Like ssommerville, I don't think I've ever gotten anything but very appreciative comments from any man I've cooked for. Women who don't cook themselves are often another story. They pay back-handed compliments like, "Gosh, I can't believe how much time and effort this entailed. Do you cook like this every day?" From the (slightly patronizing) tone of their voices and the (wide-eyed, innocent) look on their faces, it's so easy to tell what they're really thinking... that I must be an airhead, with too much free time on my hands and too few meaningful skills. Sorta like a kid who takes vocational classes instead of AP college courses. Sure, it's aggravating, but who gets the last laugh? Okay, true story. Last time this happened to me was at a Super Bowl party. A woman I know very casually thought she'd put me down so cleverly with a comment like that that I wasn't even aware of the slam. I just smiled and thanked her for the compliment, because she was the one who was clueless. What she didn't know was that her son had just picked at the Christmas dinner she'd arranged (at untold expense) through the caterer. Then he'd rushed over to my house to pig out on home cookin'. He called and begged for an invitation. I swore a blood oath never to tell. :) So why get mad at the woman for her ignorance? All I felt for her was pity. Imo, these silly people need to conduct a survey of their children/grandchildren. Assuming they got honest answers, I think they'd be absolutely shocked at how much it means to a kid to grow up in a home where family dinners are important, where holiday meals are a very big deal, where food traditions are treasured and preserved. For those of you with young families, I'll just share my experience after a lifetime of spending 'too much time' in the kitchen. First, my grown children still come home. A lot. I'm sure that my personality and charm and sparkling wit are all big draws. :) But it doesn't hurt that they know they'll get a delicious meal thrown into the bargain when they visit. Secondly, it has been an unexpected joy that their friends still stay in touch. Somehow this food thing has forged a strong bond. I hear other parents comment sadly that they never see the kids their children grew up with anymore. Funny, 3 of them were at my house for dinner last Sunday night. We had the most wonderful time eating chicken enchiladas and drinking Coronas and reminiscing about 'the good old days' -- which, in this case, went back to when they were in pre-school. When they buy their first home and I ask what they'd like for a house-warming gift, they invariably say all they want is a copy of our family cookbook. When they get married, they invariably ask me to teach their new brides to make a favorite dish. When their first child is about to be christened, they call and ask if it would be just tooo much trouble to make (whatever) for the party. It's just incredibly flattering to still feel like I'm an important part of their lives long after they no longer need me to drive them to soccer practice... The third thing is -- and, hey, it may not be pretty, but it has to be said -- I make their in-laws all look sick. lol Now, I'm all about sharing. But, seriously, can I be blamed if everybody is working hard to figure out how to spend most of the holidays at my house?? :)) Last, but definitely not least, my kids turned out to be darned good cooks and gracious hosts. Since they were all boys, I didn't make a huge effort to teach them to cook. (Sexist, I know...) But they just absorbed so much. Most importantly, they developed an appreciation of homemade and a loathing of 'fast food', so cooking for themselves later on seemed more of a pleasure than a burden. And since their friends always gravitated to our house for dinner, they're totally comfortable in the role of host. So if anybody denigrates your efforts, just write them off as an idiot and move on. Stepping down off my soapbox now...... sm

Although it seems like a forgiving dough - I can taste that I cheated on the overnight ferment. Sorry your casserole dishes aren't big enough. I bake in a toaster oven so when my bread rises it burns on top. Another reason P a L'A is good - it spreads out more than up. I brush the bread with some slightly salty water right before it goes in the oven. But I lose that lovely floury rustic surface. Do you have a pizza stone? That helped me get a better crust back when I last had an oven - now I use it in my grill to make pitas. Also I read somewhere or another about using a SS restaurant dish lid as a cloche though I've never seen one large enough. I am currently jealously watching a neighbor build a stone wood-fired bread oven by his pond - the ultimate bread oven. He says he will advise me when I am ready to build one - and I definitely do not lack for rocks. However right now my 'yard' is festooned with logs, brush and firewood piles. Hopefully in the near future the logs will become a woodshed and I can move the firewood inside. Then maybe a bread oven - which will entail moving rocks. I'm tired just thinking about it all. Making some tea and toast and taking a nap.

The reason lard works so well for pastry is the size of the fat crystal in lard is larger than in shortening or butter, so besides the flavor, there is some science to it. And definitely find fresh lard, not the boxed hydrogenated stuff at the grocery store. Cholesterol is essential for all animal life, and people tend to forget that now that the medical world has made billions of dollars off of it. In a test using lard, olive oil, corn oil and safflower oil, the life span of test animals fed diets containing these different fats had the highest survival rate with lard, and the shortest survival rate with safflower. Go figure.... From what I've studied on the subject, hydrogenated fats is where the problem is. I can get frozen fresh lard this time of the year at a local meat packing plant and I use it for a couple old family recipes for the holidays that aren't the same without it. If there is any lard left, I'll have good old fried chicken in a cast iron skillet. I think you had to be raised on lard to appreciate the flavor. A friend of ours has been a sales rep. for a paper goods distributor for 48-years. He was telling us the cardboard boxes for lard were his #1 seller for years, and now they don't even carry them. Times they are a changing.... -Grainlady

LL --> when I was designing our kitchen, I did trial prep and baking to see the space I would need. I found that cooking prep on the whole needed less space as the process was sequential and the tools and the ingredients are not out for the entire duration. Having a water source in a prep sink actually reduced the amount of space. The rinsed veggies can drain right over the sink instead of in a colander on the counter. Baking on other hand needed multiple ingredients out for a longer time and more specialist tools were needed. Shifters, bowl for dry ingredients, wet ingredients, parchment paper, brushes, spatulas, measuring cups, bowls of stuff. The work area for kneading and rolling was also more. I could not spare two large prep areas and figured that I am unlikely to cook and bake at the same time. At least not larger more complicated recipes. So 36in for baking area and 40+for the prep.