Mike Nolan
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Rosemary lasts a long time after it has been cut, I have a sprig of it on the shelf above the stove and I've been using small amounts of it for months.
It doesn't take long for plants to get stressed by heat and a lack of water.
I double-panned the baguettes last night, I think that kept the bottoms from scorching before the rest of the bread was a nice shade of brown. I could probably have left them in a few minutes longer.
I got a fairly open crust, but not a lot of really big holes. I let them proof longer and that seems to have helped with how easy they were to score, too.
One of the tomato plants I put in last night is already gone, looks like I may have some cutworms.
I've replaced it (I still had another of that variety) and I've sprinkled some corn meal around the newer plants, that's supposed to attract the cutworms and then kill them When they eat it.
Why the preference? Was it the filling, the type of crust?
The baguettes that were in the micro-perforated bags overnight are still firm today, the crust on the one in a regular plastic bag has softened overnight so the micro-perforated bags are working pretty much as I expected them to. The good news is the crust will stay crisp, but that also means they'll probably dry out faster.
FWIW, I ordered these from clearbags.com.
Teff is used for injera, a staple of Ethiopian cooking that is kind of a sourdough spongy flatbread. Teff can be mixed with wheat, but I've read it has an effect on gluten development unless it's been heat treated. (I think it encourages too much enzyme activity.)
I have some teff but didn't like anything I made with it, I haven't tried making injera, but I've had it at a restaurant in San Diego.
I finally got the last of the tomato plants in the ground yesterday, replacing one that didn't survive transplant and putting in 5 others, giving me a total of 24 plants this year, about 10 different varieties. I've still got a few left in the seed trays in case some of these don't survive transplant. Given how hot it has been, and how late they all got in the ground, I don't really expect to see many early season tomatoes, but hopefully we'll get a break in the weather at some point during the summer and I'll get a reasonable crop in August or September. If we get a late frost, I've been known to get tomatoes until nearly Halloween.
We had started some cantaloupe from seed but it wasn't doing much. I put them in the ground two weeks ago and they've really taken off since then. We've got some eggplant, too, some of the small ones and some of the big ones.
We still have some butterhead lettuce under the grow lights, they're not doing much, I don't know if they don't have enough or the right soil, aren't getting enough light or something else. Maybe they're just slow growers?
We had fish with broccoli tonight.
First taste test of the ice cream sandwiches: The cookie is too thick and not chocolatey enough. I think both of those can be addressed by using a different cookie recipe, the mix is disappointing, but it wasn't the reason I bought the press.
Today the temperature isn't supposed to get much above the mid 80's, so I'm doing some baking.
I'm doing another set of baguettes and epis, they'll be baked later this evening, the dough is still in bulk proof. I bought some micro-perforated plastic baguette bags, they should work more like paper bags, though that probably means the baguettes need to be eaten within a day or so.
I'm also making the chocolate cookies for ice cream sandwiches. I bought a Norpro press to make them a while back from The Prepared Pantry, it came with a cookie mix package, and I'm making that. The mix came with a parchment template, the dimensions of which didn't match up with the instructions on the size of the individual sandwiches, but I think it was actually the right size and the instructions were wrong. I should have just measured the plastic cutter for the sandwich press. It means I only got enough cookies to make 9 ice cream sandwiches instead of 12, but the trim pieces are good for nibbling, and I was planning on cutting them in half so they're more like the size of the mini-sandwiches we've been buying at the store.
The cookies aren't very chocolaty for an ice cream sandwich, I think the chocolate mushroom cookie dough my wife makes might work better, but I'll reserve final judgement until I've had a chance to assemble and taste one.
The pattern the last few years here has been that it rains and rains for a month or more, then it stops, sometimes for weeks.
How do I know when the rainy season will start? It seems like it starts on the day I decide it is time to put my garden in. 🙂
The weather is cooperating today, so burgers on the grill.
I was planning burgers on the grill, but the weather wasn't cooperating, we've had over an inch of rain since early afternoon. Some nearby villages got over 4 inches in 3 hours.
So we had mac and cheese instead.
In Jeffrey Hamelman's book, he suggests putting butter on top of the soft butter rolls before they go into the oven. For hamburger buns made from that dough, he suggests brushing them with butter after they come out of the oven.
He doesn't specifically mention making seeded buns.
So, I tried putting butter on top of my burger buns after shaping, before the final rise, last night, then I sprinkled sesame seeds on them. I let them proof for close to 2 hours, the dough was just rising slower than normal, not sure why.
The seeds are all falling off, so that's definitely NOT one way to get the seeds to stick! I'm sure the buns will be tasty even without any sesame seeds left on them.
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