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I have some bamboo mixing spoons and spatulas that I like a lot, and I really like the look and feel of the bamboo pastry boards I've seen, but I haven't seen any really big ones, 16x16 appears to be about as big as they go.
Check with the local tile and marble vendors. If there's a place that cuts marble and tile to size, they often have scrap pieces (usually where a larger piece fractured or from a sink cutout) that can be cut down to size and polished. I bought a really big piece of marble at a garage sale years ago, it was originally part of the lobby walls of a downtown building that was being remodeled, we had the marble yard cut it to fit on our 30 x 48 butcher block table. (We bought the table back when we were living in Illinois and brought with us when we moved to Nebraska.)
I have butcher block counters, so I just use those for my breadmaking. We had a nice butcher block cutting board that I think we also bought when we were living in the Chicago area that was probably 18 x 24, but it developed a crack and wound up splitting in two along one of the joints. It might have been possible to sand it smooth and reglue it, but we didn't really need it once we moved to this house in 1997, so we gave both pieces to a friend.
I have been tempted to buy a large custom cut end-grain butcher block slab, at least 20 x 30 and 5-6 inches thick so that I've got it at the right height for me, since the butcher block counters are lower (my wife is much shorter than I am) but that'd cost about $500 plus shipping.
I set it up as a production line. I wash, peel, core and cut the apples a few at a time, throwing them in a big pot, then I cook the filling using the recipe I got at SFBI. I can prep around 25 pounds of apples in about an hour, less if they're on the small side. I've learned the hard way that I need to wear an apron when doing this, I've ruined several t-shirts by wearing them while peeling apples. When I'm done, there's a brown apple stain on them that just doesn't come out.
Granny Smith is my 4th choice for pie apples. If I can get Winesap, they're #1, then Braeburn, then Yellow Delicious (if fresh, they don't store well.) I've tried about a dozen other varieties, none of them were as good. (I wish the folks at U of Minnesota who developed the HoneyCrisp and SweeTango apples would come up with a pie apple, those are great eating apples, OK for caramel apples, but not very good when baked, the cell size is too large.)
Granny Smith is kind of a frustrating apple. Most of the ones in stores are picked when they're only about half-ripe, so they store well, but that affects their taste and structure. If you can find some that are riper, they'll start to show some red blush on them, those are far better pie apples.
I did get some apples of an unknown variety some years back. They were small, a bit lumpy, but made a fantastic pie! Unfortunately, the grower didn't know the variety, he said the tree was already on the farm when he bought it years ago. And I haven't seen him back at the farmer's market with them since that year, either. :sigh:
What I have learned about apples and the farmer's market is, if you find one you like, BUY AS MUCH OF IT AS YOU CAN!
With a pudding pie filling (lemon, chocolate, vanilla, etc), you basically have two choices for a thickener, some kind of starch or egg yolks. I usually go with the latter, it's richer.
Not sure about over-mixing, but over-cooking a starch-thickened pie filling can cause the starch to break down.
McGee (On Food and Cooking) has a lot to say about thickeners; that book is my go-to source for cooking science. I've got some graduate level textbooks on food chemistry, but McGee tends to say the same thing in somewhat simpler language.
I don't care for the texture of apple skins in a pie, so I always peel and core them.
One of the vendors at the local Sunday farmer's market was hoping to have some winesap apples this month, those are my absolute favorite pie apples. I peel, core and slice them, pre-cook the filling, then freeze it. So, any time I want an apple pie, I get some filling out of the freezer and make pie dough in the evening and I'm ready to assemble it the next day.
There are sites that post partial answers (at best) to questions to try to get you to sign up for their site, especially the ones with a fee. I understand why they do it, but it still is irritating.
If you over-cook a French meringue, it gets rubbery. If you REALLY overcook a French meringue, it gets solid, like meringue cookies. I suspect that does bad things to the pie.
I don't personally like adding cornstarch to French meringue, because I think it affected the taste, but maybe I added too much. Never tried wheat flour, don't know if it would even work. I suspect the meringue pies you see at the grocery store or at a bakery have some kind of starch added to stabilize them.
