[Mike Nolan]

We picked up about 4 inches of snow Saturday morning and most of it is still here, because the temperatures have been below freezing. The roads are in pretty good shape, though.

[Mike Nolan]

I made four pie crusts today, tomorrow I'll make a cherry pie with two of them, the other two will go in the freezer for another time.

[Mike Nolan]

Yeah, their website appears to have some problems. I'm not sure if they're carrying as much stuff as they used to before the ownership change, either.

K&B Cake and Candy Supply in the Pittsburgh area is another place I have visited multiple times when I'm in the area, they have more Wilton pans than I've seen anywhere else.

[Mike Nolan]

Never been in a World Market, always thought it was a grocery store, though.

[Mike Nolan]

A few years ago I was in a store (Sweet Wise) near Opryland in Nashville that had square pans in every size in one inch increments from 3x3 to at least 18x18. I think they had some of them up to 24x24 but those wouldn't fit in my oven, an 18x18 would, just barely.

I bought a 10x10 pan but gave some thought to buying a full set. The last time I was in Nashville the store was temporarily closed due to an ownership change, but their web site says they're open again under the name Sweet City.

Not sure if/when I'll be in the Nashville area again, the company I used to work for has its offices about 90 miles east of there. I still do a little consulting for them, but most of their staff has been working remotely since March, over half of them don't even live in Tennessee.

[Mike Nolan]

I made a small batch of barbecue sauce today and then boiled down my beef stock a bit, portioned it out and froze it.

For supper we had Costco cheese tortellini with tomato sauce plus some cheese toast rolls.

[Mike Nolan]

The issue with flax is that the hull is not digestible, so it needs to be ground. Soaking it doesn't appear to work, doing a mash (ie, heating the soaker) might be better, cracking the flax might work, too, but I've never tried that so I don't know how easy it is to do.

I know my nutrimill specifically says not to try to run flax or any other oily seed through it.

[Mike Nolan]

Yeah, I've got a few books that are on 'healthy' baking/cooking and they seem to assume that ANY bad stuff (fat, cholesterol, carbs, meat proteins, refined sugars, etc) is verboten, even when updated science says some of it may not really be bad at all, much less dealing with moderate amounts of them.

I've got a whole grains book that literally spends at least the first third of the book preaching the benefits of whole grains (mostly in terms of science from the 1970's). Anybody who reads beyond that point to find the first actual recipe was either already converted or is a masochist!

[Mike Nolan]

Cookbooks are an interesting part of the book industry. Many people think they can write one, not that many ever complete one. But there are still hundreds of cookbooks published every year, most of which wind up on the remainders table quickly.

[Mike Nolan]

Back in March, at the start of the Covid shutdown, I was planning to go to Dallas for a BBGA course Deb and another person were running on sourdoughs, but it got cancelled. I only hope some day they can resume in-person instruction and reschedule it. (So many of the BBGA courses are on the east or west coast, I was glad to see one in the central US.) Deb lives in Columbia MO, so a central US course may be easier on her travel schedule.

BBGA is doing a bunch of online courses, but I'm really more of a hands-on learner.

[Mike Nolan]

There was a blog site about a group of home bakers who were trying to bake their way through every recipe in The Bread Baker's Apprentice. I've probably made about a dozen recipes from that book, and close to that from his Artisan book.

There are about a half dozen Reinhart recipes I use regularly and these days several Hamelman recipes, too. Hamelman has written on the BBGA forum about a rye recipe that will be in his 3rd edition, it sounds enticing enough to make me interested in the book.

I haven't made many cakes from Purdy's cake book, but the ones I have made were successful. I really like her hot water crust for meat pies, but for a dessert pie I always use the butter crust recipe I learned at pastry school, I assume it is in Michael Suas's Advanced Baking book.

There are probably about a half dozen recipes from the King Arthur Baking Companion that are also part of our standard repertoire, and a few from the King Arthur Whole Grains book, notably Scottish shortbread and hot cross buns.

So far none of the Ginsberg rye breads have become regulars, but I didn't really expect many of them to.

There was a pumpernickel recipe posted in the BBGA forum that is on my list of things to try after my cataract surgeries, it features a LONG bake, 24 hours in a water bath at just barely above 212, enough to make it more of a steaming than a baking process. The original recipe uses a double-wall pan from Germany that I can't find anywhere, perhaps nobody makes it any more. I'm planning to try it in a covered Pullman pan set on a rack in a larger covered roasting pan partially filled with water. That means lots of time for the Maillard process to turn the interior of the loaf into a dark brown bread.

[Mike Nolan]

Bolting is the process by which they sift out larger pieces from the milled flour, usually these are bran and germ.

The term comes from the fact that they used to use cloth for this, which comes in bolts.

If you look at a picture of a Wheat Berry, you can see how a roller mill works. As the rollers get closer together, they begin to strip off most of the bran. The germ is kind of tucked into one end of the berry, so it comes off after the germ. The crease in the berry complicates matters, the reason some of the rollers have grooves in them is to help orient the berry.

In a large roller mill, bolting occurs in several places, each producing two streams, one of the finer material that passes through the bolting screen, one of coarser material that does not.

Stone ground flour can also be bolted, that's where the process originated.

The germ has most of the oil, which can develop a bitter taste. The germ also has enzymes that break down the starch into simple sugars, mostly maltose, which a newly sprouted germ uses as food. These enzymes also affect the gluten matrix. I used to add germ to several breads, but it always seemed to affect how much the dough rose, so I stopped doing it.

[Mike Nolan]

I have a couple of Rose Levy Beranbaum books, I seldom look at them. I find her instructions too fussy, sort of like ATK recipes but without the 'you must do it THIS way' attitude, and I've had more out and out fails from her recipes than any other author.

Clayton's books could stand some updating, most of them were written in the 70's (he died in 2011), but he was pretty meticulous and his recipes tend to come out decently, though I think he assumes 5 (or more) ounces of flour per cup.

I generally don't buy multiple editions of a cookbook (The Joy of Cooking is an exception, I collect editions published before 1960), but I may have to buy the 3rd edition of Hamelman's book when it comes out.

I may stop buying Peter Reinhart's books, though, his last pizza book was a major disappointment, too few recipes and too many pictures. I suspect his editors are leading him astray, though.

[Mike Nolan]

As a lot of new bakers found out during Lockdown I, beginning sourdough is kind of like beginning motocross, expect a lot of crash and burn.

[Mike Nolan]

I'm guessing that would be article(s) by Deb Wink, though Emily Buehler's book "Bread Science" is pretty good, too, but neither are light reading material.

I have not seen the book "Flour, Water, Salt, Yeast" but I've seen some positive reviews about it.

Here's a list someone posted of the 5 best books on sourdough. I've got the Tartine book and the first edition of Hamelman (3rd edition is due out next year), neither are beginner books.

sourdough books list

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