I've seen one pizzeria that puts huge basil leaves on and throws the pie under the broiler for 10 seconds, but otherwise it is usually added as the pie comes out of the oven.
I haven't baked or cooked much in the last two weeks, today we had eggs for breakfast, toast with cheese or peanut butter for lunch and custard for supper. (My wife is essentially on the BRAT diet at the moment.)
I believe that semolina is not considered a whole grain product, because it's essentially just the endosperm from the durum wheat berry that isn't pulverized into a fine powder after stripping off the bran and germ. (The same thing is true with couscous.)
Durum flour may or may not be a whole grain flour, most of the durum flours I've seen are not whole grain flours.
Recent studies suggest that dietary cholesterol has little or no impact on blood cholesterol and heart health.
For example, see cholesterol study
Eggs were nearly outlawed by the 'food police' over the last few decades, but it turns out they're actually good for you. It also appears that butter is better for you than most margarines.
I picked our first tomato the other day and had it for lunch. In two weeks we're going to be swimming in them.
Some years ago we visited a friend in El Paso and he recommended a German restaurant that had the best apple strudel I've ever had. The waitress said they made about 50 pounds of it every day and most of it got sent out to their mail order customers.
I like the all-butter piecrust recipe I learned at pastry school, but I also like Darina Allen's Irish Apple Cake recipe, which uses butter, egg and milk, and it goes very well with the apple pie filling recipe I learned at pastry school. It has the advantage of being somewhat faster to make, too.
The last two times I made it I made a 1.5 X batch using 2 eggs, which filled 9 ramekins, with the extra egg the batter comes out so moist you can't roll it out, but I really like how it bakes up.
I've been using pastry flour for it as well.
I've never tried making strudel dough. My wife says she made it once with her mother and a huge table.
This video almost makes it look easy, but there's years of experience at work there!
strudel video
I stopped reading Bon Appetit so long ago that James Beard was probably still alive the last time I read it.
I've lost track of which season they're doing on PBS.
I thought Mary Berry left after season 7 when it moved from BBC to Channel 4, when she decided to stay on PBS rather than move over to TV4 like Paul Hollywood did.
According to Wikipedia, she did a one-year series about homes on BBC and is judging another cooking contest on BBC starting this year.
Chocomouse, have you looked at making a cinnamon crumb cake? That can give you the flavor profile of a cinnamon roll in a cake form.
When a recipe calls for lemon oil or extract, I usually cut the amount in half, because I think many recipes call for too much. Unless you're making something like lemon curd or a lemon pie, lemon should be a hint, not a punch in the face.
I can definitely tell the difference between artificial vanilla and real vanilla.
Tonight we had baby artichokes with a variety of dips, plus cheese souffle with mushroom sauce and a flan for dessert. I really nailed the caramel sauce on the flan!
We went out for lunch as the dough was bulk proofing, so it got a 3rd long rise rather than just 2 rises and it came out with a rustic exterior. I suspect the interior is going to have a lot of holes, too. But I"m sure it'll taste great.
This evening I made a batch of gluten-free Brazilian cheese rolls (they're made with tapioca flour) and we ate them with some left over marinara.
