Mike Nolan
Sat. Apr 25th, 2026
My mother always put rice in the salt shaker to keep it from clumping up in hot weather (our house had no air conditioning), as it would absorb some moisture, I assume it has the same effect on bread.
I bought some micro-perforated baguette bags recently, they're only 6" across so they won't hold anything bigger than baguettes, but they appear to have characteristics similar to paper bags in terms of keeping the bread from getting too moist or drying out too fast. Haven't used them enough to form an opinion on them yet.
I put some left over popovers in them, they didn't get super soft like they usually do in regular plastic bags, but they did go moldy in 3-4 days, which seemed to be about how long they'd last in regular plastic bags.
Here's an article from the Oregonian that looked at 12 donut places (one of the original choices was closed that day), Voodoo came in 12th, Blue Star came in 11th.
Krispy Kreme donuts have never been 'it' for me. And Voodoo Donuts in Portland OR were just so-so, IMHO. (My son tells me the in crowd goes somewhere else these days, anyway.)
We've got LaMars, and they're pretty doggone good!
Mike Nolan.
We had tomato and salami sandwiches on the freshly baked semolina bread.
Wonder if they ever figured out that salmon are predators? My wife won't eat salmon, but I like it.
KAF has a good recipe for baked donut holes.
I made semolina bread, with 2/3 semolina/durum and 1/3 AP and regular sugar instead of malt syrup.
Came out REALLY good.
You may need to talk to a water expert, and I don't mean Culligan.
We installed a R/O system in our kitchen when we built the house, they're a bit of work to maintain, there are several filters and they all have to be replaced periodically. When it broke the last time, I just turned it off.
BTW, I think they waste a lot of water, because they're always running. YOu also have to be careful what you use R/O water in, it has so much of the mineral content removed that it can damage some pans.
We often see wild turkeys near Wilderness Park, but they're seen all over town. They're totally unafraid of cars these days, sometimes blocking traffic.
A few years back SFBI did a blog post about how they created a full-sized Christmas tree out of bread for their lobby.
I saw a picture of a 4 foot long alligator made from bread lately.
Has anyone ever made cream puff swans?
I can't remember the last time I fried anything, we don't even have a fryer, so I'm going to be of no help here. I've done some shallow fat frying in a cast iron pan, but not recently.
I've got a book from 1987, 'Special and Decorative Breads', that has all sorts of interesting bread shapes and, in most cases, instructions for making them.
Sorry about not getting a quiz posted for the 8th, I was working on a project and just lost track of the time.
I think we're having salami and tomato sandwiches tonight and probably some of the melon, since we only ate half of it last night.
