Mike Nolan
Mon. Jan 19th, 2026
We're having BLT's tonight.
With caramelized apples and parsnips, the soup might be on the sweet side. Might even classify as a dessert soup.
We had tuna melts using an Italian Heirloom tomato from the garden. Yummy!
Have you ever tried adding any rye flour to the sourdough cheese crackers?
Diane thought the sourdough cheese crackers were good, a lot like wheat thins. They'd be good with a cheese dip or sour cream dip.
I think she agrees with me that they don't have enough cheese in them, and she thought I put too much salt on top. If I add cheese, I might not need to put any salt on top at all. I might use a slightly finer grind on the wheat berries next time, too, I tend to use the coarsest setting my grain mill will do.
I'm using the "It's Just White Cheddar Cheese Powder", not the King Arthur one.
Mmmm, lasagna sounds good, I haven't made one for at least a year.
12-13 minutes at 350 seems to be working in my big oven. I'll see what Diane thinks of these, I think I can understand why your husband gobbles them down, though. (I also think they could use a little more cheese in them.)
I thought about trying a convection setting for a batch but after the first batch got overbaked to the point where I had to toss it, I decided to try that another time.
I did the 2nd and 3rd batches in a perforated pan.
I used my small sheeter to roll out the dough, so the thickness was pretty uniform. That's always been the hardest part of making crackers for me. I do think I need some flour or something under the dough so it slides better as it gets thinner. (That's the one thing the smaller or hand-cranked laminators don't do well, on the big ones the output side belt moves slightly faster than the input side belt.)
The first batch of sourdough cheese crackers were overdone by 15 minutes at 400, so for the second batch I lowered the temperature to 350, rotated them at 5 minutes, checked them at 10 minutes and baked them a total of 13 minutes. I may do the next batch a total of 12 minutes.
The sourdough one is very mild, I can tell which is which, my wife couldn't. It'll be interesting to see how it tastes over the next day or two and how well it keeps. I'll freeze one full loaf and two half-loaves so I should have plenty of bread for the next week.
But I think I might make challah in the next few days anyway.
I processed two large bowls of tomatoes today, I should get at least 7 quarts of juice from them. These are the first I've done in several weeks, the last week and a half I've been holding off picking more than a few tomatoes to eat because of our fruit fly invasion, but we have it pretty much under control, I've seen just one today, and it might have come in with the tomatoes I picked yesterday.
We had a low in the mid 30's last night, frost and freeze warnings were issued but the really cold air didn't get this far south. But Monday night the predicted low is 34 again. If that doesn't result in our first frost, looks like we may have a couple weeks of more moderate temperatures. But at least the 90's appear to be done for the season.
Today's semolina breads, the one on the left is a combination of sourdough starter and commercial yeast.
Because corn flour is a finer grind, it will absorb more water, and the coarseness of corn meal is IMHO an important part of the texture of cornbread.
This is likely to be a busy weekend in the kitchen. I've got a roast planned, two types of semolina bread, and maybe some apple cider challah.
And we're out of peanut butter cookies.
I made the sourdough cheese cracker dough the other day and it is resting in the fridge. I'll bake some on Monday.
I'm going to do a test loaf of Hamelman's semolina bread with the flying sponge divided into two parts, one part will have commercial yeast and the other part will have some of my wheat starter.
I'm also planning to make a regular batch of semolina bread tomorrow, so I'll have something to compare against.
