Search Results for '("C'

[Mike Nolan]

We have a butler's pantry with lots of cabinets for storing china (we have a very large collection of Fiesta, for example) and some other kitchen items.
Recently I added a 4 foot high metal shelving unit there to hold flour containers. I can't say it has created significantly more working space in the kitchen, though. Kitchen space is like Parkinson's law, stuff expands to fill the space--and then some.

[aaronatthedoublef]

I also get it. I want a working kitchen and my wife wants a show kitchen. I want everything to hand and she wants everything hidden. We rented a house that had an "appliance garage" which Kate loved. But it made the coffeemaker - something we use multiple times a day - almost unusable. I would have sheet pans out on metal shelving where I could store them immediately after washing (without drying).

And to Mike's point, we invariably end up entertaining in the kitchen. I remember an outdoor Halloween fire pit pizza party we had early in COVID times. We wanted everyone to stay outside because of COVID. We had a nice fire going with pizza and s'more stuff setup on tables. Everyone still ended up in the kitchen, standing around the island. And fortunately no one became sick...

[Mike Nolan]

Churros are made from dough that is essentially a choux paste. There are so many bad versions of churros out there (fast food Mexican places generally ruin them) that I seldom buy them any more, the street food vendors actually seem to do them better.

[Mike Nolan]

Shape definitely affects taste, though the effect can be subtle.

As an extreme example, consider making a boule (maximizing the interior) and a flatbread (maximizing the exterior) from the same batch of dough. If you want to take it one step further, make crackers or carta di musica.

We concluded this when we took a batch of dough (Reinhart's Pain de Campagne) and tried a variety of shapes: boules, baguettes, epis, fougasse, courunne. After baking we gave samples of them to friends, they were astonished to know all the loaves came from the same batch of dough.

A small boule can be a snack, like a pretzel bite, or a dinner roll. As the size increases, a large boule (like a miche) becomes a completely different experience.

I've been working on a taxonomy of bread shapes and techniques, separating out various factors, including things like bread pan vs free form breads. (A Pullman loaf is distinctly different from an open top pan loaf, too.) Dough that touches a solid surface bakes differently from dough that touches only air.

Braiding also seems to have an impact on taste, and there are literally dozens of braiding techniques. I can think of at least a half dozen 6-strand braids, and that's not yet counting the one from Deli Man, which Jeffrey Hamelman says is the same as one of the 6-strand braids in his book, though I still have my doubts.

Slashing and wash treatments may enter into it, too. (An epi, for example, starts out as a baguette.) I'm hoping to include toppings as well.

I'm working with a friend who is an expert in graphic analysis, what I'm hoping is to develop mathematical models of the major shapes so I can measure things like surface area and volume. This may allow me to compute the amount of outer crust, inner crust and interior, among other things.

I've discussed my theories on bread shape with a number of bakers, Peter Reinhart, among others, they're hoping I can pursue this to some kind of logical conclusion as to the effect shape has on taste.

[BakerAunt]

We were at my husband's cousins' reunion this week. The two pumpkin pies I took were well received. On Wednesday evening, I put together two pans of cinnamon rolls and parked them in the refrigerator overnight. I baked and glazed them the next morning. About five of the twenty-four made it back home with us, but only because some people had to leave a day early. I have been asked to bake both the pumpkin pies and the cinnamon rolls again.

Because there were so many of us in attendance, my husband, the dog, and I were in a separate little cabin a five-minute walk from the main house. One advantage was that it had its own small kitchen. The little gas stove worked perfectly. I had taken along an oven thermometer, and the oven is accurate. That was not the case with the double oven in the main house, both of which gave the bakers and cooks fits. The food came out delicious, but that was due to their skill.

We stopped by South Bend on the way home today, so that I could do some shopping. I stocked up on our favorite dill pickles at Big Lots, along with some Bob's Red Mill items. I also found a lovely (independent?) grocery store called Fresh Thyme that had BRM whole wheat pastry and BRM pastry flour. I was getting low on pastry flour, so these two five-pound bags should get me through pie season without having to mail order. If the car had not been so packed, I might have bought some of the great fresh fruit and vegetables from local farms. Our other stop was T.J. Maxx for maple syrup, vanilla, pasta, and a few kitchen items.

