Pequod

Daughter wanted to bring her new boyfriend, Mr. Hurley, home to meet the family. I was ecstatic to meet him once I learned he's in Army ROTC and happens to be quite muscular. Hellllooooo moving crew for a future 32" KK. Time to roll out the red carpet to woo my future mover. We started last night by mixing up a batch of Brioche for hamburger buns. Here it is being kneaded in slo-mo, just because: After an overnight bulk ferment in the refrigerator: And trying out my new hamburger bun mold pan: The KK is ready and looking pretty: After 25 minutes, the buns are ready: Now let's grind up the burgers, a 50-50 blend of ribeye lip and brisket: Some of that bacon I cured and smoked recently: Now the burgers. I like some char, so I start the burgers on the outside Then flip them onto the CI griddle: Cheese 'em: Plate 'em: I think Hurley's onboard for moving my next KK.

*speechless*

Tweedie Bird

I'm down to two: my KK and a Kamado Joe Classic which I expect to give to my son in a year or so. Have owned others over the years that I've shed for various reasons: 270 Smokers - an insulated cabinet smoker I bought 2 years ago and sold last week. Why? The KK is a better smoker than the dedicated smoker. See my comparison thread in the KK cooking forum. WSM - Had it for about a decade. My first true smoker. Recently gave it to my niece. See above reason. Weber Genesis Silver B - also had for about a decade. Rusted out and hauled to the dump this year. I'd use a tube smoker to add smoke flavor. Various Weber kettles - they are what they are. Overachievers for the price, but can't touch a Kamado. Bottom line is I love the Kamado versatility and the KK is the best of breed. It fits my style of cooking, so I'm planning to add another to my lineup early next year. Other than that, I could see adding a pizza oven at some point. Maybe a Blackstone, but those woodfired jobs look fun too.

I have never used my deflector. Not needed.

Any updates on the baking steel?

Congrats on arrival -- finally! That is a gorgeous color. Have seen it on the store pics, but another thing entirely in the wild.

True on the complexity. This is more of a weekend and special occasion cookbook than daily use. Also picked up Raichlen's Project Smoke recently. While focused on smoking (obviously), what I like is the non traditional ways he uses smoke. Not your typical ribs, butts and brisket BBQ book. Looking forward to trying several things from this one. Smoked Bread has caught my eye...

I tend to buy more cookbooks than I should. This one is high on the recommended list. Lots of other recipes in there I'll be trying soon.

Much easier than it looks, but there is some technique involved for "serious" sourdough which produces truly "artisan" (a bit of an overused term) results. The shortcut is to look up Jim Lahey's no knead bread recipe. Great results with much less work.

You're right, it is down. Seems the domain name registration has lapsed. Hope he gets it renewed. That was a good site.

Got so close I had to wipe glaze off my iPhone. Hope she's happy.

True on all points. I think it's jumped into the lineup here as well. Just an awesome dish.

If you haven't done this Adam Perry Lang recipe, you really need to. Lots of flavors going on here. My daughter, the photo editor for the school newspaper, is always telling me to get closer. So here it is:

Must be pork night! Looks great as always.

Bruce, a starter is the first step to great bread. It is a commitment to caring and feeding. Here's what Breadhead posted over at Amazing Ribs to get me going: In a cereal bowl put in 50 grams of bread flour and 50 grams of Whole Wheat flour. Add 100 grams of water. Stir it with a spoon. When you're done stirring wet your thumb and index finger of the hand the spoon is not in with water. Put the dough stuck to the spoon back in the bowl. Seal the bowl with plastic wrap. Leave it out on your kitchen counter. In 3 or 4 days your starter will start producing bubbles to the point it will look like your old starter did when it was active. It's faking you out though. It's not ready to use yet. Dump out 100 grams and feed it 25 grams of bread flour, 25 grams of WW flour and 50 grams of water. Stir it up, cover it up with plastic wrap and leave it on your counter top. At this point it will go dormant and the inexperienced person will think their attempt at making a sourdough starter has failed. What is happening is the 2 different types of bacteria in your culture have quit doing what they are supposed to do because they are battling each other for position inside the culture. They quit eating and digesting flour and water so... There will be no more bubbles during this part of the process and you will think this starter has failed. It's important from the first time you dumped and fed your starter you do the exact same dump and feed every 24 hours from that day on, even though there is no, zero, zilch activity in your starter. After about 6 or 7 days of being dormant you will wake up one morning, look at your new starter and it will be fully bloomed. You will smile and think, woohoo, I did it! But, it's probably still not ready to make dough with just yet, close though. Dump and feed it 2 more days just like before. This is how you test your starter to determine if it is ready to levin dough with. Fill up a water glass with water. Get a teaspoon and wet it with water. Scoop a teaspoon of your starter out of the cereal bowl and dump it in the water glass... If it floats it ready to use to make pizza dough or a loaf of sourdough bread with. If it sinks, it's not active enough to use yet. I'm keeping the size of this culture very small during this process because you're going to dump out and waste to much flour if we did this on a bigger scale. After the culture becomes strong, healthy and happy, if you want to make it larger just feed it a bigger quantity of flour and water, 100, 200 or 300 grams of flour and water and in less than 24 hours that quantity of starter will pass the float test. Always feed your starter equal amounts of flour and water... That means your starter will be a 100% hydration starter. Bakers like 100% starters because it makes it easy for them to mix with their other ingredients knowing that the starter is exactly 50% flour and 50% water. That way they can scale a dough recipe up or down without using a calculator. The starter you will have at this point will not be very tangy, it will be very mild. There is a way to manipulate your starter so it will become very tangy. Let me know if you want to do that and I'll walk you through it. It's that easy and it's almost fail proof... Give it a try.

That's exactly what I was going for! A piece of a tree.

Nice looking pork! I love Oakridge Secret Weapon. Have also used Dizzy Dust. If you want to try something a bit different sometime, Simply Marvelous Spicy Apple is a nice twist.

No, it didn't.

66% Hydration overnight pre-ferment loaf using around 7-8 grams of my starter. Just bread flour in this one. What my daughter asked for. Great oven spring -- busted it's own seam outside of my scoring: That's about the color I'm looking for. Let's pull it. Cooling: Came out great! That's the crumb I was hoping for: I need to bake more bread.

Well the 270 sold over the weekend. It lives in Ohio now. Patio is now clear for another KK...in February. I mean it this time. Lol!

Pretty sure what you saw was a billy goat.

Looks awesome! What's the seasoning on the salmon and sauce on the pasta? I see capers, so something piccata like?

@skreef pointed me to this: http://dragon.namegeneratorfun.com Mine came up as Haris SourWings the Destroyer. Doesn't quite roll off the tongue the way I'd hoped, though. I think my KK will be unnamed until I get a second one. Then they'll be named something clever like "Big" and "Little"

Wow! How do you forget to put 700 lbs on a truck? Sorry to hear, but once you're cooking on it all will be right in the world.