[Mike Nolan]

I think a medium rye is unlikely to be whole grain, though dark rye probably is.

I still haven't found a local source for pumpernickel flour, I did find a few promising places online but I'll wait until after the holidays to try ordering from them.

I may just get some rye berries and mill them myself, then I can control the degree of fineness from pretty coarse to fairly fine, and it'll be whole meal.

[Mike Nolan]

When working with rye flours, there two things to consider, how finely the rye berries are ground and how much of the germ and bran are included. (And then there are rye chops, which are to rye berries what cracked wheat is to wheat berries.)

White rye flour is similar to white wheat flour in that it is mainly endosperm, with little germ or bran. As you add in more germ and bran, it becomes cream colored, then medium dark, then dark.

A dark rye flour can be finely ground.

Pumpernickel is a dark rye flour that is very coarsely ground.

Here's the whole grains council's page on types of rye flour:
Rye Flours

I've never heard of putting raw lentils as a topping on bread, either. I didn't see any obvious references to that on Google.

[Mike Nolan]

The National Pork Board guidelines say a pork loin roast should take 20-30 minutes per pound at 350 degrees, but that's to reach an internal temperature of 150, not 135.

135 sounds a bit low for pork to me. 165 was what they used to recommend, but that produced pork that was dried out and flavorless and usually tough. I remember going to a Rotary luncheon where they served pork chops that would have been better as soles for my shoes than food.

[Mike Nolan]

We're still finishing off the roast beef, so we had sandwiches and a salad. There's enough beef left to have it on a salad for lunch tomorrow.

[Mike Nolan]

The last GFS I went to was in a large shopping center in Tennessee and seemed to be catering to retail customers though it still had a lot of items for the restaurant trade.

The restaurant supply store in Lincoln closed their showroom (they still have one in Omaha, I believe), so I'm probably more dependent on Sams and Costco than before, plus online ordering. Whenever I'm in Pittsburgh visiting my son and his family I try to make a trip down to the Strip District to visit the restaurant supply stores there.

[Mike Nolan]

Sourdough/pain au levain never really went away in France, Poilâne's sourdough culture dates back to the bakery's founding in the 1930's. When Bernard Clayton traveled around France in the 60's and 70's doing research for his Breads of France book, he found a lot of small town bakeries that had sourdough cultures that dated back even further.

But there have been several cycles between good bread and cheap bread since WW2 in France, especially in Paris. Prof. Calvel was widely credited with saving French bread from sinking below mediocrity in the 50's. Looks like it's swinging back towards good bread again.

SAF is a French company, though it has facilities in several countries.

[Mike Nolan]

I have the big box of 18" plastic wrap and aluminum foil from Sams. I've tried both the regular and the heavy duty foil, I like the heavy duty one better.

GFS has a lot of good stuff, their meats usually look very good but I've never been at one close enough to home to be able to buy stuff that needed to stay cold. (I've been to ones in Indianapolis, Madison and Tennessee, there isn't one in Nebraska.)

I wasn't impressed with their flour products, either, but I have bought several large containers of spices and herbs from them, and they sell cherry syrup that we used at the soda fountain. And they usually carry a good assortment of restaurant grade cookware and smallware.

But like Sams and Costco, you need to know prices or you wind up buying stuff that isn't much of a bargain.

I did buy a box of 2 gallon zip lock bags from them, that's a hard size to find.

[Mike Nolan]

What few dripping there were (you don't a lot from an eye of round after the fat's been trimmed off) I used for the gravy I made.

I do have some good beef stock in the freezer, I usually put some in a stir fry anyway.

[Mike Nolan]

It is possible, but not easy, to whip ultra-pasteurized cream, it has to be nearly ice cold, though, and it doesn't stabilize well. You'll find lot of horror stories from people who tried whipping it unsuccessfully.

They often add gums to make UHT cream thicker, which apparently helps how it works when it is cooked but not much in the whipping process.

I've never tried making butter from UHT cream, I don't know if that works.

You cannot make cheese from UHT milk, I"m told.

[Mike Nolan]

Repurposing leftovers usually starts to sound attractive around day 3. I may have a salad with ranch dressing and some cubes of roast beef tomorrow.

I've never tried making a stir fry with left over roast beef, I wonder how well it would work?

[Mike Nolan]

We're on our third set of meals with the eye of round I roasted several days ago. I made some (instant) mashed potatoes and had a hot roast beef sandwich.

I worked on the gravy a bit, adding more water and butter, plus some salt, pepper, nutmeg and a pinch of rosemary Then I cooked it for several minutes to get rid of most of the vermouth taste. Much improved. (Julia Child used to say that you could fix almost any sauce with butter.)

[Mike Nolan]

There's a pretty good recipe for herbed dumplings in the KAF Bakers Companion, I've used it quite a few times, though I don't always use the herb blend they give. Mix it to the point where it comes together, if there are still a few pockets of flour, that's OK.

The dough should be sticky, I use two soup spoons to shape the dumplings, so my hands don't get stuck to the dough. Dipping the spoon in the pot each time will help keep the dumplings from sticking to the spoon.

You want the liquid simmering, not a full boil. You want to mostly cover the surface with the dumplings, then put the lid on and let them cook in the steam. I usually reduce the heat slightly at this point. Overcooking them is what results in rubbery dumplings, because you've overcooked the proteins.

[Mike Nolan]

I might take exception to the statement that apple growers breed for flavor, of the 12 most popular varieties of apples, there are several that have little or no flavor, and the taste of some of the others has gone downhill over the years as growers look for varieties they can harvest more readily (which usually means faster).

[Mike Nolan]

Once or twice a year I forget I have dough rising until it is well past the point where it will bake properly. Usually I just deflate it, reshape it, let it rise again, and bake it; most of the time nobody other than me would ever notice the differences.

I think it tends to produce a finer or tighter crumb, ie, one with fewer and usually smaller holes. That's because all the holes are formed during kneading, so anything after that can only result in fewer holes. (Boyle's law is the physical principle behind this.)

[Mike Nolan]

Today was my wife's birthday, so we went out for supper.

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