[Mike Nolan]

When I was in San Diego a couple of years ago, I gave some thoughts to driving to the NY Bakers warehouse, but it isn't clear whether they support over-the-counter sales or just mail order.

I bought 5 pounds of cake flour at a Mennonite store that had been rebagged from a larger bag. It wasn't labeled as to whose it was, it could have been Queen G, which they no longer sell in home-baker sized bags.

I also used to get a great pumpernickel flour at that Mennonite store, which I would hit whenever I was visiting my employer's national office, but since I retired I probably won't be going there (Crossville TN) again, and I think the nearest Mennonite/Amish community is likely to be in eastern Iowa.

[Mike Nolan]

Looking for recipes for soba noodles online made me wonder whether the soba noodles at the Mongolian grills are gluten-free.

[Mike Nolan]

Since it was just for 2 buns, probably less than a teaspoon of honey, diluted with about 2 teaspoons of hot water. Don't see any reason why it wouldn't work with whole grains or other sizes of seeds. I've used the water method successfully to stick rolled oats to loaves, and I've seen at least one recipe that suggested sticking them down with honey diluted in water, which is where I got the idea from.

[Mike Nolan]

Here's a simpler soba noodle recipe that isn't GF:

40 grams AP flour
160 grams buckwheat flour
80 grams water

And here's a picture guide to making soba noodles from the LA Times:
Soba Noodles

[Mike Nolan]

I can probably find other GF recipes that don't use those ingredients. Arrowroot is something I always have on hand, psyllium husk powder is not.

Psyllium husk is a way of adding fiber (it's the main ingredient in Metamucil), and it probably adds structure as well, which is always a bit of a challenge with gluten-free products.

[Mike Nolan]

To add to the confusion over the 'proper' weight of a cup of flour, the USDA says a cup of unbleached AP flour weighs 125 grams 4.4 ounces.

I tend to use the KAF 4.25 ounces standard, because its usually easier to add flour than to readjust everything else once you add too much flour.

[Mike Nolan]

I don't see very many 25 pound bags of flour in the stores here in Lincoln, except at Sams and (presumably) Costco. But I don't know very many people who bake a lot.

I've said this before, but you have to keep track of prices to know if the grocery prices at WalMart are good buys or not. They tend to react to local pricing changes, but not to the weekly sales. Costco has set up tents near both Sams Club stores and probably every WalMart in town, looks like they're making a strong push for business ahead of next month's Costco opening. It'll be interesting to see what happens to pricing between that and the Amazon/Whole Foods deal.

[Mike Nolan]

I don't make biscuits from scratch very often (my wife actually prefers Bisquick), but this recipe uses a little more butter and a little more milk than the recipe I've used the most, so if you also under-measured the flour that would definitely explain why it was sticky. I suspect the milk was more of a problem than the butter. (I assume the butter wasn't melted.)

[Mike Nolan]

Oops, fixed.

[Mike Nolan]

Not all soba noodle recipes are gluten free, here's a link to one that is:
gluten free soba noodles

[Mike Nolan]

I find it harder to mis-measure an ingredient if I weigh it.

[Mike Nolan]

Great to see you posting, Cass, hopefully the changes I made to the site made it less onerous to log in.

[Mike Nolan]

No, I just did an egg wash, let it sit for a minute then sprinkled poppy seeds on.

I've got one or two other ideas to try, I may do a followup experiment the next time I make hot dog buns. (We've been eating a lot of hot dogs lately because I made a big batch of tomato relish last week and it is SO GOOD on hot dogs when it's fresh!)

My wife agrees with me that other than the oil version, they all had the seeds stuck down fairly well.

There really isn't much honey in the honey wash, I couldn't taste it on the bun I had for supper. (I had one from the honey group and one from the oil group, seeds kept falling off as I was eating the latter, so that method is a total failure.)

[Mike Nolan]

The first Costco in Lincoln will be opening near us next month, so we just joined. We went to the one in LaVista last weekend, no KAF flour there, the 25 pound bags were the Kirkland 'house brand', bleached and brominated, I think. They did have an unbleached flour in two-packs of 10 pound bags, I don't remember whose, but it wasn't KAF.

The only NY Bakers I can find online is in San Diego, I thought you lived on the east coast, Aaron.

I have ordered a few things from walmart.com, including a pail of wheat berries, I haven't seen any problems with shipments, but I haven't ordered bags of flour that way. I've never had any problems with broken items when I ordered from KAF, but I did have a bag of pastry flour missing from an order. They shipped a replacement when I called. I don't think I've ordered anything larger than a 2 pound bag of flour from KAF.

I don't know if Kroger has any stores in Nebraska, definitely none in Lincoln. We have Hy Vee, a regional chain based in Iowa, and Super Saver/Russ's, an even smaller chain based in Lincoln.

[Mike Nolan]

Bread is often commodity-priced. If there are two types of 'white bread' on the shelf, one at $1.25 and one at $2.95, many people will buy the lower priced one, regardless of their perception of quality and taste. Those of us who make our own bread know that there aren't very many shortcuts to making cheaper bread, except to use cheaper ingredients or more chemicals to increase the shelf life.

There used to be an Old Home 'day old' shop near us, but it closed. I think there may still be one on the north side of town.

The homeless shelters and food pantries usually have lots of bread, what they often don't have is stuff to put on that bread or serve with it.

Two of the grad students in Agronomy and Horticulture are running a research experiment this summer with tomatoes, they have 10 rows of them, each 160 feet long. That's a LOT of tomatoes! (One day they picked, weighed and graded over 1000 pounds of them.) They've been donating a bunch of them to the food pantry, but there's a limit to how much fresh food they can handle at a time, because it spoils on their shelves just like it spoils on ours.

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