[Mike Nolan]

Report on Jewish Bakery Pumpernickel (Ginsberg pps 93-96):

This is a really good pumpernickel bread, but I did fiddle with the recipe a little. It produced two loaves about 650 grams each from (730 grams pre-baking weight), the loaves are about 10 inches x 5 inches by 2 1/2 inches.

Both of the sponge stages call for coarse rye meal, and the coarse rye meal I have is almost like cracked grain, which I thought might be too coarse to be the only rye in the recipe, so I used coarse rye meal for the first sponge and medium rye meal for the second.

I used first clear flour in the final dough, and I added about a tablespoon of caraway seed.

It uses some caramel color to produce a darker loaf.

I also used an egg wash rather than a cornstarch glaze, because cornstarch glaze always seems to produce a white pasty exterior, and this produced a nice shiny one.

It produces a fairly stiff dough, but it mixes well and it rose decently. I did let the final rise go for about 90 minutes as opposed to the 45 minutes in the recipe. Actual baking time was in the middle of the range in the recipe, by which point the internal temperature was about 206.

It slices easily and has a good internal crumb.

We used this bread for a batch of Reubens, and they were great. It was also pretty good with just little butter on it.

It also passes the toast test with flying colors.

This recipe is a real keeper, I'm sure I'll be making it again--soon!

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[Mike Nolan]

Today's pumpernickel rye bread is out and smells pretty good. We used it for Reubens, and they were great. I'll have a full review posted later tonight, but this recipe is a real keeper.

[Mike Nolan]

My new rye starter is doing something the previous ones didn't, it smells like acetone. That's a symptom of being underfed, according to what I've read. So I'm going to feed it twice a day for a few days.

[Mike Nolan]

I've made brown bread twice, it has a lot of molasses in it, and I think brown sugar as well.

I should try the Ginsberg Boston Brown Bread recipe, the biggest challenge for me is what to steam it in. The last one I think I did in a fluted gelatin mold.

[Mike Nolan]

Lavash pizza here tonight.

[Mike Nolan]

I had a FB account at the company I worked for but maybe used it twice.

My wife was big on Farmville for a while (a Zynga game on FB) but lost interest. She keeps in touch with a few people on FB, including my sister and possibly one of my brothers, but I've never gotten into it and don't care if I ever do.

I do use Instagram a little, which I think is owned by FB these days, but I don't check it very often and seldom post to it.

[Mike Nolan]

Didn't get the fan tan rolls started, but I did get started on another rye bread recipe out of Ginsberg, should be done late tomorrow.

[Mike Nolan]

I'll be making Hot Cross Buns on Thursday, not sure how many batches yet, probably more than last year.

I'm still thinking about doing some variant on fan tan rolls, to see if they tolerate overnight refrigeration or freezing. Not much else happening today, maybe I'll do that.

[Mike Nolan]

We had our second Pfizer shots on Friday, and my wife has a little sore spot at the point of the injection, but not much, I haven't had any noticeable soreness. I thought I might have been having some chills Friday night, but I think I just wasn't under all the usual bedding.

[Mike Nolan]

The advanced search feature has the ability to search specific areas (ie, recipes only) or tye author field, but in the case of something posted by someone else with the original author's name as a reference, that's just a free text search.

I don't think shaboom was ever a member of this site.

I've tried to contact Zen to see if I could get access to her archive, but she hasn't responded to my emails, maybe she's not online these days? Anybody in touch with her?

[Mike Nolan]

Historically, libraries would accept donations, sort through them and keep only the ones they wanted, the rest they would either sell off or just throw in the trash. (Selling them off requires storage space, publicizing and holding the sale, etc.)

Libraries have started becoming something other than repositories of dead trees (paper books), so I've heard they're less receptive to donations.

A curated collection is something else, but that generally requires a cash donation to support the curation process. The John G. White collection in the Cleveland Public Library has several hundred thousand books on two subjects, magic and chess, but it also has an endowment that supports several staff members.

[Mike Nolan]

I'm planning stuffed peppers for tonight.

[Mike Nolan]

Here in Lincoln the retired teachers and school administrators organization used to hold an annual used book sale, but it was discontinued a few years ago, because there weren't enough people willing to do the behind-the-scenes work of collecting, sorting and grading all the books during the year. I think they also had a problem with their storage space.

I think the library system still does a used book sale, but I don't know when it is.

I've got a rather extensive cookbook collection these days and I'm not sure what I want done with it after I'm gone. I know better than to offer it to either the city or university library system.

[Mike Nolan]

Jeffrey says he's revised a number of recipes, added a few new ones and made quite a few changes in the front matter. He retired from King Arthur a couple of years ago and has been getting reacquainted with home baking.

[Mike Nolan]

Aside from having a number of editions of The Joy of Cooking (IMHO the best ones were the ones in the 40's), I seldom have much interest in a new edition of a cookbook.

I am willing to make an exception for the upcoming 3rd edition of Hamelman's bread book, though.

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