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I would suggest getting an infrared thermometer, they're useful for more than just checking the temperature in various parts of your oven. You do have to open the door to use them but you can take readings at multiple places inside the oven. A decent one will cost anywhere from $25 to $60. Some can measure temperatures as high as 1000 degrees (F) and as low as 50 below.
You can probably use any meat thermometer that has an external readout. The wireless ones are meant to go in meat, which keeps the electronics from getting fried.
Maverick makes an oven thermometer that is meant to hang below the rack. But it doesn't measure the current temperature, which goes up and down a lot (that's called hysteresis), it measures the average temperature, which also goes up and down, but not as fast or as much.
I've mentioned this before, but a chef once told me that whenever he moves to a new kitchen, one of the first things he does is check for hot spots in the oven by using some sliced bread at various temperatures and on each rack setting.
September 6, 2019 at 10:33 am in reply to: What are You Cooking the Week of September 1, 2019 #18064We had salad with tuna fish last night.
Chicken served on an airline is just foul.
September 5, 2019 at 12:56 pm in reply to: What are You Baking the Week of September 1, 2019? #18043Opinions vary on whether rye starters are better than wheat starters, one expert recommends feeding a wheat starter with rye flour every few weeks and others recommend a mixture of wheat and rye.
Having a little rye flour in a wheat bread isn't a bad thing in general. 🙂
Has anybody heard from Paddy lately? I think she signed up for MNK but hasn't been on in a while.
We went out for dinner last night on my birthday, because one of the things you really can't do at home is prime rib, especially since my wife doesn't care for it. (She had a filet.) And of course the Texas chocolate sheet was good, even if a bit top-heavy because of the amount of frosting.
You're not missing much even the meals in first class are mediocre these days. On many of the airlines you get charged for a snack that's dreadful, so many people buy some fast food in the airport and bring it on board.
At least if I have to fly through Midway I have a choice between a good Chicago hot dog (with a poppy seeded bun) or an Italian beef sandwich.
I can't bench divide evenly, either, so I always use a scale.
I made a large Texas Chocolate Sheet Pan today to celebrate my birthday. We ate some of it and the rest will go in to my wife's office in the morning. I made a batch-and-a-half of batter and a quadruple batch of frosting to go in my new 2" deep half sheet pan. My wife thinks the frosting might have been a bit of overkill, I think it'll be better after it hardens up overnight.
September 4, 2019 at 10:36 am in reply to: What are You Baking the Week of September 1, 2019? #18016I've used a knife to split both home made and commercial (Wolferman) English muffins, it didn't destroy the holes. However, a fork produces a less smooth surface, so IMHO that's why there are more holes visible.
September 4, 2019 at 10:29 am in reply to: Article on Using Sourdough Starter in More Baked Goods #18015The simple answer is you can use it in anything that uses yeast, as well as in things that use other forms of leavening. HOW you use it is where the art is. 🙂
Most instructions for maintaining a sourdough starter at home basically go like this:
Divide in two
Throw half out (or find something to do with it)
Feed other half, possibly using some to make bread tomorrowMost commercial sourdough instructions go like this:
Feed
Divide in two
Use half to make breadWith the former, you have to find things to do with the half you throw out, for example, use it in pancake batter. With the latter, it assume every time you feed it you're also planning on baking with it shortly thereafter.
A sourdough culture is generally most active during the period from a few hours to a day after it's been fed. If you're a commercial baker, you're probably baking sourdough every day anyway, and you have the space available to feed your starter without throwing half of it out.
One exception is if you follow the Chad Robertson's (Tartine Bakery) method. He has you use just 5% of the starter to start the next batch, so it is what he calls a 'young' starter, meaning it isn't as acidic. He also talks about how refrigeration of a starter changes the bacteria composition to favor ones that produce more acid. I doubt that he throws out 95% of his starter in his bakery on a regular basis, so I suspect that the routine he gives for home use is different than the one he uses for mass production.
We had salami and melon, along with some onion chips and dip from a fast food truck.
I've made both types of English muffins, and I preferred the dough ones.
Well, it was hot today, so I did burgers on the grill.
WE baked all our pies in pastry school in disposable aluminum pans, they had us double-pan some of them if we were filling them with a heavy filling. I've been known to put a disposable pan inside a sturdier one at home.
These days I tend to bake my pies in my Norpro non-stick pans, they really are non-stick!
When they've cooled, I transfer them to another pie pan for cutting, so I don't scratch the non-stick surface. I've got some disposable aluminum ones for that purpose if the pie is leaving the house. They aren't quite the same diameter as the NorPro pan (about 1/4 inch smaller), but the pies fit OK.
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