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I'm not sure what you meant, Aaron, but a teaspoon of salt is about 5690 milligrams (2300 mg of sodium), not 12.
Some aromatics need to be added later in the cooking cycle because they either dissipate if added too soon or turn bitter if cooked for a long time. Vanilla is always added at the end, and basil will turn bitter if added too soon. By contrast, bay leaf needs to be added early in the cooking cycle, because it has to be cooked a long time to extract the flavor.
Onion if added early will caramelize and turn sweeter, if added towards the end it retains more of the sharp ohion flavor.
Salt is a complicated ingredient, it has culinary purposes beyond just flavor. Because it is hygroscopic (it absorbs water), it affects the food it's added to. For example, it is commonplace to 'sweat' vegetables like zucchini or eggplant by sprinkling them with salt to extract the moisture. What I don't know is whether if you then rinse them off if that removes most of the salt. I'll have to do some research into that.
Similarly, adding salt to bread dough will tighten the dough considerably. Kidpizza/Cass is one of many bakers who recommend waiting until towards the end of the mixing cycle to add salt to bread.
As I recall, most dough enhancers include vital wheat gluten and some kind of acid, and often either barley or soy flour, which would add enzymes.
King Arthur's whole wheat improver has vital wheat gluten, soy flour, inactive yeast and ascorbic acid.
I think you could replicate much of what it does by adding some vital wheat gluten, a little vinegar and some diastatic barley malt.
Most bread recipes are usually between 1.25% and 2% salt (baker's weight, ie, compared to the weight of the flour). A few years back I did some experimenting and found that you can cut the salt down to about 1% before you start to notice much change in either texture or taste.
The no-salt challah I made yesterday was rather bland, Peter Reinhart's challah uses about 1.4% salt.
The cinnamon rolls I made yesterday called for 1/4 teaspoon of salt in a recipe that used 150 grams of flour, so it was already only at about 1% salt. I cut that to 1/8 teaspoon and couldn't tell the difference in taste at all. They might have been a bit more puffy, but I don't consider that a bad thing in a cinnamon roll!
Paddy's Clonmel Kitchens Double Crusty Bread recipe, which I use to make Vienna bread, has 2 teaspoons of salt in about 32 ounces of flour, or about 1.25% salt (though it does have an egg, so that adds some sodium from the egg white.) I may try making it with just one teaspoon of salt.
And of course there is a little sodium in wheat flour, too.
As I recall, different brands of kosher salt have a different weight per teaspoon, because the size of the salt crystals isn't standard. But if you measure by teaspoon, you're definitely adding less salt by weight when you use kosher salt.
The salt manufacturers do not recommend using kosher salt for baking bread, because it may not dissolve as well as finer grained table salt does. It's OK for other kinds of cooking.
Most of the cooking schools teach cooks to add salt several times throughout the cooking process, it's no wonder that their recipes are incredibly salty! Alton Brown, whom my older son adores, is one of the worst offenders. Some people, myself included, often refer to the Culinary Institute of America as the Sodium Institute of America.
It cracks me up to see something labeled as 'healthy' in the store and then see that it has 900 or more mg of sodium per serving. I'm especially leery of the 'low fat' versions of foods, because they often have higher salt content that the regular versions. (I guess it needs more salt to replace the fat taste.)
Graham Kerr, who many of us may remember from the Galloping Gourmet shows back in the 70's, had a heart attack and subsequently revised and republished a lot of his recipes to lower both the fat and salt content. But I don't think those later books sold as well, because they were a bit preachy.
Lincoln has a lot of pizza places, too, but everybody seem to copy Valentino's (which started in Lincoln) and most if not all use a sauce with garlic in it. We've taken to ordering pizza with NO sauce but a double or triple helping of tomatoes.
Onions don't really sweat that much on pizza, but fresh mushrooms do. (Canned ones are already cooked, so they don't sweat as much.) I like green or red pepper on my pizza, my wife likes pepperoni. Both of us like artichoke hearts on pizza. I'm looking into ways to be able to make pizza and stick to my low sodium diet. A light hand on the cheese and making my own sauce may work.
Have you tried an arm roast? Sometimes I will cut any heavy fat ridges out of a chuck roast.
The 'low fat' recommendations are being scaled back, turns out some fat is necessary! `
They have to start production on the year's flu vaccine early in the year, and they can only include 3-4 strains, so they're basically trying to guess which strains will be most active 6-9 months in advance. This year, they missed the target.
I had never heard of serving cinnamon rolls with chili until I moved to Nebraska. (And of course the kids dip the roll in the chili.)
To me a pot roast isn't done if the meat isn't falling-apart tender. But a (top or bottom) round roast is not one that I would generally use for a pot roast, I prefer cuts like chuck (preferably a 7 bone roast), rump roast or arm roast.
Today I made the no-salt challah that I posted a link to the other day. As expected, I had to add additional flour before the dough wasn't really sticky.
It's a bit bland, but not bad with a little peanut butter on it. (I'm allowed SOME sodium, after all.) I put sesame seeds on half of it, but left the other half without seeds so we can try making French toast with it.
I also made a batch of 4 cinnamon rolls using a total of 1/8 teaspoon of salt in the batch, so I figure each roll has about 100 mg of sodium, maybe less. (Cinnamon rolls with chili is sort of a requirement in Nebraska. The public schools here have been serving cinnamon rolls with chili for many years, and even most of the local restaurants will often bring a cinnamon roll when you order chili.)
Today I'm making a batch of chili using ground beef, onions, red peppers, no-salt-added beans and no-salt-added tomatoes, plus some tomato sauce from the freezer. I tastes OK but I think it's going to need some doctoring with herbs and spices, so far it's got some pepper, some celery seed and some parsley. I'm thinking about adding a few dashes of tabasco or dried chipotle pepper, but I'll wait until my wife is home, because I don't want to go overboard. That may be added at the table. (Many chili powders have garlic in them, so we don't even have that on the shelf.)
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This reply was modified 7 years, 5 months ago by
Mike Nolan.
It always seems to me that pizza sauce is just a bit thicker than spaghetti sauce, though I know restaurants that use the same marinara for both.
Most pizza enthusiasts say pizza sauce should be applied rather sparingly. I've actually been known to use tomato paste straight from the can on a pizza.
With the salt in the crust, sauce, toppings like sausage or pepperoni and the cheese, pizza is going to be largely absent from my diet. :sigh:
There's always something new to learn or something old to remember to do. 🙂
It may be that your pan is a bit too large for the recipe. Keep in mind that professional baking writers like the ones at King Arthur Flour, will bake a recipe many times during testing, and only pick their best efforts for the photo.
Something to look forward to is the annual April Fools Day blog post at King Arthur, showing some of their worst efforts over the year. Some of them are hilarious!
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This reply was modified 7 years, 5 months ago by
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