[Mike Nolan]

My plan is to make several pans of lasagna this afternoon, one for supper, one for the freezer and one for my wife to take to a friend in Omaha tomorrow.

[Mike Nolan]

Crepe batter needs to be fairly thin and mixed just long enough to be fully hydrated, you don't want to develop the gluten much. Getting the pan ready is always a challenge for me, you don't want it too hot, but it can't be too cool, either.

We've got a crepe pan, but I find it easier to use regular pans, either my wife's non-stick egg pans or a stainless steel sautée pan.

With crepes, the egg is the most important ingredient. In fact, one of the best crepe recipes I've used doesn't use wheat flour at all, it uses cornstarch. If I don't have that recipe posted, I'll look for it and get it posted. I've seen recipes that used rice flour, too, but I've never tried that.

See Chantilly Crepes Recipe

My wife is a big fan of blintzes, which are pretty much the same thing as crepes, just with different fillings.

[Mike Nolan]

If I'm right about KA having 3 lines of mixers, the Artisan line is probably the middle one.

Regardless of the load it puts on the motor, you probably don't want to use higher speeds on bread dough anyway, it tends to tear the gluten rather than develop it.

Most of the commercial recipes that the BBGA puts out specify what speed to use (on a commercial mixer). Some recipes only use speed 1, some specify some time at speed 1 and some at speed 2. It sort of depends on whether the recipe is a 'short', 'improved' or 'intensive' mix. (Jeffrey Hamelman goes into the three mixing styles in his book.)

[Mike Nolan]

Worth asking. True Italian flours are made with European wheat, which are generally a softer wheat and lower in protein than North American flours, and as I understand it ground to a finer consistency than most North American flours. So the gliadin/glutenin ratio might be different, too, although that's not something that's easy to test at the mill.

Peter Reinhart's 'Roman' crust in his American Pie book makes the thinnest crust I've seen in years. You can almost read through it.

[Mike Nolan]

I'm making a batch of marinara tonight.

[Mike Nolan]

I usually put shredded mozzarella and havarti on it, I find putting tomato slices on it helps add some tomato flavor. I think I have some dried powdered tomato skins in the freezer, they might add some tomato flavor too.

I'm making a batch of marinara tonight for lasagna, if it is thick enough I might set some aside and try it on a lavash pizza

[Mike Nolan]

I fully understand how making pizzas can wear you out to the point where you don't enjoy eating them. With just 2 of us, taking the time to get the oven ready to bake just one pizza is hardly worth the effort. When we've done it for a group, we usually have had one person rolling out the dough and someone else adding the toppings and baking them. I should try the pizza oven that goes on the outdoor gas grill, since it makes smaller pizzas, but it also takes 20-30 minutes to preheat.

I think that's one of the reasons why we've started making lavash pizza now that we've found a local store that sells good lavash. I sort of miss having tomato sauce on them (it softens the lavash too much); while many people rate the crust as the most important part of pizza, I think the sauce can make or break a good pizza.

[Mike Nolan]

There are a number of sauces in Peterson's sauces book that use crumbled hard boiled egg yolk as a liaison. I haven't made any of them yet but I think those sauces are enough different from sauces that use raw egg or raw egg yolk that they should probably be listed separately, since they represent different cooking techniques, and that's more or less what Câreme was getting at.

I think we may be over 50 at this point, and we've probably hardly touched the savory dishes where egg is not the primary component.

[Mike Nolan]

We looked at a Wolf stove when we were shopping, since the chefs I know swear by them, but we thought they were kind of ugly. I think they've changed the look a lot since then, they look a lot more like the Viking/DCS did back then.

Gas stoves may become a thing of the past in California.

[Mike Nolan]

Caesar dressing has egg in it. So does thousand island dressing, though the recipe I use starts out by making mayonnaise, so it probably shouldn't be counted.

[Mike Nolan]

I think mousse is enough different from pudding/custard that it should be listed.

7 minute icing should probably be listed, maybe royal icing as well.

[Mike Nolan]

I'd call shakshuka a different dish from a poached egg, since it's poached in a tomato-based sauce. (I've seen some recipes that add feta cheese, too.)

I could argue that breading pork chops is different from breading fried chicken, too.

And a potato and egg tortilla is quite different from other egg dishes.

I like some dishes with an egg on top, like corned beef hash, but I don't know if we need to start counting those. (I don't understand putting an egg on a hamburger, though.)

[Mike Nolan]

Pickled eggs are very different from 100 year eggs, the former are often found in a big jar on the counter in bars. I've had pickled eggs but didn't care for them (pickled pigs feet are another bar delicacy that I'm not fond of), I've never had the courage to try a 100 year egg, something about eating a black egg just turns me off.

I think you could argue that waffles are different than pancakes, too.

[Mike Nolan]

Some pizza makers prefer a low-protein flour, others prefer a high-protein flour.

But the real key is probably to come up with a dough that is more extensible than flexible, which means a flour that is higher in gliadin than glutenin. Most hard wheats tend to have more glutenin in them, but I believe semolina, which is durum wheat, has more gliadin, which is why it is good for pasta making, where you want extensibility.

[Mike Nolan]

I'm trying to come up with dishes that aren't similar, so custard tends to rule out pudding, creme brulee and flan, but not pastry cream or creme anglaise.

Likewise egg drop soup is quite different from a cream soup. I suspect I could come with a couple dozen sauces that use egg as a liaison (thickening agent), but for now I only listed mayonnaise and hollandaise.

This takes us up to around 32 and I haven't broken out a cookbook yet, I'm just thinking of things I've actually made:

cream soups
souffle
meringue
pancakes
crepes
cakes
angel food cakes
bread dough
pie dough
pies filling
hollandaise
stuffing
meat loaf
creme anglaise
ice cream
dumplings
pastry cream
glaze for bread
mayonnaise
marshmallow
nougat
breading
egg cream

• This reply was modified 6 years, 10 months ago by Mike Nolan.

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