[Mike Nolan]

Having the right type of flour can make a big difference. I find pie crust really needs a softer flour than AP. (And of course KAF AP flour is on the high end of AP flours.) I use KAF's white pastry flour for pie crusts, because the only pastry flours available locally are whole wheat flours, and I don't really care for the taste of pie crust made with whole wheat flour.

The apple pie I made on Wednesday was excellent (I'll post a picture when I get them downloaded from my camera), I used frozen apple pie filling that I had made a year ago using winesap apples I got at the farmer's market. That apple vendor didn't have any winesaps this fall (or at least none that I saw), but I still have enough pie filling in the freezer for another 3-4 pies. Winesap is still the best pie apple I've ever seen, but almost nobody grows it anymore.

[Mike Nolan]

The trees here are all pretty bare, even our chinkapin oak seems to have dropped most of its leaves already, some years it has leaves until late winter.

[Mike Nolan]

I think Sarah Wirth has the most complete list of the BC members and email addresses.

There are a number of people who have registered for My Nebraska Kitchen but don't appear to be logging in or posting. I'm working to see if I can send out some kind of 'holiday message' email to everyone as a reminder that we're here.
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Mike Nolan

[Mike Nolan]

We made a pumpkin custard last night (think pumpkin pie, but without a pie crust.)

My wife was originally looking at a recipe she found online that included maple syrup, but we decided it was going to be too sweet, so we went looking for a good base recipe to start with. Wound up using the one in Michel Suas's book, Advanced Bread and Pastry, as a starting point, then substituting maple syrup for brown sugar and adjusting the spices. (No clove, more cinnamon!!) The test batch was a little too sweet but showed promise, so we tinkered with the main batch a bit (more pumpkin and egg, plus a little more allspice and cinnamon.)

I took notes, of course. Haven't tasted the full run yet, but I think it'll be pretty good, and I'm not fond of pumpkin! There's enough pumpkin puree left over for a second batch, we'll use that one to test that I got the recipe written down and then I'll post it.

[Mike Nolan]

According to Google Analytics, traffic is building, slowly.

After my retirement and the holidays I'll have more time to spend on blog posts and feature enhancements, and I might spend some time/money on search engine optimization.

We've got over 2300 recipes on file here, that makes us larger than quite a few cooking sites.

I need to work on ways to sort/categorize recipes, which probably means setting up recipe categories and classifying everything.

[Mike Nolan]

As Stephen Wright has noted, "You can't have everything--where would you put it?"

I was looking at a $99 immersion circulation heater last night, I'm not sure which would be the bigger question--where would I store it or how often would I use it?

[Mike Nolan]

Before I went to Chocolate Boot Camp, I'd probably have made filled mini-tarts, using either a sable breton or a chocolate pate sucree dough, like the sable breton tarts shown at the bottom of the page. The sable breton dough is a much softer dough than pate sucree, which makes it a little more tricky to release from the molds.

My wife has a Nordicware Teacake Plaque that she makes small scones in, it should work for other small cakes. Her scones recipe is so buttery they never stick in the pan. I think shaped desserts are more attractive than drop cookies or bars that have to be cut.

These days I'd consider making a plate of chocolates, like the almond haystacks I made for a Halloween buffet. (I sent about 60 of them, they ate all but one.) For an even fancier dessert, I'd make filled molded chocolates. One of the chocolates we made in class was filled with a lemon white chocolate ganache, it's one I'm eager to try at home. We made them in egg molds that had been colored on the outside with yellow cocoa butter, but I think any shape or color exterior would work.

• This reply was modified 8 years, 3 months ago by Mike Nolan.

[Mike Nolan]

The problem is that heating elements aren't linear--if you increase the power to the heating element by 25% you don't necessarily get 25% more heat. The same thing can be true with the thermocouples used as temperature sensors.

Fully digital devices (like infrared thermometers) can be calibrated to adjust to non-linear scales, my stove (made in 1996) probably cannot. Whether a stove with digital controls has that sophisticated a calibration mechanism may vary from maker to maker. I'd guess most don't spend the money on it, since the hysteresis cycle is going to have a peak-to-valley range of 20-50 degrees anyway.

A professional convection oven has a peak-to-valley range of more like 10 degrees, but you pay for that kind of precision. I suspect home convection ovens have a peak-to-valley range of 20-25 degrees, but that's not something the manufacturers advertise.

Besides, you can lose 40-50 degrees just opening the oven door.

There are kitchen devices, like a circulation heater (for sous vide cooking) that can be adjusted to very precise temperatures, staying within a degree or two, I'm told. Laboratory equipment is even more precise.

