[Mike Nolan]

I've seen 80% beef at $1.99, but other cuts haven't come down as much yet. We don't see a lot of prime beef in the grocery stores.

I"m seeing a lot more out-of-stock items, pretty much across the board. How much of that is due to supply line issues is unclear. Some products have vanished completely, like the type of toilet paper my wife prefers, my guess is it has been dropped from the product line and may not come back.

[Mike Nolan]

I made another batch of bagels today, using the 'wrap around the hand' method. You can see the overlap on the top right one (at about 10 o'clock) and at the bottom of the other 3 without cheese on top.

This method makes a slightly smoother surface, because it hasn't been hand stretched.

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[Mike Nolan]

I had a bagel and some peas, my wife had soup. I'll be having soup a lot next week, I'm having a crown prep on Friday. (She had one last week.)

[Mike Nolan]

I've heard that a lot of what is being sold as balsamic vinegar is artificially aged (ie, not in oak casks) and really poor quality compared to the expensive stuff. I've never really cared for balsamic vinegar, maybe I just haven't tasted a good one.

Our friend went to a tasting at the western Nebraska place, she had a sample of some balsamic vinegar that was priced at over $100 for a small bottle, she said it was unlike anything she'd ever tasted.

There are instructions for making balsamic vinegars in the Noma book, but it is a complicated process and even the Noma team wasn't sure how good their stuff would get over time.

My carrot and celery vinegars are interesting, so far I use the celery one more than I do the carrot one.

[Mike Nolan]

The Wall Street Journal had a story the other day on meat price, especially beef. Apparently there's a glut of higher quality beef on the market now, ground beef prices have dipped belos $2 a pound in some markets and prime rib is selling for around $7 a pound.

Because of delays in getting cattle from feed lots to processing plants, they put on more weight than usual. most of which is fat. This leads to higher marbling in the meat, which makes the meat higher grade. That has led to a lot more prime graded beef at the wholesale level.

[Mike Nolan]

Although I'm not currently creating new quiz questions very often, I've changed the top menu to say 'Take a Quiz!" One of the links there will take you to the latest quiz question, the other will take you to a randomly selected quiz question. Enjoy!

Take a random quiz question

[Mike Nolan]

I make my bagels with about 3 ounces of dough, that's smaller than the standard, which is more like 4 1/2 ounces, but we like them better.

The bagels made Montreal-style (less salt, honey instead of barley malt syrup) are a bit bigger than the ones I get with the recipe as written, I think it's because the lower salt makes them puffier. Traditionally, Montreal bagels also have a larger hole in the middle, that's probably also due to the softer puffier dough.

The conventional wisdom is that blowouts are related to under-proofing, being close to the convection fan could mean they get more oven spring activity. If you've got a 1 or 2 inch deep half sheet pan, you could try baking them in that, it might shield the dough more.

There's kind of a narrow window between under-proofed and over-proofed. Home conditions are generally not as consistent as bakery conditions, so we're always guessing as to when they're ready for the oven.

[Mike Nolan]

I picked a bowl of tomatoes today, not as many as I was hoping to get, if the frost holds off we should continue to get a few tomatoes every day or two for at least three weeks.

We had tuna salad in tomatoes for supper tonight.

[Mike Nolan]

Anodized coatings wear off, I'm not sure if the acid in tomatoes would speed that up.

We have two 9 1/2" Ikea stainless steel saute pans, I like them a lot, but sometimes I wish I had one 12" stainless steel saute pan, though I don't feel like paying $200 for one. (I don't want a non-stick pan for general cooking, we do use them for eggs.)

[Mike Nolan]

We had bagels with cream cheese, corned beef and Swiss cheese. They were pretty good, I used the Reinhart 'Artisan' recipe with 1/3 the salt and honey instead of barley malt. The poaching liquid also had honey. We both like them so much it'll probably be our go-to variant.

I made 9 bagels, slightly under 3 ounces of dough each. I figure they're about 35 carbs each, before adding toppings.

[Mike Nolan]

The Pullman loaf came out good, too, I used the Austrian Malt bread recipe with 28 ounces of flour, 50% semolina. (This is a 4x4x13 pan.)

I took the lid off 5 minutes before I expected it to be done, and the internal temperature was only about 180, so I gave it another 10 minutes, at which point it was 205.

I'll slice it in the morning, but I expect the square slices to be fine.

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[Mike Nolan]

The Montreal-style bagels are out, and they're definitely fluffier and softer on the exterior. They won't have quite the same taste as a true Montreal bagel, because they weren't baked in a wood-fired oven, but I think they'll be pretty good for supper tonight.

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[Mike Nolan]

Sometimes I think my wife would prefer I stick to a few proven recipes, but what's the fun in that??

[Mike Nolan]

Today I'm making another semolina/malt bread recipe in the Pullman pan (about 25% less dough this time) and I'm also making bagels--sort of a Montreal-style recipe (less salt, honey instead of barley syrup in the dough, honey in the poaching liquid instead of baking soda.)

[Mike Nolan]

I'm not sure we've EVER had a bag of self-rising flour in the house, but we aren't big biscuit eaters.

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