[aaronatthedoublef]

I am debating whether or not to show this to my kids as they will want their bagels cut this way and I think I might lose a finger doing it!

[aaronatthedoublef]

Don't many British recipes also use self-rising flour? We have a Welsh friend who kept using all purpose flour and not having her recipes workout. I gave her bag of self-rising and it changed her life.

A pastry chef offered me a job based on three criteria:

1) I would pass the drug screen
2) I showed up to where I was supposed to be when I was supposed to be there (see item 1)
3) I can do fractions in my head

Not very demanding requirements to work for a high end chef in a fine-dining restaurant.

[aaronatthedoublef]

Has anyone tried recipes from the GBBO? How often do they use ingredients we do not have here? How hard are they to translate?

I'm surprised at the continued success of Hell's Kitchen. It wore me out after a few seasons.

[aaronatthedoublef]

http://www.finecooking.com/article/heavy-cream-vs-whipping-cream is the link I originally intended to post. It's interesting except for the one snarky comment at the end.

In our town rents and taxes are so high the only stores that can survive seem to be national chains, except for restaurants. We seem to have and endless number of them and very few go out of business. We now have three new ice cream shops in town that charge a minimum of $6.50 a pop.

Two are Thai ice cream places (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ybb57frsdKk) and one makes ice cream to-order using liquid nitrogen.

I've started to refer to our town as Connecticut's food court. People have asked where they can buy a t-shirt so I may have a new, second line of business!

[aaronatthedoublef]

Clotted cream is good on scones and berries. For example, when they mention strawberries and cream at Wimbledon it's clotted cream.

The web says: Clotted cream (sometimes called scalded, clouted, Devonshire or Cornish cream) is a thick cream made by indirectly heating full-cream cow's milk using steam or a water bath and then leaving it in shallow pans to cool slowly.

Sorry about the bad link. I'll try to fix it.

[aaronatthedoublef]

Hi BA. Just looking at the sides of the cartons heavy whipping cream appears to have more fat. I found this article online. You can search and see. According to this whipping cream is 30-36% while heavy cream is higher - the article says one dairy came in am 39%.

They say more fat makes it more stable.

I've always used heavy cream regardless of whether the recipe called for whipping cream or heavy cream or, sometime, water in my pie crust.

[aaronatthedoublef]

I'm back to rye bread with a fresh load of first clear flour. I still need work on shaping but the taste is good. I also made pizza this week. Usually I use some flax meal but I was out so I just put white whole wheat and cake flour in the crust. It was noticeably lighter. I may try this again.

[aaronatthedoublef]

We are big fans of Bread and Jam for Frances. And I can also see it backfiring. There is also one about bedtime... Bedtime for Frances maybe but it is not as popular. That maybe because at the end her dad says go to bed or I will spank you and then put you in bed... or words to that effect.

I've started telling the older boys to make their own dinner if they do not want what I make but it's hard to do that with a 4 year old.

KAF has some interesting recipes including one for hummus bread. I'll let you all know what I try.

Thanks

[aaronatthedoublef]

Thanks Mike. We're trying to figure out a way to trick a four year old into eating more than pasta and yogurt (occasionally together :-)).

Roux might work on pasta. I'll check out Bob's Red Mill for some recipes as well as KAF.

[aaronatthedoublef]

I would love a second refrigerator/freezer in the basement I might just do that.

Now I stock up on much smaller bags of flour and keep them in their bags in a sealed bin.

Maybe I'll try a 50 lb bag one day.

Thanks!

[aaronatthedoublef]

How do you store a 50 lb bag of flour? If I were going to portion it out and freeze it I would need to buy a new freezer.

[aaronatthedoublef]

Thanks for the tip!

My family's favorite cake recipe is from the cake bible and calls for something like 2.5 egg whites or you can measure by weight which is what I usually do.

I've only worked in a couple of bakeries and the recipes were all numbers of large eggs. But I always cracked them into a separate bowl or measuring cup and added them to the recipe in case some shell went with the egg.

I know with my pancake/waffle mix I've upped everything except the eggs and it still seems to work. And I used flax meal in it so maybe that is why it's worked without adding more egg.

[aaronatthedoublef]

Thanks! I remember watching an episode of a Julia Child show where she would cook with young, up-and-coming chefs.

The chef that day showed Julia an early generation bread maker which baked vertical loaves with a hole in the bottom. Mrs. Child smiled and was gracious but was less than impressed. I never saw her with anything like an instant pot but I wonder how she would have reacted to that.

[aaronatthedoublef]

Interestingly, an English friend of mine who has lived in the US for many years now maintains that all British biscuits are twice baked. So they differ from most American cookies in that regard. However I have several recipes for things like shortbread that are only once-baked so that has me wondering. I'll have to research that. Also, years ago, when I took my cooking class in Italy, "biscotti" referred to twice baked cookies and was translated as "biscuits". I do not know if biscotti were always biscotti or if that is something that developed from British English which is still the dominant English in Europe.

I am now a member of the Clandestine Cake Club and affiliated with the Boston chapter. But they do not appear too be very active. So perhaps I will try to start a Hartford chapter.

I am up for celebrating Cake Week if Mike will allow us to do that through his site.

[aaronatthedoublef]

Hi. I baked off some challah dough I had in the freezer. I put it in in March so I figured it was approaching EoL and I needed to bake it. I made a six strand braid which came out pretty nicely. They really do have a nice, three-dimensional look that three and four strand braids do not have. It was a two and a half pound loaf that my two sons polished off in a matter of hours. It's not my normal recipe and I don't like it as much but apparently my boys did not care.

I also made another double batch of rye bread and learned a few things. First, I figured out what caused my blowouts. I made two two-and-a-half pound loaves. I put them too close to each other in the oven and they expanded until they were touching. Without room to rise evenly on both sides they each blew out the opposite side.

I like three slashes better than five but that is an aesthetic decision.

I did not check my ingredients before I started and ran out of first clear flour half way through. So the loaves were half real clear and half bread flour. I do not like the color as much and I do not like the taste as much as the all-real clear loaves. But it did have a slightly higher rise in the finished product. Cass was right as usual.

I left one loaf unglazed and brushed egg wash on the second. I like the cornstarch the best (pace Mike). But it is also more of a pain in the neck as the cornstarch glaze involves cooking.

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