Forum Replies Created
-
AuthorPosts
-
I have made crackers a few times, never thought they were worth the effort it took. A sourdough cracker sounds interesting, but with my wife's problems with sourdough, I don't have a starter to work with.
I think if you ate a slice without knowing the ingredients list, you'd never guess it had malted milk powder in it.
Rascal, have you tried the Austrian Malt Bread recipe? That's the one that my son said was more like white bread than white bread.
I generally divide the Double Crusty dough into two or three parts, shaping them into torpedo-shaped loaves and baking them on a parchment-lined sheet pan. These days I've been making two loaves, cutting both in half when cool, and freeing 3 halves.
I'd welcome some threads on kitchen design, there were some good ones back on the KAFBC.
We spent a lot of time designing our kitchen. The counters and cabinets are all deeper than the standard, the top drawer under each counter has a pull-out so there's expandable work surface area, there are multiple types of surfaces (butcher block, granite and marble) at several different heights. (I could use an even higher counter for some tasks, I've been tempted to buy a 24x36 butcher block that is at least five inches thick to build up an area for my baking work, as I'm 5 inches taller than my wife, but it'd cost at least $500 and would weigh at least 40 pounds.)
One thing I wish we had added is some kind of stainless steel surface next to a sink for easy cleanup after doing something like cutting up a chicken.
The floor surface is another area where I MIGHT have done something different. We put in a slate surface tile, because we were concerned that a smooth surface tile might get too slippery. The problem is that the surface has lots of little places where dirt collects. A steam cleaner seems to be the best solution for keeping the tile clean. I've considered ordering commercial kitchen mats a few times.
The overall kitchen dimensions are 17 x 18 feet, with a center island that has a prep sink on one side and an electric cooktop on the other. There's also a dual fuel 48" range on one wall.
The home kitchen design 'experts' spend a a lot of time talking about the 'work triangle' but commercial kitchens follow different rules, as one of their goals is to have multiple work areas so several people can be working at once. (If you do a good job with mise en place, it doesn't matter whether the refrigerator and freezer are 2 steps away or 10.) We once hosted a party with 3 professional chefs doing the catering, they loved our kitchen!
Good luck on your kitchen remodeling project, they always take longer than you want them to. The house across the street from us was recently bought by a young couple and they're redoing the kitchen and a bunch of other things. (The house was built in the 60's and nearly every room on first floor has a step up or step down from another room, they have--or will soon have--little kids so all those steps have to go.) They were hoping to be done by the end of July, but I think the contractor is still working on stuff. And now the house next to theirs is apparently undergoing some changes. (Both the owners have passed away in the past year and the house needs a lot of updating, plus it may have termite issues, several of the houses in this neighborhood do.)
Jeffrey Hamelman listed 12 steps for making bread in his book, "Bread":
Scaling
Mixing (which may include Autolyse as a sub-step)
Bulk Fermentation
Folding
Dividing
Preshaping
Bench Rest
Shaping
Final Fermentation
Scoring
Baking
CoolingSome sources list additional steps, such as making pre-ferments, mashes or soakers, recipes that use a sourdough starter might have steps to deal with getting a portion of the starter ready for use. (The way this is done in a commercial kitchen is somewhat different than how it is done in many home kitchens, a professional baker is never going to throw away half of his starter when feeding it, so feeding the starter becomes part of the process of getting a portion of the starter ready for the day's breadmaking.)
Many of the recipes on the BBGA site have First bulk rise, Folding and Second bulk rise steps. I've seen some baguette recipes that go through as many as four bulk rises, with folding or punching the dough down between bulk rises.
This is one of those books that every time I read it, it messes with my mind for a while. I"m not sure why, I guess I may take some of his steps a bit too literally.
"You have to know when to break the rules." (from The Golden Child)
I wound up with about 10 quarts of tomato sauce out of all those tomatoes, I filled 20 containers of various sizes, from a few tablespoons up to 2 quarts, and they're all in the freezer. I tasted a few teaspoons of the sauce, it's going to be really good in recipes this winter.
I told my wife before she brings home more tomatoes, I need to see if we've got any space left in the freezer for more sauce.
The Defiant tomatoes were really good with some tuna salad in them, too. I may try to grow them next year.
I can't use a traditional wooden rolling pin with handles to save my soul, but the ones that are just cylindrical rods work well for me, and that's what we used in pastry school. I now have 4 of them, 3 different diameters of wooden ones and one that is silicone-coated. I also have one of the French tapered rolling pins, I've never figured out how you're supposed to use it.
I have some 1/4 inch square wooden sticks that I sometimes use to help with the thickness on final rollout, they're for model makers and most hobby stores should have them, in several sizes, they're a lot cheaper than the guides the baking sites sell. The rubber bands that go around a rolling pin never worked for me at all, my wife found them clumsy as well.
The last several times I made laminated dough I used Peter Reinhart's recipe (in the Artisan book), but I've also used the recipe on the Food Network site for Danish Kringle, which makes a really SOFT dough, so the first two turns are a bit challenging, though refrigerating the dough more might help. The lemon extract is pretty strong in the dough, but more subtle in the final product. The butterscotch filling is excellent. I've used a couple of other recipes, including one on the King Arthur site.
Peter says that the dough and the butter block should both be about the same consistency. How you enclose the butter block in the dough varies from author to author. Something I'd like to try making some time is a reverse laminated dough, the butter block goes on the OUTSIDE (with some flour beaten into the butter to make it less messy.) Most books that talk about reverse laminated dough say it is intended for use with a sheeter, but I have seen a website that says you can do it manually at home.
The main difference between croissant dough and puff pastry is that the croissant dough has yeast. Some dough recipes have egg in them, others do not. Personally, I prefer the ones without egg.
