Guess I'll try that tonight and finally stop eating sad, floppy fries.

My buddy's kid once grabbed his circular saw while he was getting a glass of water. Didn't even have time to yell before the kid flipped the switch and the blade caught the edge of a workbench, kicking back and slicing his own leg open. Nine stitches and a lot of therapy later, he keeps everything locked up now. Is that one freak accident really worth the gamble just to avoid locking a cabinet?

I've actually had the exact opposite experience with that same Cedar Creek butter. I used their 82% butter in a croissant recipe at 80% hydration and got the best lamination I've ever had, clean layers with a really defined honeycomb inside. The extra moisture actually helped me get a better oven spring because it created more steam early on which lifted the dough before the fat could melt out. I think people overstate the 84% thing, I've had more problems with Plugrá being too stiff and cracking in my dough than I ever have with a good local butter that's a little softer.

Two months of calling about my own broken lock and they finally fixed it last week, so I feel this on a deep level. It's like they wait to see if you'll just give up and go away, which is honestly exhausting when you're trying to do the right thing. Good for you for hanging in there, seriously, because most people would have thrown in the towel months ago.

Wait, has anybody thought about what kind of wood you're using and how wet it is... Like, I swear if your wood isn't seasoned right, one or two chunks can put out way more smoke than ten dry chunks. That old pitmaster might've been seeing your wood was still green or full of sap, and that's what he meant by "too much" smoke. I've made that mistake before with hickory that wasn't cured long enough, and my meat came out tasting like a campfire. Could also be about what kind of cooker you run, some smokers are just way more efficient at holding smoke in. So maybe it's not the number of chunks, but the quality and your setup that matters most.