The hollow sound test is fairly standard, but I admit it's hard to tell for sure simply based on knocking on the loaf.

I'd use a standard time (say, 35-40 minutes for a free-form loaf) and then would use the color of the crust as the primary indicator of doneness (looking for a fair bit of browning and caramelization). You could take internal temperature with a meat probe, but that seems excessive. Finally, you could cut off the oven around 40 minutes and then crack the oven door to let the loaves coast a bit and firm up the insides.

I have a request for cauliflower. I bought 2 heads and will follow the recipe and try it out on Wednesday.

https://www.foodandwine.com/recipes/...ed-cauliflower

550 degrees!! I didn’t even know our oven went that high (yes it does!)

Well, we had an interesting day. Made rosemary bread with one son and nachos 🙄 with the other. I will say, both were huge hits. The teens esp enjoyed building their personal mountain of nachos and pork and beans and cheese and guacamole. Not exactly “cooking” but a successful dinner for the kids.

https://cimg1.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.fly...d72400b51.jpeg
https://cimg3.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.fly...5f4874c15.jpeg

Gorgeous nachos. Which cheese(s) do you use?

I’m almost embarrassed to tell you. Pancho’s cheese sauce. From Costco. My 20 year old basically has an IV feed of that stuff.

The dollop to left of guac is sour cream with some chipotle peppers in adobo sauce. Gives a nice kick and smoke flavor.

My suggestion if you have a large post, type it out in Microsoft Word first, then copy and paste it into a post. This will avoid having to retype it if your browser crashes in the future as well as allow you to edit it before posting. Just trying to help.

It's appreciated. I've been working from a laptop the last week while we get settled into a new place and I hadn't disabled the mousepad yet. I'll use that method in the future though and save myself some ripped hairs.

The recipe guideline is 40 minutes so your advice is sound. I like the idea of cutting the heat and cracking the oven door. Do you have a suggestion for time on half loaves? I was thinking of 5 minutes less. I’ll thump them but I’m not all that confident about what hollow will sound like.

I love cauliflower, but my favorite of all time is the dish served at Girl & The Goat here in Chicago. The recipe is all over the internet, maybe even still on the restaurant's site. Just Google "Girl and the goat cauliflower recipe" and I'm sure it will come up. There are a lot of ingredients and it takes a fair amount of prep time, but it's delicious. Worth a try if you get another request :).

5 minutes less is typically what I've used for smaller loaves, and so far, it has worked (10-15 minutes for the initial spring, 20 minutes for the bake). I had one which was a bit underdone in the middle back when I first started ramping up baking, but leaving the loaf parked in a warm oven for another 10 minutes or so solved that without burning the crust. What I typically do is toss the "finished" loaf into the upper oven compartment while I ramp the heat back up to 500 on my lower (convection) oven; I don't even have to run the upper oven, as it's fairly warm just from running the one under it.

And I agree that the sound is tough to go by and that I worry I'm into overdone territory by the time I get what I consider a hollow sound.

thanks - we used to go there and L’Auberge (when I used to eat foie gras) so I’ll check it out. I’ll do the cauliflower tonight but the easier recipe :-)

I’ve been watching a lot of food porn on Netflix. I showed my wife some interesting ones from Nadiya’s Time to Eat. She made a beef Wellington meatloaf type dish last week. This week, I’ve been craving a nice chicken pot pie. She made some today! A little underseasoned, but that was easily fixed with some salt and coarse black pepper.

I’m pretty lucky!

you’re like my spouse. Today I bought steak garnish (mint, cilantro, shallot, lime, lemongrass) and poached salmon gear (salmon, white wine). I had already bought the cauliflower. It’ll be hopefully yummy but I wouldn’t normally think of these items :-)

Interesting steak garnish....going for a little Thai flavor?
Report back (with pics) on the cauliflower please for when I go to the store again in a week and get some. Right now I am working my way through the pillowcase sized package of haricots vert that I got at Costco yesterday.

The steak garnish today was lime, cilantro, Red onion, and mint. A cute salad with steak slices on top. I just had steak slices with tortilla chips and salsa for the chips. I felt the steak was great enough to not need green garnish.