[Mike Nolan]

Yeah, trying to tie oiled strings around a ball of dough is messy work. I may try this again some day, but with a different dough recipe.

I hope everyone had a happy Thanksgiving day. We had a great time, and I'm still stuffed 5 hours later. Even the weather more or less cooperated, considering the forecast 24 hours ago was for 1-3 inches of snow and/or freezing rain.

We had lots of leftover breads even after 25 or so people chewed their way through the 7 types of bread I made the last few days. There were at least 3 pumpkin pies and 3 types of brownies on the dessert bar, and a couple things I wasn't sure what they were, but no fruit pies. If we're invited next next year, I may bring an apple pie.

We gave the hostess two of the challah loaves that hadn't gotten broken into, with instructions to cut them into thick slices and make French toast with them. I'm going to slice up and freeze most of the partial loaves we brought back for the same purpose. Having frozen sliced challah makes it easy to do a little French toast on short notice. I also put most of the cranberry nut rolls in the freezer along with the hard rolls and the cheese rolls. I won't freeze the breadsticks quite yet, I plan to make cheese dip for tomorrow's football watching and I think they'd go very well with it.

[Mike Nolan]

Today I'm making a batch of pão de queijo (Brazilian cheese bread), as an appetizer treat. I made a batch and a half, which with a #60 scoop makes about 48 golf-ball sized rolls.

We had a house guest staying with us for a few months from Brazil, he made a batch of them using a mix. I looked up recipes and made a batch from scratch, he said they were as good as the ones his mother made. Then we went to the Brazilian-American Friendship picnic a few times, and I brought these along both times, they always disappeared quickly and we got very favorable comments on them. I leave out the garlic, but I've had them in restaurants and it is considered optional.

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[Mike Nolan]

More than once I've been tempted to make a batch of stuffing and some gravy using turkey stock, and maybe even mashed potatoes, and pig out!

I also love DGBC (dreaded green bean casserole), in fact I might make some for Black Friday.

[Mike Nolan]

The concern in the UK is more over mass-produced loaves that use additives to create a sour taste and baker's yeast as the primary leavening. Some of the food chains sell them as 'artisan' loaves. There was a movement in the UK earlier to try to define what 'artisan bread' meant, they couldn't agree on it.

This is more than just a big vs little battle, the reason sourdough has a lower glycemic index is that the long time it takes for the wild yeast to produce sufficient leavening allows time for enzymes to convert much of the starch into forms that aren't absorbed as quickly. People who buy the sourfaux loaves expecting the lower glycemic index are being ripped off.

[Mike Nolan]

The challah loaves aren't quite as dark as that photo suggests. I took it using my iPhone, and I don't know how to color correct it.

[Mike Nolan]

I made six 6-inch loaves from a batch of Challah dough (Reinhart's recipe in BBA):

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[Mike Nolan]

I made two batches of grissini breadsticks from Carol Field's book yesterday, the second batch had parmesan cheese in them.

These are fast to make and kind of fun, you cut them then stretch them to the width of your baking pan. I did a better job keeping the thickness more uniform with the second batch than with the first one.

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[Mike Nolan]

This morning I'm making challah, still trying to decide what braid to use, I may try the single strand braid in Clayton's Breads of France book, it is one I've not done before. There will be about 20 of us at at least 4 different tables, it'd be nice to do 4 or 5 smaller loaves.

[Mike Nolan]

I wound up subbing hickory nuts for walnuts in the cranberry nut recipe, because I couldn't find any walnuts in the freezer and I had a bag of hickory nuts I got from the Nebraska Nut Growers Association a while back.

The two go together well, and hickory nuts would have been readily available 100 years ago, before the hickory nut canker wiped out much of eastern America's hickory forests, so this is a classic throwback pairing.

[Mike Nolan]

The questions to ask when making cookies and the texture isn't what you expected:

1. What's the sugar to fat to flour ratio in those cookies? (A classic sugar cookie is 1-2-3.)
2. What kind of sugar is it using (white vs brown)?
3. Is the fat liquid or hard? (If you cream butter and sugar, it's still considered hard, Shortening is also hard, but if you melt the fat or use oil, it's liquid.)

I wouldn't worry about getting eggs fully cooked, by the time the cookies are edible, even soft ones, the eggs are way past the point where they're safe.

[Mike Nolan]

You should at least look at the explanation of the answer, there's always something to be learned.

[Mike Nolan]

I'm not sure what we're doing for dinner tonight yet, but I made some hard boiled eggs. Might go on a salad, might go in tuna salad, might be egg salad.

[Mike Nolan]

I made grissini (thin crisp breadsticks) today, I may make a second batch with parmesan cheese in them. This evening I'm going to make a cranberry walnut bread, probably as mini-muffins.

[Mike Nolan]

There are so many different ways to make cheese that even experienced cheese-makers don't use most of them.

Charles DeGaulle once said about France, "How can anyone govern a nation that has 246 types of cheese?"

[Mike Nolan]

We had veal Zurich over spaetzle made with 100% semolina flour, which was less successful than I had hoped. It didn't have enough gluten to hold together, so the texture is closer to a polenta. It was tasty, but it wasn't really spaetzle. A 50-50 blend of AP and semolina might hold together more.

We also decanted the first of the two flans I made yesterday. The recipe I have makes a LARGE flan, it calls for a 1 1/2 quart charlotte pan, and we wound up cooking it in 2 10" pyrex dishes, next time I may just do it in one pan, which would make it a lot deeper.

I forgot to add the vanilla, I think it may counteract the slight bitterness of true caramel, so I'll make a note on the recipe for next time not to forget it. It took a lot longer to set up than I had expected, I think I made a bit too much caramel and that insulated it too much. I may also have not had the water in the bain-marie hot enough.

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