[Mike Nolan]

I don't reuse them a lot, because I think that leads to the bread going moldy faster, and we probably lose close to a quarter of our bread to mold because we just don't eat it fast enough. I have been known to rinse them off and turn them inside out to reuse them, or to turn them inside out to get rid of the moisture that collects in the bag when you freeze bread.

[Mike Nolan]

One thing I found when making the grilled pizza was that you need to get the first side well baked (plenty of brown spots) before removing it to facilitate flipping it over and putting on the toppings and then grilling the other side. Otherwise it might be slightly underdone in the center.

[Mike Nolan]

I remember eating at Unos in the early 70's, there was a pallet of 50 pound bags of flour visible in the kitchen, so I don't think they were using pre-made dough. The pizza suffered when they started opening other locations, I wouldn't go to a Uno's today. Giordano's quality suffered when they expanded, too, Lou Malnati's River North location was still pretty good when I was there a few years ago, though. (The Malnati family was considering selling the chain, I don't know if they have.)

The dough that King Arthur Baking has for their 'pizza school' grilled pizza series is quite good. I'm going to keep making them on the outdoor grill until it is too cold to crank up the grill, then I think I'll try making them in a cast iron pan on my DCS range; it also has a gas grill that I don't use much, but I could try it for that. The next time I make them I'm going to try piperade (sweet peppers, onions and tomatoes) as the sauce.

[Mike Nolan]

International Plastics probably has the widest selection of bread bags, ranging from 8 inches deep to 30 inches deep.

I like their gusseted bags: BR-HI1019 5.5 x 4.75 x 19 1 mil is the slightly thicker bags, last time I ordered the .65 mil thick bags, and I think the thicker ones might be worth the extra cost.

They're big enough to hold most breads I make, the exception being some of the larger Challas. They probably wouldn't hold a large boule like a 4 pound miche, but I seldom make breads that big. They have several larger bags.

If I need a really large bag, I have ones that will hold a full sized sheet pan. I've used them to hold a full slab of ribs or a brisket I was marinating.

It takes me a long time to go through a case of 1000 bags, I last ordered them in 2015.

[Mike Nolan]

I canned 4 quarts of tomato juice.

[Mike Nolan]

I defrosted some of my apple pie filling for the turnovers, and I've got about half a container left, so I think I'm going to make a small apple galette using some pie dough from the freezer, the apple pie filling, and some Mrs. Richardson's caramel sauce.

The local orchard I usually go to lost its apple crop this year due to wind, but they may have some Winesaps at Kimmel Orchard in Nebraska City, if so I may go out there to pick some apples in early October and maybe buy a 5 or 10 pound container of their frozen pie cherries. Usually I freeze the pie filling in large enough containers that I can do an apple pie with them, which takes about 1100 grams of pie filling, but having some smaller ones for things like apple turnovers seems to make sense now.

[Mike Nolan]

I made the rest of the turnovers today. Had some shaping issues with the 2nd batch, I think I didn't let the dough warm up enough before I started working it, and I wound up with some very not-square pieces.

I made more of an effort to get 3x3 squares in the 3rd batch, and it helped. I think they're a little smaller than the ones I made yesterday, and I overfilled a few of them so they popped open, I'm happy enough with them that I put a tray of them out for tonight's dinner with friends to celebrate our 50th wedding anniversary.

Next time I'll probably aim for 4x4 squares.

I baked them a little longer than I did yesterday, one or two of yesterday's batch appeared not fully baked.

Cleaning the dough sheeter is fairly easy, but I need to make sure I don't have flour inside the central unit before I store it away. I also need to find a mouse-proof thing to put it in, our annual invasion has started. I might wind up putting it in two separate bags, then in a box.

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[Mike Nolan]

It still isn't clear just what makes some foods lower on the glycemic index than others, it probably has to do with things other than the sugars and starches, like what's in the sourdough culture or the bran and germ in whole grain flours.

