[aaronatthedoublef]

I used to use table salt. Then I worked for a pastry chef who only used Morton's kosher salt. She is a phenomenal pastry chef so I started using Morton's kosher salt as well. And it is different from other brands.

I asked my wife to pickup some kosher salt and she came home with coarse sale' de mer... It is this super coarse French sea salt and makes kosher salt look like table salt.

Every once in a while I will taste a salty bit in something I make but I find if I mix the salt in well this doesn't happen.

I want to make biscuits for Thanksgiving... Maybe I'll try the cheddar ones.

[aaronatthedoublef]

Their parchment is pretty expensive. If you live near a restaurant supply store it is worth checking to see. It comes in whole sheets not half sheets but a box by me costs between $35-$40 and will last forever (or until your basement floods). I was on the same box for 12 years until the basement flooded and soaked it.

It comes out to about $0.08 a sheet or $0.04 a half sheet.

[aaronatthedoublef]

As Mike says, it lasts years, especially if treated properly. The SAF site says to always keep it chilled and not to let the bag come to room temperature. Just take what you want and use it. It also says that as the yeast ages you may want to proof it before you mix in the rest of your ingredients.

I keep mine in the package in a quart bag. I keep the quart bag in a gallon bag along with the oven bags I use for letting the dough rise.

[aaronatthedoublef]

Yup. The pain de mie pans I've seen did have lids but you don't need to use them I don't think.

I just used regular loaf pans. I haven't done it in a while. All the loaves I've made recently were for bar or bat mitzvahs so those were braided loaves.

At my bread class this weekend there was a woman who made challahs in all shapes and sizes. Her phone was loaded with pictures. And a fellow I used to bake bread considered challah a real good bread for toast and French toast and didn't care what shape it was in. So while there are some traditional shapes it seems like anything goes these days.

Good luck with your next challah.

[aaronatthedoublef]

I've baked challah in a pan. I braided it then put the braided challah in a loaf pan. It give it a regular shape but it's still braided and it makes it easier to use for sandwiches.

My mom did this too.

[aaronatthedoublef]

Thanks. Maybe I'll try some baking with it out of the oven. And, like you Mike, I am very curious about the baking steels but I am not sure why it is better and as you point out it is expensive and heavy.

In my last oven the door had no window and no insulation so the stone actually helped keep the temperature consistent. When our youngest started moving about we decided it was finally time to bite the bullet and splurge for a new oven that was significantly less dangerous to kids (although our first two survived with no burns and without setting anything on fire from the pilot lights).

But even before that oven I never took it out. Mine is some unglazed ceramic rectangle. And I used to have it on the bottom but I recently moved it to the middle shelf (our old oven only had two shelves).
And, again, it helps regulate the oven temp. The people who installed the oven never tested the temperature and so there can be big variances in different parts of the oven. The stone helps mitigate that some. Some day I'll have someone service the oven and adjust.

That is the one thing I miss about our old oven - it was dead simple and I could do most repairs and maintenance myself and I am not a handy person. I also made some insulators for the door but it was ugly so it was banished from the kitchen.

• This reply was modified 8 years, 1 month ago by aaronatthedoublef.

[aaronatthedoublef]

Thanks. My pizza and challah doughs are pretty yeasty. Although I cut the yeast in half on this batch so we'll see how it goes.

I went to SAF (owned by Red Star). They talk about freezing dough here:Freezing Dough

In their frequently asked questions they talk about storing yeast in the freezer here.Storing yeast in freezer

I may still do my own thing but then I only have myself to blame when it does not work...

[aaronatthedoublef]

I've found white whole wheat to be less bitter than red whole wheat. I still needed some kind of sweet in it.

Is there some whole grain that is also sweet that you could use?

[aaronatthedoublef]

Mike, what a neat idea to give out small toys and such. Maybe we'll do that next year.

