McDuff

Vanilla Chiffon Genoise 10 lb 6 oz egg yolks 2 lb sugar 3 lb vegetable oil 12 oz egg whites 2 lb cake flour sifted 2 lb 4 oz baking powder 1 oz water 5 oz vanilla to taste whip the yolks and half the sugar to full volume. drizzle in the oil make a common meringue with the remaining sugar and the whites sift the dry ingredients mix the water and vanilla fold the dry and wet alternately into the yolk mixture. (it can ball up against the sides of the bowl. be careful.) fold in the meringue scale into greased, papered 9 inch pans at 1 lb 8 oz bake at 360 till done. I don't think that's a lot of oil. the mix I use at work takes 9 lbs of oil for a 30 lb bag of mix. cake stays moist forever.

McDuff "Disremember"????? ← Mark Twain said that first, I gotta admit. I work for the earthy crunchy groceria so I can't go near Nutex or Fluid Flex on account of the hydrogenation issue. Ever make a chiffon genoise? You beat the yolks to full volume with half the sugar and drizzle in oil. It's just like making sweet mayonnaise. the other half of the sugar goes into a meringue and it's all folded together with the flour, a little water and vanilla. Tender, moist, easy to work with, and real food to boot.

No, they are not the same thing. There's one called Nutex, a partially hydrogenated shortening with special emulsifiers that allow the baker to make a cake that is basically out of balance according to traditional standards. It will help hold more liquid. It's not available to the consumer, as far as I know. Even if you could find a place willing to sell you a can, it would take forever to use it, unless you make a lot of cakes. There's another one out there, but I disremember the name right now. There's also a hi-ratio shortening from the same manufacturer, I think it's Proctor and Gamble, called Sweetex, and their regular shortening is called Primex. Liquid shortening cakes are dead easy to make. Dump everything in the mixer and mix in two stages at two speeds. We used the swill in school. Thank God I know how to make real cake.

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I make a chiffon genoise when I am asked for a dairy free cake. Confidential Chat has been discontinued. I used to respond to it sometimes. I have a bunch of clippings from it with oddball recipes like Bailey's hot fudge sauce. I could go for a Bailey's sundae right now.

I made Jeffrey Hamelman's poolish baguetters using Dan Lepard's no-knead technique today and got some beautiful batards. If you google "Hamelman pain rustique" you will stumble across a pdf file with 56 pages from the pre-ferment section of his book. I've been working my way through all of them, and incidentally, ordered the book.

There is all of that, what's mentioned in the previous couple of posts, the profiling which goes along with the din and heat of a line going flat out. But what keeps me coming back for more, and I may be one of those rare cases who can work the hot line, the pastry station and finesse the breads but only because I've been at it for a long time, what makes it worthwhile for me is when someone likes what I've made. Keeping the customers satisfied..whether it was in the restaurants, the convent, the retreat house, the college dining hall, the bakery, the country club, or at the earthy crunchy groceria.

And I've always been told that stirring TOO vigorously can cause separation also. Hmmm. Talk about confusing. Who knows what's right anymore, eh? For the record, I've never had any problems with separating.....I just stir it a bit about every 30 seconds or so, approximately. ← I stir like a mad man till it comes together and starts to boil, then only once in a while on the way up to 270. And that's only to see if it's starting to stick.

At Passover I have to make mass quantities of matzoh crunch and I find that vigourous stirring keeps the 20 lbs or so of toffee from separating, so that's a good tip. I use a little bit of honey instead of corn syrup, as corn syrup is not ok for Passover use. The corn syrup in this recipe is likely there as an inhibitor. The more different kinds of sugar crystals in a solution, the less the chances of it's crystallizing.

The Joy of Pickling by Linda Ziedrich and Blue Ribbon Preserves by Linda Amendt are two books I use. There's also the classic Putting Food By.

When I read the initial post, this is what I thought too--until he said that the detrempe and fat doughs are mixed thoroughly together. That would mean the fat and detrempe aren't layered anymore...therefore, not a laminated dough. Is that correct? ← I can't imagine there's any layering going on here. Mixing these two doughs thoroughly is going to completely mash all the fat into the flour, and you want chunks and thin layers of fat to make a pie dough flaky. And that's what I think this recipe is...flaky.

What's the kitchen look like when the prima dona is done all this fabulous cooking? That's a big test for me.

I agree with that. RLB's chart of baking powder amounts is all well and good, but my God...I don't have a triple beam balance in a glass enclosure handy most of the time. I had to make a 12" wheat free wedding cake layer for yesterday and I just baked two thinner layers, rather than one thick one. But I did follow Rose's chart for batter weights. And while I'm mentioning her, anyone think her serving numbers for wedding cakes are way optimistic?

