Search Results for '("C'

[skeptic7]

Yes I was trying to use two pie pans for blind baking. I had picked them up in a thrift store, they are similiar size and a heavy metal, but the inside pie pan is perforated. This is the first time I tried blind baking with this technique and I wasn't impressed with the results.
This mornings pie shell slid to the bottom despite having been well pricked and going from the refrigerator to a very hot oven. I thought that the first failed attempt was caused by an oven at only 325 degrees and resolved to try again at 400 degrees.
The pie crust was rather thick. I used all the dough ( 1 1/2 cups flour ) in the crust instead of rolling it thin, and discarding the extra. Would a blind pie crust have worked better if it was thinner?
I did the KA Lemon Meringue again but used corn starch instead of flour, and 1/3 cup lemon juice instead of 1/4 cup. It isn't notably prettier with corn starch instead of flour. The lemon meringue filling was fine and pretty.
I want to try blind baking again, but will have to wait for another cold snap. How much beans will be needed if I try that route? Do the beans have to fill the pie crust?
Maybe I will try the two pie pan method and use parchment paper to prevent sticking.

[Mike Nolan]

Haven't tried your recipe, but my take on blueberry muffins is that they're usually pretty sweet, added sugar on top seems unnecessary.

I haven't made them lately, because I don't have any spent grain, but the spent grain blueberry muffins I made several years ago were the best I ever had, a bit crunchy due to the spent grain. (Grinding it up in a food processor takes care of that fairly well.) spent grain muffins

I have been making blueberry cornbread muffins using the gluten-free cornbread recipe that I got from the gluten-free girl site. (The recipe has changed on that site several times, here's my variation on it: GF cornbread)) You do need to grease the muffin tin or they don't release well.

[Mike Nolan]

I use pie beans when blind baking a pie shell, I have a Tupperware container of them, probably enough to do 2 pies. (At SFBI they had a huge tub of pie beans, you need to fill the pie pan quite full.)

I generally use parchment, like we did at pastry school, or sometimes tin foil. We don't drink coffee and you have to buy the commercial-sized filters in large quantity, I think the smallest package I've seen was 500. I do have 8 and 9 inch parchment rounds, but those are for making cakes.

*Note, this post sort of duplicates an earlier post that I wasn't sure posted, because my computer crashed.

[Mike Nolan]

I got it from The Prepared Pantry, http://preparedpantry.com, (look for non-stick pie pan), but googling 'norpro pie pan' finds other sources, though it may not be the same item.

[BakerAunt]

For Sunday breakfast, I made wholegrain waffles. I had previously reduced the butter from 8 Tbs. to 5 Tbs., so I tried it with 4 Tbs. They were fine, but I think that they are better with 5 Tbs. When cooling the leftovers, I also followed a KAF baking book tip and spread them out on the rack rather than putting them next to each other. That is supposed to keep them from getting soggy, and these were firmer (although maybe the reduced butter was also an element).

[Mike Nolan]

The KAF piece also had a photo of rolls from the Parker House Omni hotel in Boston, they were rectangular, too. But maybe they weren't rectangular when the recipe was first developed?

I've stayed at that hotel once, but didn't eat in the restaurant. (That was before I got seriously into baking, I've kicked myself a few times for not taking advantage of that opportunity, it's not like I didn't know the hotel's gastronomic history.)

[Mike Nolan]

I tried the 'dipping' method once, couldn't even get them to stay folded through the final proof at that point. But they were sure buttery!

One of the things we did in pastry school was to put a lid on a tray of puff pastry shapes that we were baking, with a stack of tart shells on all 4 corners to set the height. This limited how far it puffed up and gave it a uniform height. We used two perforated sheet pans on the top to ensure it had enough weight. We then assembled the six pieces (a bottom, a top and 4 sides) to make a box that we filled with fruit and pastry cream.

I've been tempted to try something like that with Parker House rolls for the final proof.

[Mike Nolan]

I have had very good luck with the Norpro non-stick pie pan. After the pie is baked, you just slide it out onto a plate (or into a regular pie pan), that way you don't damage the non-stick surface by cutting the pie in the pan. Sometimes you have to twist the pie pan a bit to get it free, but most of the time it is loose.

