[Mike Nolan]

I've concluded the fancy fluting on the edges is largely a waste of time and pie crust, in part because I'm terrible at it, but also because far too often most of that edge gets left on the plate. So I've been making simpler edges of late, and it makes the pie look better/cleaner, if simpler, too. (I still like doing a lattice crust for a cherry pie, though my wife prefers a non-latticed top.)

[Mike Nolan]

We used to live about a block from a school that had the neighborhood air raid siren. Every Wednesday when they'd do the 10:30AM test, the neighbor's dog would howl until several minutes after the sirens stopped.

In our current house, unless the windows are open I don't even hear the sirens on Wednesday.

[Mike Nolan]

At one point last night I told my wife I thought Kansas was winning the battle against South Dakota for control of Nebraska. Tonight the fireworks aren't quite as vigorous.

[Mike Nolan]

A google search for 'tobacco netting' comes up with a few possibilities for where to get some.

[Mike Nolan]

My instructor at the SFBI pastry school probably thought I was never going to get a good pie crust made, and I do admit it took me 3-4 tries after I got back home to get the knack, but once you've got it down, good tasting pie crusts aren't difficult.

One of the reasons I developed the pie dough chart was so I could size the pie dough correctly, having too much dough means a crust that is too thick or a lot of wasted dough, having too little dough means working it harder to stretch it to fit the pan, and that toughens the crust.

I've tried RLB's cream cheese pie dough a couple of times, while I think I'm making it correctly, we prefer the all-butter one I learned at SFBI.

[Mike Nolan]

As I suspected the video is way too big to post, but here's a shot of the first wave of the parade.

Our little two-block long street has been doing this parade for a few years now, getting participants from the whole neighborhood. They skipped 2020 because of the pandemic, of course, but this year's turnout may have been the largest one so far.

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[Mike Nolan]

I made some potato salad using my mother's recipe, for the 4th. Our street is having its 4th of July bike parade tomorrow, I'll see if I can get some good pictures and post them.

Happy 4th of July, everybody.

[Mike Nolan]

I managed to get in enough time over two mornings and one evening to get all the big weeds pulled in the tomato patch, hopefully I can keep it clean with shorter stints. Hot is the order of the day here for the next week or two.

[Mike Nolan]

I've got tomatoes on quite a few of my plants, the 4th of July ones have nice clusters of them, but they're not starting to ripen yet, so they won't make their eponymous target.

The cherry tomatoes I planted indoors in the Aerogarden are starting to bloom, haven't seen any fruit that has set yet. But I may have cherry tomatoes by the end of July.

[Mike Nolan]

I've had some commercial pies where eating the cardboard box the pie came in might have been a taste upgrade. Fortunately, I learned how to make a delicious pie crust at SFBI.

[Mike Nolan]

We had a lavash pizza with the usual ingredients (tomato chunks, artichoke hearts, mushrooms) plus some Canadian bacon.

[Mike Nolan]

More leftovers here.

[Mike Nolan]

Here's a shot showing today's bread (above) and the previous bake (using a 50-50 ratio of flours).

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[Mike Nolan]

The semolina bread came out differently than the previous blend of flours, more of a dusty color crust and it probably wasn't developed enough. Tastes good, though.

[Mike Nolan]

I am making semolina bread today, I changed the proportions of flour from 50-50 to 5 parts semolina and 3 parts bread flour. The recipe that I'm trying to reproduce lists these ingredients:

Water, enriched durum flour, enriched semolina flour, unbleached enriched
flour (which includes malted barley flour), less than 2 percent of each
of the following: rice flour, salt, sesame seeds, malt syrup, yeast.

So I'm figuring the durum + semolina has to be more than 50% of the total flour. I don't know what the rice flour is used for, possibly just lubrication under the bread?

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