We live on a street that gets loads of traffic (pedestrian and cars- it's kind of scary) from all over. I gave away less candy than usual mostly because I limited how much I bought. I had about 1500 pieces that were gone after 2.5 hours.

Lots of people give away full size or movie theater size candy. Our next door neighbor was out in his driveway with a movie theater candy counter.

Several years ago a man who lived down the street gave out half pound Hershey bars. He had pallets on his driveway and hired kids from the local college to hand out the candy while he watched. He grew up poor and Halloween and Christmas were the only time he ever had candy so he loves to give it out himself. He has since moved a block east. One of these Halloweens I'll have to walk over and see how he is doing.

[aaronatthedoublef]

I grew up on the South Side and we always had thin crust. Pizza was the one food we would bring in on a semi-regular basis. In the 70s we had two new places come to our neighborhood. One served deep dish and the other was Giordano's.

I haven't been back to the old neighborhood since my mother died but there were many different pizza places even a Pizza Hut (ugh).

I am raising my kids as if they are South Siders when it comes to sports teams and we have a tradition that I will ship in pizza when a team wins a championship. The Blackhawks have cost me a fair bit of money.

The place I was craving the most now is the Home Run Inn. It has it's own distinct pizza but seems to never have had the big publicity places like Malnati's and Giordano's enjoyed.

And no, we will not be ordering pizza if the Cubs win tonight. I am from the South Side.

[aaronatthedoublef]

Thanks.

The first time I make something I try to follow the recipe exactly. For his pizza dough in "My Bread" Leahy says to use 300 grams of bread flour and let it rise for two hours so I did that. I used a little extra water because the dough was too dry and was not coming together.

I then divided it in half per his instructions and tried to stretch it by hand to fit a half sheet. That was where I ran into trouble.

I took the second half and froze it. Then I let it thaw out for about 24 hours in the refrigerator and rolled it with a rolling pin. If I'd really wanted to test this I probably should have tried to hand stretch this but I didn't.

Now I'll try some variations on the flour. I know you suggest semolina to lower the gluten but I'll use cake flour. My family does not like semolina (at least when I use it).

Also, looking up Leahy recipes on the web Mr. Leahy and his acolytes are letting his pizza dough rest for 18-24 hours. I really like longer so I may try that too. But I like to only change one or two things at a time. All this takes time and I only make pizza once a week so it will take a while to sort all this out. I would bet some of this is covered in "My Pizza" but I do not want to shell out another $20+ for it.

[aaronatthedoublef]

RottieDog, that is exactly what Jim Leahy recommends in "My Bread". I tried that a couple weeks ago with no success. It was thick (Mr. Leahy says his is cracker thin) and chewy but tasted good. I kept tearing holes in it and repairing the holes.

Some of this may have been because it needed to rest more after I cut the dough.

This week I took the second half of the dough and used my rolling pin and rolled it out and put it on a half sheet. It was thin. Perhaps it was because the dough was rested or maybe it was just the rolling pin or maybe both.

I can turn pizza on my hands, toss it, or roll it but not stretch it by hand. Maybe I just need to practice more.

My primary purpose is to give people a dough they do not need to knead in a machine or by hand.

[aaronatthedoublef]

Sounds like a good meta topic - what accidental discoveries did you make while cooking/baking that changed the way you make a recipe?

[aaronatthedoublef]

I worked in the kitchen in college and we had a night time snack bar. Usually I ran the grill while the pizza makers made pizza. We usually started them with a rolling pin and then hand tossed them and the tossing could get quite involved.

Friday night was usually slow (people went off campus) so we would have pizza tossing contests and in addition to seeing how big people could stretch the dough we had people doing 360 degree turns and various other acrobatics while the dough was in the air.

How no one ever crashed into anything and was seriously injured is a minor miracle. 🙂

[aaronatthedoublef]

In a six strand, double decker like Mike's I have two lengths - the bottom and the top with the top being shorter.

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