Mike Nolan
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There's a lot of variance in food prices around the country, some of it is due to regional supplier availability, but Californians have to deal with an increasing number of regulations on food, some of which are affecting national trends.
Eggs were $1.92 a dozen at Aldi the other day, and they had a good supply of them.
It doesn't appear flour prices are going to go down much any time soon, though. Costco has 25 pound bags of Ardent Mills bleached flour for $10.99, but I think 12 pound bags of KAF AP went up a little, though they're still under $10.
I didn't look at the sugar prices at Aldi, but I did see someone loading what looked like several dozen bags of sugar into her car, along with numerous bottles of oil.
Have you checked the restaurant suppliers to see if you can place a will-call order? You may need a tax permit or NFP determination letter from the IRS.
The semolina/durum flour I have is from Azure Standard. I've made 3 batches of bread with it so far, and the last one came out pretty good, but I can still taste some bitterness from the bran. (Maybe that's like your situation with honey, I can taste it because I know it's there.)
I haven't tried their other flours yet, but I think they're mostly whole-grain flours. Their prices on rye berries and tapioca flour were both quite good. Their freight charges are much lower due to their delivery method (you pick them up at a nearby drop site, most likely a shopping center parking lot), it's about 4.5% for freight to here, and I got 40 pounds of stuff for under $5 shipping. I think to the east coast it is more like 8.5%, but that may still beat most shippers.
We had chili from the freezer tonight.
I made more chewy peanut butter cookies today.
I don't see why the Brod & Taylor sheeter wouldn't work for crackers, but they're not something I've made in a long time (and wasn't very successful with back then), so I don't have a go-to recipe I'm familiar with to test it on.
I've got a pretzel recipe I'm familiar with, I might try that and make pretzel crackers.
Venison burgers and sausage are about all the local deer hunters make, a boring use of the meat.
Some of you must have a lot of venison in your freezers.
The primary advantage the pan has is it tends to keep the rolls more uniform, without developing bends. If you're making sub sandwiches, that's a big plus.
You still have to shape the rolls by hand.
Putting baguettes in a couche serves a similar function during final proofing, it probably also affects how they rise and how the surface ripens, which would impact how easy it is to slash them.
Transferring them to a peel or pan for baking using a baguette flip board is something I've not had a lot of practice with.
We had ham steak with pineapple rings and a side dish of macaroni and cheese.
Good luck finding that sandwich loaf pan, though, King Arthur dropped it years ago and although I know it is a Chicago Metallic product, I've never seen it on their website or on other sites that carry their pans. I've seen a similar pan, but it is more heavy duty and quite a bit more expensive.
I've used maple syrup to help stick down the cinnamon sugar a few times, but these days I think making a compound butter and spreading it on is better, a lot less sugar/cinnamon leakage when you cut them.
One of the two loaves of semolina bread I baked yesterday came out nearly perfect, nicely shaped then fully proofed and baked. The other had some shaping issues, but was properly proofed and baked.
Not sure the one loaf would be sellable, but it doesn't matter if we're the ones eating it.
There used to be a Girl Scout who stopped by our house every year, but I guess she grew up and nobody else in the troop wanted to work our street.
So unless I see a group selling cookies at one of the local grocery stores or WalMart, I won't have a chance to buy any Girl Scout cookies again this year.
They discontinued one of our favorite cookies, the chocolate covered shortbread 'Thank You' cookies. My wife is allergic to raspberries, so we won't be trying that new one.
But it seems like they've fallen into the new strange flavor trap as well.
We bought some frozen Otis Spunkmeyer cookie dough balls from a neighbor's son, they were really disappointing when we baked them.
I've made sub rolls using the Chicago Metallic 5-sandwich roll pan that King Arthur used to sell, though I haven't done them lately. The pan helps to keep the rolls straight. I shape them somewhat like a baguette, just not as long:
Scale, round and allow to rest, then flatten to somewhat circular or oval shape. Fold the top down 2/3 of the way, fold the bottom up to the top. Seal with edge of hand, then fold the bottom up to the top twice, then seal with hand, roll to desired length and put on tray seam down. Some people like to exaggerate the narrowness of the end to a long point, but I prefer to use my hand or bench knife to make the end more or less flat once or twice, I think it makes for a more uniform diameter.
Here's the recipe that came with the pan:
https://mynebraskakitchen.com/wordpress/forums/topic/hoagiesandwich-rolls/BLJ's molasses cookies are something I haven't made in a while, but they're really good. We've been on a peanut butter cookie kick lately.
The Crumbl will be on the other side of town, by Whole Foods, and the fact that several of their varieties of cookies seem a bit weird (like caramel corn or cornbread) doesn't make me excited to go there.
Crumbl appears to have just opened a location in South Bend, but I don't see other obvious chains there.
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