I may try to scale down the puff pastry recipe we used at pastry school, it used a 5 pound butter block, because it was designed to be rolled out on a sheeter and it filled 3 full-sized sheet pans. (Peter's recipe uses 3/4 of a pound.) It also had some lemon juice in it, though I'm not sure if you could tell it was there in the finished product. The acid in the lemon juice may help condition the dough. There was a blitz puff recipe in our classroom material, but we never made it and our instructor wasn't too keen on it. I think she felt if you're going to through the effort of making a laminated dough and have a sheeter, why not go all the way?
Here's a story on them:Eclipse Donuts
That's not quite enough to get me to Krispy Kreme, since we also have LaMar's Donuts, and it's closer.
When we were in Portland Oregon in July, we stopped at Voodoo Donuts (though the locals now prefer Blue Star), we thought LaMar's were better, though Voodoo may have them beat on 'interesting' combinations of flavors. However, when we stopped at a motel in Tacoma the next night and were bringing in our stuff, the front desk staff went crazy when they saw the Voodoo box, so we gave them a few of the ones we had left.
Letting the flour and water sit for a half hour (before adding salt, yeast or any enrichments like fats, milk, eggs or sugar) is often called autolysis, and was championed by Professor Raymond Calvel, who is credited for having rescued French breadmaking from mediocrity after WW2. Now there are national standards for things like French baguettes and national training centers for French bakers.
His book, Le Goût du Pain (The Taste of Bread), is hard to find even in libraries, but I learned a lot from it, even though it isn't really so much a cookbook as a textbook on bread ingredients and techniques. (It has several pages just on salt.) One of my goals in learning French is to be able to buy and read that book in French, if I can find an affordable copy. (Reviewers of the English edition of the book seem divided on whether the translator did a good job translating and updating the book.)
Another thing I've rediscovered lately is to let my dough rest for at least 15 minutes after pre-shaping before the final shaping.
-
This reply was modified 7 years, 10 months ago by
Mike Nolan.
The eye-opening experience for me was watching Susan Reid of KAF make a near-perfect batch of puff pastry under what had to be about the worst possible conditions. Most of her tools and ingredients didn't make it to the site, a motel in Kansas City, so she had to improvise, she was using a motel room card as a pastry scraper! And though the books usually tell you to treat the dough gently, she'd pick it up, flop it around and stretch the corners until she got a good rectangular shape. When I went to pastry school a few years later, we spent about a day on laminated doughs, and the instructor commented that I wasn't afraid to work with my dough.
When I do a 'turn' I want to roll the pastry out to about 3X its current size, since I do letter-fold turns. If you do book-fold turns, you want to roll it out to 4X its current size.
Most puff pastry is rolled out to 1/4 inch at the end, or possibly a bit thinner, depending on what you plan to make. Keep in mind the dough will shrink a bit after it has been rolled out and as it is cut.
1/4 inch is about the height of 4 pennies. I have my suspicion that most of us are poor judges of how thick pastry dough is and wind up with something that's 3/8" thick or thicker. Even in pastry school, where we were using a sheet roller, most of the students had to be told to keep rolling it thinner at the end.
When I was testing Peter Reinhart's laminated dough recipe (in the Artisan book), I used a laser leveler to check how thick and even the dough was, I even took pictures! Peter got a kick out of them.
There are several things that can cause brown spots on tomatoes, while some are fungal infections, most are related to having soil issues, watering issues or heat stress. (A hailstorm can also bruise tomatoes.) If it's widespread in the area, the weather-related issues are the most likely cause.
Your county extension service can help diagnose the problem and recommend solutions.
We've had problems here with blossom end rot, which is a calcium deficiency. It's actually possible to have too much nitrogen in the soil for tomatoes. I let my tomato garden go fallow again this year, it's got mostly alfalfa in it this year. Last year it had a mix of alfalfa and buckwheat. (Boy, do bees LOVE buckwheat flowers!)
I think I may let it sit idle for another season, or possibly plant something that's not in the nightshade family, which includes tomatoes, peppers, potatoes and eggplant. (Unfortunately, tomatoes, peppers and eggplants are what I have the most experience growing.)
I've been getting a pound or two of tomatoes at the farmers market about once a week, that's been enough for the two of us. But I do miss those sun-warmed tomatoes picked and eaten moments later.
I processed at least 60 pounds of tomatoes today, running them through my food mill to remove the seeds and skins. I wound up with nearly 10 pounds of skins and seeds left over, which I froze in 2 pound bags, I'll use them in place of canned tomatoes in beef stock recipes this winter. (I got some nice beef shank bones at the Farmer's Market a week ago, so I'm ready for cooler weather.)
I've got a 12 quart and a 16 quart pot of tomato sauce reducing on the stove overnight. Not sure how much they'll need to reduce, hopefully I'll wind up with 12-15 quarts of sauce for the freezer.
The tomatoes came from the test gardens at the University of Nebraska, the grad students running those tests said they picked over 1000 pounds of tomatoes today. The variety is Defiant, which is in the seed catalogs. It's a determinate with good disease resistance and a long season, the vines grow to 3-4 feet and produce 8-10 ounce red fruits that are very meaty. I may have her get a second batch of them the next time they pick, on Friday. I saved a few for slicing, BLT's may be on the menu tomorrow.
I only put in 4 tomato plants this year, and they're just starting to produce, so I was glad to get the ones from UNL. (Fringe benefits of my wife working for Agronomy and Horticulture.)
She also brought home some sweet corn from the test gardens, I think it's the best sweet corn we've had this season, too bad they're just about at the end of the season.
-
This reply was modified 7 years, 10 months ago by
-
AuthorPosts
