[Mike Nolan]

I don't buy pasta very often, except for Kraft macaroni and cheese boxes and the cheese tortellini that Costco has. I did buy some orchiette to make minestrone with a couple of years ago, used half the package and eventually threw out the rest. (I thought the minestrone was good, my wife didn't like that I had added summer squash to it.)

Most of the time I make pasta myself using the KA pasta kit, I like the semolina egg pasta recipe that came with the KA pasta kit, it makes good spaghetti, fettuccine and lasagna noodles.

My KA pasta kit came with two cutter, one is called spaghetti or linguini, though I think it is sort of in between those two shapes, not exactly flat but not really round, either. There's also a fettuccine cutter, and I use it for both fettuccine and soup noodles, the former I try to get to the '4' setting on the roller, soup noodles I usually do at '3'. If I want wide noodles, I hand cut them after rolling them out.

One of my projects this winter is to try making Chinese pulled noodles. I ran across a 'how-to' article that says the secret is adding yeast flakes (non-fermenting) to relax the gluten.

If I'm making something that is usually served on noodles, I generally prefer to make spaetzle, using the recipe that Grizzlybiscuits posted to the original KAF site.

[Mike Nolan]

Accuweather is calling for a high of 91 on Saturday here, and we thought the 90's were done for the year!

They're not showing a frost until early November, which would be OK with me. I think we lost a lot of grass in August, I may reseed those areas if I can water them in for 4 weeks so they sprout.

I'm still planning to do some lettuces in the Aerogarden so we have fresh greens over the winter, I think I'll probably wait another week to start them. The tomatoes we put in are kind of weird, and they're not really 'bush' plants as one of them was climbing up the window and was close to 8 feet long when I finally cut it off. There are still a few green tomatoes on it, I'll probably wait until after those ripen to rip it out and put in a second set of lettuce plants. The roots from the tomato plants seem to have gotten into the water level sensor, I'm not sure if they've gotten into the pump housing as well, wouldn't surprise me though. Tomato plants have aggressive root systems.

[Mike Nolan]

I baked the King Arthur buttersnaps (Bordeaux copycat) cookies today. They said 12-15 minutes at 375, the first batch was overdone at 12 minutes, so I dropped the temp a little and baked the second batch for 11 minutes. That was better, but one or two of them still look a little dark on the bottom. I might try 350.

They're darker all the way through than Pepperidge Farms Bordeaux cookies and the taste and texture aren't that close, either. King Arthur has you roll the cookies in sugar with a little salt, I think that makes the cookie too salty on the surface. I'll probably skip that next time.

If I make this again, I think I'll try a blend of white sugar and brown sugar, though another copycat recipe uses dark brown sugar. The King Arthur recipe doesn't use milk, some of the others do. I may also try using just egg white rather than a whole egg.

I stuck a chocolate kiss on some of them after they came out, because I like to eat Bordeaux cookies with chocolate kisses, those were interesting enough I would do that again.

[Mike Nolan]

There was plenty of flour at the grocery stores when I made my weekly shopping trip, and Costco had a large supply of 12 pound bags of KAF AP flour, though the price has increased from $5.99 to $6.99, over a 16% increase.

[Mike Nolan]

I don't have netflix, just not enough stuff on it we'd ever watch to justify the monthly fee.

There are usually summaries of each episode in the British papers, like the Guardian. No, it's not quite the same as watching.

The technical challenges are usually the most interesting, because everybody is making the same thing, or at least trying to.

[Mike Nolan]

We had to run some errands ahead of supper and thought we might pick something up for supper while we were out. Considered several fast food places, nothing really struck our fancy. So we thought we’d go to Village Inn, a local pancake/diner chain. Turns out they’ve downsized their menu and got rid of both of the items we were thinking we’d order, waffles for her and a chicken pot pie for me.

So we went home and made pancakes, but my wife mis-read the recipe and added too much milk, so the first batch came out really thin, so thin she couldn’t flip one. I ate the one she could flip, it was sort of odd, kind of like a crisp crepe. We added some more flour to the batter and the rest of the pancakes were thicker.

I suspect a chicken pot pie will be on the menu soon, gives me a chance to play a little with the hot water crust recipe, I'm trying to figure out the optimal thickness for a pot pie so I can update the pie dough chart post, which has become the most popular page on this site in my monthly page view stats from Google.

[Mike Nolan]

Its on my list of candidates should my nearly 50 year old KA finally bite the dust, but, yeah, it isn't cheap.

[Mike Nolan]

I made a small batch of the KAF version of Bordeaux cookies yesterday and let it cool overnight, I'll bake some later today.

[Mike Nolan]

The Meater Plus (one probe with a bluetooth repeater to give you more range, though the advertised 165 feet range seems to be several times larger than what I get) works fairly well, it gives you the ambient temperature plus the internal temperature and a time estimate of when it will be ready for the resting stage.

[Mike Nolan]

I often make a simple tartar sauce using just mayo and some dill pickle, adding some dried dill weed is something I may try.

[Mike Nolan]

Nope, no leavening in the batter, though as you say it'll get some from the egg. I don't think you'd want a LOT of leavening, this is probably more like a crepe than a pancake. We haven't had pizza night for a while due to our appliance issues (everything repaired as of this morning, including the new disposal installed), but may try the poured crust once we get back to that. We did have a lavash pizza last week, but that almost doesn't count since the lavash is bought already baked.

[Mike Nolan]

Jack Stack BBQ restaurants in the KC area make a cheesy corn bake that is very good. There are copycat recipes available for it that use frozen corn. (We leave out the garlic, of course.)

[Mike Nolan]

I suspect the physics behind the cold cloche method and the hot Dutch oven method are different.

Here's my guess as to what is happening with these two methods, both related to what's happening with the thermal mass of the baking vehicle:

A cold cloche is going to take longer to get up to the ambient temperature of the oven, resulting in a slower warm-up of the dough, extending the period during which oven spring occurs. That's why it takes longer for the bread to bake than it does just putting the dough in the oven. That probably makes this method similar to starting the bread in a cold oven.

A hot Dutch oven is going to produce an initial burst of steam, cooling and softening the crust in the early stages of baking. Where the dough touches the hot surface of the pan is going to behave differently than where it touches the hot (and steamy) air. My admittedly limited experience with the Dutch oven method is that it shortens the baking time.

I think there's value in both methods, but I don't think they're interchangeable.

I've got a Meater Plus wireless meat thermometer, but I'm not sure it'd be safe to use it with bread. Otherwise it would be interesting to see how the internal and ambient (air inside the cloche/Dutch Oven) temperatures change over time. I'm not sure the bluetooth signal would get through the metal of a Dutch oven, though. Maybe two or three corded oven thermometers would work, though? (One for the temperature of the surface under the dough, one for internal dough temperature and one for ambient air temperature.)

[Mike Nolan]

I've been using Australian wines for boeuf bourguignon, Lindeman has a shiraz that I like and also a good cabernet. Shiraz is a grape that gets dissed by the wine snobs, but I think it makes an excellent cooking wine.

[Mike Nolan]

I'm cooking an eye of round today, we'll have leftover roast beef for several days.

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