Several people responded to my plea for help yesterday, all with the same basic suggestion: take the sheet pans out halfway through cooking and swap them (also turn them 180 degrees). Today, I made chocolate chip cookies and followed that advice, and both sets of cookies came out with a very similar degree of doneness. Thanks, Jessica, Lucinda, Mike, and Françoise!

We went out for a walk before going to services at Shir Hadash; the vultures were back at our neighbor’s house. I don’t know what they’re looking for, but they seem to have found a home.

We’re about to watch Die Hard for the first time ever; it seems appropriate for tonight.

Whatever you celebrate at this time of year, I hope you enjoy it! Happy Hanukkah, Merry Christmas, and Blessed Yule!

I made pretzels this afternoon, following the King Arthur recipe as usual. I always need two baking sheets to hold the entire batch, and the pretzels on the top sheet always cook faster than the ones on the bottom sheet.

Today, the pretzels on the top sheet were completely baked to a nice dark color in 14 minutes. After I took them out, I moved the bottom sheet to the top rack and baked them for three more minutes, but they were still not nearly as dark as the ones that had been on the top rack the whole time, as you can see in the photo below.

Baking friends, any suggestions on ways to get the two batches to cook more evenly? I guess I could bake the two batches serially – if I did that, would I have to wait to boil the second batch, too?