[Mike Nolan]

I've always considered baking both an art and a science. Both have to be reasonably right, but there's room for innovation and experimentation in both.

There are times I go into 'mad scientist' mode, but I also know I'm a better scientist than I am an artist. (Comes from that engineering training in college and the fact that I can't draw a straight line!)

I suspect many families would prefer their designated baker not experiment so much, I know my wife has said that to me.

[Mike Nolan]

My mother made a potato salad where she poured oil and vinegar over diced cooked potatoes while the potatoes were still hot, so the oil and vinegar soaked in. She'd add hard boiled egg, celery, onion and celery seed. No mustard or mayo.

Not sure if this is similar to some of the German potato salad recipes or not, as it is served cold, not hot.

I have discovered if you follow the instructions for cooking potatoes in McGee (soak the diced potatoes in 130-140 degree water for 20 minutes first), the potatoes don't get soggy.

My grandmother seldom used recipes. She'd add raisins to stuffing for Thanksgiving, but other than that it wasn't unique.

However, she made a rice pudding that I've never come close to duplicating. I remember helping her stir it for what seemed like hours. Closest I've come to it in the nearly 50 years since she died is to add some tapioca.

[Mike Nolan]

Last year Melissa Weller, the head baker at the bagel and bakery program at Sadelle's in NY, held a two-day class on bagels, bialys and babkas in Montclair NJ, for members of the Bread Bakers Guild of America. Maybe she'll repeat it some time.

Many of the BBGA classes are on the east coast or the west coast, but Jory Downer, owner of Bennison's Bakery and a member of the 2005 Gold Medal Coupe du Monde team, is doing one on laminated doughs in Chicago in September. Tempting! And the Chocolate Academy has said they'll be doing some kind of 10th anniversary celebration the week of Sep 23rd, might be reason enough to go to Chicago for a week!

[Mike Nolan]

I was introduced to bagels in 1968 during my sophomore year at Northwestern. A dorm mate used to drive down to Ashkenaz Deli in the Rogers Park neighborhood (at the Morse Avenue El stop) to pick up bagels and lox. (They must have had two dozen different varieties of lox available, too.)

At the time, they still hand-rolled their bagels (or so the sign proclaimed.) However, by the time we lived in an apartment a few blocks north of there, in 1972, the sign was gone and the bagels weren't quite as good.

Ashkenaz burned down in the late 1970's, I believe, and the Rogers Park neighborhood, which had a number of Jewish stores and restaurants, including a kosher butcher and another butcher that, while not kosher, was the finest butcher shop I've ever been in, is now largely Vietnamese.

For those who don't believe someone could shape over 800 bagels in an hour, there are some YouTube videos available showing how it was done. (I think one of them was from someone who claimed the record, over 1200 bagels an hour.)

See 1979 bagel film for one example.

Good luck finding an old-time bagelmaker to teach you the craft. There probably aren't many of them left, and I suspect they still protect their craft!

• This reply was modified 7 years, 3 months ago by Mike Nolan.

[Mike Nolan]

I can definitely relate to this!

My mother-in-law, Catherine Hillegass, edited the cookbook put out for the Nebraska Centennial in 1965, "The Nebraska Centennial First Ladies Cookbook". (For those who don't know, my father-in-law, Cliff Hillegass, was the founder of Cliffs Notes. He started an imprint called Centennial Press to publish this book and a few others including one featuring Czech recipes.)

This book contains recipes from a number of Governor's wives around the country, plus many recipes sent in by long-time Nebraskans.

My wife fondly recalls how her mother tested every recipe included in the book, and a number that didn't make the grade. They received 8 very similar recipes for one fried dough dish, from a variety of ethnic backgrounds, and published all 8! (It's called 'knee patches' in at least one form.)

I will say, though, that I've looked at a lot of chocolate chip cookie recipes over the years, but never found one that was identical to the one my mother used to make, which I still think is the best cookie recipe ever for dipping in milk.

[Mike Nolan]

I wonder if being too wet was the reason they didn't rise well?

[Mike Nolan]

According to Google Analytics, there are a lot more people reading the site than posting to it. Historically, most forum sites have a lurker-to-poster ratio of about 20-1, I think we may be in the same range.

[Mike Nolan]

I use Pampered Chef mini-muffin pans, but no liners. I do grease the pans with melted butter, though.

Last night I made 9 dozen mini-muffins, most of them got frozen in bags of 5.

[Mike Nolan]

My buttermilk that I've been refreshing went bad, so I had to buy some buttermilk tonight
to make my banana muffins, and I'll start over, but this time every time I refresh it I'll
transfer it to a clean container, I didn't always do that and the lid got moldy.

[Mike Nolan]

Hmm, yeast dies at 138 degrees, which is more than just 'warm' milk.

[Mike Nolan]

I'll be making banana nut mini-muffins tonight, I've got enough ripe bananas for a good sized batch of them.

[Mike Nolan]

I tried a chicken experiment tonight.

I took 2 bone-in chicken breasts, skinned them, placed them on a bed of shredded carrot, spinach, celery seeds and mustard powder, sprayed the breasts with oil, dusted them with dill weed and poured in some white wine. Then I threw it in the oven for about an hour at 350.

Smelled great, probably needed more wine so there was more sauce and it could probably have used more carrots and spinach as well, but it was quite good. Served it with a salad.

[Mike Nolan]

A lot of breads come out of the oven with a fairly hard outer crust, but it softens up as the bread cools. The recipe I use for sandwich loaves is like that. The Clonmel Double Crust recipe stays a bit firmer, but I like the taste of it as Vienna bread. (Some years ago I made a batch of it and a batch of Peter Reinhart's Vienna Bread recipe from BBA, and the Clonmel version won a blind taste test.)

[Mike Nolan]

I know one bakery whose sourdough feeding schedule is roughly this:

10AM: Feed the starter, doubling it in size. (He says he maintains about 40 quarts of starter, so after he feeds it he probably has 5 or 6 big tubs of it.)

2AM: Take half of the starter, about 20 quarts, as the beginning of that day's bread.

[Mike Nolan]

As I understand it, the legal meaning of the date printed on a milk carton varies from state to state, but in general it is a 'sell by' date, not a 'use by' date.

Buttermilk, being a cultured product, like sour cream or yogurt, seems to have a much longer shelf life than fresh milk does, so the date printed on the carton may be of little help to consumers.

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