tekobo

Help! I have been working on my leaven and trying to pass the "float test" as set in the Tartine book. First time I tried I managed to get a piece of leaven to float about 24 hours after I refreshed it. I tried yesterday and the leaven looked good and lively after 12 hours but would not float. Went to bed and 24 hours from refresh the leaven looked flat as a pancake. I have re-started the starter and will see what it looks like in the morning. Should I just trust my instincts and ignore the float test?

Hi @Longhorn203. In order to decide what you need, people often ask how you normally cook and how many for. The problem with that question is that it limits you to what you currently do and doesn't take account of what you might discover you want to do once you get your hands on a KK. I have never subscribed to the go big or go home philosophy but I would say that something as simple as wanting to cook a full size baguette or brisket might make you regret not having a slightly bigger grill. On the other hand, money in the bank or more accessories may be more useful to you. If you put a gun to my head and made me choose I would go for my 23. More room and more versatility with the half grate and ability to approximate to two zone cooking. Take the gun away and I would struggle to give up my 21.

I have used a controller once in the two years plus that I have owned my KKs. All the fuss of fiddling with wires and fans just doesn't seem necessary when the KK behaves so reliably once you work out your top damper settings for different temps. Technique is the same as many people describe elsewhere on the forum. For a low and slow light in one spot, open up top damper and bottom vent until you are about 50 degrees off your target temp. Wind back top vent to just off the seat for low and slow. Have fun with the toys but it may well be easier not to use them.

Ha. I don't know if you Americans also use the expression "giving it the finger". Looks like you are giving the MEATER the finger. And with justification, looking at how well your cook turned out.

Very interesting. Particularly the fact that you started the cook from frozen. One to experiment with methnks.

I'm jealous. Not of the hunting bit but of your access to wild ducks. And quail. I wonder if pricking the skin all over would help? You would still get the self basting but a crispier skin? I don't cook duck very often and would normally avoid it on the roti for fear of fat flare ups. Will try your method and see how I go.

Very nice looking Ducky @Tyrus. I am curious about how you cooked it. Was it indirect all the way? It looks like you have a cover/shield on both sides of the basket. Neat.

Wow. I remembered you posting before @Ticket2ride04 and went back to read one of your old posts. You were thinking of matte black at the time. Big change to be going for metallic bronze. I applaud your choice, it is a fun tile. Note the fact that it is a tile though. Pebbles still cook better...

Ha ha. Think kumbaya and you will be close with Cwmbran. I started working in Wales just over a year ago and was horrified by the fact that a) I would not be able to call people by their names because they were so unfamiliar and b) I would not be able to do my job because it involved lots of place names and it would be disrespectful to talk about point A to point B. Luckily, a friend near home recommended a local professor who happens to be Welsh and was willing to sit with me and take me through reading and pronouncing Welsh words. I got a database of Welsh place names and a list of the most common boys' and girls' names and we worked our way through them. I am no expert but I flounder a lot less now!

@Jon B. I too love hard boiled eggs. I think having the capacity to cook 12 at once would blow my mind! One egg sliced, on toast with sardines works just fine for me. In fact, I think I need to have one of those very soon. A bit of added cheese wouldn't do any harm. Gross, I know.

Well, I found a "solution" to getting a more sour taste in a most unusual place. We visited a meat heavy restaurant in Wales on Wednesday (called Ynyshir) and one of their courses came with a great sourdough loaf. It turns out they age the dough for their loaves for seven days before baking. Now, I knew about aging dough for pizzas but it never occured to me to age dough for a loaf of bread. Will see how it turns out.

I did this the other way round. I bought the book on Amazon, thinking I would return it if I don't like it, and then I found the google preview. How interesting. I won't be returning the book when it arrives tomorrow. Thank you for the recommendation. At first I thought it was stupidly expensive at £47 in the UK. When I saw that it costs $165 in the US, it felt like a bargain by the time I added it to cart. I started to check your maths, just for the hell of it, even though I know that is your area of expertise. Then I thought about how very very small the amount of active ingredient there would be in the sifted flour and how much might be lost through sifting. Do you really see a difference when you do this? I guess you do, otherwise you wouldn't bother. I do not have your scientific sieves for the fresh milled flour. So far I did an initial sift with my standard home sieve and ended up taking out about 10% of the weight. Am I right in guessing that about 75%-80% extraction is a good target?

Wow. That looks like the best beef roll ever. I want one!

I have been working my way through the Tartine lexicon. I tried the rye bread from their Tartine Bread book. I found the dough a bit wet and the first loaf stuck to my peel. Used lots more flour the second time and remembered to get the steam going on the second loaf, it's the one on the left. This should make others laugh. I was very rude about @Pequod's fresh milled fun i.e. the fact that he, and others, were bothering to mill their own flour. I have given in. This is my new mill working on some rye this morning. I am going back to a 100% rye recipe that uses rye flour, rye leaven AND cooked and soaked rye grains. I last made it in 2008 and my notes in the book say it was "disastrously bad". I also said that I used too much soaked grain and that I would try again. The time has come and I will try it out later this week once the leaven has bubbled up.

