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We're just finishing up a gingerbread house based on a local historic mansion. For windows we used sheet gelatine. Their light straw color and diamond markings make for a realistic glass stand-in. Their transparency is great if you want people to see into the house. You can install them with royal icing or, if allowed, hot glue. They look much better than sugar glass (which in our tests showed some fogging and discoloring as it aged. All the cutting of the wall and roof piece was done after baking. A local cabinet maker cut them out, windows, doors and all, on his band saw (with suprisingly little breakage). The biggest problem was warping. To replicate the wooden shingle exterior of the mansion, we attached brown-colored fondant rolled through a Rondo sheeter at a 2 setting. We then scribed shingles into the fondant, and got a weathered look with a dusting of Brazilian black cocoa. We're doing the same for the roof, only in a slightly different shade. It's been a lot of work, but the look is amazing. We've also installed lights. A local hobby shop had rice grain-sized 12v bulbs. Some of these were placed behind the gelatine windows as "candles." The bulbs were too bright at 12v, so we used a 9v power supply (Radio Shack) to reduce the intensity. The shop also had special "fireplace" bulbs that flicker. So the model mansion has a "working" fireplace. Because the real house is haunted, ours has a ghost, too, lit by a pair of strobing white LED's. By drilling holes into a gingerbread christmas tree, we were able to mount 15 vari-colored bulbs. The tree is in the living room and folks can see it through the windows. We cast the chimney in solid chocolate, using a "crocodile skin" texture mat to emboss bricks into the piece. The house is due Monday and we'll make it by the skin of our chinny-chin-chin. But it's been an exciting challenge. When it's all finished I'll try to post some pictures here. Cheers,

How's the noise level on the DLX? Cheers,

I third that. We bought one mainly for the 7qt capacity. We've had wires pull off on two whisks - but discovered that the similar Kenwood has a different and much better design that fits perfectly. Still, the Viking is noisy and, despite it's much-vaunted 1000w motor, has a terrible time doing even small batches of doughs. Viking has named this a "professional" mixer, but when you talk to them about service and mention that you're using it professionally, they tell you that you've invalidated the warantee because you've used it "commercially." That's all bull-bleep. We're now thinking of putting it up for sale in the local "trader" weekly, and look forward to replacing it with a 6qt KA. Bottom line on the Viking - I'd never buy another Viking appliance. Cheers,

Business consultants are fond of saying that "everybody is expendable," that a business can thrive even with the loss of a key employee. Frankly, I've found the opposite to be true. The departure of a talented, experienced, hard-working, loyal staffer can wreak havoc on a business and, if that business is already on the edge, can fatally tilt it over the precipice. To have a baker/pc like chefpeon would be a godsend - every employer's dream. I wish there were more of you out there. We do everything we can to keep the good ones. But they seem so few and far between. Cheers,

Wendy is so right. You get to the point where you can't see the forest for the trees, and that's dangerous because you're missing the big picture. You spend your time on the niggling little micro things, to the detriment of broader issues, like marketing and promotion and whether you're making money or not. The people who owned this bakery before us decided to cut back by eliminating the retail operation in the front and concentrating solely on wholesale. That way the couple, both bakers, could do most of the work themselves, with the assistance of a part-time baker and a dishwasher/packager. They didn't have to worry about advertising or managing a large staff. Still, they both worked 10-12 hours a day, 6 days a week, and I don't think they found much balance in their lives. Cutting back doesn't seem like an option for us right now - there are too many problems to take care of and not enough time. All I want for Christmas is staff stability. Then perhaps there will be time to look at bigger stuff. Cheers,

Mel, Don'tcha just love being in business for yourself? We lost two talented bakers in the past two weeks - one to stress and one to a move out of town. And this week we had one of our two fulltime front people quit because "I pissed her off," and the other left town because a stalker was after her. That left us without any fully-trained people in the front or the back and, consequently, left us exposed to all kinds of painful failures, micro and macro. Just when you think you've got a stable organization, it goes to hell in a handbasket, and you have to start from scratch all over again. Sucks big time. So, we can really, truly sympathize with your plight. Hang in there and look on the bright side - the holidays are coming and you can woo folks in with amazing pastries and confections. Cheers,

