[Mike Nolan]

We made it ourselves, using Armour dried beef that comes in a small jar and some Béchamel that has beef boullion added to it for flavor. Buddig meats also has a dried beef that works well (it's what my mother always used), and I've even bought it at the deli counter, but it's kind of pricey that way.

[Mike Nolan]

Tonight we're having the creamed chipped beef on toast we've been thinking about for a couple of days.

[Mike Nolan]

I took some fluid mechanics courses in college back in the late 60's, but I don't remember the formula for the rate water can flow down a pipe due to gravity.

Fortunately you can find almost anything on the web these days. It looks like 1/8" interior diameter tubing will have a gravity flow rate of 2-3 teaspoons per seconds, depending on the friction of the tubing.

It appears that the interior diameter of the funnel is the limiting factor so far.

I've got a funnel that fits outside the tubing, as far as I can tell without leaking, it allows a faster flow rate. I think I got over 1/3 cup into the pan in under 10 seconds, which is consistent with the flow rate I computed online.

1/4" OD tubing struck me as about the largest I could use without creating a heat leak at the oven door.

In tests with a syringe instead of a funnel, I can get 60 CCs of water into the pan in under 10 seconds, but it looks like 1/2 to 2/3 of it doesn't flash to steam, though it would continue to create steam for a minute or two. A larger or heavier pan might handle more water at a time, but I'm not sure it is necessary, the bread tests may tell me more, I'm hoping to do them next week.

[Mike Nolan]

The Equipment:

This is 1/8" interior diameter (1/4" exterior diameter) food grade silicone tubing, which you can get from home brew suppliers.  It took about 27" of tubing for my oven.

The funnel is one of several we got at a kitchen supply store.  I'm using two brass nuts as weights to make sure the tubing stays in the pan, though in my initial tests I didn't use them and didn't see any problems with the tubing falling out of the pan.  One nut is a bit larger than the other, the hole in the smaller one is a tight fit for the tubing, so it shouldn't move around.

The Setup:

There's a gap between the oven and the cabinet, and I'm using an angle bracket to hold the tubing and funnel in place.  I also put in a small wedge just to keep everything from shifting around.  During production I don't want to have to deal with things other than the bread.

Here's a view of the full setup. When not in use, the tubing can hang straight down and it doesn't interfere with the cabinet door or touch the floor.

Here's a view of the tubing sitting in a 9 inch cast iron pan.  I've added about 20 CCs (4 teaspoons) of water just to show how much that is before it evaporates.  It takes 3-4 seconds for that much water to go down the tubing.

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[Mike Nolan]

There was a marijuana grow house (illegal, of course) raided a couple of blocks from us a few years ago. It was rather surprising because this is not a low-cost neighborhood, I guess they figured the neighborhood might supply some camouflage. Wrong!

The house subsequently was sold, and the new owner had to pretty much redo all the drywall, apparently the high humidity they were using ruined all the walls.

One of the Illinois recreational sales facilities is in downtown Evanston, a short walk for Northwestern students. When I went to school there, Evanston was still dry. (The WCTU national headquarters is also in downtown Evanston.)

[Mike Nolan]

About the only thing I use the convection fan for is the first 10 minutes of fruit pies.

I also posted about this on the BBGA forum, and got an email from a baker who says he thinks I'm getting plenty of steam, all you need is enough to get the crust damp.

I found the instruction manual for an oven that uses steam for both baking and cooking, it has a tank that holds 950 ML of water, and it says that'll last about 50 minutes. That's 19 ML per minute, which is pretty close to what I found I can do in a single burst with my tubing setup. Of course with bread, steam is really only useful in the first 10 minutes or so of baking.

I think I've identified about 8 different methods I want to test. My plan is make up a large batch of Peter's Pain de Campagne (I've used it for other tests, and the addition of a little whole wheat flour to a lean dough adds some nice color and flavor, so the bread won't go to waste, though it might go to waist) and retard it in the refrigerator overnight, so that each test has pretty much the same conditions, dough that has been out of the refrigerator for about 2 hours.

I'm also going to see if I can get some time-lapse photography shots of the bread baking through the window in the oven door. Not sure if there's enough light inside for that, even with the oven light on.

[Mike Nolan]

I read that Illinois was the 11th state to legalize recreational marijuana use, and around 33 states have legalized it in some form. It still remains illegal under federal law, and I don't see that changing any time soon.

An accurate test is probably a lot more expensive than the one that hospital used.

[Mike Nolan]

If I'm using anything lower than about 90% lean ground beef, I will generally drain it before using it. I haven't measured it, but I suspect the meat I'm getting after draining a higher fat product is comparable to the 90% lean meat, but at a much lower net price per pound. Which tastes better? Hard to pick a winner.

I remember reading an article about testing on various grades of lean meat, for the most part they're fairly close to the stated percentage of fat, but there can be a variance of several percent. They probably prefer to err on the side of having less fat than claimed.

I did try weighing the raw meat, the finished meat and the fat drained off a couple of times, the meat and fat usually added up to about 95% of the raw weight, I assume the difference was a combination of what's left in the pan and any moisture or fat loss due to evaporation.

My wife read an article years ago about a way to remove even more of the fat from ground beef after cooking and draining it. You put it in a pan of boiling water for 10-15 seconds. I think pouring boiling water over it from a tea kettle has about the same effect. I believe this is how the 'loose meat' sandwiches at a place like Made-Rite are prepared.

[Mike Nolan]

On a related matter, in 1958 Congress passed a bill that included the Delaney Amendment to the Food, Drugs and Cosmetics Act of 1938. It said that something that has been proven to cause cancer cannot be used as a food additive.

The problem with Delaney Clause testing is that testing has gotten much more precise and accurate over the years. In the 1950's labs were able to detect those additives at a rate of perhaps one part in a million. These days they can detect them at a rate of one part in 100 billion, and they're still refining the testing equipment. Not surprisingly, they're finding a lot more of these banned substances, including ones that are naturally produced as a result of the food or cooking process.

I think the same thing is true of drug testing, I've heard that even being in a room where marijuana was recently smoked can lead to testing positive for it.

[Mike Nolan]

We've had takeout the last two nights because my ankle has been bothering me since Saturday, and it hurts to stand up to cook. Not sure what I did to it, but I'm back to wearing the ankle brace I got when I chipped a bone in my ankle several years ago. (This is an ankle that's been injured several times during my life, starting with an ice skating accident when I was about 9.)

I've got several kitchen projects I was hoping to work on this week, not sure which of them I'll even get to at this point, much less finish.

[Mike Nolan]

About the only thing I ever make in our slow cooker is pulled pork and I haven't made it in several years. We do use it for things like taking chili to a pot luck, but with the limitations the University of Nebraska has placed on bringing in home-prepared foods, I don't know when we'll use it again.

My older son is really into instant pot cooking, he has 2 of them now, a small one and a larger one.

[Mike Nolan]

I don't know that I've ever bought fava beans, but I've probably eaten them at some point without knowing it.

[Mike Nolan]

We're probably doing either creamed chipped beef on toast or creamed tuna on biscuits.

[Mike Nolan]

If you override it, the link does work I think browsers are getting overly insecure about the archive sites. Norton didn't complain about it at all.

[Mike Nolan]

This might be the recipe, it uses 2/3 of a cup of maple syrup AND a half cup of brown sugar with 2 cups of dried beans. I'm getting a sugar rush just writing this!!

See Maple Baked Beans

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