Mike Nolan
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The third edition of Jeffrey's book came out recently, I've got the first edition. I know he's revised some recipes (fixing some errors, including one in the semolina bread recipe) and adding some new ones. It's kind of pricey, but maybe not so much when compared to the Modernist series. Modernist Pizza just came out, and it only weighs about 30 pounds.
A new edition of Emily Buehler's Bread Science just came out, that one I may order from her (she self-publishes), she has a PhD in chemistry and does a pretty good job keeping track of the scientific literature on bread. I don't have access to all the technical journals, and I'm not sure I understand even half of the articles when I read them.
I'm still trying to get my head around the presentations on sourdough that were part of the Johnson & Wales bread symposium; much of what I thought I knew about sourdough appears to be wrong. The presentations from the symposium will be available on Youtube next year. When they're up, I'll post links to several of them.
I think BakerAunt was trying to help KidPizza get back to posting, but it seems that he is still reading this site from time to time, he offers comments through her (and others) about threads that interest him. He's had to give up making cheesecakes due to his health.
I've been making Jeffrey Hamelman's semolina bread for around a year, he uses a 50-50 blend of semolina and bread flour, I've been increasing the semolina to about 63%.
His is an interesting recipe because it uses a 'flying' sponge, a term you don't run across very often. You take the yeast, mix it with about 1/3 of the flour blend and water, then let it sit for about an hour, by which time it isn't exactly bubbly but it is clearly active, then add the other ingredients.
True Altamura bread (which has PDO status in the EU, like parmigiano reggiano) is made with 4 different strains of locally grown Italian durum wheat (some call it reground semolina), there was a demo on it as part of the J&W bread symposium using a flour mix sold by Puratos and I ran across a take on that recipe in Andrew Whitley's book, Bread Matters. The original Altamura bread is made with a semolina sourdough, Whitley's recipe uses an overnight sponge, I'm building a semolina sourdough starter so that I can experiment with this recipe and some others.
My rye starter died this summer, fallout from the refrigerator failure. Considering that I was only using a few teaspoons of it to inoculate a levain for rye breads, I may try the semolina starter on some rye recipes rather than build a new rye starter. As cooler weather hits, I'm going to try to get back into the Ginsberg Rye project, though.
Welcome back, Kathy.
I'm working on making a version of Altamura bread, made with 100% semolina flour and using a semolina sourdough starter that I've been building for a couple of weeks now. It's supposed to be somewhat cake-like in texture.
The WSJ and other media run articles fairly frequently talking about how empty shelves have become commonplace throughout the USA. Doesn't seem to matter what it is, everything has supply line issues. I hear whiskey distillers are having trouble getting the 750 ml bottles they use.
Some of it is product availability, some of it is packaging, some of it is shipping issues. The dock workers in LA have recently agreed to go to 24 hour shifts, but will they find people willing to do the work on the overnight shifts?
Shutting most of the world down for many months is still causing major ripples, likely to last into 2023 and well beyond. In Europe empty shelves have been a problem for years, we hosted some French exchange students about 20 years ago; they were amazed at the amount of products (and the variety) on the shelves of stores, especially the big box ones. These days, the empty shelves here would probably make them feel more at home, I guess.
Some of the major players, like Walmart, are renting entire container ships so they have sufficient transport capabilities, and that can run into 7 digits per ship! The 40 foot containers are in limited supply, too.
Depending on what kind of cinnamon you buy, I find I need about 50% more than the recipe calls for to be able to taste it. Some of that may be that as you get older (I'm 72) you need stronger flavors to be able to taste them.
I tend to buy the 16/18 ounce containers from Tones or McCormick, which is pretty generic cinnamon. My wife likes the Watkins cinnamon for her oatmeal but it is hard finding a Watkins dealer these days, Amway dealers are even harder to find. A close friend has been selling Tupperware for many years, she's trying to wind that down and is slowly getting rid of her inventory.
I'm finally getting to the apple strudel today, it probably won't be as pretty as the last one, so I don't plan to post pictures. I had issues stretching the dough as it kept tearing. I used King Arthur AP flour, I don't know if I should be using a stronger flour or a weaker one! (Some research on the Internet suggests I should have used a higher gluten flour and kneaded it longer.)
