Mike Nolan
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I think I"m good for now, I've still got a pound of Fleischmann's IDY unopened, though the package in the freezer is getting low, and I've got most of a pound of SAF Gold in the freezer, too. I just got a 10 pound bag of Wheat Montana AP unbleached at WalMart. I bought 15 pounds of medium rye in early February, and am less than a third of the way through the first bag. The flour section at WalMart didn't have any KAF flour, though. They had quite a bit of TP, just not ones we'd normally use. Hy-Vee's flour shelves were still pretty bare.
I'm seeing a lot of out-of-stock things, like the soft margarine we like. I hear the latest shortages are hair coloring products, since all the hair salons are closed.
I bought about 6 pounds of semolina at the coop last month, before everyone started shutting down bulk food bins. Unless we get on a pasta kick, that'll last me 2 months or longer.
We've been in a winter storm warning since late last night, but no snow yet. If we're going to get any, it may start before noon.
Walmart had 10 pound bags of Wheat Montana AP unbleached, so I bought one, that gives me a good cushion for the next month or so. My son got some SAF instant dry yeast on Amazon.
The number of mice I'm catching is slowing down, hopefully that means I'm making a significant dent in the population.
The rye crispbreads I made are a lot like hardtack. I read somewhere once that a lot of hardtack was made from rye flour rather than wheat flour because rye flour was, at least historically speaking, cheaper.
I find pre-shaping then letting the dough rest for around 5 minutes before final shaping improves the way the shapes come out and gives me more consistency between loaves.
I'm slowing down the rate at which I'm making the Ginsberg rye recipes, mainly to make sure I don't run myself out of flours before the shortages subside, since so many types of flour are unavailable right now. Whether I can complete all 78 recipes by the end of 2021 or even 2022 remains to be seen.
We had reubens for supper.
It's a good thing the second (smaller) batch of sauerkraut is just about ready, because the first batch is almost all gone.
I've got a 4 gallon crock coming soon (UPS says tomorrow) and we bought 30 pounds of cabbage today, which should make a pretty big batch of kraut.
Bob's Red Mill has triticale berries in their webstore, but they're currently listed as being out of stock. I'm not sure if I've seen them in stores, but BRM still makes a number of products I haven't seen in stores here.
The size of the chips can figure into it, a cup of mini-chips is probably going to be heavier than a cup of standard size chocolate chips (eg, Nestle's Morsels) because there's less air between pieces.
I remember when bags of chocolate chips were 16 ounces, now some of them aren't even 12 ounces. :sigh:
They're about 6 rabbit's feet apart. 🙂
We had a lavash pizza for supper.
Triticale is an interesting and challenging grain. The breads I made with it at around 15% triticale were good; most people who tasted them preferred the triticale breads over similar loaves made just with wheat. The ones at a higher percentage started to show some structural effect from the triticale grain, which has weaker gluten proteins. The pasta I made with it didn't hold together very well, but it was edible.
Triticale adds a nutty taste that reminds me a bit of durum wheat or semolina; given that 75% of its DNA comes from rye (according to the geneticist at UNL), it really doesn't bring in any rye notes at all.
I've still got around 6 pounds of triticale berries, and Steve, the guy who grew it, said I can have more whenever I want. (Might have to wait until UNL is open again, though.)
French (and European) farming is much more of a cottage industry than in the US, especially for things like corn or wheat. There are more strains of wheat grown, and the wheat could almost be described as artisinal.
I'm not sure the small US mills are going to be that much different from the bigger ones, because they're all getting pretty much the same strains of wheat grown on similar ground.
What the bigger mills can offer (and I include KAF in that category) is consistency. A common thread on the BBGA forum is this: "I just switched from brand X flour to brand Y flour, and my breads aren't coming out the same, how do I fix this?"
Prof. Calvel didn't always have kind things to say about North American wheat, but he still thought a skilled miller and baker could produce good bread from them.
What I find interesting is how many articles and books I've seen that talk about how much bad bread is being produced, even in France. (And I'm not talking about the mass-produced factory breads, which are almost uniformly awful.)
I declared my celery and carrot vinegars done this weekend, the final pH on the celery vinegar was 3.2, the final pH on the carrot vinegar was 3.45. (Carrot juice is sweet enough that next time I might try the traditional two-stage process for making vinegar, first fermenting the carrot juice into alcohol then turning that into vinegar.)
In any event, I may get a refractometer to measure the process more precisely.
I'm going to let them settle for a day or two before I decide if I need to rack them to get rid of more sediment.
Looking forward to trying these in salads and recipes. I've got some nice bottles for them that I got at Hobby Lobby, and I'm going to print up some oval labels.
I'm thinking I may try an onion vinegar next. That's not one the Noma book suggests, but they do a black garlic balsamic vinegar, so alliums must work. This fall I may try a butternut squash vinegar. A cucumber vinegar is another possibility.
Easter pizza, the mind boggles!
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