[Mike Nolan]

Are you saying the rice is in the broth but clumped up or that it clumped up before you put it in the broth? It should come apart when heated.

Rice is mostly starch and starch binds to starch as it cools, so it will clump together.

[Mike Nolan]

I often eat rice with a little butter and Parmesan cheese, while a dash of rice wine vinegar and soy sauce adds a nice piquant flavor. I know people who put balsamic vinegar on rice, but I think balsamic is overused in cooking these days, rather like truffle oil was 10 years ago.

[Mike Nolan]

You can try adding a little stock, even a little salt might help. I've been known to throw a pat of butter in the rice cooker, but I think it makes cleanup harder.

Some varieties or brands of rice seem extremely bland to me. I like jasmine rice, but my wife doesn't like the odor, so even though she seldom eats rice these days, I don't buy it.

You could also try adjusting the water-to-rice ratio slightly, overcooking rice a little (by having too much water in the rice cooker) can cause it to lose flavor. Undercooking it is more obvious, the rice is chewy if not crunchy.

Is your new cooker one of the 'one button' cookers or does it have multiple settings?

[Mike Nolan]

The 6, now 4, quart plastic bucket for ice cream is very commonplace in grocery stores here.

Real soda fountains buy ice cream in 2 1/2 gallon cardboard containers. I don't use enough ice cream for that to be practical, and these days I'm not sure where I'd get them. There used to be Goodrich Dairy Stores in Lincoln that would sell 2 1/2 gallon containers of ice cream, but I think the last of them recently closed.

Regional differences in food packaging are hard to fathom. Here in Nebraska we can buy soda (eg, Coca-Cola) in 24 can cases, but when I'm visiting my son in Pittsburgh I never see anything larger than 12 can cases. Some stores now carry 20 can cases (often for about the same price as other stores have the 24 can case, of course.)

[Mike Nolan]

Tuna fish cans have gotten smaller over the years, too, and I wonder if there isn't more oil or water in them than there used to be. MAD Magazine once talked about how breakfast cereal boxes get taller but shallower, and suggested that eventually they'd come in a huge envelope that filled one bowl.

Peanut butter is another, lots of old peanut butter cookie recipes call for '1 jar' of peanut butter, but I have no idea how much the contents of a jar weighed 50 years ago. The jar on my counter is 16.3 ounces, but I remember when a jar of peanut butter weighed 18 ounces, not all that long ago, either.

Ice cream used to come in 6 quart buckets, now they're down to a gallon, if that.

[Mike Nolan]

In the freezer it lasts for years. It took me nearly 2 years to use up the last pound package of yeast I opened, I used to go through a pound in about 4 months. Shows how much less I bake since our younger son moved to California. I keep it in an Ikea container that holds a full pound of yeast.

[Mike Nolan]

Brioche would make more sense in a pain de mie (with lid), sizing the quantity of dough to the pan might take some experimenting, as I recall brioche is another bread that rises a lot.

I don't have a pain de mie pan, but as I understand it you can be off by a moderate amount, but if you overfill it by too much the dough can rise enough to warp the lid or pop it off completely. I think a few years back KAF posted an example of that in their annual April Fools blog post.

[Mike Nolan]

A pain de mie pan (also know as a Pullman loaf pan) usually has a lid on it, wouldn't that mess up the braiding?

I find the two-layer Challah make good sized sandwiches, but I was never one that had to have rectangular bread.

The two-layer celebration Challah I made for my wife's department chair a few weeks back (the one that I posted the gorgeous picture of) got rave reviews, Roch said he hadn't eaten that much bread in a week. They did freeze what was left over for the next time their kids are over for breakfast, for French toast.

He's got another dinner coming up in two weeks (this time for us, these dinners were auction item at the Agronomy club fundraiser earlier this year, we bought one of two dinner packages), and I assume I'll make another Challah for that one. It might be difficult to top that last one for appearance, though.

[Mike Nolan]

Challah in a pain de mie pan sounds like a contrast in terms, Challah is an open, often braided, loaf that rises a lot both during final proof and in the oven, the finished loaf is somewhere around 3X the size it is right after shaping. I'd be curious to know how that one turns out.

[Mike Nolan]

Barley tastes sweeter than wheat, and so does corn. There may be other whole grains that are also sweeter than wheat.

Peter Reinhart says that creating a mash of whole wheat and letting it sit for 8-24 hours not only softens the bran, it reduces the bitterness. A warm mash may release more sugars than one that isn't warmed, it's been a while since I read that chapter.

[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, 3 months 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.

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