If I make two for the freezer, as I have been thinking of doing, I may try two different types of flour for the dough, to see which works better for me. I think I'll also increase the amount of dough relative to the amount of filling, I would like to get more layers around the filling. The Li'l Vienna recipe I'm using has you spread the filling over about half of the dough, I think it should be more like a third.
I used a dish towel under the dough at the end to help get it rolling, that worked reasonably well. (Last time I think I tried parchment, which didn't work as well.)
I cut the quantity of apples down from about 2 pounds before peeling and slicing to 1 1/2 pounds, last time I wound up with filling I couldn't get inside the strudel. (It was tasty nonetheless, though.) I got all the filling in this time, but it was still trying to fall out the sides.
Another strudel recipe online seems to use 3-4 times as much dough relative to the filling as the Li'l Vienna recipe does, so I'm definitely making more dough next time, either doubling or tripling the dough recipe.
The squirrels have been feasting on our tomatoes recently, we are finding half-eaten ones all over the back patio and in the yard. It is supposed to get to 37 tonight, I may pick everything that's ripe or close to ripe later today. We had an inch of rain overnight so right now the ground is still a bit too soggy.
Squirrels can slip through some pretty small holes, even chicken wire might not keep them out.
They're now calling for lows in the upper 30's this week, I'm not going to strip the tomato plants quite yet. We gave several bags of tomatoes to one of my wife's colleagues, they made some tomato relish with it and have already eaten a bunch of it.
We did bring the big rosemary plant in for the winter, now can I keep it alive?
We wound up having a lavash pizza on Sunday using some of the left over meat sauce from Friday's spaghetti, I also added more mushrooms and some artichoke hearts. It was very good.
It would make more sense that way, but when you go through the doorway between the two sections, it says 'Welcome to Marshalls' when you enter the side that has the linens, furniture and kitchen items.
I've been in a Marshalls store (in PA), it had a little bit of everything, just like the TJ Maxx in Lincoln. So I'm not sure there's a clear dividing line between the three.
TJ Maxx, Marshalls and Home Goods are all the same company, we have all 3 in Lincoln.
Our TJ Maxx seems to cater more to clothes for young people, but it does have a small cooking section.
The Marshalls and Home Goods here are inter-connected, you can go from one to the other and the checkout area is for both. The Home Goods area seems to have mostly clothes, the Marshalls has furniture, linens and a pretty big cooking/food area, with a large wall of kitchen implements and tools. They won't have the latest innovations, but I've gotten measuring cups, custard cups, brushes and a few pans there, usually at very good prices. (I'm always looking for new shapes and sizes of brushes.)
The company buys a lot of surplus inventory (as does Tuesday Morning), so the selection changes all the time. The foodstuffs they have (candies, chocolates, pasta and oils/sauces) tend to be brands I'm not familiar with, I'm not sure if that's just because they aren't carried in this part of the country or if they're buying from companies that market under multiple brands or haven't established other distribution channels.
I've only been to our TJ Maxx a few times, we have a Marshalls and a Home Goods store a lot closer now, similar concept (and same ownership). I did get a nice santoku knife at TJ Maxx once, but the foodstuffs are kind of tucked into a quiet corner of that store. I've not been all that impressed with the food items at the Marshalls.
I find when cooking with wine that adding a little acid helps cut the sweetness. I've got home made carrot and celery vinegars that work well for this, plus I have several bottles of white and red wine vinegars from the wine teacher at UNL, his standard Christmas present to my wife.
We had hot dogs for supper.
I see a lot of vacant spaces in the malls near us, most of them were probably young women's clothing stores. We've lost a lot of restaurants here, not all of them directly to COVID. The Red Lobster in Lincoln closed last month, because they couldn't reach an agreement on a new lease.
Fast food restaurants come and go all the time, so it is hard to say which ones wouldn't have made it anyway. Zoup closed during the first few months of the pandemic, which is too bad because they had several soups we liked, though most of them use a soup base with garlic in it.
The Valentinos Grand Buffet, which had been closed for the last year due to COVID, will not reopen. Vals is down to just two dine-in locations in Lincoln, (from at least 5) but they must have a half dozen take-out-or-delivery locations.
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