Tips on Choosing Fish

Scene on "foodie's diary - seattle"

• slimy, aspic on top of fish = freshness
• scales - want to feel it..if can't feel it, fish was thrown around and mishandled after it was caught
• halibut - green hue is good
• ling cod - BAD - inside flesh is reddish - means the fish struggled at death therefore blood taste in the flesh
• long cod - GOOD - inside is white and no red in the flesh - no struggle, clean taste
  

Bread Lessons

after baking bread every 3 days for the past month, i have learned a few things:

1. to get bigger holes in the bread, don't fully degas it when u punch down the dough after the benchproofing
2. to get a thick crispy crust, u need to pull and stretch the dough when shaping
3. if all u do is shape it without stretching dough over itself when making the baton shape for baguette, the baguette might have bigger holes and still taste fine, but its crust will be soft
4. baking with tiles on the 2nd notch up from the oven bottom is best...any lower and the bottom burns
5. don't spray tops of the bread too much when it first goes in the oven....it makes the crust unable to get crisphy
6. when slashing for the baguette ears, a serrated blade is better than any utility blade or kitchen knife
7. slashing strokes need to be fast and deep
8. not deep enough and the slashes fill fill up
9. baguette slashes need to come from a near horizontal angle. if its vertical, the bread will just open up, not fold ears
10. best to let the shaped baguette dough rise on a cylinder (i made my own using poster cardboard tubes) lined with a floured lint-free towel
11. when sliding the dough from the towel to the floured board (to help with putting dough into the oven), just roll it off into it
12. breads need to be rotated after the initial 10-15 minutes
13. breads are easiest to shape when there is no flour around and the table is slightly wet so the dough sticks slightly to it.
14. breads need lots of time to rise after shaping or else it won't get enough oven spring to give it a nice shape