McDuff

Try steeping cocoa nibs in the mix. I make a range of chocolate things from cocoa nib panna cotta, to milk chocolate pot de creme, to double chocolate pudding. Every color of the chocolate rainbow.

I used to be production manager at a bakery where we used freshly milled flour every day, and we never had a problem with it. We used it within two days of it's being milled. We got good volume and pop on the breads and there is nothing more mind-blowing than smelling that stuff come out of the mill when you're used to dry-as-dust whole wheat from the major millers. The only problem we ever had was the stuff retaining heat in the big barrels we stored it in. Sometimes we had to use an ice water formula to simulate water temps down into the teen's.

You can sometimes see that fat floating on the top of a bowl of chocolate you're trying to temper. I had an instructor, one of the guys on winning US baking team last year, Ciril Hitz, who called it "purple haze." I used to have a different definition for that substance, but I stirred the lemon curd for several minutes and didn't have any separation. That book is verrrryyyy pricey, and probably has more info in it than I need. We don't do anywhere near the variety of in-house production one could pull from that source.

That's pretty much what I've found so far. They set up, can be sliced carefully, and remain very tender. They also seem to weep a bit the following day, and the bowl of vanilla bavarian which I ignored for several days to see what would happen to it completely collapsed when I poked it with a spatula. I don't read French so the book/cd might be of limited value. The woman at Cocoa Barry in Montreal was very helpful when I ordered the sample and I suppose Whole Foods has enough clout to make her sit up and take notice if I tell her we need to know how to use it.

I got a sample of mycryo to play around with and made the Vanilla Bavarian which recipe came with it, folding Valronha's perles au chocolat into it and making a mousse torte kind of thing. I should have infused the milk with Valronha's cocoa nibs, now that would have been tasty. I tried to figure out how much to use per unit of mousse or whatever and landed on 1 oz per lb. So I made some lemon curd, dropped the mycryo in while it was still hot, then cooled it, folded in some whipped cream, spread it on a round of frangipane, pressed fresh raspberries into it, then piped whipped cream over it. Not too shabby tasting. If anybody else has used it, is an oz per lb enough? Does it need heat and/or acid to work? Most of the recipes that came with it need to go to 158 degrees, then the cream is folded in at 64 degrees. I just love that kind of precision. What happens if you bump the amount used up a little? Does it set any firmer? I don't have a lot of it left and I don't think my boss will buy it if I can't answer some questions about it. It apparently costs about 110 bucks for 9 kilos. But the big brass are a little excited by it as it is natural and vegetarian. We can only use beef gelatin from Giusto's and people don't like the smell when it's hot.

So how about a Summer Solstice/St. John's Day kind of thing? Bonfires, first vegetables of summer, bread, golden cheeses, mead and wine at the hour of dusk. My wife puts two stipulations on it...backyard needs to be a little more presentable, and the new pantry has to be finished. At least she didn't insist on the greenhouse window being done. I've got the time for that stuff...money is an issue. I try to string these little projects along. BTW, I mentioned in another thread that I helped a guy about 25 miles away in R.I. bake his bread on a Sunday morning in a 6 x 8 Alan Scott oven. That was sorta fun. I'm up for this if anybody else is.

OK McDuff, if you're within striking distance of NYC, you have to invite me over for some pizza making in that oven. I'll supply the ingredients. OK, the wood too. I'm 40 miles southwest of Boston, about 30 miles north of Providence and 23 miles east of Worcester. 95 north to 495 north, and you're here. Or 84 to I-90. (It's been a long time since I've been to Nuevo York.) There's nothing quite like tending the fire all day, then stepping down the back steps with the pizza on the peel, and three minutes later bringing it in the house. I made 21 pizzas in it one day.

I was taught to keep the salt away from the yeast. Especially fresh yeast. This whole thread is making my head throb. It's a Zen thing..make the pizza. Eat the pizza. I'll admit to being a huge pizza snob. I also have a 5 ton brick oven in my backyard that bakes a pizza in under three minutes. I'm a big Reinhart fan, use his foccacia formula from Crust and Crumb for pizza, and in this case, maybe Shirley is talking out of her butt. Knead more yeast into a retarded dough? No way. If you have to do that, there's something wrong with the formula.

proof that a light touch on a grinding wheel will work.

You're not really getting conflicting advice. You're hearing from people who have been/there done/that with the grinding thing, and from people who have no idea what they are talking about. Go look at the thread on sharpening with waterstones, started by this guy rbm who appears in this thread, and ask yourself, does this guy have a clue? Yeah, I think so!

A long time ago a buddy of mine got annoyed at my neighbor's in the condo complex I was living in and he used my Henckel's paring knife to flatten all four tires on their car, breaking off the tip while doing this. I reground it, on a grinding wheel, to a sheep's foot shape, and it was, and still is, much improved blade geometry. This repair is not a big deal. Get the yaller pages, find a machine shop, take a guy 5 minutes to do this. It is going to change the knife in a subtle way. But it is very definitely salvageable.

Oh, please don't get me going here. I thought I was all done when I got my hands on a Stanley 45, but no..there was the filister plane with all the brass and wooden knobs and the guy only wanted 50 bucks... A Norris with rosewood infill, put me down for one.

One caveat to using invert sugar is not to substitute it beyond a certain percentage, or your baked goods will be very brown.

