Pequod

Chicken skewers marinated in lemon, ginger, garlic, and baharat.

@Chanly1983 - I shoot for the same temps as in the oven...or thereabouts. A caveat: Most Dutch Oven recipes have you start hotter and then turn the temp down 50 degrees or so. A heat soaked KK doesn’t just drop 50 degrees like that, so go with a happy medium. Say 450’ish, which is a typical temp for bread baking.

Looking good! One bit of advice. Forkish claims his loaves score themselves at the natural seam, and yours did. However, this isn’t generally the case and I’ve had Forkish loaves that didn’t form a seam on their own. Hence, as you progress you will want to learn scoring with a lame. Regarding difference between KK baked and oven baked, I think the differences are more textural and visual than flavor. A CI Dutch Oven tends to create a hard crust and a dark color if you don’t watch it. The KK bread is more uniformly brown and a crust that’s a bit less dense. Both are good. I prefer the KK baked breads.

@Chanly1983 - sage advice from @Syzygies above. Just do it!

Learning bread can seem like torture at times! Interestingly, one of the longest threads in the Pit at Amazing Ribs has nothing to do with meat at all. It is all about sourdough bread. The good news is that books like "Tartine Bread" and "Flour, Water, Salt, Yeast" shortcut the learning process considerably. The latter is really just an extension of the former -- Forkish simplifies the Tartine Bread process into something more accessible. For even more good info, there are some helpful videos and other resources at Stella Culinary: https://stellaculinary.com/cooking-videos/stella-bread/sb-004-how-make-basic-loaf-sourdough-bread

I’m pretty sure this is a prerequisite of becoming a KK owner.

I love homemade stock and used to do it all the time, but stopped because the all day simmer method is...time consuming. This is where the Instant Pot has come to the rescue. Same ingredients, but one hour under pressure and I’m back in the stock game! Great use for roti chicken carcasses.

We would both rank these as: 1) Nigerian, 2) Bazaar (close second), 3) Milk Street. Not that the Milk Street version was bad by any means. I quite liked it. It’s a reasonable approximation of the real thing with readily available ingredients. However, there is a certain je ne sais quoi in the other versions. The real epiphany for me is that I have a spice shop nearby that sells high quality, authentic blends using the correct ingredients, not just approximations.

No shame in an oven bake. Especially to get started with new techniques, best to start with the way the recipe is written first to get the feel for the process and the finished product. I haven’t tried the Baking Steel yet for bread. My concern with the steel for bread is the impact of the high initial heat transfer on a long bake. I feel like it would result in a bottom that’s considerably darker than the top. Dennis’ stone, on the other hand, is ideal for achieving uniformly browned breads. I guess my answer is: don’t do it until you have more bread notches under your belt. For the steam oven technique: I use two spools of chain in a large (16-17”) cast iron skillet. I deposit ~400g of ice into that as a single sheet frozen in a 1 quart zip lock laying flat.

Wow! Wing sauce as a pork mop. Pigs really do fly! Interesting idea. There are some Old Virginia, vinegar based sauces for pork that aren’t far off from a wing sauce. I can see how that would work very well.

Don’t know that book, but any of Forkish’s breads can be baked without a Dutch Oven. The purpose of the Dutch Oven is to trap the steam released by the moisture of the dough, creating the rough equivalent of a steam oven. Or that’s the conventional wisdom anyway. I suspect there’s more going on than that in terms of heat transfer. There are many ways to bake bread on a KK. One is to go naked on the baking stone. Another is to use an inverted, preheated Dutch Oven or stainless steel bowl to trap the steam. Another is Syzygies steam oven technique. The results between the three may vary, but they all can give you good bread. An experiment I’ve always meant to try, but haven’t, is to make two loaves of whatever Forkish bread you choose, baking both on the KK baking stone, but with one covered by a preheated stainless steel bowl for the first 20 minutes.

