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finished a 2-day baking class today. i think i need a spiral mixer. pan de cristal at 130% hydration

I'd almost be interested in the hanging rack, but back in the day, I had the blacksmiths down in the Amana Colonies craft me this rack and skewer set. I don't use it very often, but it does come in handy for some cooks.

Have meat hanger, will travel. My husband and I drove the 2.5 hours from our house to visit with @RokDok and his wife Helen this last weekend. I wanted to show him the hanger and I also wanted to try a hot and fast cook. I took one tandoori marinaded chicken and one suya marinaded chicken with me. The marinade from the Tandoor Cookbook by Ranjit Rai includes papaya and I remembered others' warnings that leaving meat too long with this tenderiser could make your meat soft and pappy. Sooo... on the first evening we tried the tandoori marinated chicken. @RokDok has exactly the same colour and tile(!!) 32 as I have at home so we didn't miss a beat. The book recommends 250C temperatures and a very quick cook after slashing and marinading the whole chicken. The recommendation was about 10 mins for the first cook, out to rest for 5 mins, baste with ghee and then cook for another 10 minutes. In practice the whole cook took about 45 minutes. The legs did get burned but the meat was generally juicy. We followed the chicken with duck legs gently cooked in fat in the KK with lovely roast potatoes. Ain't nothing wrong with double protein unless you object to being so full you can't fit in dessert! I wanted to improve on that chicken cook so, the next day for lunch, I positioned the suya marinaded chicken higher up on hook to get it further away from the fire. We also heat soaked the KK for longer so that the breasts would cook a bit faster. Main lesson learned? You need a shield to stop the lower extremities burning in a hot and fast cook for something that takes as long to cook as a chicken. I should have cooked the chicken away from the fire for the first 30 minutes and then moved it over the fire to crisp it up at the end. That said, this was a mighty yummy cook and between us we picked the carcass clean! Dinner was this yummy steak with more potatoes. We all had a lovely time and Paul has now ordered his very own duck/meat hanger. Hurrah! I suspect that skewers will be a really good use case for a hot and fast cook on the hanger so I will try that next. I hesitate to do this but hey... @RokDok got a local farmer to bring him a squirrel which he proceeded to skin, cut and cook on a skewer. I refused point blank to taste it but it did look good and he and my husband professed to enjoy it with their beer.

Wow, Tekobo was on a road trip pushing KK accessories. Mission accomplished. 👍👍 Sure sounds like the cooks were a tasty success, well that is until you mentioned someone cooking one of my squirrels. 🥹

That looks amazing David !!!!!

@tekobo didn't really have to do much pushing - I was sucked into the vortex of buying frenzy when I tasted the result of the cook. Mrs RokDok was also in non-coerced agreement - so no need for subterfuge or trying to make out that when it arrived it was some kind of shower fitting or car part. My poor son - who lives in Boston has agreed to take delivery of one, ( he has one room in a shared appartment ), so I've now got a good excuse to pop over and see him. @tekobo and I have played gadget acquisition ping-pong for four years now and I am losing badly.

IMG_9435.mov @dstr8 baguette preshaping and shaping is the stuff of nightmares.

FWIW, I use a cheap Lodge Combo Cooker for baking rustic sourdough bread; 850g battards are no problem. Baguettes are a different problem though. I'd like to use the Challenger but can't get 2-up in my oven as I can using the Combo Cooker...

Bruce it was nice to hear from you, I think of you often. Good luck with the charcoal and I'm sure your daughter will do you proud with the KK. You've had many cooks together with her. Hope all goes well with your Senior Home, save a space for the rest of us, we are on the way.

Time for a bit of a ‘mixed grill’ tonight. Corn, yellow squash, small red capsicums, large mushrooms, country suasage links, smash burgers, chicken satay skewers, lamb kofta skewers and a couple of scotch fillet steaks. Nice mix for us and the kids- ended up using most the the 32BB lower grate real estate. Great success as always…

Another desem loaf. 60% fresh milled hard white wheat + 40% fresh milled yecora rojo + 25% desem. 80’ish percent hydration. This is Alan’s Bread from Flour Power, but at higher than the 75% hydration called for. Yecora rojo is a bit thirsty and I think the low hydrations in Flour Power correspond to the recipes labeled as “beginner.” Apparently beginners require stiff dough 🤔.

The Challenger Bread Pan is an effective alternative to filling an entire oven with steam. They're the same idea as the Dutch oven approach, except one gets to bake a bâtard, which some of us prefer to a boule. They recommend a couple of ice cubes. In a KK, the bread then doesn't see fire till one removes the Challenger lid. That's ok; for us the main advantage of the KK is avoiding heat in the house in the summer.

Actually, what I realized was that aluminum has nearly twice the specific heat capacity as steel, so I replaced my steel chains with an aluminum disk. Thomas Keller is the earliest reference I know to using rocks, which I consider a clumsier approach than an aluminum disk. There are two pervasive problems with web debates, both raised by The Perfect Loaf. First, they need content, so they'll write something. Second, many people will assert that they're happy with an intermediate solution, and all they're saying is that they're happy. Partly because they're unaware of better solutions, and haven't tried them. The Perfect Loaf certainly doesn't compute the physics. That is a time-honored approach: Try something and see if you're happy with the results. Of course, many people claim to be happy spritzing 5 grams of water from a plant spritzer. That's a placebo effect. What I computed was the weight of aluminum needed to create enough steam to replace the volume of a KK or a conventional oven a couple times over. This is what commercial bread ovens do, because they can. What I don't understand is the marginal utility over generating just enough steam to partly fill an oven once. That certainly helps over doing nothing. It's amazing how in a weak bleach solution, bleach finds its target. I don't believe that a weak steam mixture behaves the same way, but my chemistry days are long ago.

I tried steam and it is just so much easier to use a dutch oven.

Hello everybody, Bruce Pearson here. I’ve been a member of the form for eight years and have a big bad 32. I also have some charcoal for sale. I live in the San Francisco Bay Area. I bought this charcoal seven years ago. It’s been in containers at my house all that time, I have quite a bit to sell if anybody’s interested in buying it I have the Coco and the regular char if you’re interested my phone number is 510-396-3586. You’d have to come and pick it up. I am giving my kamodo to my daughter she lives in Hawaii and we can’t ship the charcoal to Hawaii it’s a good deal anybody who wants some please get a hold of me. Also, my email address is [email protected]. The reason I’m selling this is because I’ve moved into a senior living home and I have absolutely no room for my beautiful big 32.