I spent 7 hours yesterday helping a guy in Smithfield R.I. who built a 6x8 Alan Scott oven. We turned out 3 full oven loads, about 60-70 loafs per load, and the stuff sold right off the peel. By the time I left I don't think he had 20 loafs to sell for the rest of the day. He was a little lackadaisacal about proofing too, as some his loafs bulged here and there. The trick to slashing with a sharp serrated knife is to think follow-through even as you start the cut. The cut almost seems to be incidental. I also find that getting really cool "ears" is one of the more elusive techniques to master. Sometimes I'm just satisfied if the loaf looks good and didn't pop.

My two favorites--our meat guy, Lenny the Llama, brought his girlfriend in for dinner, and she wanted rat-tat-twah. A dummy I worked for came in the kitchen and asked if we had prosecuto and fruit.

the recipe from The Patisserie of Pierre Herme is 560 g peeled Marcona almonds 960 g non starch confectioner's sugar 400 g beaten egg whites 1 g powdered egg white 1/3 of the whites should be fresh, 2/3 old. Grind the nuts and sugar. Beat the whites with the powdered egg white till stiff. Mix all together with the whisk. Stir to deflate and pipe and bake. There is no mention of drying the macaroons before baking, a specificity he must feel the merely mortal can get along without.

Just got prompted to remember this--my wife had to go through chemo for a second time and I had my head buzzed so she wouldn't be bald alone. We went to a Todd English joint, had spicy fried calamari on arugula, and after we lapped it up discovered a looong black hair under the salad. We pointed it out to the waitress, who said, "are you sure it isn't one of yours?" I'm such a classy date, I don't drink, but my wife wanted a glass of wine, so I bellied up to the bar and ordered a number 92. The bartender nicely pointed out that was the vintage.

I used to work at a retreat house and one day was tossing a big bowl of potato salad. One of the resident priests was watching me and murmured, "I wonder how many of your epithelial cells we've eaten?" Nowadays when people ask me if I can make them a cake, I tell them, "2 dogs, 4 cats, it's up to you."

I have a couple of his books, I like his Christmas book the most, though it is a bit informally chatty.

This is all nothing compared to what I go through every working day, in the earthy crunchy grocery store, where the default choice seems to be all Madonna all the time. The thrashing pounding electronic drums of that music make me nuts. I've scoped out the location of every volume control in every department where I need to work. I even got up on a ladder and lifted the ceiling panel to see if I could disable the speaker in my production area, but it was hard wired and I wasn't about to cut the wires and have everything in the store go out. Eight hours of this swill every working day...If I walked into a restaurant and heard crap coming out of the ceiling I didn't like, I'd walk right out. I live in a duplex and told the twentysomethings who just moved in, live and let live, but if I hear your music, I'm not calling you, I'm calling your landlord. I almost dread the first nice day of spring where the idiots go out to clean their cars, and blare the music while doing it. And people walking or running with earphones? For what? At least if I want to annoy someone with loud music, it's Frank Sinatra and Nelson Riddle, or Stairway to Heaven, played wicked loud.

I once had to make 160 diamond shaped mini cakes for a party, walnut chiffon genoise with white chocolate ganache glaze, served with pistachio creme anglaise. The ganache didn't cover well at all. I wound up hand icing each freaking piece of cake. But I didn't have any kind of crumb coat or any other covering. This might work if your cake has a base coat.

This is the technique Pierre Herme uses in his Lemon Cream, which product brings to mind the adjective "smooth."

As far as I'm concerned it's a violation of protocol to eat certain things without also eating the pickle and coleslaw.

Had cervelles de veau au beurre noir one quiet snowy night in, I think, 1976, at Dodin-Bouffant, followed by stingers at the Ritz, and spent the next week in bed, sooo sick. Maybe it was coincidence, it was possibly the flu, but I haven't eaten the damn things since and it's a long time since brandy got by my tonsils. Then when Moncef Maddeb opened L'Espalier in the same space, I had tournedo with mustard seeds there. His kitchen was a revelation. All Le Creuset, whereas I grew up on Wearever aluminum.

At my first restaurant job we had a Vulcan broiler which had one of those slanted drip pans under the grill to direct drippings into a removable tray. the pan would get crusted over with cheese that dripped off the onion soup crocks and since we didn't do a lot of steaks, the thing had a dry carbonized crust that would start to smolder ominously before bursting into flame, which the chef would put out with milk. My first Thanksgiving in a new house I was making prime rib and popovers and got a little frisky with the grease in the popover pan. It flooded out, spilled into the flame at the bottom of the oven and caught fire. Thinking back to Executive Chef Bill Lalor dousing a fire with milk, I did the same thing. POOOFFF! And the reason why one nevers put liquid on a grease fire was demonstrated as the flames came roaring out the vents on the back of the stove and licked up the kitchen wall. The orange glow was so intense people in the living room could see it reflected on the walls. All I could think was, Well, there goes my investment. My quick thinking brother merely shut the oven door to quell the flames, then threw a box of baking soda on it all. I was left shaking like a leaf. Executive Chef Bill Lalor's brother Tom once went into that kitchen, turned on the ovens, broiler and salamander, forgetting the key thing of the exhaust fan, and went downstairs to prep. He came back up with his bus buckets to discover he had tripped the Ansul system. Now that was a mess.