Going to add this here (I along with the rest of the internet have apparently been infected with JLW’s move to make sourdough):
I also made a tray of sourdough focaccia; came out great (with ample proofing time)! I’ll share that too when I use some of it to make a sandwich using random other leftovers from the fridge…
ETA: I guess I could share yesterdays lunch too.
Pita bread, mozzarella, cheddar & ricotta grilled cheese, with a quick from scratch tomato soup:
More bread:
Same ciabatta-style no-knead recipe as last time, but with half the volume and baked in a small loaf tin.
Oh, wow. That looks seriously tasty. I just want to slather some butter on that and devour it in three bites.
Lovely food (no, really) but…can we talk about that table!!!
Bringing more food supplies tomorrow to my daughter who’s about an hour away, so I decided to make one of her favorite loaves: a semolina sandwich loaf:
OK, you natural-born bakers are really making me jealous (and hungry!). I can’t really bake to save my life, unless you count pizza.
Pizza counts! (erm… unless it’s frozen…)
The Chef John recipe I’m using is literally “mix flour, salt, yeast and water; wait eighteen hours; smoosh it into loaf shape; wait another two hours; half an hour in the oven”. You’d have to try pretty hard to mess it up.
Nope, I make my dough from scratch.
I love Chef John. 
He does make it easier, but for now I’ll let the folks in my house who are good with bread do their thing.
Ahh… sure!
So I made the table top about 10 years ago or so.
It is an edge glued 3/4" thick slab of ponderosa purchased from a big box hardware store.
I used a router to cut the design into it (ancestral puebloan rock art inspired sun spiral), carefully stained the two colors, filled in the router groove with a wood filler putty, painted said putty with a silver paint pen, and coated the whole thing with two part bar-top finish.
It’s had a few homes, including being bolted down to a purpose-built, multi-purpose base, but is currently just sitting on top of a rolling cart to provide more counter space in my cramped kitchen.
Breakfast of (Finnish) Champions?
No thanks.
Don’t kink shame.
Last day on the sausage.
Fully bloomed. Skins tend to be tight, the sausage will be darker and everything is dry to the touch.
I clip them apart with scissors. You don’t need to worry about knots or a seal on the end. Properly mixed and bloomed sausage the skins attach pretty firmly, the twists/ends will just shut themselves again. And the meat wants to hold it’s shape anyway.
Vacuum sealed they’re good in the freezer for like year. The sealer will squish them a bit, so it’s a good idea to stop the vacuum before it squeezes all the way down. But for the most part this won’t push any meat out of the casings, just make them a bit funny shaped. They’ll plump up nice and round during cooking.
Ended up with 30 finished sausages. Cooked five, vacuumed and froze the rest.
I’ll usually cook slow over indirect heat till they’re cooked through the middle and the skins start to crisp. Then finish over low to medium heat to brown them up. Also good roasted, and I think they’re best fried in a pan. These ended up a little light, it’s crazy windy and the grill kept blowing out.
The cracking mostly comes from over stuffing. And it’ll happen. You hear a lot about cooking sausage and burst skins. Or don’t poke it or the juices will run out. Don’t handle too much.
For the most part it’s not true. If the skin is all that’s holding the juice in your sausage it’s not very well made. Properly mixed and made the meat is gonna hold moisture and fat all by it’s lonesome. Skin or not. Sausages are often pricked and poked when their made to get air bubbles out (I tend not to bother). If you over cook the sausage all the juices will run out, and the sausage will get dry. Otherwise if it’s well put together it’ll put up with a hell of a lot.
Usual internal temp to shoot for is around 150F, that article also has the recipe for how I usually do these for parties.
That’s some German mustard and bit of red cabbage slaw on there. On a crappy bun we found in the back of the freezer. Something something shortages.
Beautiful work! Even with a router, cutting that spiral couldn’t have been easy.
Yeah, freehand / no guide with a router like that can be pretty sketchy. I still have visions of losing hold of the thing, having it fly off & cut a groove in my thigh…
And thank you! 
Fermentum-19 ?