[Mike Nolan]

When I took the full-week pastry course at SFBI, we made two laminated doughs on a commercial sheeter. The Brod and Taylor sheeter has many things in common with its big brother, but some differences as well. I'm guessing with practice I'll be able to make sheets of dough in sizes that facilitate the types of pastries I want to make.

The kringle recipe from O&H in Racine that is on the food network site, https://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/kringle-recipe0-1941189, has you roll the dough to a 6 x 20 rectangle for filling and shaping, that should be relatively easy to do. I remember that dough being really soft at first and having a strong lemon smell before baking due to the half teaspoon of lemon extract, but the final product had only a hint of lemon in the dough. The butterscotch filling that is part of that recipe is one I've made and used for danish.

Some turnover recipes recommend cutting circles of dough and rolling them out to an oval shape.

[Mike Nolan]

I managed to get in two more single folds then rolled them out to 3mm and cut them into rectangles that were about 4x6. Each got about a tablespoon of apple pie filling, brushed with egg wash after sealing and sprinkled with a little sparkling sugar. They're very tasty!

I was worried I might have screwed up the lamination when making the turns, but the dough seems pretty forgiving.

For my first time with the new sheeter, I'm satisfied with the results. A littler practice and they'll look even nicer.

I posted one shot of a turnover in the weekly baking thread, here's a close-up shot where you can see the layering better.

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[Mike Nolan]

I just took the first batch of turnovers out of the oven, I made them rather small, the baked weight is about 44 grams. The dough puffed up decently and they're very flaky, you can see the layers along the left edge of this one.

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[Mike Nolan]

Well, here's where I stopped for the night. This piece is about 7 x 14 inches and assuming I'm understanding the settings, it is about 5mm thick. It needs to get down to between 2mm and 3mm for turnovers, according to Suas.

Tomorrow I'm going to try one more single fold to try to clean up the corners a bit, then do the final rollout, probably to 3mm. I've got some of my apple pie filling defrosting, I'll use that for the turnovers.

I might be able to tell something about the lamination layers when I cut it, but I suspect I won't really know a lot until after it has baked. But for a first try, it doesn't look bad at this point.

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[Mike Nolan]

We had burgers on the grill and sweet corn tonight.

Saturday is our 50th anniversary. We're having a Valentino's pizza party with some close friends. I will probably make another batch of Thousand Island dressing to go with the salad that comes with the pizza.

I made a Texas chocolate sheet cake in 2 pans earlier this month, the 2nd half of it is defrosting and we'll have it on Saturday, possibly with some apple turnovers if they come out good.

[Mike Nolan]

It works about as well as I expected it to, it doesn't have the range of height and multiple or continuous settings that a bigger sheeter would have (probably including the larger model from Brod and Taylor), and that probably contributed to the dough sticking. Keeping the top floured seems necessary, but I remember having to do that when using a commercial sheeter, too.

I tried to do two turns without chilling the dough in between. Not a good idea. The dough stuck to the top roller. Cleaning it wasn't bad, though.

I think with a little more practice, it'll get a lot easier to use, which is consistent with what people who have used a clay sheeter for laminated dough rolling have said, and this is very similar to one, just probably a bit easier to keep clean. (Oh, dear, an excuse to make laminated doughs!)

I stopped after the 2nd turn to refrigerate the dough thoroughly, I'll try another turn later tonight, I don't know if I can get in a 4th turn, it depends on whether I still have discrete butter layers, which I probably won't know until I make something with the puff pastry tomorrow. (Even if the butter layers are messed up, it may wind up being like using blitz puff pastry.)

[Mike Nolan]

I decided to go with a 500 gram batch of puff pastry to start, mainly because it's hard to get smaller batches of dough to work in my mixer. If I have to, I can split it up for final rollout. This should make around 10 turnovers, if I have the sizes figured out right. It'll depend on how the final rollout goes, Michael Suas's book says to roll it out to 1/8 inch, which is pretty thin.

My plan is to do the lamination this evening, let the dough rest overnight, then do final roll out, shaping and baking tomorrow.

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