[Mike Nolan]

Last night my wife thought there were several cantaloupes ready to pick, by morning one of them had been half-eaten by critters and another two of them were almost too ripe, but we picked 3 of them, gave the best of them to our neighbor and had one for lunch, along with some tomatoes fresh from the garden.

I think we'll get 2 or 3 more melons in the next few days, there are a bunch of smaller ones but I'm not sure they'll get big enough to ripen, the vines are already dying back.

The variety we planted was 'Hearts of Gold', and I'd plant it again, sweet and reasonable sized. Most of the stores tend to have Athena or Kandy. We've grown Athena once, it produces these HUGE melons, one of them was about the size of a basketball!

[Mike Nolan]

Canning jars and lids are in short supply, more so than usual for this time of year.

It will vary, wherever they put most of the BRM flours is where you'll likely find the semolina, at Hy-Vee it is in their health/organic aisle, at Super-Saver it is next to the other flours.

[Mike Nolan]

North Dakota Mill is the miller.

Here's the semolina/Austrian malt bread, it doesn't make a very tall loaf compared with the way it rises without the semolina, not quite 3" high, just barely above the rim of the standard loaf pan I used (which is behind it in the picture.)

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[Mike Nolan]

I've never tried minced dried onion in a rye bread, if you try it let me know how much you can taste it.

[Mike Nolan]

Well, I had some big containers I could put it in. And my guess is I'll go through it in six months or less, especially once cooler weather comes and I start making pasta more frequently.

I've been making the malt bread with 10 ounces of semolina and 10 ounces of AP or bread flour (haven't decided which I like better yet), so a 50 pound bag would make around 80 loaves. I've been making a loaf about every 4-6 days.

Semolina doesn't cause my wife's blood sugar to spike as rapidly, so I'll probably be making other breads with some semolina in them. I may have to try a rye bread with semolina, for example:
Semolina Rye Bread

Here's what 50 pounds of semolina looks like in containers:

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[Mike Nolan]

I'm doing a loaf of semolina/Austrian Malt bread today using the new semolina.

[Mike Nolan]

I've got plenty of semolina now, 50 pounds of it. Some of it will go in the freezer.

Grocery prices have been going up since March, but the way they compute inflation most grocery price increases don't show up in the national inflation numbers.

[Mike Nolan]

My 50 pounds of semolina came today, I split it up into 6 different containers, some will probably go in the freezer.

[Mike Nolan]

The problem with half shelves is that if you put tall stuff in front of the half shelves, which is, I guess, the point, you can't see much less reach the stuff below the half shelf without moving everything in front.

[Mike Nolan]

I made honey wheat bread last night, since my big bag of semolina won't arrive until later this week.

[Mike Nolan]

They were in pending posts, I'm not sure how you do that.

[Mike Nolan]

We picked the first cantaloupe from our garden and had that with some salami.

[Mike Nolan]

We had cheese tortellini with a pasta sauce that I added mushrooms, diced tomatoes and some ground beef to.

[Mike Nolan]

I don't think no-knead breads are going to have quite as much gluten development as a kneaded bread, and that's likely to result in some decrease in volume. But there are so many factors other than kneading that lead to volume that it may not be that big a difference.

Semolina breads in general seem to be denser than ones made with AP or bread flour, probably due to the gluten in them, I believe semolina is higher in gliadin than glutenin.

I've been making the Austrian Malt bread recipe with 50% semolina lately, and it comes out fairly dense. We like it that way, because it can be sliced quite thin, so I'm not in a big hurry to see if I can improve the loaf volume.

Jeffrey Hamelman's semolina bread seems to be a bit lighter, but it uses a two stage process which may be a major factor.

[Mike Nolan]

I wonder about how home indoor gardens get pollinated. The professionals have their own bee colonies.

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