[Mike Nolan]

While I loved Julia Child's show, she was a bit fussy about equipment. Early bread makers had a lot of limitations, but I liked my vertical Zo model 15, I never had one of the horizontal two-paddle machines.

[Mike Nolan]

A quick search didn't find anything about how eggs have changed over the years, but I suspect that commercial egg production, especially the diet they feed the chickens, is more geared towards increasing quantity than nutrition or taste, except perhaps if you buy high Omega 3 eggs.

It seems to me that 'large' eggs aren't as big as they used to be, but maybe that's just bad memory.

A year or two ago my wife left the eggs out of a waffle batter she was making, and they were pretty good even without the eggs. We've made it that way at least once more on purpose.

[Mike Nolan]

I've been on the road, so no cooking or baking for me.

But I did have a few great meal experiences. One of them was in Wyoming, where we stopped for lunch at a small town and found a great restaurant. I'll post more about that later.

The other was a soup I had the last two days, a sunchoke cheddar soup that was just incredible, creamy and smooth, almost like an alfredo sauce. I've asked the chef for the recipe, if I get it I'll post it, otherwise I may have to go searching for a recipe elsewhere.

I've also been promoting My Nebraska Kitchen at the International Master Gardeners Conference, so if some Master Gardeners show up here, please welcome them.

[Mike Nolan]

I'm making Chicago Style hot dog buns today, we can't get poppy-seed buns around here, and I'm just in the mood for a Chicago Dog. Besides, what's more American on the 4th of July than a hot dog? (It won't be 100% authentic, no Vienna Beef dogs and no day-glo green relish, but it'll be close enough with celery salt.)

Clove is another spice you need to use sparingly. I once made a batch of pizza sauce with too much clove in it, we ate the pizzas, but they reeked of clove!

• This reply was modified 8 years ago by htfoot.
• This reply was modified 8 years ago by htfoot.

[Mike Nolan]

I never developed a taste for Spam either. They love the stuff in Hawaii!

[Mike Nolan]

I did hear from Zen over the weekend, and I sent her information on how to send me the HTML files she captured from the KAFBC. It'll take some tweaking to format them and check for duplications.

[Mike Nolan]

I did another batch of oatmeal crisps (chocolate chip cookies) for our 4th of July parade and block party tomorrow, I made them a little smaller than usual, using a #100 scoop, since they're mostly for little kids.

• This reply was modified 8 years ago by Mike Nolan.

[Mike Nolan]

Sorry, the WSJ has apparently changed their policy on posting article links--again.

[Mike Nolan]

I suspect most Italian flour is Type 00, but that really doesn't tell you what it's good for. In general, European wheat strains are lower in protein than wheat grown in the USA and Canada. (But there are 'soft' wheat strains grown in North America and some harder/higher protein wheat strains grown in Europe.)

It may be that the information on the package, like sample recipes, is the best guide to what type of baked goods it is best for.

American nutritional information labeling is not very helpful for things like flour, because of serving size and rounding error. If the nutrition label says it has 4 grams of protein in a 30 gram serving, that really means it has somewhere between 3.50 and 4.49 grams of protein, which means it could be anywhere from 11.6% protein to 14.96% protein. 3 grams of protein means somewhere between 8.33% and 11.6% protein.

Europeans measure protein content differently than they do in the USA, just to make matters even more interesting. In Europe they analyze the flour as if it was completely dry, in the USA flour is analyzed based on a 14% moisture content. So a flour that Europeans would measure as 10.46% protein would measure as 9% in the USA.

• This reply was modified 8 years ago by htfoot.
• This reply was modified 8 years ago by htfoot.

[Mike Nolan]

There are so many different aspects by which flour can be defined that most online descriptions of it remind me of the old story about the 7 blind men and the elephant: Each blind man was accurately describing one important part of the elephant, but none of them were describing the whole elephant.

For the last several weeks I've been reading Wheat Flour Milling by Posner & Hibbs, the standard textbook on the subject, and though I'm only 2 chapters in, I'm already pretty overwhelmed by all the material. (People can and do earn PhDs in flour milling.)

I'm probably going to write an article (possibly several) on what I've learned later this fall, so I won't go into it in depth at this time.

As I understand it at this point, type 00 flour describes the granularity of the flour, ie, how finely ground it is. That doesn't tell you what kind of wheat it came from, what protein levels that wheat has or how much of the bran and germ are still left in the flour, and those are all things that affect how the flour will perform in various types of baking. (There can be other factors as well, such as how the flour has been treated before or after milling.)

Basically, Italian flours come in Type 0, Type 00 and Type 000, the more zeroes, the finer the grind. Type 0 is a coarse flour, type 00 is probably fairly close to most American AP flours for grind (though some sources say it is a bit finer than the average American AP flour, more like 'southern' flours such as White Lily), and type 000 is very finely ground, the closest equivalent in the USA is probably cake flour.

Different brands of Italian 00 flour will be made from different types of wheat, and that will affect how the flour performs in various types of baking.

The suitability of Caputo Type 00 flour for pizza, which it is how sources like Amazon may label it for marketing purposes, is an entirely separate matter. If you follow the discussions on pizza-oriented forums like Peter Reinhart's Pizza Quest, you will find some people who insist that you must use a very high protein content flour for pizza and others who insist that you should use a lower-than-average protein content flour. Both factions have valid arguments for their points of view, but that's because they have different opinions as to what pizza crust 'should' be.

Peter Reinhart's book American Pie gives a number of different crust recipes, from various types of pizza across the USA and around the world, and calling for various types of flour. I've tried several of them, and I have to say they were ALL delicious!

[Mike Nolan]

There was always a parade on the 4th in my small home town, too, although I just heard from the alumni association and this year's parade is on the 3rd. (We'll be there for the gathering of my high school class, which is celebrating its 50th reunion, but not for the parade.)

Lincoln doesn't have a city parade these days (not sure if it ever did, I don't recall one since we moved here in 1977) but it has a city fireworks celebration though it isn't always on the 4th. Our block will have a block party and parade on the 4th, complete with a fire truck escort.

We don't bother with fireworks ourselves any more, but the neighborhoods surrounding us more than make up for it, by 9PM it'll sound (and smell) like a war has broken out!

[Mike Nolan]

Squirrels will eat tomatoes too. (In fact, our gardener tells us that squirrels will eat the composite material our new deck is made out of.)

Not sure about possums and raccoons, but I suspect they'll eat anything.

Have you ever heard of the fence Australia built to try to keep rabbits out of the western area of the continent? (Rabbits are not native to Australia, they came with the British settlers and, having no natural predators, multiplied like, well, you know.)

See Australia's State Barrier Fence

[Mike Nolan]

Sounds more like a cooperating arrangement than a change of ownership.

[Mike Nolan]

We've been watching a baby bunny grow this spring/summer, it figured out how to climb into the pots on the back patio, climbing into taller pots from the shorter ones, and has been feasting on my wife's annuals. It especially seems to love her gazanias. Finches and other small birds really love gazanias when they go to seed in the fall, too, so we moved the pots around to make it harder for the bunny to get into the taller pots where the gazanias are, and got some more gazania plants, too. The ones the bunny had nibbled down are rebounding, I'm pleased to report.

[Mike Nolan]

We have house guests this week, so we're going through bread pretty fast just at breakfast, so I'm making honey wheat bread tonight.

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