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I do live in California. In a little community at about 3,000' - 3,200' elevation. Heck we got over 7' of rain this season.

He does, just north of Napa Valley. They've just had crazy weather all year now. Torrential rains and lots of snow.

Aha! Finally found the MSR poster. It was @Forrest. Linked here to keep all pot smokers in synch.

Great looking paella @remi! I love paella but don't think I dare try and make some for our Italian friends. They love food but the Venetians think that Tuscan food is foreign let alone trying to impose an import from Spain!

For some reason I thought you lived in California Paul. Obviously not with those temperatures!

I use 100% extraction einkorn for a simple loaf made with yeast. Delicious. P.S. Beautiful proofing cradle. Nicely done.

Hurrah! I've got my foccacia mojo back. I realised that while I use bread flour in the UK, the flour available in Italian supermarkets is "flour for bread". I am guessing the latter has less gluten and so when I went for a long 12 hour rise my dough just collapsed into a wet puddle. Until I find other, better flour I have restricted the initial proof to one hour and got good results on my 16 KK. Cooking tips - you need a hot dome and a pizza stone to get the desirable crunch on the base and light crisp on the top. I let the KK dome heat soak for an hour with nothing in the KK and then I added in the grate and stepping stone shield. A pizza stone would have been better and I will get one for next time. In the meantime, we all enjoyed this with our chicken dinner last night. IMG_4929.MOV

Nice toy Mac. A bit expensive though...

@tony b this stainless steel comes up clean very easily in the dishwasher and also with a short soak in soapy water. PBW is worth the soaking time and cost when it comes to getting grill grates nice and clean but I don't find that I need it for things like rotisserie forks.

Sounds like a great evening is in store for you, Tony.

Happy Cinco de Mayo, everyone! Nice day here, I should be grilling something, but I've thawed out some al pastor that I stashed in the freezer from the last time I made it. So, margaritas and al pastor tacos on the deck for dinner tonight! 🥟 🍹

Wow, what a great paella cook. It looks sooo tasty and sounds like a wonderful outside cook.

36°F and snowing here. Brought my theremeters in. Good looking cook!

I usually cook paella inside, but when I’ve got some time it is so much nicer on the KK. It was a beautiful autumn evening here, and kids were sorted- so it was the perfect time to cook tonight’s paella on the KK with some post oak for smoke. Originally paella was cooked on a pan over fire, so it feels right. Simple one tonight with chorizo, chicken, Roma tomatoes and green beans/ flavoured with saffron, paprika, stock and rosemary from our garden. Spicy pimenton in the adult one. I also love cooking the whole thing outside as you set up your ‘mise en place’ and then just relax. I’m smokey as all hell though, so need a shower. Nevertheless it was so so good- worth the extra effort.

I just searched for Desem in recipes indexed by Eat Your Books. The three books that come up are Flower Power, The Laurel's Kitchen Bread Book, and Southern Ground. This of course misses out-of-print books like The Bread Book by Thom Leonard, but at least we haven't missed anything obvious.

For today's Desem bread I made a proofing cradle from wood. I'm at the limit where my dough will sploof out into flat bread. A classic proofing basket is already wider than the wood frames I've been using for years. My frames had no bottom, but now I want to finish proofing in the fridge. For flavor, and as a bonus so the loaf better holds its shape. So now I needed a bottom. There are gaps by the four corners (which is fine for a proofing basket) so that wood expansion doesn't crack the box. Wood responds to changes in humidity by expanding across the grain. The poster child here is a beginner woodworker who makes cutting boards for gifts, and mixes end and side grains. Their boards crack. If one studies drawer construction, the bottoms float to avoid this issue. I prefer a chunkier solid proofing cradle, for thermal mass. You'd think my design would be everywhere, but I've never seen it before. In the same spirit as my artistic tirade above, this box uses my favorite cheater joinery. One shouldn't glue end grain without further support. People who understand wood believe that a hand cut dovetail joint displays the pinnacle of craftsmanship, even though box joints are stronger. People who make box joints tend to use jigs, then they look like every commercial box you've ever seen. What I do is plan and dry assemble my joinery using cabinet screws, then glue using the screws for clamping. Once the glue dries, I remove (and reuse) the cabinet screws, and replace them with Miller dowels. I then sand further and finish with Tried & True Original Wood Finish polymerized linseed oil and beeswax, which is food safe. My box is shown sunning in our yard, so the bread won't taste like linseed oil. This is dead simple joinery that I'd recommend to any casual woodworker. My friends who don't judge art by difficulty, or who are simply oblivious to measuring difficulty for wood joinery, love this style of construction.

