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How high are the feet? I usually just put a dishtowel under a cutting board that slides around. (I've got a big 18x24 hard plastic one that I use for large projects.) Or you can use the stuff you line drawers with or put in between dishes to keep them from getting scratched, it's also slightly tacky.
I know there are some u-pick orchards in western Ohio (somewhere around Toledo), I see them every time we drive down I-80 to visit our son in Pittsburgh, but we're never making that trip during apple season, so we've never stopped there. Not sure how far away that is from where you are, there may be better options in Michigan or Indiana.
Butchers have been using wood surfaces for cutting meat for a long time, but they wash them down frequently (with chlorine bleach these days) and then scrape it dry. You can tell a really old butcher block because the surface isn't perfectly flat anymore from having been scraped so many times.
But I don't cut raw meat directly on my butcher block countertops, either. I use a plastic mat that can be washed in the dishwasher.
I've used Macintosh, it's OK but not my favorite pie apple. I bought a few pounds of Apollo apples at the farmer's market today, not a variety I'm familiar with. The wiki chart Apples says it is an eating apple, but it says that about Winesap, too, and I know it is a great pie apple. I tried eating one, I think it'll be a better pie apple than an eating apple. So I'll be making an apple pie tomorrow. (Pie dough is made and resting in the fridge overnight.)
I've made a cabbage beef soup, but the beef is probably the dominant flavor profile. Caraway should be good with it, cabbage goes well with garlic, mustard seed, dill, thyme, celery seed, tarragon, nutmeg and savory. (But stick to no more than 3 or 4 herbs/spices.)
I prefer egg white, the spray stuff imparts a taste. I've also used milk and milk with just a bit of honey in it. I've heard of doing it with a light spray of cooking oil, but haven't tried that.
Followup: I tried the cooking oil method, it doesn't work! See Seeds Post
To get seeds to stick with just water, you need to heavily spray the loaves with water, sprinkle on the seeds, spray it again, then let it sit for at least 5 minutes.
Another way to do it is to put the seeds on the parchment or couche and put the loaves on upside down during final proof, so the seeds get well-attached to the dough as it rises, then flip the loaves over for baking. A flip board makes this easier.
There are some companies that sell marble slabs for commercial candymakers, but they're usually pretty thick, 3 inches or more, and that makes them quite heavy. Not very cheap either, and shipping is both difficult and expensive.
But check places like Kohls, Michaels and Bed Bath & Beyond, their websites suggest they may have marble slabs for prices ranging from $30 to $60.
I haven't seen a Winesap apple at a grocery store in decades, either. I'm fortunate that a local grower has a few trees. I've heard some growers in Michigan still have them.
You need to be really patient with that bread, sometimes it takes 2 hours to rise in both the bulk rise and final rise. Soaking the grain should helps soften it.
I have some bamboo mixing spoons and spatulas that I like a lot, and I really like the look and feel of the bamboo pastry boards I've seen, but I haven't seen any really big ones, 16x16 appears to be about as big as they go.
Check with the local tile and marble vendors. If there's a place that cuts marble and tile to size, they often have scrap pieces (usually where a larger piece fractured or from a sink cutout) that can be cut down to size and polished. I bought a really big piece of marble at a garage sale years ago, it was originally part of the lobby walls of a downtown building that was being remodeled, we had the marble yard cut it to fit on our 30 x 48 butcher block table. (We bought the table back when we were living in Illinois and brought with us when we moved to Nebraska.)
I have butcher block counters, so I just use those for my breadmaking. We had a nice butcher block cutting board that I think we also bought when we were living in the Chicago area that was probably 18 x 24, but it developed a crack and wound up splitting in two along one of the joints. It might have been possible to sand it smooth and reglue it, but we didn't really need it once we moved to this house in 1997, so we gave both pieces to a friend.
I have been tempted to buy a large custom cut end-grain butcher block slab, at least 20 x 30 and 5-6 inches thick so that I've got it at the right height for me, since the butcher block counters are lower (my wife is much shorter than I am) but that'd cost about $500 plus shipping.
I set it up as a production line. I wash, peel, core and cut the apples a few at a time, throwing them in a big pot, then I cook the filling using the recipe I got at SFBI. I can prep around 25 pounds of apples in about an hour, less if they're on the small side. I've learned the hard way that I need to wear an apron when doing this, I've ruined several t-shirts by wearing them while peeling apples. When I'm done, there's a brown apple stain on them that just doesn't come out.
Granny Smith is my 4th choice for pie apples. If I can get Winesap, they're #1, then Braeburn, then Yellow Delicious (if fresh, they don't store well.) I've tried about a dozen other varieties, none of them were as good. (I wish the folks at U of Minnesota who developed the HoneyCrisp and SweeTango apples would come up with a pie apple, those are great eating apples, OK for caramel apples, but not very good when baked, the cell size is too large.)
Granny Smith is kind of a frustrating apple. Most of the ones in stores are picked when they're only about half-ripe, so they store well, but that affects their taste and structure. If you can find some that are riper, they'll start to show some red blush on them, those are far better pie apples.
I did get some apples of an unknown variety some years back. They were small, a bit lumpy, but made a fantastic pie! Unfortunately, the grower didn't know the variety, he said the tree was already on the farm when he bought it years ago. And I haven't seen him back at the farmer's market with them since that year, either. :sigh:
What I have learned about apples and the farmer's market is, if you find one you like, BUY AS MUCH OF IT AS YOU CAN!
With a pudding pie filling (lemon, chocolate, vanilla, etc), you basically have two choices for a thickener, some kind of starch or egg yolks. I usually go with the latter, it's richer.
Not sure about over-mixing, but over-cooking a starch-thickened pie filling can cause the starch to break down.
McGee (On Food and Cooking) has a lot to say about thickeners; that book is my go-to source for cooking science. I've got some graduate level textbooks on food chemistry, but McGee tends to say the same thing in somewhat simpler language.
I don't care for the texture of apple skins in a pie, so I always peel and core them.
One of the vendors at the local Sunday farmer's market was hoping to have some winesap apples this month, those are my absolute favorite pie apples. I peel, core and slice them, pre-cook the filling, then freeze it. So, any time I want an apple pie, I get some filling out of the freezer and make pie dough in the evening and I'm ready to assemble it the next day.
There are sites that post partial answers (at best) to questions to try to get you to sign up for their site, especially the ones with a fee. I understand why they do it, but it still is irritating.
If you over-cook a French meringue, it gets rubbery. If you REALLY overcook a French meringue, it gets solid, like meringue cookies. I suspect that does bad things to the pie.
I don't personally like adding cornstarch to French meringue, because I think it affected the taste, but maybe I added too much. Never tried wheat flour, don't know if it would even work. I suspect the meringue pies you see at the grocery store or at a bakery have some kind of starch added to stabilize them.
I've made Swiss meringue for a pie once, it's a lot more work than French meringue, but it has the advantage of being very stable and easy to pipe if you're doing multiple pies. And you don't have to bake them much because the meringue is already cooked. (You usually put the meringue on after the pie is baked.) I've seen them torched to add color highlights.
Italian meringue (the one where you dribble hot sugar syrup into the whipped egg whites), is generally not recommended for pies. I've never seen an explanation why, maybe I'll do some digging on this one.
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