I've made cherry, apple and pecan pies in it, plus a chocolate creme pie with meringue in a blind baked graham cracker crust; all came out easily.

[Mike Nolan]

I think it was Tyler Florence who had a recipe that was pretty high on butter to start with, and then they were dipped or brushed with more butter after shaping. (His website is coming up as having malware on it in Firefox, which is getting pretty fussy about that sort of thing.)

A number of recipes say that overproofing the dough is what causes them to pop open.

[Mike Nolan]

Greg Patent wrote what may be the definitive article on the history of Boston Cream Pie for the journal Gastronomica back in 2001. He had it on his website, but it looks like the link is messed up again. I'll drop him a note to see if he can fix it again.

I had a series of emails with Greg a few years back, I was convinced (and he later confirmed) that the original icing on a Boston Cream pie was made using confectioner's fondant. (This is NOT the same thing as cake decorating fondant.) Almost nobody does it that way anymore, though, most use a chocolate ganache, whether it is semisweet or more of a milk chocolate ganache seems to vary depending on what part of the country you're in.

When I took my chocolate academy course last fall, other than the instructor I was the only one there who had ever made confectioner's fondant. It's made sort of like an unflavored fudge, but then is creamed on a marble surface until it becomes crumbly. Then you store it in a sealed jar and after a few days it softens and becomes almost like silly putty. It will last several weeks at that point.

[Mike Nolan]

I made the chocolate mushroom cookie dough today, my wife is going to roll them out and bake them either later today or tomorrow. (Probably just circles, not the mushroom shape.)

[Mike Nolan]

I spent quite a few months trying to get Parker House rolls that didn't pop open when they were baked.

Tried several different recipes and quite a few different ways to shape/fold them. Some recipes were so buttery that they were slippery on the outside before baking. But they all popped open. They were tasty, but I wanted to solve the popping open problem.

Then King Arthur had a blog post on them: Parker House Rolls

The recipe wasn't my favorite (in general I don't like rolls made with mashed potatoes, potato flour or potato starch) but the instructions they gave pretty much solved the problem and that method works with the recipes I prefer the taste of, too.

No matter what recipe you prefer, they're incredibly rich and buttery, so I save them for special occasions. I have my suspicion that restaurants have a trick to doing them.

[BakerAunt]

Let me ask another question: Do you prefer a stainless backsplash, either low or high (bought in addition to the stove) or some kind of a tiled backsplash? My last stove actually had a top piece in the back (no controls or anything on it) that was about 6-7 inches high. However, if I want that for this range, I will have to buy it. I see one advantage in that it keeps anything from running down behind the range (which in the best of all possible kitchen scenarios, in the best of all possible worlds, would never be a problem).

[Mike Nolan]

Our range hood isn't a commercial one, it's the one DCS was selling with the 48" dual fuel range 20 years ago. It has a shelf, 2 heat lamps (that we almost never use), a light and a variable speed fan that at high speed clears a lot of smoke quickly.

True commercial range hoods these days have fire suppression systems in them that make them way too expensive for a home kitchen, and they're huge to boot.

[aaronatthedoublef]

Our water is actually pretty good here. We're having a battle with a bottled water company because they want to start filling from our reservoir at a ridiculously low price while all of our bills are going up and, when they proposed this, we were at an all time historical low.

We actually have a pedal sink in the kitchen. It works very nicely. I used to tell people it was voice activated and say "sink on" and step on the pedal. In a couple years there will be Alexa-connected (or Google) sinks.

Like Mike, we have a commercial hood (which used to go with our commercial range until we pitched it). The only real challenge here is if something goes wrong. The people who can fix commercial products are not bonded to work in houses and the people who fix residential appliances have no idea what to do with restaurant gear.

Our commercial range had a 48 inch, stainless steel griddle and I loved it. My new range came with a really nice, thick, cast iron grill/griddle and I use it daily. It takes the place of two burners. I may take it our, put the burners in, and then get a griddle that sits on top of the burners. I saw one with a back splash that will be less messy to cook on and easier to clean.