I want to shift the direction of this thread a bit. I have been working with a very stable San Francisco sourdough starter culture. The loaves that come out of the oven smell great, taste great and have a good "hole-y" texture- very close to the real thing. But the problem I'm having is with forming the loaves and getting a good hard crust. The process is thus: Combine flour and water and let it autolyse for 30 minutes. Add the starter sponge and salt. This makes a very sticky dough. Place the dough in a bowl and let it proof for about 12 hours at room temp. Punch down the dough and let it proof for 5 more hours at room temp. Form the loaves with a minimum of handling, placing them in wicker baskets to proof at room temp for 2 hours. Roll the forms onto a peel, slash, spritz and bake in a commercial convection oven, on a stone, at 450F for 15 minutes, switching to 400F for the rest of the bake. I steam for 20 seconds at about 3 minutes, and again at about 10 minutes. The problems are thus: The dough is very sticky and moist, and does not form well. Should I be more aggresive in forming the loaves? When I roll them out of the baskets onto the peel, they sort of smooze around a bit. When I slash them, the cuts tend to "heal" up. Okay, so into the oven they go, and they brown really nicely after about 35 minutes of baking, but the crust is not as thick as some of my customers would like. Any thoughts on what I might be doing wrong? We're at 3000ft here - is that going to have an impact on the quality of the crust? Bottom line? Help! Cheers,

Last year a local woman won a blue ribbon at our county fair with chocolate bon bons made with paraffin. People should know better. Scary. Cheers,

Many thanks for the info. I found AWMCO and spoke with a rep there. He said they can custom make stones for our oven - and the price is pretty reasonable. Cheers,

Mel, Long ago and far away you wrote about looking for baking stones for your Reed oven. Did you ever find any? We have a Reed 25 pan and are hard crust challenged. For one thing, the steam isn't working, for another, the former bakers did eveything soft crust, so they had no wisdom to share. Any thoughts on how to get a better product out of a Reed? Also wondering about panini bread. We've got a customer who pays $.70 to Sysco for a piece of crap "panini" roll that looks like a squished hoagie. We've tried making a foccacia-style flat bread, but thinner. The results were only ok. Tomorrow we're going to experiment with a thick pizza dough to see if that gets us the texture we're looking for. What sort of bread have you been using for panini? Thanks for sharing your struggles. We took over our bakery about the same time you opened, so we can share your pain and joy (more of the former than the latter, it seems at times). Cheers,

Yes, about a 1/4 cup of pumpkin pie mix, with the spices already incorporated. We might try to make our own puree and spice it up oursevles, but customers are really wowed by the idea of a pumpkin 'mallow. Cheers,

We made some pumpkin marshmallows this week, using canned pumpkin pie mix and Emes vegetarian gelatine. We did have to whip it longer than most other mallow formulas we make. The pumpkin pie flavor comes through nicely. They turned out so well that we're offering them out front to folks who buy a cup of chai. We've also got a local apple farmer who can make fresh cider for us (we'll have to pasteurize it ourselves), and we think that would go great with the pumpkin mallow. Regarding the Emes gelatine. We now use it exclusively because it gives us a firmer confection that is much easier to handle and cut (we use a guitar). And because it makes the vegans happy. Cheers,

I use melted couverture with a little peanut oil. This gives a semi-hard finish that is easily cut with a hot knife.

