[Mike Nolan]

Tonight I made boneless center cut pork chops, baked in the oven in a little butter and lemon, with a classic Sauce Robert. (Demi-glace, onions, white wine, dijon mustard)

This is the first time I've tried making Sauce Robert (possibly one of the oldest sauces in the repertoire), I was pleased that my wife liked it.

[Mike Nolan]

Bagels aren't hard to make, though most home bakers will boil them in an alkali solution made with baking soda rather than with cooking lye. (You really do need to wear gloves and use eye protection when using lye. I suspect you have to be careful what kind of pot you use for the lye solution, too, though I've not researched that.)

Several years ago an article in the New York Times suggested taking baking soda and baking it in a hot oven, turning it from sodium bicarbonate to sodium carbonate. That will make a more strongly alkaline solution, though still quite a bit weaker than one made with lye (sodium hydroxide.) I still haven't tried this.

Though I've done it a few times, I don't usually take the time to retard the bagels for 24 hours to develop the classic sour tang of a NY bagel, I can't say anybody's noticed.

I've tried several bagel dough recipes, the one I like best is Peter Reinhart's recipe in his Artisan book. He puts some barley syrup in the dough (and in the boiling water)

[Mike Nolan]

They may not carry it during certain times of the year, because without the cornstarch it is very prone to clump.

I wonder if baker's superfine sugar would work here? It's not as finely ground as powdered sugar, but it is much finer than granulated sugar.

[Mike Nolan]

It's the cornstarch in powdered sugar that impacts the taste. You can get powdered sugar without cornstarch in it, some people call it icing sugar, but it's kind of hard to find in the USA, and usually expensive. (KAF had it at one point, not sure if they still do.)

[Mike Nolan]

What's worse is that a lot of those repeated recipes are badly flawed.

[Mike Nolan]

Bagel molds?? Now, you can do it the classic ‘wrap around your hand’ way, or you can do it the ‘poke a hole in the middle’ way, but a mold is just SO WRONG!

We prefer bagels made with about 3 ounces of dough as opposed to the much bigger commercial bagels, which are more like 4.5 ounces each, if not bigger. (I think the Wolferman ones are closer to 6 ounces each.) 3 ounces is not enough dough for me to do it the ‘wrap around your hand’ way, but I have fat hands.

[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, 7 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.

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