[Mike Nolan]

A French meringue is fairly easy to make, but it weeps easily.

Some people think that an Italian meringue is the hardest to make, because you have to make the hot sugar syrup then pour it into the egg whites, but to me a Swiss meringue is the most work, because you have to cook it in a double boiler. (Maybe it's just that I've been making cooked sugar candies for so long that making a sugar syrup is easy for me.)

I've always admired those who can make lovely peaks of meringue, mine winds up looking like something made by two little kids playing in a bubble bath. I suppose I could pipe it on, but that's a lot of work, too.

For a while I was making a brown sugar French meringue, but we got tired of it, and it seemed to weep even more than one made with powdered sugar.

[Mike Nolan]

Several years ago I bought a 10" diameter round Tramontina enameled cast iron Dutch oven at Sams Club for about $40. We also have a huge Club aluminum roaster (11x16) that we've had for nearly 50 years, big enough to do a turkey or a goose with the lid on.

I've made bread in the Tramontina, but not the Club. The largest boule I've made in the Dutch oven was about 16 ounces of dough, I could probably make one with 2-3 pounds of dough and have it pretty much fill up the pan.

[Mike Nolan]

A hot Dutch oven is supposed to do good job of reproducing what happens in a deck oven with steam injection, but since I've never baked with a commercial oven, I'm not sure how close it really comes.

Spraying a little water in the Dutch oven should help increase the amount of steam it generates. You're supposed to take the lid off about half way through the baking.

When I was doing my steam tube testing , the Dutch oven results were pretty close to what I got with the steam tube.

See Adventures in Steam

[Mike Nolan]

I don't have a cloche, but I do have a Dutch oven, and when I bake in it, the oven is pre-heated with the Dutch oven in the oven. This does make lowering the dough into the pan a bit tricky, but I've got a big wide offset spatula (KAF used to sell it as a cookie shovel) that works pretty well. I've seen instructions online to make a sling from parchment and use that to lower the dough into the hot pan, but I've never tried that.

[Mike Nolan]

I'm starting to think about my 2022 garden a bit. I think I'll skip the Brandywine and Mortgage Lifter tomatoes next year, and do more Amish Paste and Italian Heirloom, those were the majority of what I processed last night. I'll keep the Rutgers, 4th of July and First Lady II, maybe add Celebrity, a variety I've had good result with.

Several years ago, one of the test gardens at UNL was planted with Defiant tomatoes, which is a determinate that produces an 8 ounce fruit. Those were pretty good, I may add that to the mix next year.

My 4th of July plants went crazy this year, at least twice I've picked a large bowl of them. The First Lady II plants did well, too, but I think they didn't get enough water during the hot months. Next year I should set up some soaker hoses to water the tomato garden when the hot dry spell hits (which it always does.) I meant to do it this year but was having some ankle problems and just never got it done.

[Mike Nolan]

Yeah, I was up past 2AM processing them all, since I can only process 7 quarts at a time in my 24 quart pot. All 10 jars sealed, so I'm happy. I've done 22 quarts of tomato juice so far this season, which seems like a lot but my mother often did 50. (We drank it all winter.) We've already finished off 5 quarts and are working on the 6th.

And we've got our big fridge and freezer back in operation, though the freezer is still working on getting cold. And the dishwasher is currently running a load of mostly pots and pans. Now I just need to get a new garbage disposal installed on the cleanup sink. (It is on order, should be here early next week, then I need to get a plumber to put it in.)

• This reply was modified 4 years, 5 months ago by Mike Nolan.

[Mike Nolan]

I canned 10 quarts of tomato juice last night, most of the tomatoes that I picked yesterday were big ones like Amish Paste and Italian Heirloom and they produce a lot of pulp and juice.

[Mike Nolan]

We had extra sharp cheddar cheese, Honeycrisp apples and Genoa salami for supper tonight, they paired very well together.

Tonight I need to do a third batch of tomato juice, I picked 3 big bowls of tomatoes today. Might still be another good picking left depending on the weather.

The heat has broken here, it was 44 this morning and probably didn't get above 72 today. Most of the hummingbirds have headed south, only saw one or two all day.

[Mike Nolan]

Here's what Cook's Illustrated has to say about hot water pie crust, but I suspect this was not Kenji Lopez-Alt's work.

hot water pie crust

I think the recipe Susan Purdy has makes a very good savory pie, I use it for chicken pot pie.

[Mike Nolan]

Re-reading Kenji's article on pie crusts, it occurs to me that using whole wheat flour for a pie crust has one advantage, it might discourage gluten formation.

[Mike Nolan]

I'm not sure where I read it, but one description of a hot water crust said it breaks all the rules but still works.

I suspect part of what the hot water does is similar to a tangzhong bread, the hot water starts the process of gelatinizing the starch in the flour.

Kenji Lopez-Alt has written a lot about pie crusts (he invented the vodka pie crust when he was working at Cook's Illustrated) and he says the trick to a good pie crust is to get the flour to coat the fat (the opposite of conventional wisdom), and melting the fat might encourage that. I wonder if he's ever looked into a hot water pie crust? The word 'pie' isn't even in the index for his book, "The Food Lab".

I use his trick of holding back a little of the flour (around 20%) until after the fat has been cut into a pie crust, I think it improves my all-butter crusts. In pastry school they initially had us cut the fat in with a chef's knife, it takes a long time but you get to watch what's happening. Most of the time we were allowed to use a mixer, and at home I've used my fingers, a knife, a pastry cutter, my KA mixer and a food processor, and I've pretty much settled on using the mixer.

[Mike Nolan]

The frosting for the Texas Chocolate Sheet Cake, which uses butter, buttermilk, cocoa, vanilla, pecans and powdered sugar, is better if you heat it to about 120 degrees after mixing in the sugar before pouring it on the still-warm cake. Comes out a lot like home-made fudge that way!

[Mike Nolan]

I took a BBGA course on mooncakes on Friday, and I've been gathering the ingredients to make a batch of them this week. I couldn't find lotus seed paste, but I did find shelled lotus seeds, so I'll try to make my own.

[Mike Nolan]

We had sliders (3 ounce burgers) on the grill.

[Mike Nolan]

I made semolina bread today, tinkering with the flour ratio a bit, normally it is 1 pound of semolina and 1 pound of AP or bread flour, I used 20 ounces of semolina and 12 ounces of AP. It looks pretty good, but is still a bit too hot to sample.

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