[Mike Nolan]

The easiest way to post a link is to use the link tool at the top of the text box. You put the link in one box, the description of what the link is in the other. I find that easier and more dependable than just typing in a link and hoping browsers recognize it as one.

[Mike Nolan]

I use 6" unglazed quarry tiles (as first suggested by Alton Brown.) I got a box of 20 or 24 for around $10 at Home Depot, but that was some years ago and I haven't seen unglazed quarry tiles at the local Home Depot in a while, though a tile dealer should still be able to get them. Glazed tiles can contain chemicals that you don't want on your food, though as I understand it lead has not been used as a glaze on tiles made in the USA since the 60's if not earlier. (Concerns about lead are why some ceramic cooking items cannot be brought in through customs.)

I only use them when baking something that can benefit from the heat sink, like bread or pizza, never a cake. I tried it with a pot roast once, it actually slowed down the cooking time because the air couldn't circulate under the roasting pan.

I keep looking at the baking steel, but at 15 pounds (for the regular one) and about $90, it's not something I'd use often enough to justify the cost.

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

[Mike Nolan]

Could you use honey instead of orange juice?

Peter Reinhart's whole grains book has a lot of 100% whole flour recipes, and I've had pretty good success with the ones I've tried.

[Mike Nolan]

I hear you on the smaller quantities issue, I'm used to making soup in 8-10 quart batches, but I have to freeze 3/4 or more of it.

[Mike Nolan]

In one of the episodes of The French Chef, Julia Child dropped a chicken on the floor in the middle of preparing it to go in the oven.

She picked it up, rinsed it off, and said into the camera, 'Remember, nobody sees what happens in your kitchen other than you."

In one of the episodes of the Galloping Gourmet, Graham Kerr is listing the various steps he's about to do when a pan catches on fire. Without missing a beat, he takes a kitchen towel, beats out the flames, says 'Then we beat out the fire", and keeps right on cooking and talking.

[Mike Nolan]

I do most of the cooking and baking these days, and I've tried Angel food cake about a half dozen times, so far none of them have been winners. Not sure what I'm doing wrong, I've tried 2 or 3 different recipes and several sets of baking instructions.

But tonight's souffle was delicious, as mine always are. I think next time I'll take a bunch of pictures and do a blog post on souffles, they're not as difficult and touchy as their reputation suggests.

[Mike Nolan]

Here's the followup to the cake/turkey story, though.

A few years ago (by which time we had been married for about 40 years), she went to make an Angel food cake and it came out really strange. Edible, but the taste and texture were all wrong.

A couple weeks later, she went to make another one. She got down what she thought was the same container of cake flour that she had used before, and that's when she figured out that it was a container of powdered sugar.

[Mike Nolan]

I've told this story before, but not on this site.

When we were first married, we were living in an apartment in Chicago. My wife tried making me an Angel food cake for my birthday. It was a lovely brown on the top, so she inverted it on the counter to cool.

A few minutes later there was kind of a 'floop' noise, she looked and the mostly-liquid cake had collapsed out of the pan onto the counter. The top was tasty, the rest was way undercooked.

Fast forward a few months to Thanksgiving. She makes a turkey in the oven. The top was nicely browned, but the inside was totally raw. So it went back in the oven and we finally ate turkey about 2 hours after dinner had been planned.

It wasn't until after Christmas that she figured out that the lower element in the electric oven in our apartment was totally dead. So she had broiled the cake and the turkey instead of baking them.

[Mike Nolan]

Whenever something comes out differently than I expect it to (sometimes for the good, more often for the bad), I treat it as a learning experience.

Is the recipe flawed?

Is my equipment flawed or inadequate for the task?

Was there a problem with my ingredients?

Was there a problem with my procedures?

Was there an unexpected event?

[Mike Nolan]

I've had days where I couldn't boil water without a mishap!

Usually I try making some kind of 'comfort food', doesn't have to be fancy, just yummy. Spaghetti with cheese toast is one of my favorites.

[Mike Nolan]

I didn't see a honey glaze for donuts in my 'cooking with honey' book.

[Mike Nolan]

I grew up in NW Illinois and have been a Cubs fan all my life, my first game at Wrigley Field was in 1956.

But when I think of all the Cubs players and fans who were born, lived and died without ever seeing the Cubs in a World Series, much less winning one, I'm so overjoyed it happened in my lifetime.

[Mike Nolan]

I don't INTENTIONALLY leave bay leaves in marinara, I just have been known to forget to take them out before I use the stick blender to turn it into a puree.

(I also prefer to make marinara with seeded tomatoes, because tomato seeds can get bitter when cooked and stick in between your teeth.)

[Mike Nolan]

You don't HAVE to remove the bay leaf; it tends to crumble into little pieces that are not very appealing, but there's nothing unsafe about it.

I've done this a couple times with marinara.

[Mike Nolan]

I wonder what the egg yolk and cream do, keep the potatoes from drying out when they're reheated maybe?

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