[Mike Nolan]

Something else you may want to do is test your oven for hot spots.

The way I do this is to go buy an inexpensive loaf of sliced bread, bring the oven up to temperature and then open it and quickly lay out slices of bread all across one of the racks, front to back and side to side, leaving about an inch between slices. Close the door and let the oven run until you can start to see obvious browning through the door. Then open the door and see which slices are more brown than others, that will map where your oven's hot spots are.

If you do this at multiple rack positions (my oven has just 3 positions) you may find that the hot spots aren't in the same place at different rack positions.

[Mike Nolan]

I have a Maverick oven thermometer that is designed to measure average oven temperatures, not food temperatures. It hangs below the shelf rather than being stuck in a roast. (I wish it had a setting to switch between average and in-the-moment temperature.)

I've also used a Polder digital meat thermometer which measures current temperature rather than average temperature.

Anyway, what your oven measures is the temperature at the sensor, not in the middle of the oven. There are a number of factors that can contribute to non-linear readings.

There are ovens that have more than one temperature sensor. I'm reminded of the old saying that a man who has a watch knows what time it is, but a man with two watches is never sure.

I find when I check my oven dial for accuracy, generally using two digital oven thermometers plus an infrared gun, that it if it is pretty much dead on accurate at 350, it'll be off at both 300 and 400, and not necessarily in the same direction.

[Mike Nolan]

How is it handling hysteresis?

Hysteresis, for those who don't remember the posts on it from the King Arthur Baking Circle, is the process by which thermostats cycle the heat on and off, so that the temperature averages out to the desired temperature.

An oven will go past the desired temperature, perhaps by as much as 25 degrees, because heating elements don't instantly stop producing heat when turned off, then the temperature will drift down back through the desired temperature until it gets enough below that temperature to trigger another heating cycle.

Placement of the sensor(s) is an important factor for the oven designer, as is the developments of thermal (air) currents under various types of oven loads. Any baker who has tried to bake 3 large fully loaded cookie sheets at the same time will have experienced the way the oven load diminishes air flow to certain areas (usually the middle sheet.)

Putting a heavy item (a thermal mass) in the oven, like oven tiles or something made of iron or steel, is a way of narrowing the peaks and valleys in the hysteresis cycle, but of course that lengthens the pre-heat time because that thermal mass has to absorb heat. And that thermal mass can also impact the air flow in the oven.

Convection oven fans are designed to increase air circulation, which generally means more constant heat and faster cooking times, because the oven is more efficient at heating the cooking utensils and the food in them. It also generally speeds up the hysteresis cycle time and, if properly designed, will narrow the range between the top and bottom temperatures seen at the sensor.

[Mike Nolan]

Ham has more carbs than do some other types of proteins, like beef or chicken. Sorry if that wasn't clear.

[Mike Nolan]

These days we seem to have to choose between a ham slice or a spiral sliced ham, both fully cooked. The spiral sliced ham is really too much for the two of us. Ham is higher in carbs than other proteins, probably due to sugar-curing, so we haven't had much ham lately.

Is your oven totally non-functional at this point, or could you use an oven thermometer to reheat a fully-cooked ham?

I'll make the pie dough tomorrow night and make the pie Wednesday evening, which is also when I'll check to make sure the turkey breast is fully thawed. Dinner's at 5 or later, so I don't have to start cooking at an ungodly hour. When I was a boy, my grandmother used to do two seatings for Thanksgiving dinner, one at 11AM for her relatives from Iowa and another one at 1:30 for the local family, including us, after my grandfather closed the drug store for the day. She'd start one turkey cooking on Wednesday and a second one at 5AM on Thursday. And these were 18-22 pound behemoths!

[Mike Nolan]

You'd think she could have narrowed it down a bit.

[Mike Nolan]

You need the collagen/gelatin in bones and cartilage in order to make adequate stock (I never make chicken broth), and I've found that the 'secret ingredient' is parsnips, if I leave them out the stock is bland.

If I find hind quarters on sale, sometimes I'll brown them in the oven and make brown chicken stock, discarding the meat afterwards, but usually I use a whole chicken (without the giblets) plus any bones that I've saved up from when I debone breasts.

I wish I could find an expensive source for chicken backs, though. I"m not paying $1.99 a pound for them and the online sources all seem to be for pet food and are labeled not for human consumption. One of these days I'm going to contact the Smart Chicken folks in Tecumseh NE to see if they'll sell me a 40 pound box of chicken backs from their cut-up chicken production line. Tecumseh NE is only about a 30 minute drive from here.

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