[Mike Nolan]

I did some looking around and although I don't have a lot of resources on sourdough, I don't see anything in any of them that suggests an autolysis step. Not sure why.

[Mike Nolan]

I recently read an article that said salt and yeast co-exist just fine as long as you don't do something like dump salt into a container of proofing yeast. That wasn't as true with cake yeast, but today's active dry or instant yeasts are less sensitive. (Of course if you quadruple the salt, as I did once, you'll get an inedible brick.)

Anyway, the point to autolysis, at least according to its originator, is to let enzymes go to work on the flour, which helps the yeast access the sugar in the flour later on. If you add yeast you're basically making a preferment, like a biga or a poolish. That's a good thing to do, too, but it invokes different biological processes and leads to different (though good) results.

I've seen a number of recipes that use a preferment AND autolysis, and even a few that use a preferment, autolysis and a mash or soaker. (A mash, as I understand it, involves heat, a soaker stays at room temperature.)

Cass, I'm sorry your article didn't post properly, I'm not sure what went wrong. It doesn't seem likely that it would have run afoul of the anti-spam filter. (According to the logs, the anti-spam filter I use has filtered out over 400 spam posts this month!)

[Mike Nolan]

The weather here has turned quite cool, temps in the 40's and rainy, so I made a cheese souffle for supper tonight and we're planning on a pot roast for tomorrow.

[Mike Nolan]

Rye dough is lower in gluten than a bread with just wheat flour, but it has enough structure to make marbled rye loaves. I don't think I've ever seen it braided, either, maybe rolling it into long strands is the problem?

If you search on 'braided rye', there are some pictures of it, so apparently it isn't totally unheard of.

The marbled rye buns were made by taking 4 pieces of dough, flattening them, stacking them, then doing the Kaiser fold. The other methods for making Kaiser rolls would not have resulted in the striated interior.

[Mike Nolan]

Len, have you ever made Kaiser rolls? I did that with some marbled rye bread dough once, they were quite pretty. Might work well with Challah dough.

There are at least 3 ways to do this. The classic method is to fold them, which is what I used for the rolls shown above. it takes a bit of practice but is kind of fun and fairly fast once you get going: Folding Kaiser rolls

My guess is it'd a fun thing to teach to kids. The video doesn't show it, but if you place them upside down for the final proof and then flip them just before they go in the oven, you'll get nicer shapes. I don't know if that'd be necessary with a dough as flexible as Challah, though.

You can also tie them in a knot: Kaiser Rolls - Knot method

Or you can use a stamp.

[Mike Nolan]

A net search on 'bell pepper nachos' produces a number of hits, but none to food & wine. Is that recipe behind a paywall or can you post a link to it?

[Mike Nolan]

The best way to check for a 'ribbon' stage is to try to drop some of the mix from a spatula. If it forms a wide ribbon (think Christmas ribbon candy), you're there. Pate a choux paste is a recipe that calls for ribbon stage.

I'll have to see if I have that recipe, I have Susan Purdy 'Piece of Cake' book, but she changed the title when she updated it. In general I find her recipes pretty reliable and easy to follow. (I can't say that about some other authors.) I've only made genoise a few times, and I haven't settled on a recipe yet. It's always been a recipe where you fold in egg whites.

[Mike Nolan]

Rinsing them several times a day is supposed to prevent that. If you've done much rooting of plants, the smell isn't all that noticeable unless you really let something go too long without proper care.

[Mike Nolan]

I generally don't use rum, we don't care for the taste, but I've always thought rum extract is a poor substitute for it.

I use simple syrup instead, brushing it on fairly liberally.

[Mike Nolan]

I've tried dental floss a couple of times without much success, I think it takes practice. Having 4 hands might help, too. 🙂

I understand all too well about the 'good price' aspect, I'm a kitchen and tool junkie of the first order. Lately I've been threatening to be a photography junkie, too.

[Mike Nolan]

For folding in egg white, you probably want fairly stiff peaks (bird's beak) but not dry, because the loft you get from egg whites is minimal if the egg whites are too dry.

I always start out slow, to make sure the egg whites are 'loose', then move it up in several stages all the way up to the highest speed on my KA mixer.

[Mike Nolan]

Is that the adjustable diameter ring with all the grooves in it? I've wondered how well those work. I've seen one at Marshall's a couple of times, but I don't make cakes very often and even less often slice them.

The last time I sliced a cake, I used my cake decorating stand, which rotates, and set a metal bar along one edge to help keep the knife level and steady.

One of these days I want to make a dobosh torte, which requires that the cake be sliced many times, sometimes up to a dozen layers. A dobosh is generally a rectangular cake, though, so the round slicing guide probably wouldn't be much help.

[Mike Nolan]

Do you have a chopping board, cake decorating platform or something else you can set the cake on to raise it so that you can use the cake leveler? Of course it needs to be narrower than the cake leveler.

My Wilton cake leveler has notches at 1/4 inch increments, but sometimes that puts the slice where you don't want it, so I adjust the height in roughly 1/16 inch increments by taping pennies to the bottom of the chopping board, a penny is almost exactly 1/16 of an inch thick, so 2 pennies is 1/8 of an inch, etc.

I have a 14" long Dr. Oetker cake knife that I could probably use with a rotating cake decorating platform to hand slice cakes (I've seen a demo of that, probably on Youtube), but my hands aren't steady enough.

• This reply was modified 8 years, 2 months ago by Mike Nolan.
• This reply was modified 8 years, 2 months ago by Mike Nolan.
• This reply was modified 8 years, 2 months ago by htfoot.

[Mike Nolan]

A genoise is usually a fairly thin airy cake, whether this one had a loft issue may be hard to tell until you cut into it and see how open the crumb is. But you should be able to split that one that thick with a cake leveler, I've seen that done to produce slices less than 1/4 inch thick. You may need something on top of it to keep it even.

Some people like the fancy Wilton folding cake leveler, I've used both and I prefer the smaller one.

My semolina bread came out pretty good for taste, it's pretty close to the McGinnis Sisters bread, maybe not quite as sweet. I think I'd need a loaf of each to check for differences. It made a good complement to the steak and sauteed mushrooms I made for supper, to sop up the juices.

The lame caught in the dough when I was making one of the slashes, and as a result one end got a bit squished, so it's not the prettiest loaf I've ever made.

[Mike Nolan]

The pecan meal I have is a bit coarse, though it works OK in a pie crust, I usually think of a genoise as a fine-textured cake. You have to be careful when grinding nuts and nut meal not to turn it into nut butter.

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