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phcooks

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shrimp

shrimp (7/123)

  1. 2 words: Fruit and Fiber (OK three). Replace weekday lunch with 3-5 fresh fruits: Banana, apple, pear,grapes, orange, melon, grapefruit etc and one serving of dietary fiber (about 2 Tspns dissolved in an 8 oz glasss of water). Drink the fiber first then eat the fruit for the obvious reason that fruit tastes so much better. When you must eat lunch out, drink the fiber before. Rules: Never drink calories unless they have alcohol in them and are thus comsidered therapy, not food. Never drink your fruit unless as above somebody has spent a lot of time, science and art turning it into wine. Never skip a healthy breakfast, cereal, eggs, fruit, no meat, no refined sugar, no donuts, coffe cake, muffins etc No snacking between meals (fruit is OK) Make sure that dinner is everything you want it to be, every night, as long as you want red meat no more than once a week and vegetables and salad are included! Make Fish twice a week, make a vegetarian meal twice a week (should not be too hard for an enterprising foodie) and round it out with poultry and pork. Finally, enjoy some form of exercise every other day of which 3 out of 4 are cardio. You will lose weight, your bad colesterol will go down, the good will come up, you will feel great and you will still look forward to a great dinner every night!
  2. If anybody is interested there is a great bread board? blog? ...place, called "The Fresh Loaf" where amateur bakers and enthusiasts gather to exchange recipees, technique and discuss (and display) results. www.TheFreshLoaf.com. The thread on the NY times article is quite extensive there. It has good practical ideas/advice on sour dough and pretty much all kinds of baking.
  3. I've made the bread twice, using roughly measured cups of flour (stick the cup in the flour bag, shake it level and throw it in the bowl) and the bread has worked beautifully both times. When first mixed, the dough is not slack at all, almost looks like one of those biscuit type doughs where one is admonished to not over mix. I would guess that those who are getting batter like results at first are adding too much water. After 18 hours it becomes quite slack but still holds together when I dump/scrape it out on the surface to to fold. Once folded and shaped I have found it useful to let let it rise on a plate/platter (on a well floured dish towel) that has raised edges that contains the edges of the dough a little, encouraging vertical rise. Obviosly one that mimics the shape of the baking vessel. Since I'm baking an oval loaf I'm using an oval serving platter for the final rise. It also facilitates the final plop into the superheated baking vessel as you can hold the edges of the dishtowel and the platter together and simply tip the dough in.
  4. From Reinhart, BBA, p. 32: "There are 25% more living yeast cells per teaspoon than in an equal amount of active dry yeast, and there are 3 times (300%) more living cells than in an equal amount of fresh compressed yeast" and "The reasons I [Reinhart] prefer instant yeast are simple: It's more concentrated than fresh or active dry yeast, it has a longer shelf life, and it can be added to the flour [directly] instead of hydrating first."
  5. As I look at my pile of CI's, i was a subscriber for a couple of years in the 90's, Iv'e come to the conclusion that their only redeeming value/s are the lovely color ilustrations on the back cover. Whats in between the covers...well I think most people have said it already; bland (obvious) recipes, overwrought technique, pedestrian taste (arogant pedestrian taste) and sometimes inexplicable ratings. Having said all that, I'm keeping them (not only for the back covers) but also as a gift for my college age daughter. When the day comes that she decides to learn how to cook I think they could be a good practical primer for the novice home cook.
  6. I made this bread immediately. Total labor: 3 minutes, 10 minutes if you include clean up. It really is great bread, complex flavor and a truly crispy/delicate crust. Mixed it Wednesday, baked it yesterday, ate 1/2 last night, eating 1/2 tonight. Other than scheduling around the 12-18 hour sitting time and 2 hour final rise it was a piece of cake. I used an oval covered clay roaster that somebody gave me eons ago (it has finally found it's function in life, i was a little worried that it would crack when I dropped the room temp dough into the 475 degree clay-- but no worries) so I got a nice oval loaf. I think that the overproofing is avoided because of the relatively small amount of yeast: 1/4 tspn for 3 cups of flour and the lack of easy food source for the yeast (no sugar, no oil). Basically the yeast has to live off flour alone so its growth is not as quick. These are the classic ingredients of french bread: flour, water and yeast and the results are truly astonishing considering how easy it was to make. Tough to make more complex breads because of the distribution issues--this is not a kneaded bread! Obviously different flours, nut flours, maybe finely grated hard cheese could be used as long as everything is thouroughly blended before the water is added.
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