Food Smokers and Smoking Tips/Tricks/Techniques

Got a bread machine? Use it make the dough. Check out my recipe in the bread thread. Easy and damned good.

 

I had one years ago, sold it and never did buy a new one. We do have a Kitchenaid with dough hook and that works decent.

 

Didn't get a chance to cook my homemade bacon today for BLT's for lunch. Found a capsteak, small ribeye and 2 sirloins that I pulled at the same time. So got to use some of the bacon tonight.



Cold front moved through and brought winter back again. Did someone say GrillGrates?

 

I hate unitaskers. So a bread machine isn't happening. A stand mixer, however, just may.

Took me 4 damn hours to make the naan. Most of that was due to waiting on the yeast to bloom. Pitched at 110, and waited and waited. Thinking the house was too cold, put it in the oven on warm. Still nothing...

Then I added some sugar to the water. Stupid sonofabitch. Oh look, now they are happy...

I guess it must be a climate thing, but I needed twice the flour. I used bread flour, maybe that made a difference. At any rate I nearly threw it out several times, but persevered and ended up with a quite nice dough, actually.

Should have kneaded some garlic into it, maybe some minced onion. It's a tad plain, but by no means terrible. I can't tell the yogurt is in it....

Still and all, it should be good for sopping up the tika masala sauce when I cook tomorrow night. Not a bad first go.

Oh, and as you can tell, I learned the hard way you have GOT to watch them cook. This one inflated on me and got too close to the broiler element. Next time I think I will make them on a grill pan. I will also cut the dough into 12 pieces, likely, to make each smaller. They are about 10-12" as it stands now. That's a LOT of bread.

 

The dark parts are atill probably quite good.

 

Finally seasoned up the Blackstone....first run boogers and bacon.


Gotta figure out the temps.

 

After emailing Masterbuilt about my door, they said a new one was $60. Messaged them on Instagram and:



They sent me a new one for free!

 

Send it back!! It’s upside down!!

 

The hinge pin is also bent.

 

I think a torch and a 5lb hammer will fix it.

 

Very, very crisp. I ended up diverting from the recipe a bit on my later ones- didn't moisten my hands and thus the dough before putting them on the stone, and cooked for about 90 seconds a side so the consistency is more flexible and the bread isn't as dark. Basically making it more along the lines of a pita. Having said that, I wonder now what the difference is between this and a pita?

Most of the issues were just my readjusting to making dough. I haven't baked in about 8 years. I will do this again. I may get lazy, though, and buy a doughball from Publix. The bread is basically just a white bread dough, but I will be much more inclined to experiment with kneading in things.

 

Looks pretty damn perfect to me...

 

I’m going to have to give this a try. I think the main diff between naan and pita is usually the cooking method and naan always seems to be a little thinner and more pliable to me.

 

what recipe did you use? Also most recipes that have yeast will add some sugar to the yeast slurry to get them going. I think pita bread has more whole wheat flour vs plain white flour, lots of similarities to "flatbreads" around the world.

 

I started with the recipe posted earlier in this thread (sorry, don't recall the poster, but it was yesterday), but it wound up being more along the lines of this one: https://www.allrecipes.com/recipe/14565/naan/ due to the flour content- I had to add about 2.5 cups more flour than called for in that first recipe. That is going to be weather-specific to some degree, of course. At 2c flour, all I had was a very thin pudding sort of thing going on. Nearly chucked it, but kept experimenting, adding more and more flour, encouraged as I saw it start to come together into one mass as I stirred. My least favorite part of doughmaking is getting stuff stuck to my fingers, so I am pondering a stand mixer purchase now. I would love to be able to adapt this to a low-carb bread recipe, as it seems that tortillas last a lot longer than loaf bread, and I have to wonder if that holds true for naan as well. If nothing else, I could make them once a week rather easily with a mixer.

 

Dough takes patience, time and the right temps. Most recipes for breads say room temp...BUT Ive had best results in 80-90 temps...well above "room temp".

https://www.kingarthurflour.com/shop/items/bread-proofing-box

 

Turn the light on in your oven and it will typically keep it 80+ degrees. Perfect for Proofing. It only speeds up the process. It will still proof at 70*, but take longer.

 

Just an FYI, we have a bread thread.......

https://www.tacomaworld.com/threads/bread-any-kind.525677/