Pizza making around here follows an annual cycle. Since getting a portable, outdoor pizza oven, summers are devoted to Neapolitan-style pies. But in winter, when it’s too cold for the outdoor oven (I found that the Ooni struggles to stay hot enough when it’s below 20º out, plus who wants to walk out there?) we […]

The first time I ever ate a Manwich sloppy joe, I thought it was so weird — and definitely not a sloppy joe. It’s not that I’m a snob about food the comes out of a can. It was because, growing up, this is how my family made sloppy joes: Cook some minced onion and […]

We almost missed observing Våffeldagen this year! I threw together my basic pancake batter and poured that in the waffle iron and the holiday was saved, but if I actually plan ahead, my favorite waffle batter recipe is the yeasted waffles from the March/April 2004 Cook’s Illustrated.

This is not a post about why pancakes made from scratch are better than pancakes made from a mix. Pancake mix is fine. I grew up eating pancakes made from Bisquick, and while I haven’t had a Bisquick pancake in a while, if I did I bet I’d enjoy it a lot. But I don’t […]

Continuing my rye kick, for St. Patrick’s Day I decided to try to make soda bread using only rye flour. I started from a brown soda bread recipe from Cook’s Illustrated. That recipe called for a roughly fifty-fifty mix of white and whole wheat flours, with some wheat bran also thrown in, and enough buttermilk […]

Quiche was on the menu tonight. I decided to try making the crust with rye flour, figuring the toasted/nutty flavors of rye would be good with savory quiche fillings. In the food processor I combined: 4.3 oz bread flour 2 oz rye flour 1 tsp sugar 1 tsp? kosher salt After mixing that I added […]

Hearth Breads in a Toaster Oven

I’ve struggled with the best way to cook pork loin, which tends to come out dry (there’s not a lot of fat in it). Tonight, I think I figured out the solution: Blast it at high heat till it’s almost done. I’ve tried the low and slow approach, with a sear at the end, but […]

THINK about it

It’s the kind of claim I’d normally dismiss out of hand: a from-scratch Neapolitan style pie in about one hour, start-to-finish. Everyone knows you need at least an overnight fermentation to get good pizza dough, and two days doesn’t hurt. If it had just been published on some foodie blog I probably wouldn’t have given […]