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Aren’t dogs carnivores? And if they are, why do we feed them grain and vegetables? A very interesting question, reader Dianne, I’ll do my best. Though dogs are natural hunters, they aren’t strictly speaking carnivores. Sometimes they’re classified as omnivores, but that doesn’t quite capture it either, since dogs can’t make a living eating shoots […]

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Where dog biscuits don’t come from.

London. That’s where they were supposedly invented by accident, sometime in the 1880’s. A popular myth has it that they were invented at a butcher shop, one whose owner was experimenting with a savory biscuit recipe (for humans). The biscuits were so bad, it’s said, he was forced to feed them to his customers’ dogs, […]

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Hey all you iPad users…

Reader Brian sent me this image, showing me just how cool joepastry.com looks fed into the nifty news aggregator, Pulse. The New York Times may not approve of Pulse, but I certainly do. I mean, what better addition to your day than a steady stream of Joe Pastry posts? Plus there are all sorts of […]

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The Uptight Gourmet Cooks Italian

Love Italian food but abhor the mess it makes in your kitchen? Then this recipe is for you. A full-on cheesy lasagna that bakes up in the hot, watery environment of the dishwasher. Mrs. Pastry loves to tease me because I start cleaning the moment I stop cooking. Imagine my excitement when I discovered a […]

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Geek’s Corner: Cold Fermentation vs. Epoxy

I’ve been having some fascinating discussions with a few readers via email, all about Peter Reinhart and the evolution of his whole wheat sandwich bread recipe. The conversations began when three readers alerted me to the fact that Reinhart updated his recipe in his most recent book, Peter Reinhart’s Artisan Breads Every Day. Essentially, he […]

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White Flour: Is it Evil?

You hear a lot of wacky conspiracy theories at the fringes of the whole grain baking movement. About how white flour is a conspiracy by General Mills and Hostess to keep us on a steady diet of nutritionally vacant foods, how it’s a Western tool for addicting non-wheat eating cultures to cheap and abundant carbs, […]

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