Our current home setup is, @antichrista handles school in the morning, I do all the meals. Here’s a look into what our kitchen is like. This morning I woke up at 6:30 and, for breakfast, I toasted bagels I’d made yesterday… I then took the bread dough I’d mixed last night (overnight, room-temp proof) and moved it to a banneton (a proofing basket). Then I fired up our outdoor smoker and put salmon in it; I had brined it two days ago, fridge-dried it overnight…

Quick story of parental pride: after the kids were in bed, I put on a Fritz Lang flick, ‘Ministry of Fear’ (1944). Olive walked in; couldn’t sleep. I thought she’d just fall asleep with me, watching this old b&w film, but instead… she stayed up to watch. It's a deeply weird, moody spy-noir, with an unpredictable plot and bizarre characters—just what you expect from Lang! It's also slow and moody. This is the first time she watched an "old movie" of this sort, I believe. And she was definitely taking it in!

Blue collar armadillo Two cool blue collar logos at once, I'll take it

I see Apple has updated the TestFlight icon again! Here's the one in the current iOS 14 betas. Even though I don't use TF much anymore, I keep an eye on the icon because I designed the original one… I designed the TestFlight icon ten years ago, when it was an independent service (and a pretty amazing one, compared to how iOS app-testing was supposed to be done at the time.) Here's my blog post on it from 2010… mrgan.tumblr.com/post/103735374…

When baking, I find stretching and folding to be crucial—it gives you a smooth, uniform dough, whether you knead or not. Last night I mixed no-knead bread dough and took pics each time I folded—30, 60, 90, 120 minutes after mixing: See how the dough goes from a shaggy mess to a nice ball? Here’s my folding move, btw. (This is a kneaded dough, but a similar approach works with stirred, no-knead dough. You just want to fold the bottom to the top.)

On our neighborhood walk this morning, Zel almost stepped on a snail a few blocks from our house. To make it up, he declared it was the snail’s birthday. First, he made a card… We then made the snail a birthday cake to go with the card… (“I ❤️ you Snaily. Dear Snaily, I’m sorry I squashed you…”)

Pizza! We made four pies tonight. (The kids are getting into it slowly.) Stay tuned and I’ll tell you a bit about baking steels, preheating, and temperature… But first! This one has spinach cream (heavy cream blended with cooked spinach), smoked Sulguni cheese, and chicken skin This is tomato-butter sauce, Provolone, fresh mozz, pickled Serrano peppers, shaved onion, and homemade fennel sausage. Classic combo!

I’m entering the New Wave era of my pizzamaking. Just putting random things in there and explaining it away as art. This one is 10% rice flour. What does that do? I have no idea. We’ll find out. While the oven is preheating, I stepped out to grab some herbs. (Recognize them?) I’m really into topping white pies with a ton of herbs.

Can you make pita bred in a pizza oven? Yes you can. Baked up in about 40 seconds, three at a time, rotating around the oven stone. (FWIWA you can do this in a home oven with a baking steel or stone as well, of course.)

Presenting: mayo pasta. A limited-pantry improvisation I like so much, I'll put it in regular rotation. How did it come about? Today is #carbonaraday, I'm told. You don't have to twist my arm to make it. However, we're out of the crucial ingredient: eggs. And it's not like we can just go shoping(sp?) for more. Then I remembered: mentaiko pasta……

Yesterday I got to use the brand-new @OoniHQ Koda 16, a portable, backyard pizza oven with a HUGE 16" deck. Wanna see it in action? Notice the L-shaped burners? (Btw it runs off a regular propane tank, like a gas grill.) More even cooking, PLUS you can see on the left how your pie is baking up.

Liveblogging (blogging?) focaccia today. Mixed the dough two days ago—all white flour, 80% hydration, rye sourdough starter. 4-hour bulk rise, then in the pan in the fridge for a few days. Here they are three hours out of the fridge. Bubbles already waking up. Dimple vid

Live-blogging pizza today. 10:30 AM, my sourdough balls come out out of the fridge. (Aiming to bake around 4:30.) We’ll see them again in four hours. Considering toppings until then. (This long pre-bake rest isn't something you should do with any dough—this particular sourdough recipe just requires it. 3-hour bulk rise after mixing, then a few days in the fridge, then this long second rise.)

I've been doing pizza parties with friends (we call them Pizza Speakeasy) for a while; today was supposed to be our biggest one yet—obviously, it's canceled. But while we can't make 30+ pizzas for 50+ people, we CAN all make pizza at home and share it with the tag #pizzaspeakeasy I believe I will be joined today by our host @ngaloppo and co-pizzaioli @ThisIsPizza and @pwillen1. Anyone else? I hear @Grafera is in. If you can cook pizza this evening (we're shooting for 5 PM PST, doesn't really matter) show us what you make!

I just dimpled my office-lunch focaccia and it bubbled so much, I'm on pins and needles waiting for it to bake up. It's like waiting in that midnight line n front of the record store to buy 'Kid A.' 😈

I’ll do a little thread on this, speaking as a lapsed MST3K super fan (I find the endless attempts to reinvent it ill-advised). I generally agree with the criticism here: the snark attitude is regrettable…

https://twitter.com/TyleKurner/status/1218724286887874560

However, most viewers wouldn’t have watched those movies (and their genres) at all otherwise, and if they had been forced to, they would’ve stopped watching ten minutes in. To some, that just gave more to mock—but not to all, I hope…

Yesterday I finished Chris Ware's new book, 'Rusty Brown,' and as is often the case with his work, I'm utterly overwhelmed. I feel it does a disservice to his amazing stories to discuss the sheer craft of it, but how can you not—the guy is in a league of his own. Look at this. He hand-draws, colors, and letters this. He does more graphic design in his "comics" than a Graphic Designer does at their job. Oh and of course he WRITES it, too.

A quick tale of design evolution: Makedo is a set of cardboard-creation tools, reusable screws. It lets you make things tape alone won't do for. It originally shipped with two tools: a saw/hole-punch, and a screwdriver… The saw was never that effective; it cut ragged lines. A good cardboard cutter works better. The screwdriver is good, BUT, you had to switch between it and the hole-punch a lot… So now, they offer a combo tool…

The logo and the packaging on this snap fastener brand are both super super hip Nice job, Copenhagen’s meatpacking district