[chocomouse]

I made 2 loaves of Harvest Grains bread today.

My husband stopped at the Norwich KAF store today and got me a fifty-pound bag of Sir Galahad flour. It was $49.95, up from 34.95 six months ago! However, he got a discount (Guest Pass) even though he used my account number and name, so got 9.99 off.

[Mike Nolan]

Shaping is one of those things that requires attention to each loaf, otherwise you can end up with a set of loaves that don't even look like they came from the same recipe. (But I still say shape is the hidden taste dimension of bread, and one that few bread books discuss.)

Your loaves look good to me. I don't see major problems comparing them, either. As to the cross-section, I can't tell if it got squished a bit while slicing and/or if you didn't let it cool and the starch gel long enough. A different slashing pattern might change the cross-section profile, but just because a loaf is asymmetric or not slashed dead center, that's not a problem, even at a bakery. There are a lot of bread shapes, like a tabatiere, that are very asymmetric.

I often lose patience waiting for loaves to cool. Besides, eating warm fresh bread is such a sensual experience, very different from eating a fully cooled loaf. (And reheating bread doesn't bring back the earlier experience, I'd rather just toast it and enjoy that different experience.)

Ginsberg has one rye bread that he recommends be wrapped in plastic and allowed to age for 48 hours before slicing. I think I'd have to make some other bread at the same time to keep from tearing into the rye loaf as it ages!

[aaronatthedoublef]

I LOVED Wheat Montana. Cool place. But there was no way I could pack flour to bring home. I suppose I could order some. Again, it's hard to tell what is what and what will match (or improve on) what I'm using. I almost wish we had standard names and terms like the EU.

There is a nice, small mill about two hours from me but they no nothing about baking. They decided to start a mill after reading an ingredient list I think but they really do not know much about flour. Nice, but expensive.

I made my sourdough today. Really nice snap on the crust. One was shaped pretty well. The, not so much. They both need to be tighter. I need to make this more often and in larger volumes and start giving it away. I cut the time down from 2.5 days to 12 hours to tame the sour. It's a much milder taste. It's good to know I can make this either way.

The cut load is a little squished. Not sure if that was from lack of proofing (it definitely rose quite a bit) or it wasn't quite done cooling when I cut it.

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[chocomouse]

Tonight we ate the last of the Celebrity and Roma tomatoes. I'm hoping the nice-looking and abundant Brandywines ripen before the first frost (average date October 15). However, the daytime highs have been and are predicted to be in the low 60s, with nights 40s an 50s, not great for ripening tomatoes. So vine ripened tomatoes are not likely to happen.

We prefer the buttercup squash over butternut -- they are sweeter and more reliably neither too wet nor too dry. However, the butternut shape is much easier to prepare for cooking. I will be planting a couple of honey nuts next summer. Thank you for your input, BakerAunt and Skeptic.

[Mike Nolan]

I think the original use of strong may have come from 'hard' wheat. 'Hard' vs 'soft' wheat had to do with the berries themselves, hard red wheat berries are, well, harder than soft red wheat berries, which affects how you mill it as well as what the resulting flour is like. How well this translates into protein/gluten differences and thus baking differences is where things get fuzzy, because there are several major types of wheat (notably hard/soft, red/white and winter/spring), and that's before you get into things like durum and the heritage varieties like turkey wheat and legacy wheat ancestors like emmer.

There are USDA recognized wheat breeders in a number of states, and they're all producing varieties intended primarily for use in specific parts of their state.

Some of the presentations I've heard of from Nebraska's (now retired) wheat breeder were interesting, he was more concerned with growing conditions (temperature, moisture, insects and plant diseases) and yield than with what bakers did with the wheat. (In fact, when he gave me 5 pounds of triticale berries, which he also bred, he'd never tasted bread made with any triticale flour in it.)

One of the great successes in wheat breeding was the development of dwarf wheat species. Shorter stalks means less chance of the wheat getting blown over and being harder if not impossible to harvest. It also means more of the nutrition drawn from the soil goes into the wheat berries rather than into making straw, reducing the need for fertilizers. One presentation I saw from Nebraska's (now-retired) wheat breeder considered this almost as important in the struggle against world hunger as Norman Borlaug's work with breeding dwarf rice. As a result of his work with both grains, Borlaug received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1970.

