McDuff

We just got some samples of palmier into the bakery at the earthy crunchy groceria, individually packed in a sealed cellophane envelope, and they have a 30 day shelf life. I'd bet anything they are packed with what I heard referred to by a cookie manufacturer's rep as a "hydrogen flush." That leaves me wondering if she really meant hydrogen, what with the Hindenburg and all, maybe it's nitrogen. But I guess that's one way to do it.

This is all nice and gross. I worked in my early 20's in an operating room and one night they brought in a kid who had a twisted intestine. They unzipped him, and the smell hit the ventilating system and went all over the very large hospital. OR's have slightly higher pressure than the rest of the place, so that when the doors open, air goes out. The surgical resident who was assisting the surgeon kept gagging, and getting yelled at. Next day I was in the preop waiting area, tooling around in a little cart they rolled kids around in, and got nosy about what was in the little refrigerator. There was a petri dish kind of thing which I picked up, and turned over to read the label. Juice from the dish ran down my arm, and I realized it was the specimen from the kid the night before. I went screaming for the scub sinks and the phisohex. This poor kid made it through that, but I won't bore anybody with the details of his next hospitalization and surgery for priapism.

Leave an instant read thermometer in 80 lb of sourdough, and then proceed to mix it rather vigorously for 10 minutes in an 80 qt mixer. Use a brand new digital probe thermometer to test the temperature of the brine in an ice cream machine. It read 13 degrees before it fizzled out. And I don't know why, but it's still in the drawer in the kitchen, along with several crappy timers, as if it's going to come back to life.

I'm not sure I know what you're getting at by saying the recipe is puree centric. We can get puree for 3.50 a lb, or make our own using frozen raspberries, or the really hard way, mooch culls off the produce department and make it fresh. We don't use flavoring compounds, if that's what you mean. That's a pretty standard diplomat cream. As far as people making pate a bombes, I don't know. There is some exceptional talent in the stores, but some of the stores have pretty limited kitchens and I like to figure out how everybody can make a product, not just those of us with several mixers, a wall of ovens, 30 years of experience, and a degree. I have to make another 1/2 sheet raspberry mousse thing tomorrow, with the top covered with fruit. I'll take a picture. The book is cheaper than $150. I think the book/cd combo might be that much. The book is not much help when it comes to figuring out how to use the stuff. Fine if you want to copy the book. If people blow a recipe, they just have to write it off. We have coordinators who travel around helping with merchandising. We really need one who travels around training production people. My boss and I have put the bug into people's ears that that would be a perfect job for me, but it's still in development. They're opening a ridiculous number of stores in this area in the next year.

ice cream bar, scooped ice cream, lots of toppings and sauces.

We talked on the phone, Jeff. I'm with Whole Foods. We got approval to use the product, but again, 1 to 1.6 doesn't seem to me to be the numbers Derek gave me. for instance, I've worked up a raspberry mousse involving the following: 16 oz prepared cold pastry cream, 8 oz raspberry puree, 3 oz Clearbrook Farms raspberry preserves, 24 oz very soft whipped cream, lemon juice and 2 oz Mycryo dissolved in some of the warmed puree. I melt the mycryo, stir till it emulsifies well with the puree, add the rest of the puree, then temper in some of the pastry cream, then fold it all together and last, add the whipped cream. You can almost feel this tighten as you fold it, and if the cream is the slightest bit too stiff, the whole thing will get grainy, which I guess is the result of the fat-to-fat thing. This makes about 3 lb, which is enough make a half sheet cake in a frame with a nice layer inside. I have to do a demo on this product at an upcoming pastry team summit meeting for the North Atlantic region. I don't suppose you can get to Cambridge MA on August 3? You're looking at a fairly significant market here. Actually it's a teleconference with the TriState pastry people in Edgewater NJ, if that's closer. Shimme would be the guy to talk to. Most of the pastry people inside Whole Foods really disdain gelatin, and agar is just too expensive and quirky. Mycryo seems to be the perfect solution for us, but it's a little tricky. The book is nice, pretty pictures yada yada, but the skill level isn't there in some of our locations, and my approach to jazzing up the pastry case involves what I call the building block approach. If we can make a nice cake filling using a Diplomat cream, which is what the above recipe is, then almost everyone can handle that, as opposed to a Bavarian, which has the added and treacherous step of making a creme anglaise. I've forwarded a can of this to the North Atlantic region Bakehouse, as they are very interested in it. If you pm me, I can give you the name of the contact person.

I love the line in that recipe that says, "Let it be fleshy and full of life." You are then instructed to flip it on it's back, put a meat hook with a weight in it's jaw, and cut it's throat. No way, not me. I move turtles on the road in springtime if it doesn't endanger my life. My biggest this year was a thirty pound snapper that got a short ride in a fast machine.

They are also available on ebay. I may have duplicates of the German and/or Austrian book I could send you gratis.

I went to the library today and got The Joy of Pickling. She doesn't really clarify the pickling salt issue for me. Says to use white sea salt if you can't find pickling salt. I wonder if anyone has subbed kosher salt? In the past when I've made pickles, I used kosher, but other than refrigerator bread and butter pickles, I've never made a pickle I thought was fabulous. Would like to try some fermented pickles this time around.