I've made Swiss meringue for a pie once, it's a lot more work than French meringue, but it has the advantage of being very stable and easy to pipe if you're doing multiple pies. And you don't have to bake them much because the meringue is already cooked. (You usually put the meringue on after the pie is baked.) I've seen them torched to add color highlights.
Italian meringue (the one where you dribble hot sugar syrup into the whipped egg whites), is generally not recommended for pies. I've never seen an explanation why, maybe I'll do some digging on this one.
I've totally forgotten about dough during first (bulk) rise more than once. Once I forgot about it for about 6 hours. I had to peel some of it off the plastic wrap over the bowl, but then I just punched it down, let it rise a bit more, then went on to shaping. Nobody noticed a thing.
I did a test once (using the Austrian malt bread recipe) where I let it rise for an hour, deflated it, let it rise for another hour, deflated it again, for a total of 4 bulk rises. It rose just fine after shaping and during baking.
I have not been in touch with her husband. Assuming I have her address right, her house is in the 100 year flood plain area, so there's a good chance it's under water.
A former co-worker lives in Houston, the last I heard, 2 days ago, the water was not yet in his house, but was getting close.
Sounds like your meringue is weeping. That's caused by an unstable meringue, which can be cured by baking it longer or by making a different meringue type, one that produces a more stable meringue. Adding cornstarch is supposed to help stabilize a simple French meringue, but I think it affects the taste.
Here's a guide to the various types of meringue: French, Italian and Swiss Meringues
Caraway, dill and celery seed are 3 herbs I've started using much more frequently with meat and poultry dishes. I use a lot of oregano, thyme, marjoram and basil, but those are ones everybody uses. Any beef dish that cooks in its own juices for a while, like a stew, usually gets some bay leaf.
My older son uses a lot of rosemary, I use it more sparingly. He likes to use juniper berries too, I'm pretty selective about when I use them.
Oh, I forgot one thing I put in the chicken, some powdered mustard.
My wife brought me another 50-60 pounds of tomatoes from the UNL test gardens, mostly the same ones she got a few weeks ago, the variety named Defiant. She also brought a bag of sweet peppers.
SO I'm going to make a batch of tomato relish tonight with 10 pounds of tomatoes and most of the peppers, then I'll run the rest through the tomato mill and make tomato sauce.
We made pies in pastry school using frozen berries, but we cooked the berries first, which helps adjust for any variances in their moisture level.
I make an all-butter pie dough, I haven't had any problems blind-baking it.
A standard depth 9 inch pie pan will hold about 2 pounds of beans, an 8 inch pie pan about a pound and a half. That's when the pie pan is empty, ie, without a pie crust or the parchment, it'll take a bit less than that when you're blind baking a pie crust.
I haven't measured my 10 or 12 inch pie pans, and a deep dish pan will take more beans than a regular depth pan, of course. You do need to fill it pretty much level with the rim.
You either need to store them in a heat-proof container or have something heat safe you can pour them into after blind baking a pie crust, because they will take a while to cool down and you want to let the pie crust start cooling by removing the beans shortly after taking the blind baked pie crust out of the oven. Some blind baking instructions have you remove the beans before the pie crust is fully blind baked, putting the pie crust back in the oven. I pour them into a big metal mixing bowl, then back in the tupperware container after they're cool. Bugs don't seem to like dried bean much, and especially not after they've been used for blind baking.
Once you use the beans to bake a pie, you don't want to cook them (like for bean soup), but you can reuse them many times. Go buy a 5 pound bag of beans at a big-box store.
Somewhere I've got some notes on how much pie crust (by weight) you need for various sizes and depths of pie pans. I don't want to lead anyone astray by guessing.
I'm not sure why people have problems, wordpress runs about 30% of the websites on the Internet.
I do admit to having tightened down the process of getting posting rights, because of spammers. Since that seems to be working, I may be able to get rid of the recaptcha for logins, but keep it for new registrations.
I've done that and will monitor things to see if it causes any new problems and whether it helps people like Cass.
However, I'm frustrated with some other aspects of wordpress and may start checking out some other hosting software options.
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