One of the more interesting presentations at last year's online International Bread Symposium was on how they're trying to develop an ultra-dwarf wheat variety that could be grown in space or on a Mars colony. They've got wheat that's only 18 inches tall now. BTW, did you know that bread isn't allowed in space because of the crumbs? Some years ago an astronaut snuck a corned beef sandwich on board, though.

[aaronatthedoublef]

Thanks Mike. I appreciate that. And I get the mixing of different wheats and holding wheat back to try for consistency. I have a buddy who worked in IT for Pepsi and he used to talk about the huge vats of orange juice (I think Pepsi owns or owned Tropicana) to try and keep the taste consistent not just for a year but over 10 years.

When I was looking at Mark Bittman's cookbook he uses "hard" and "soft" to signify higher gluten flours like bread and higher or softer flours like cake (he does not mention pastry). I've only heard hard and soft in terms of wheat and never read it used like Mr. Bittman does.

And speaking of hard and soft wheat I like KAB's soft white wheat mostly for the flavor but it is crazy expensive here. I can buy a hard white wheat from Central Milling for less even with shipping. Is what give KAB's a mellower flavor the fact that it is white, not red or that it is soft and not hard like their red whole wheat?

[Mike Nolan]

There aren't precise standards for how terms like 'high extraction' and 'strong' impact our baking.

'High extraction generally means a higher percentage of bran and germ are included. Patent flour is virtually all endosperm and has an extraction rate of 72%, which means that from 100 pounds of wheat the miller gets about 72 pounds of patent flour.

Whole wheat flour is 100% extraction. The higher the extraction rate, the more flour the miller can sell. What they can't sell as flour generally gets sold for animal feed, at a much lower price.

It seems to me that flour that is separated into component streams in a roller mill and reconstituted according to the standard percentages of endosperm (around 83%), germ (around 3%) and bran (around 14%) in wheat has some differences from whole meal flour, such as what you would get from a stone mill where the milled wheat is never separated.

'Strong' refers to the gluten strength of the flour, which isn't quite synonymous with protein content. It depends on the type of wheat and the ratio of gliadin and glutenin in that wheat.

Other factors that come into play are the amount of starch damage and the alpha amylase level. (This is by no means a complete list, the more you learn about wheat the more you realize what a complex chemical environment it is.)

A lab report of flour will give more information, but home bakers never get that information. Better flour companies blend their flours so that it is more consistent from bag to bag throughout the year. A recurring theme on the BBGA forums is bakers noting that they changed brands of flour, or the mill changed what they're providing, how the new flour is performing differently and how the bakers are trying to compensate for that.

[Mike Nolan]

Have you checked the accuracy of you oven's settings? (I do it with an infrared thermometer.)

If the oven runs hot, then reducing the temperature might help.

[cwcdesign]

I made the No Knead from KABC again with much more success this time. First, it helps if you actually read the ingredients - I had used AP when the recipe called for bread flour. Then I just mixed it with the dough whisk instead of the stand mixer - the mixer was quick, but more to clean up. I also wonder if it over mixed the dough. I also used regular yeast.

The dough rose and bubbled nicely by this morning. I shaped the dough and put it in the pan. It was cooler today and I set the timer for 40 minutes for the second proof - I gave it additional 10 minutes, put the lid on (no scoring) and put in in the oven for the minimum time. At 45 minutes, it was up to temp and golden. It definitely rose more, but it's not a high loaf - the texture and flavor are much better.

[BakerAunt]

I made my half-sheet sourdough pan pizza for dinner on Saturday. Instead of cooking up canned tomatoes, or fresh ones, for sauce, I used the rest of a tube of tomato paste, which I mixed with water and 1/4 tsp. garlic powder. I added the usual toppings of Canadian bacon, mozzarella, mushrooms, red bell pepper (from our garden), and green onions, but I also halved cherry tomatoes from our garden and put those on as well. I added black olives to my half, then grated Parmesan over it and baked. The nice thing about the sourdough crust (regular flour, semolina, durum and rye) is that it holds up to lots of topping.