[Mike Nolan]

They look like they might have been over-proofed a little, but the braiding looks good.

[Mike Nolan]

Could you put something heavy on the lid to hold it down better?

We're having creamed tuna on biscuits tonight.

[Mike Nolan]

As I understand it, meat needs to reach a designated internal temperature to be safe, either a sufficiently high peak temperature or a lower temperature for some period of time. With something like a steak, it is usually assumed that any bacteria will be on the surface, which gets much hotter than the innermost part of the steak, which is why a rare steak is generally considered safe, though restaurants may warn about undercooked food to keep the lawyer happy.

Sous vide cooking works by keeping it at a lower temperature for a longer time. A similar process is used for pasteurized eggs, they get to some specific temperature (around 123 degrees) and have to be held there for something like an hour.

I have a mini crock pot that I use for hot fudge, which needs to be kept at about 110 degrees, or it will separate or scorch.

I found a Lutron plug-in lamp dimmer that allows me to set the crock pot to that temperature. I haven't seen any signs of it damaging the crock pot, but I assume it wouldn't work with one that uses electronics.

[Mike Nolan]

Try this picture, it shows the cord better. I measured it at 4 feet.

https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0520/3928/6956/products/ChefAlarm_Red-01_1024x1024@2x.jpg?v=1629303753

[Mike Nolan]

I'm planning to make spaghetti for supper tonight

[Mike Nolan]

A client I still do some work for is looking to move their forums to a new platform, Discourse, and I've been helping to evaluate that platform.

There are a lot of things I see in Discourse that are an improvement over WordPress. There are probably some things that aren't an improvement, too. I'm still looking for a way to do a better job displaying and printing recipes, not sure Discourse is an improvement there.

[Mike Nolan]

Does your new slow cooker have a temperature setting you can dial down? The early crock pots just had 'on' and 'off', some later ones had one or two intermediate settings, some had a dial.

It may be that dials or lower settings were dropped by the makers or banned by the government because they could lead to food not being cooked to a high enough temperature to be safe. The sous vide community has expressed some concerns over this.

[Mike Nolan]

My wife noted that while the somewhat overbaked cookies are edible, they're baked beyond the point where they're chewy. The ones with the mini chocolate chips are a bit of a disappointment.

[Mike Nolan]

I recently bought a Thermoworks ChefAlarm to replace my CDN candy thermometer. Like many digital thermometers, it has a clip that allows the probe to hang on the side of your pan without touching the bottom. (And it came in purple.)

I've used it a few times for cooked sugar candies.

It comes in a nice pouch that makes it easy to store in a drawer without the cord getting all tangled up.

[Mike Nolan]

I made another batch of peanut butter cookies today, I put some mini semi-sweet chocolate chips in a few of them.

I think I left them in the oven for about 30 seconds too long, they're a little on the dark side, just this side of burnt. But Diane likes them that way.

[Mike Nolan]

I think the latest semolina dough would have benefited from some stretch-and-folds, that does seem to help the shaping.

My baguettes often looked like a snake that swallowed 3 rats, though I found with practice I got better at it, I think the pre-rolling part of the shaping is key. I watched the staff at SFBI roll out baguettes during one of the lunch breaks when I was taking my pastry course, they even let me roll out a few, and said I was doing pretty good, though they were much faster.

One of the advantages of making epis de bles is that the cuts tend to mask the uneven-ness of the baguette. (And it definitely maximizes surface area, the crusty outside is the best part of a baguette, IMHO.)

One of the things I noticed from the picture yesterday is that the sesame seeds are heavier on one side than on the other, probably has to do with the angle at which I hold the shaker. I thought this batch had enough seeds on them, my wife commented on the previous batch that there weren't many sesame seeds at all.

I think Hamelman recommends dipping the shaped loaf in a tray of sesame seeds, which is probably a lot faster in a production shop. (As I noted in a recent BBGA thread, a lot of production practices are geared towards speed and consistency.) I've always thought that might wind up with too many sesame seeds on the loaf, maybe next time I'll try it. I always wind up with a lot of them falling off the loaf and going to waste on the parchment, presumably any that don't stick would just fall back into the tray.

[Mike Nolan]

Artisan to me means meeting a high standard of quality and consistency, and the latter includes shaping, proofing and baking.

There has been an interesting thread in the BBGA forum lately, and one of the full-time bakers made a comment about a loaf (one that probably looked better than my latest semolina bread) that I think defines the standards an artisan baker tries to meet:

I wouldn't present that loaf at the end of a practical baking assessment and expect to pass.

Loaves that are by design not uniform (or at least close to it) might be called 'rustic', I suppose.

[Mike Nolan]

We had chili again tonight.

[Mike Nolan]

It'll probably take me a few more rounds to get it to the point where I'm really satisfied with it, but it was definitely an improvement over the first batch with the Azure semolina/durum flour. I haven't made pasta with it yet, that's on my list for this week.

Although I'm not selling my breads to anyone, I'm still thinking about that possibility, and a salable loaf is my standard. I'd rate this one as 80-90% of the way there.

[Mike Nolan]

Today's semolina bread came out pretty good, nice oven spring, decent crumb, though it did sort of blow out a little at one end, I think it needed a little more proofing. My shaping was a bit imperfect, too, my goal is to get the middle 2/3 of a loaf to have the same size (width and height) so that the slices are more uniform for sandwich making.

The changes I made (ratio of semolina/durum to bread flour, adding OJ, lower baking temperature) all seemed to have positive impacts, the crust isn't quite as dark or thick and the bitter taste from the bran is either gone or lowered to the point where it isn't obvious.

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