[Mike Nolan]

I'm getting started on making a cherry pie today.

[Mike Nolan]

Leftovers tonight, plus a salad.

[Mike Nolan]

The ones in bagel dough and served with Chicago sauce do seem like a bit of work, but I've made pigs in a blanket a few times and they seemed like a lot of work for a pretty pedestrian result, even if you use the dough in a tube.

[Mike Nolan]

Boneless skinless breasts are easy to overcook and not very flavorful, I prefer to do bone-in breasts, even if we don't eat the skins.

[Mike Nolan]

I have to admit to having given some thought to buying a Lodge square pan and have the handle cut off one side.

[Mike Nolan]

Kitchen stores are tempting enough but real restaurant supply stores are downright dangerous! I love visiting the Strip District in Pittsburgh, there are multiple restaurant supply stores and PennMac, where there are types of cheese I've never seen anywhere else, and you can get samples of them. K&B Candy Supply in the Pittsburgh area has Wilton pans I've never seen anywhere else.

The cake supply place near Opryland in Nashville is open again, as SweetCity, but I haven't been there since it changed ownership and I don't know if they still carry as much stuff, their new website doesn't impress me, though.

Thankfully, there isn't a Gordon Food Services near us, though some GFS outlets seem better than others. Sysco isn't open to the public, nor is Restaurant Supply Depot in Omaha. Hockenbergs closed their Lincoln store, but they still have one in Omaha. There's a Sur la Table in Omaha, but somehow it never impresses me.

The other thing that is real dangerous for both of us is a good used book store.

[Mike Nolan]

Change of plans, we're doing prime rib (sous vide) for Christmas dinner.

Tonight we had French onion soup and salad from the Aerogarden.

[Mike Nolan]

If I can find one, we're going to do a goose for Christmas dinner.

[Mike Nolan]

Bread needs to dry out as it bakes, unlike something like Boston Brown Bread, which is steamed.

[Mike Nolan]

The instructions for baking in a commercial steam injection oven almost always say to open the vents, removing the steam, after about 10 minutes of baking.

My understanding is the impact steam has on the crust, delaying it from setting, needs to give way to completing the process of baking the bread.

Peter Reinhart's instructions for adding steam in a home oven also say to take the pan out after about 10 minutes.

I'm using about a 6 inch cast iron skillet with my steam tube, what I'd really like is a much larger cast iron pan of some kind, maybe a griddle, but the bigger ones tend to have handles that get in the way. (The steam tube has to be fairly near a front corner of the bottom rack, because it falls out if you try to have the pan more centered in the oven, and you really don't want to be dumping water onto the lower heating element.)

[Mike Nolan]

There was a thread in the BBGA forum a year ago on where to find candied citron.

It's probably too late for this year, but next fall check with Sheridan's Fruit Co in Portland, OR, though I don't see citron in a search of their website today.

You might have to buy a KG or more of it. (One supplier had 30 pound boxes of it at about $180 plus shipping a year ago.)

If you can find whole citron fruit (try Whole Foods), cutting up the peel and candying it yourself might be another option.

Nuts.com has candied citron at a reasonable price, around $9 per pound plus shipping, but I don't know who makes it for them or how it compares to other sources.

[Mike Nolan]

I always want to make sure any water in the oven is used up or removed 10 or at most 15 minutes into the bake. With my steam tube I can control that fairly precisely.

[Mike Nolan]

We had some of the onion soup I made the other day, the onions have softened up nicely.

I also had a salad, my wife had a baked sweet potato.

[Mike Nolan]

I checked for stories on the WSJ and Bloomberg sites.

And here's a 6 year price chart for wheat:
Wheat Prices.

USA is a major wheat exporter, and wheat exports have increased, but most of the supply chain issues in early 2020 were due to changes in demand patterns, especially at the retail level. Wheat in storage never reached critically low levels.

The BBGA forum has had multiple threads on commercial bakers having both availability and quality issues. As we all know, if you switch flours, your recipes may need adjusting.

[Mike Nolan]

Tonight we had salad from the Aerogarden (with lots of stuff still needing to be picked) plus a bagel from today's batch.

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