Here's an industrial sized recipe. It can be scaled down. Great bread. Multi Grain 40 33.5 oz loaves sponge weights are in lbs. h20 17.60 honey 8.4 molasses 1.26 fresh yeast 1.26 whole wheat 33.6 sesame seed .83 flax .83 sunflower seed 3.42 nine grain mix 4.15 from Honeyville grains in Utah 1min 1st, 4 min 2nd 80 qt Hobart 3 hr ferment ddt 75 degrees dough ddt 80 degrees h20 5.4 65 degrees yeast .6 salt 1.11 bread flour 8.6 1 min 1st, 2 min 2nd, 4 min 2nd 25 min. rest, proceed right to dividing, scaling, and shaping. Proof at 95 degrees, 85% humidity. After shaping this bread is sprayed with water and rolled in a mix of flax seeds, sesame seeds and poppy seeds. Slash three times across the top when baking. Bake at 315 degrees in a rotary rack oven till 190 degrees inside. Let cool thoroughly before slicing. Will last most of the week in a bag on the counter.

I was making a 15 lb batch recently and misscaled the butter, adding too much. About half of the 150 eclairs were unusable because they were way too soft, and when I had a chance when the boss wasn't looking, I tossed all the rest of them. I had to add flour to it while it was in the mixer to get it to come together. When I was cooking it, it just didn't want to smooth out. Looked really greasy and slick. That was a clue.

It isn't very hard to make.

I used to ask new guys in the kitchen to boil me a pot of eggs. If they had green yolks, well, that told me something, usually to their detriment.

I love that book for many reasons. ← Wish it had pictures. I'm full of cornmeal crepes with Meyer lemon curd, salad of lemon and lime zest, creme fraiche and warm caramel sauce and pistachio tuile. Tuiles always taste like hot silpat to me, but everything else, Not bad...

You mean overwhip it like egg whites and make them go flat? ← I don't know if the batter would go flat, but I think it might just get thick and sticky. I had an instructor in school, who really should know since you see him all over the Food Channel doing the bread thing, who said it was impossible to overbeat an egg foam, but I think you can beat it beyond a point where it's a luxurious billowing foam that still has some elasticity to rise when put in the oven. The reason to warm the eggs is to help dissolve the sugar and heat denatures the egg proteins so they will unfold and get fluffy. the classic way to tell if the foam is ready is to either drag your finger through it, and the trough should only very slowly fill in, or the way I do it, stick a spatula in it, hold it up, and if only one blob of batter falls off it's time to fold.

Whole bunch of recipes for different gazpachos in The Alice B. Toklas Cookbook, which is also a very good read.

My wife caught me hiding a box of Drake's cherry pies in the old volvo. I eat them on the way to work while I drink a mug of sweet sweet sweet sweet sweet sweet tea. At one point in life I considered having a custom bumper made that read..This vehicle brakes for potato chips.."

I hate them more on my index fingers from sliding the pans off and on a stainless steel rack. The phenomenon is known as "galling" I think. Well after googling it, maybe it's not technically, but I do remember a lot of articles in gun magazines when manufacturers started making stainless steel guns that parts that were not stainless were causing a problem with the rubbing and so on. I just moved to a location that has THE dirtiest collection of sheet pans I've ever seen. Amazing how soap and water and three or four minutes with a copper scrub pad makes them shine again. The perfed pans probably need a session with the pressure washer.

I first learned to make genoise using "picnic table soft" butter. If I were confronted with those directions, I would use very very soft butter, beat some of the batter into that to disperse the butter, then beat that into the rest of the batter in the manner called for. Or you could melt it and do the same thing, but handle it a little more tenderly. If you mix some of the batter into the melted butter it has less of a tendency to sink to the bottom of the batter. eta--that recipe is unneccesarily complicated with the separating of eggs and beating of whites. Make a whole egg foam with the 4 eggs and all the sugar. Warm the eggs and sugar over hot water till warmish, then beat till ribbon stage. Fold in the sifted dry ingredients in thirds, add some of the batter to the melted butter, then fold all together. Cocoa is a drying agent and also has fat in it which will cause an egg white, or whole egg, foam to collapse if not handled carefully. If this kind of batter is overfolded, it will fall before you even get it into the oven. So make sure your flour/cocoa mixture is well sifted, and fold like a delicate demon. You ought to be able to make a cake like this, with practice, in about ten minutes.

I'll tell what's humbling...you're the head baker in a startup thing run by two fools, all the bread is sponge and dough, full of honey and dried fruit and nuts, real tight bouncy dough all shaped into rounds,you think you are good, and they hire a guy who really knows his way around the bakeshop, and he can round loaves one with each hand. We were totally in awe. I still can't do it.

Here's what the stuff looked like. Wish I could tell you what it tasted like, but most of you are probably familiar with your own products. I didn't take a picture of the inside of the Canadian bacon, but when I first sliced it, I thought it was raw, it was so pink. But that was from the nitrite salt. I have never tried smoking in a kettle before, but it worked. It kept a steady 300 degrees, using hardwood charcoal, and wet hickory chips. We played in the yard, which obviously needs more than raking, I lied. I fired up the oven with some of the brush we pulled out. Had nothing to bake in it, but lit it anyway. The herb sausage The Canadian bacon The little-used brick oven