[Mike Nolan]

I like sourdough, but it usually bothers my wife's stomach, so I've pretty much given up on it. I did it enough to know what does and doesn't work.

It's also kind of one-note. There are so many things you can do with bread that don't need sourdough taste or structure.

[Mike Nolan]

We had salami sandwiches tonight.

[Mike Nolan]

I made another batch of chocolate chip (M&M) oatmeal cookies today.

Here are shots of the top and bottom of cookies from 4 different batches.

The first is a cookie from the previous batch, baked a bit longer

The second is a cookie from today's batch, same greased pan, but baked about 1.5 minutes shorter.

The 3rd is a cookie baked on a red silpat about 30 seconds less than batch 2.

The 4th is a cookie baked on a white silpat, same baking time as #3.

Interesting to see the difference baking time and baking surface make in appearance and taste.

Attachments:

You must be logged in to view attached files.

[Mike Nolan]

I'm a firm believer that one can never have too many squash!

I feel that way about tomatoes.

My mother-in-law's brother once planted a dozen zucchini, thinking each plant only gave one or two fruit. He was giving them away by the bushel basket, ran out of people in Omaha to give them to, so he was bringing them down to Lincoln.

[Mike Nolan]

Your tomatoes are ahead of mine, but it looks like all of the ones I put in the ground two weeks ago will make it, even the one that looked weak is throwing out new leaves and has a more solid looking main stem now though it is still much smaller than the others, some of which are getting close to a foot tall.

I started seeds indoors for the next round of the hydroponic tomato garden. I'm hoping to have the seedlings in the pots by the 2nd week of July, and that should put me on schedule to start getting tomatoes in October, around the time that the outside plants will be shutting down.

I've got 2 each of five different varieties, I'll take the best looking plants in 4 different varieties for the hydroponic garden. (A 4" net pot will only support one tomato plant.)

[Mike Nolan]

We had BLT's on the bread I baked a couple of days ago.

[Mike Nolan]

we had salads with tuna fish tonight.

[Mike Nolan]

I think she rebranded her website, possibly due to intellectual property issues, but I haven't found anything about that online, or maybe she just got tired of doing it.

The wayback machine still has her pages: https://web.archive.org/web/20260308164616/http://shaboomskitchen.com/

The wayback machine is harder for me to use these days, my ISP and my browser both classify it as a suspicious website.

I tried searching for Carol Stevens (her name), didn't find anything.

[Mike Nolan]

I'm making a batch of honey wheat bread this evening.

[Mike Nolan]

We had salami sandwiches

[Mike Nolan]

Yeah, for that price I would expect it to do things scales costing a lot less don't do, the only one I saw was the wireless display panel. I'd find that a lot more useful if it had 30 pounds of capacity, I've got a 24 quart stock pot that weighs almost 10 pounds when it is empty, and when I set it on the scale I have that has a 33 pound capacity, I have to put a pastry ring on top so I can see the display, a display panel that can be moved around does have its advantages.

[Mike Nolan]

I will probably try the Detroit and New Haven ones at some point, but we prefer thin crust pizza, both for the taste/texture and the lower carbs (less crust, which is virtually all the carbs.)

Of course we could just limit ourselves to one or two pieces.

I've been making 12 inch pizzas lately, using a tavern cut (16 pieces) rather than wedges.

[Mike Nolan]

Tonight's pizza was Pizza Tondo (Romano) from the King Arthur book.

This dough is 20% semolina and has 10% olive oil in the crust and it is rolled paper thin.

We topped it with sauce, artichoke hearts, pepperoni, tomato slices and whole milk mozzarella, and it was very good, we liked it better than the tavern-style thin crust in that book.

Attachments:

You must be logged in to view attached files.

[Mike Nolan]

We've had to have several cats put down, it is never a pleasant task, even when it is absolutely the right thing to do. We had one who just keeled over and died one day, that wasn't fun, either.

[Mike Nolan]

I lived in Chicago for 10 years, and ate a lot of pizza, hot dogs and Italian beef sandwiches. When I was a sophomore a bunch of us drove down to the south side of Chicago on a Sunday afternoon to the original location for Giordano's, back before it turned into a chain, there was a 2+ hour wait.

Burt Katz's first foray with pizza was as a chef at a place called The Inferno, fairly near the Northwestern campus, you had to walk by it to get to the football stadium. It was very popular with students because the campus dining facilities were closed on Sundays. After that he started Gulliver's and at least 3 other pizza places before he died. (I've still never come up with a reasonable copycat recipe for Gulliver's pizza bread, people would order it while standing in line for a table.)

Back around 1975 there was an article in Chicago Magazine on the multiple styles of Chicago pizza, I made some editorial suggestions to a draft copy of that article. A friend and fellow chess player was their business manager. Before we decided to move to Nebraska I was talking to them about starting a second food reviewer column for casual and fast food dining. (They did run such a column for a few years, too.)

I haven't looked at the Pizza Bible (Amazon shows two books with that title, I assume you're referring to the one published recently). I have occasionally given some thought to buying a copy of Modernist Pizza, but it's like $350.

[Author]

Posts