I look forward to seeing more of your bakes soon @Basher

Thanks All. I had to fly up North for business and landed back down South last night in the middle of a raging storm. I am sure we were safe throughout but I was sufficiently unsettled to be looking for some comfort food when I got home. Happily, the salt beef was sitting in the water bath, nice and warm on my return. Nothing fancy - a nice, comforting salt beef and pickled cucumber sandwich on rye. I made the 20% ish rye Tartine bread. Not enough rye for me so I will be trying another recipe this weekend. The salt beef? A little grey because I didn't use salt petre. Very tasty. Needs more fat. Back to brisket next time.

Yup. My MEATER stopped working and I returned it to the company for a fix. They looked up my online data and said I had taken the device over the recommended temp and that I had voided the warranty. Thankfully, they were nice and replaced it anyway.

This sandwich has been a few weeks in the making. I started the kraut exactly a month ago today, inspired by a huge, overgrown beetroot from the allotment that needed to be processed into something good. I found a recipe with that used beet, cabbage, onion and green beans. The kraut has been sitting quietly in the corner of our dining room for the last month, fermenting away in this crock pot. I tasted it today and it was just right. A bright sour taste. Into jars and into the fridge. I have made salt beef a few times using this recipe: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/home/moslive/article-1359876/Salt-beef-You-make-dont-forget-tell-half.html I usually use rolled brisket but this time I bought a hind quarter of beef and so used a silverside instead. Less fat. I hope that won't mean less taste. The salt beef has been in the cure for a week and, usually, the next step requires me to boil it for about three hours. We are going out this evening and I wondered if I could cook the salt beef sous vide instead. I looked up a few recipes online and they ranged from 48 hrs to 3 days at 60C. Given I am due to be away for work and will return at about the 60 hr limit, this seemed ideal. Here is the beef vacuum packed: I have put the sous vide machine on my husband's work bench in the plant room. I have also told him it is meant to be there and I have not forgotten it.. All that remains is to make the rye bread for the sandwich of the year. The shaped loaves are just waiting to go in the KK. I am looking forward to this sandwich. A fair bit of effort but a lot cheaper than a ticket to New York.

It took me a long time to get to the stage where I wanted to post any bread pictures. Mac put up with a lot of my wild ideas en route. For some reason I decided that, in order to amp up the sour in my sour dough, I ought to leave my leaven for two weeks between refreshes. How wrong was I?? My dough was flat and wet and I ended up with this misshapen loaf. The other loaf in the same batch came out ok, just. I now refresh my leaven the day before I want to use it. It grows beautifully in the warmth of the kitchen and makes nice plump and sufficiently sour loaves. Hurrah.

I came across a technique for IDK pizza cooking which uses two steels: https://shop.bakingsteel.com/collections/steels/products/respect-the-craft-baking-steels Curious. Would this be of benefit in a KK?

I have spent the last few months practising bread making in the KK. Thank you to all who have gone before for all your guidance. This post is a chance to document what I have learned and to ask others to share their journeys too. First, taking inspiration from @Pequod's KK as a steam oven post and @Syzygies' updates, here is all the kit set up in my KK, See here if you want to learn more: I heat soak the KK and contents for at least an hour before introducing the shaped loaf and, very quickly afterwards, some chunks of ice onto the aluminium disc below. Before I did it I was really worried about how to introduce the ice and anticipated a big, dangerous whoosh of steam. It is more gentle than that and, once the ice is in, I shut the lid quickly to get this: 492D96A9-6CE0-476E-A2A3-A0114D77ADF5.mov It is too cold to stand outside checking how long the steam lasts. Will do that one day. My ambition was to test the difference between a loaf cooked without steam: and one cooked with: The one cooked with steam is prettier. I do not have the right vocabulary to describe the bread, yet, but we found the crust on the steam cooked loaf more pliable. I cannot for the life of me remember which loaf was which in the next picture. I think the steamed one is on the left. More experimenting to do and I am looking forward to making baguettes soon.

This wife has discovered the jet washer and is loving it. Clears all in its way and leaves everything moss/slime free without chemicals. I agree about planting a BBQ garden - paving and kit much lower maintenance than lawns!

Happy New Year to you All! Spent yesterday evening making Mai Tai jelly shots for our NYE party. Tasted one this morning. Wow! I think we are going to have to set a two jelly shot limit. The tequila pannacottas are pretty good too. I think I need a lie down.

Hmmm. I like the look of that recipe @Troble. Thanks for posting.

Congratulations Lars! Your burgers looked great and I look forward to seeing how you get on with your Christmas duck.