This is a Tale of Two Suyas. It was the best of cooks, it was the worst of cooks... For this cook, I wanted to compare the Nigerian original by way of @tekobo with the Suya Spice sold by Bazaar Spices in nearby Washington, DC. My original plan was to compare these with the version by Milk Street, but the pinky test suggested these were very similar to each other and nothing like the Milk Street version (good in its own right, but different). The Nigerian version is on the left and Bazaar version on the right. After dry brining strips of flank steak for an hour, I divided in half. That’s 12 oz of steak in each bowl. The one on the left is rubbed with 1.5 Tbsp of Nigerian spice, and on the right is the same amount of Bazaar. Onto the skewers: Onto the sear grate of the 32 with some ears of corn: Resting on the cutting board. Bazaar version on the left, Nigerian on the right. I had shakers on the table of each for extra spice on the plate. My daughter the food critic gave me her opinion, which matched my own. The underlying flavors of each are the same, but the Nigerian version has a bit more heat. Both are very different from the Milk Street version. We agreed that the Bazaar version could easily be tailored by adding cayenne. Finally, she said to me: It is a far, far better thing that I eat, than I have ever done; it is a far, far better plate that I go to than I have ever known. (apologies to Charles Dickens )

Love this recipe. Need to do it again soon.

Sorry to hear about the humptying of your egg. This is much better. You won't regret it.

Reminds me of my corn “dealer” back in Shampoo-Banana Illinois. He preferred payment in small, unmarked bills. Could never figure out why...

I own both a 23 and a 32. The 32 is the better grill regardless of your family size. There. I said it. The 23 is great too, but the 32 is just plain better. It is a true two-zone grill (the 23 isn’t), has more capacity, etc. I love them both, but if forced to choose one, it’s not even close. 32 hands down. Only thing better is a 32 in pebble.

I’m looking forward to my next trip to Dallas. I’ll be looking for “funky brisket” on the menu at my favorite BBQ joint. If not listed, I’ll ask for it. Look forward to seeing what I get.

Here’s one source: https://www.cooksinfo.com/italian-flours. According to this, our All Purpose and Bread flours are closer to Italian type 0. And then there’s this: http://nybakers.com/index.php?main_page=index&cPath=9_15. Based on ash content, it seems type 1 is more consistent with French type 65 or 85. And this: http://www.theartisan.net/flour_classification_of.htm. Italian type 1 doesn’t seem to be something we’d find the equivalent of in the wild. More of a specialty flour, but type 65 at NY Bakers would be close.

Sort of a “panless” pan pizza. Some interesting techniques. Now I need to go investigate type 1 flour...

Oh I haven’t forgotten...just haven’t broken the good news on the Konro to the wife yet!

I would be interested to know which flavour of binchotan all y’all are using. White is prohibitively expensive, but the other types on the Korin site are reasonable and look like they would do the job. I have several more months to noodle the binchotan part of this.

This is why I haven't pulled the trigger yet on a WFO. I can cook everything *I like* the most with my KK, with a preference toward Chicago thin and deep dish styles. A WFO would help me with Neapolitan...but do I *need* to perfect Neapolitan pizza? Jury is still out. Wife would say no...

Summarizing: Cooking is all about heat transfer. The temperature of the cooking medium is a rough guide to that, but not the entire story. Heat flux is also proportional to thermal conductivity of the interface between the thing imparting energy and the food absorbing it. For example, a baking steel has much higher conductivity than a baking stone, so at the same temp the steel will transfer more energy to your dough than a stone in the same amount of time, while the top is being cooked at the same rate with both. Place your hand in boiling water and you're immediately burned. Place your hand in a 212F oven and you're fine. Keep your hand in that oven long enough and you'll be burned. When baking pizza on a steel I generally dial the temp down 50-100 degrees from baking on the KK baking stone. Similarly, the "right temp" for your WFO depends on the thermal conductivity of the floor tiles and the type of dough you're baking.

I got mine from Pennsylvania Macaroni, which is my source for Italian ingredients. I place an order periodically, so added brick cheese to my next when I saw your post.

Kai Yang Chicken with Tamarind Dipping Sauce. This is a Milk Street recipe. There’s lemongrass in there, so I know it’s authentic. Making the sauce. Starts with sautéing some lemongrass, a chili, and shallot. Then magic happened! (I.e., I forgot to take any other pics of the sauce making process). The chook brined in a soy sauce, fish sauce, cilantro, lemongrass, etc. mixture for two hours. Then I spun it with a pineapple. The pineapple is sporting Dizzy Pig Pineapple Head, which I’m told is all the rage in Thailand. Ready to serve. Have done this one before. It’s becoming a favorite way to do a chook.