordered some pastry flour from Vitacost. I'll see how their service is.

[aaronatthedoublef]

I barbecued a chicken Sunday. It was a cooler morning and I have not used the Weber in a long time but it still works! I had a little too much smoke, I think. And when I grill it I cannot throw the vegetables in the pan with the chicken.

Not sure what else I'll make this week. And school lunches start tomorrow (Wednesday).

[aaronatthedoublef]

BA, for my pizza I started with all bread and then went to bread and whole wheat. Then pastry and whole wheat. Then I added flax meal and sometimes some chickpea flour. Now I am at whole wheat (I like white if it's not too expensive), pastry, flax, and some bread. I may try semolina in the next batch.

Violet and I made "tea" sandwich cookies. They were a little big for typical tea cookies. Each cookie was an ounce. Next time I'll make them a half ounce.

I made biscuits, Added the right amount of salt this time. I still had butter leaking despite a long chill in the fridge and the oven at 425 on convection (the recipe says 350). I may ping the baker before I bake the rest.

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