If you're working for yourself, fine, disable it and have fun. But if you're working for someone else, DO THE RIGHT THING and leave it alone. Do we need any more lawsuits from people who screw around with something like this, get hurt, and then decide to sue? I made one comment to the head guy where I work that the rear circular guard on our 80 qt was not in place, and he had Hobart in there the next day to weld it back. Like I mentioned, I got grabbed by a mixer, a 12 qt Univex, not a beast, but no Kitchen Aid either, and it nearly pulled me into it as it shredded the sleeve of my terry cloth bathrobe. I was making hollandaise years ago, a guy stuck his finger in to taste it just as I flipped the mixer back on, and you could hear the whip rattle across his knuckles. Two people in my bread class at J&W got hit by dough hooks because they couldn't keep their hands out. Those machines will show no mercy. I cannot imagine what your arm would look like if a hook on an 80qt Hobart on speed 4 grabbed it. And I'm also sure that most companies that come along to do the repair work have an eye out for liability issues. Can you hear the testimony in court? "So, Repairman XYZ, did you re-engage the safety cage lockouts on the mixer in question before or after you did the repair on the chipped gear in the transmission? And if you didn't, why not?"

That's a dumbass thing to do. If the machine breaks, Hobart won't fix it till they get the safety thing working again. I got grabbed by a mixer once that had no safety cage, and I've learned to work with them.

Read more Heinlein...way more Heinlein.

I'm fascinated by Laguiole. Got some steak knives, then scored two of the smaller pocketknives at Home Goods for ten bucks. Don't know if they're real, and don't care.

Go to Williams-Sonoma or Crate and Barrel and buy an Opinel. Very simple, wood and steel, Paul Bocuse uses one to shave truffles.

The scene in Austin Powers where Fat Bastard is munching a turkey leg while Heather Graham shoves a gps unit up his backside.

Healy and Bugat--The French Cookie Book

I also spent many many hours trying to make sense out of the pictures and descriptions in the Bread Builders, and finally built one. It's a major investment in time, most of my free time for a summer and a fall, and money, about $1000, and it will permanently claim a space in your yard you will never get back. The hardest part was figuring out the chimney, as the book is none too clear, and I couldn't afford the plans, which are pretty cheap anyway, but oh well, the damn book was expensive enough. There's about 5 tons of material there, and I still need to add some trim, which is all cut and sitting in the cellar, and throw some shingles on it. I hardly ever use it. I think about using it all the time, but it's a lot of time to fire it up, tend it all day, and then bake 3 pizzas, a pan of roast vegetables and some sausage. I've baked more pizza than anything in it. Last time I made bread, it was ugly bread. You could smell the burnt bitterness all over the neighborhood. I didn't need a permit and the fire chief asked me to call before I light it, as this is a fairly cramped neighborhood. The only time I didn't call, it was warm and muggy, the smoke hung low and the fire dept showed up at the front door. They took one look at the contained fire, shrugged, and left. I bring them pizza when I use it. I disremember who started this thread, but he makes the point that his oven is too well vented to use one of these dumbass steam injection methods people are always coming up with. I find that when I do the hot water into the cast iron skillet trick that all the steam comes out the stovetop. Waste of time. Join the brick oven group on Yahoo if you need/want advice. The masonry wasn't that difficult, just damn boring. I could never lay block for a living, but apparently you don't need to mortar them together. I found an angle grinder with a diamond blade an essential tool. I have some pictures posted on the yahoo brick oven group site of how neatly I was able to cut the bricks that form the forward slanting part of the arch. I followed the Bread Builder's pretty carefully, insulation and all, and a full 80 hours after the fire is raked out, the oven is still at 110 degrees. I used sakrete concrete for the hearth and cladding and made my own fireclay mortar mix as Scott recommends. The dome is boxed with steel studs and wonderboard and has 9 big bags of vermiculite and perlite poured into the box. Also used all firebrick rather than red brick as he says you can and I'm glad I did, as the red brick gets very brittle quickly. The hearth is only 24 by 39 due to size considerations of my yard and next time I make pizza I think I'll try the fire along one side instead of across the back to see if I can do two at once. Pizza from this kind of oven is unbelievable. Done in three minutes, tops. I made 21 of them one night. If you're at all handy, this is a fairly easy project. It's a lot of weight to move around is all. I had to move everything from the front of the house to the back by hand, 2 tons of rock, 60 blocks, 55 bags of concrete, 200 firebrick, 150 red brick, assorted wood and shingles and plywood. I think the last time I used it I was lighting off Ground Bloom Flowers in it.

shrooms

Just saw his obit on the NYTimes website. Said he died Wednesday, but I haven't heard of it. Sad story, you see?

I'm sure there will be some disagreements, but in Basic Cake class at J&W, we were taught to refer to the covering of a cake as "icing," frosting being what Joe and Suzy Homemaker use to cover their cakes. I don't know that there is a difference other than the semantic one.

Those who congratulating themselves on doing the right thing are upholding the Fourth Law of False Spirituality..which states that whenever one does a good deed, one is obliged to tell the first 500 people one meets about it. As far as karma goes, Sunday afternoon here in the earthy crunchy groceria, an unsupervised toddler got her meat hooks on a Scotch Bonnet pepper, and learned something about vegetables she may never forget. Quite the scene, down there in the produce dept.

That's the tidbit I was angling for.

What I'm asking is, if a formula calls for 2.5 instant yeast, would you use 2.5 fresh, or make the upward adjustment? Again, 6% doesn't seem out of whack for an enriched laminated dough which is going to be frozen.

I'm not saying that sounds like a lot, but I always figure a percentage of yeast pretending it was fresh yeast, and then making the downward adjustment to instant. So 2.5% instant would work out to be more like 7.5% fresh, wouldn't it? And that doesn't seem like too overly much since it's an enriched dough and one would want to bump the amount upwards by 25% anyway, since it's going to be frozen.

Can't really tell you any of that. I have the formula, but it's proprietary info. It looks pretty straightforward though. It uses fresh yeast, but after I reported back to the big boss that these things are nfg, he crabbed to the bakehouse that made them and they are switching the yeast, that was going to happen anyway. I left some on the counter all night to proof, covered with an inverted sheet pan, and all the did was dry out. they puffed up, but they're really not the right thing.