McDuff

Who's that guy, cookbook writer, Lee something something, look in his book of Southern Desserts at the picture of a chocolate pudding. Talk about flies perfectly encased. How did that get by? If I remember his nombre, I'll edit this.

I baked off some frozen Danish units this morning, part of a new line we're supposed to rolling out, and when we did the test baking the stuff came out great, but these, with a pack date of June 3, came out like sinkers. Anybody know the shelf life of a laminated dough made without some kind of special freezer stable yeast? And what would we be looking at here for yeast, SAF gold, or something like that? And is a month maybe a bit too long to hold a Danish dough? Bear in mind this is the earthy crunchy grocery store with no preservatives and all-natural ingredients.

Now, that link was interesting. I'm flying to London on Sept 1, but I still might pull a Craig Claiborne. Do they let smoked salmon through security?

They don't call it Cajun Napalm for nothing.

Where I work, at the earthy crunchy groceria, a guy got in trouble because he told a woman who was on the phone at the coffee counter in the bakery that he would wait till she was done to wait on her. The other night I was in the personal care aisle of another store and some guy my age was talking to his teenaged son about what kind of razors did mommy use? It transpired that the kid wasn't even home, but then, wait, mommy herself called on his other line..and he lost her. I loudly commented, "Ahh technology, let's you down every time." As he walked off to get a better signal he ignored me. Dope. Someone is making a boatload of money off of cellphones. When I realized at the end of a two year commitment to cingular that I had given them almost 1400 bucks for two phones, I said never again. They are both prepay now, but at one point between verizon, comcast and cingular, our telecommunications habit was 200 bucks a month.

Can you believe that? That's going to get out of control at 38 cents an ounce. I made a raspberry mousse cake by dissolving the mycryo in the hot puree, then adding cold pastry cream and folding in whipped cream. I left it in the walkin for 4 days and it was perfect. No runs, no drips, no errors. I'm on vacation but can't wait to get to work and play some more. I have to submit all these forms with formulas and costs and margins and stuff in order to get a new product into the pastry case. There's a quick turnaround on the paperwork, but I know I'm going to be buried when I get back.

I had a lengthy conversation Monday with a guy named Derek Pho from Barry Callebaut, or Cacao Barry, whoever makes this stuff. He changed some of the numbers I was working with. They're quite willing to spend time on the phone with you. The number is 1-800-774-9131. Derek is a technical guy. There's another guy named Jeff Kulhawy who can talk intelligently about it. My boss found the ad in Pastry Arts. Add it at the rate of 3 to 6 times what you would use for gelatin. He said, for example, if you were using cassis puree, which is fairly thick, go with the three factor. Passion puree needs more because it is thin. Heat the puree to 60 degrees Celsius, add the mycryo and dissolve, then add the sugar and cool to 18 degrees C. Then finish assembling the preparation. When folding in whipped cream he suggests it should be whipped to very soft peaks. He also said you need to experiment with the stuff. Nice. We bought the book at work, but what I was looking for was not specific recipes or formulas, but general techniques. As far as substituting it in the dulce de leche mascarpone thing, you'd be looking at 48 grams, a little less than two oz. I was taught in school to make a gelatin solution of 1 oz of gelatin bloomed in 5 oz of water. One oz of this is used to stablize a pound of cream, or mousse. If my admittedly shaky math is correct then one oz of this solution contains .17 oz of gelatin, so I need to substitute .51 to 1.02 oz of mycryo for each oz of gelatin solution. I wish I could remember that for more than five minutes, but no...everytime I need to get the calculator and redo it. It's the drugs.

Calvel's rustic bread..I find this stuff to be a workout. Figured it out, at least for today.

Three things about flipping...really experienced cooks look on novices flipping away at the range as indulging in an activity of all form, no substance. Too much of it leads to tendonitis. Once mastered, it is fun, and looks cool.

Spray them with water and then toss them in a bowl of seeds.

Does anyone know the optimal look of a gooseberry when it's ready to pick? We have a sprawling plant right outside the back door, some of the berries are getting a rosy blush, but most are still green. I made rhubarb gooseberry preserves last year, and have about 4 times the amount of fruit this year. Lot of tailing and topping. I may have picked them a week or so later on last year, but still didn't know what I was doing.

I don't think I've ever seen a recipe where they not are soaked in ice water, blanched in a half-assed court bouillon, shocked, picked, pressed, and then finished. I like mine dredged in flour, sauteed till crusty golden brown, and sauced with a sauce made with shallots, brandy, green olives, demi, and madeira and butter. I had them once with a lobster sauce, but they were poached and I didn't care for them that way. This is what I mean.......

On the other hand, I waltzed by the meat counter at the earthy crunchy groceria where I work and spied a boned, rolled, tied rib roast for 251 bucks! That's gonna make some pricey Delmonicos.

Thank you, brother

Briefly, bean flour has lipoxygenase in it and it catalyzes oxidation during intensive mixing, because there is more air incorporated and more dough surfaces are formed. Peroxides are formed, which decompose and release volatile products which alter the balance of the substances which make up the aroma of bread. That's paraphrased from page 35 of The Taste of Bread. To quote from the same page "Lipoxygenase is situated at the very "crossroads" of chemical reactions in dough, and can exercise an influence not only on the taste appeal of bread, but also on its nutritional value through the loss of carotenoids and of vitamin A...." It does indicate all through this book that these effects are exacerbated by the intensive mixing process, which Calvel disdains. But after reading the descriptions of some of the breads people have produced in this thread, I repeat, why go there? Work with good flour, salt, yeast and water and learn how to make a great loaf from the simplest of ingredients before y'all start freelancing.