I added her Daily Desem, which is about the same hydration. Yes, she calls for "full" extraction white and/or red whole wheat flours in the two recipes. Perhaps some people actually use 100% extraction flour? I put mine through a coarse sieve, ending up with 95% extraction, which can (nearly) handle 90% hydration. I'm going to drop a few percent at a time to see what happens.

Interesting. Is that 73% hydration with 100% extraction flour? That seems very low for whole, unsifted flour.

My impression is that as a rule, Desem bread uses high hydrations. I was startled, reading Flour Power, how little water she uses. My earlier sources use clumsy Imperial volume measurements, making comparisons less precise, but I believe that Southern Ground is closer to usual practice?

Tara relocated to Hamilton, VA about two years ago. This puts her about 2 hours north of me, and just west of Dulles Airport.

Alas I noticed. We'll meet there, if not sooner. Oddly, Tara Jensen's web site makes no mention that I can discern as to the location of her upcoming workshop?

Desem also appears in Tara Jensen’s book “Flour Power.” The workshop I’m taking with her next month includes different levains, so I’m expecting some discussion on desem (or I’ll be raising my hand to ask). She did a stint in Asheville, NC, home of Carolina Ground, hence the lineage from Robertson to Scott to Lapidus to Jensen. Asheville also has a biennial Bread Festival: https://www.ashevillebreadfestival.com. Next one is Spring 2025. I’m thinking I need to make that pilgrimage — Asheville is just about 5 hours drive south of me.

Ha! My wife Laurie is my muse, saw where I was going with the Brød & Taylor Sourdough Home, and recalled reading the Desem section in The Laurel's Kitchen Bread Book, back in the 1980's when it came out. I sensed a seminal work, akin to Richard Olney's Simple French Food spawning the Chez Panisse diaspora. Sure enough, Jennifer Lapidus read that same passage back in the day, and tracked down Laurel Robertson's dear friend Alan Scott, who became her mentor. She bought his 5,000 pound, 48-inch stone mill when he died before receiving it, and used it to found Carolina Ground. Her book Southern Ground is my new bible; as @Pequod discovered it's basically about Desem bread. I'm working through the Kindle edition until her signed copy arrives. Tracing back her sources, I found a used copy of The Bread Book by Thom Leonard. It's yet another take on Desem bread, worth reading. I've learned a few things I hadn't put together, such as slack bread could be overly digested by the sourdough starter. Meanwhile, my grain order from Janie's Mill arrived, to supplement our stocks of hard red spring wheat from Central Milling, and soft wheat and rye from Giusto's. Let the games begin!

Just noticed this new piece of gear, interesting but it won't replace a KK. Could be fun to play with though. https://www.fourneauoven.com/products/fourneau-wood-fired-grill-16-deluxe

I shouldn't have stopped by here today. I recently came across Desem in the "Southern Ground" book and am trying to resist the need to develop a Desem starter. Resistance is futile, it seems. Southern Ground tells the story of Carolina Ground, which works with farmers to restore historic grains, mill them, and supply the flour to regional bakeries. One of my favorite local bakeries, Albemarle Baking Company, uses their flour. Next month, I'm doing a workshop with Tara Jensen, a renowned baker and Carolina Ground advocate (@bakerhands on Instagram).