I think you all ought to read The Taste of Bread by Raymond Calvel, which was translated by James MacGuire who was a guest in a q&a forum this week. Calvel basically slams the use of bean flour. Why would anyone even go there? For what?

Two eggs over easy sausage home fries whole wheat toast fresh squeezed tangerine juice

The problem of timing with the oven is sheer inertia---bodies at rest tend to stay at rest. I have no doubt that I could pull it off, in fact I did get one perfect loaf out of the oven and in a sense, that was all I came for. So there it sits, 20 feet from my back door, $1000, a whole summer's worth of my day's off, and 5 tons of rock, brick and mortar. The bakery where I was forced to make the crummy baquettes was one of those Great Harvest ripoffs where we milled our own whole wheat flour and I learned to appreciate that. We had a 4 step process for figuring water temps, which in the hot weather, with the flour coming out of the mill at about 100 degrees and sitting in a 30 gallon container overnight, sometimes the water temp would need to be in the teens. I found Wayne Gisslen's ice water formula handy. It worked well and we could do it on the fly as we were making up to 21 sponge and dough breads every night. We also made a sourdough using Hansen Lab's cultures, but I don't think they make them anymore and in any case since then I've learned how to make it from scratch. That was another dough that got a 15 minute ride on speed 3 in an 80 qt Hobart so I know well the phenomenom of whitening that occurs to a dough that's kneaded that long. We used Bouncer, which I think is bleached, and at this point I won't use bleached flour for anything anymore. Thanks for participating here.

No feedback from the book? I find that astonishing. I can sit and puzzle over that book for hours, trying to make sense of what had previously seemed like an easy thing to do, make a loaf of French bread, only to find that the complexities quickly brought me in over my head as far as technical details go. My guess is that the majority of us who have access to large mixers only have planetary mixers and the subtleties of the mixing methods are a little hard to finesse. I used to have to make baquettes by the intensive method and the dough was hot, sticky, and would come apart in chunks during makeup. I've made the rustic bread a number of times and figure if I can come close to what the picture in the book looks like, I've done all right. I actually built myself an Alan Scott oven, but have yet to have the serendipitous confluence of fully proofed dough and the right oven temperature for baking it. I would really like to see Prof. Calvel's videos.

Only when I'm making stir fry. Otherwise, I'm bebopping and scatting all over the kitchen grabbing things.

This is the pugliese, made with all bread flour and no potato, from The Bread Baker's Apprentice. I was real casual about shaping it, just gave it another three fold and then flipped it over to proof. The loaf on the left has a less brown bottom than top and that's where the thing just lifted right up off the pizza stone. My amibition is to make a bread that look's just like an Iggy's Francese, for those of you in eastern ma, but this, good as it was, doesn't come close to the hole size they get.

This is probably right. Try rounding into a tighter ball when doing the final shaping. The loaf spread out because it was it's skin was too relaxed. I'm also wondering if "taut" was not the word here, though "taught" almost seems to work.

What makes you think it's overproofed? Looks good to me. Maybe could use a little more color on the top of the loaf, and if you slashed it, you didn't get much, but it has a nice irregular crumb, with lots of big aureoles, if that's the word, and it's apparent even from the somewhat dingy picture that the crumb has that shine to it that Peter Reinhart says is evidence of a fully fermented, roasted, gelatinized dough. This thread has got me thinking about a nice loaf, especially the pix of a pugliese somewhere here, so I have a double sized batch of biga going, for baking tomorrow evening. I like using pate fermentee and have made French boules that I couldn't believe I made. I'm always trying to recapture the rapture of those loaves. I would bake them at the country club I was working at for the dinner service and next day the chef would tell me that the sous chef ate a whole one, and that he brought one home. I think the pugliese is another thread..sethg's blog, and will someone tell me what that is, please?

Were those loaves held shaped in the refrigerator? That's where the little blisters come from. I like those. I think the separation occurs when the dough is making gas and it collects under a dried-out skin. If I need or want to hold a shaped loaf I spray it all over with pan spray and tuck plastic wrap around it.

I would double check the amount of milk powder..3/4 cup seems like a lot for two cups of milk. Professional bakers who use powdered milk use a kind that has been heat treated to inactivate an enzyme or a protein that weakens gluten. That's why one is instructed to scald milk when using fresh. I don't know if milk powder from the grocery is treated this same way. I used to make literally hundreds of loaves of 100% whole wheat bread and never had a problem with no oven bang, or flat loaves. The flour was milled the previous day to production, against all conventional wisdom, but it worked well. this formula is in pounds, make 40 2lb 2 oz loaves. To scale down, multiply by 16 to get ounces, then divide what you want by what you have. In other words, if you want two loaves, get the weight in ounces, then divide that by the total weight of these 40 loaves, then multiply all the ingredients in this big formula by that factor and that will give you the weight of what you need for two loaves. I've batches of 80 loaves, or two loaves from this formula. Honey Whole Wheat 4x sponge h20 8.4 yeast, fresh .7 honey 5.8 whole wheat 19.2 1 1st, 4 2nd minutes and speeds in an 80 qt Hobart 3 hour fermentation dough h20 4.3 yeast .2 salt .6 whole wheat 4.8 1 1st, 2 2nd, 4 2nd 25 minute rest, take to bench for scaling and shaping. Proof at 90 degrees, 80% humidity till no rebound. Bake at 350 till nicely golden brown.