I'm not much of a fan of Schokinag chocolate. There's a kind of raw tobacco flavor to their bittersweets that are not attractive. I prefer fruitier couvertures, like Valrhona. As for Callebaut, I've never gotten it to work successfully for me in my ganaches or molded chocolates. It's way too viscuous, a characteristic chef friends have noticed too. I tried working with the 58.5% and their standard milk, even adding cocoa butter to try to thin it, but threw my hands up in disgust and moved over to Cacao Berry, which, for an every day chocolate, suits my needs every well. Cheers,

One of the ways to achieve a smooth, creamy non dairy gelato (sorbetto) is to finely control the amount and types of sugar used. By substituting powdered glucose and sometimes powdered dextrose or invert sugar, you should be able to get the texture and mouth feel you want. Boiron, a French supplier of fruit purees, has receipes on their website. Go here to see them. Patisfrance also has a similar set of recipes. Boiron usually adds 10% sugar to their purees, so you should do the same. Just puree the fruit to the desired state, then stir in 10% of the weight in granulated sugar. Let us know how your sour cherry turns out.

We tried making banana marshmallows. I do not recommend banana. The texture was so wierd that my first reaction was to spit the cube out. But the flavor lingered and made me queasy. Perhaps this was because we used very ripe bananas. Perhaps if we had used greenish bananas the formula would have worked. But I'll never know. I have no plans to try this flavor again. Another thing we've been doing is piping choclolate marshmallow into a silcone toy bear mold. We're using chocolate chips for the eyes. We powder them with a cocoa mixture. Customers love them. We had a little trouble with the "eyes" migrating under the pressure of the piping. One bear ended up with eyes in his ears, looking for all the world like a fuzzy frog. One turned out to be a cyclops with a tasty belly button. The first batch we did was vanilla, and the bears closely resembled the Ewoks in Star Wars. Fun with marshmallows! Steve Smith

Kew, I was given some Emes Kosher Jel to try for marshmallows. As you can see from my last post, it worked very well. Like regular gelatine, it soaks in cold water for a bit to soften. In fact, we're switching to Emes for all our marshmallows because the texture is better and they're easier to handle. There are a couple of places you can order them on the web. Dunno if they'll ship overseas, but it's worth a try. Use the plain, not the flavored. Cheers,

I'm planning to offer store-made pasta in the new retail section of my bakery. We're going to do a basic egg, a spinach and a tomato basil. The plan is to make sheets, then cut them at the counter for the customer. Problem is - the cut pasta is sticking to itself and doesn't always come apart when put in boiling water; some of it clumps. We tried 100% semolina and 50% semolina - 50% all-purpose. We've tried chilling the pasta before cutting, using lots of semolina when sheeting and cutting, but nothing seems to work. We'd love to hear thoughts about how we can improve our product. Cheers,

VEGAN/KOSHER MARSHMALLOWS One of my customers gave me a bag of Emes Vegetarian Gelatine to try to make marshmallows with. I found a receipe here that seemed to work very well (in fact, it set up much faster than with the sheet gelatine I usually use). I don't know much about the Emes, but the woman who gave it to me said it was Kosher. Cheers,

Neil, I've tried this twice and all I end up with is goop. Too much liquid? Not enough gelatin? What are your thoughts? Cheers,

The sign says, simply, "HOMEMADE MARSHMALLOWS." We had another market today, and yet more eyes popped and jaws dropped. People often comment, "I didn't know you could make them at home." And a few others tell us that they've made them for Boy/Girl Scout meetings, church functions, or just for fun. Due to the popularity of the basic MM we decided to offer S'Mores, too. We make a thinner MM than usual, dip it in some Callebaut 52% semi-sweet, then sandwich that with store-bought grahams. We tell folks that if they want to heat them, they can stick them in the microwave, but under no circumstances should they run it for more than four seconds. If you do - KABLAAM!!! What a mess. Thanks for the curiosity. Cheers,

I used Neil's recipe for both "classic" (i.e., vanilla) and strawberry marshmallows. They've been selling like hotcakes at our local farmers' market. We charge $1 for a bag of four. The looks on people's faces when they read our sign are priceless! Usually they glance at it, then glance away, then turn deliberately back to read it more carefully. Their jaws drop and eyes open wide. They walk over to our stand and ask all sorts of questions. Then out comes their dollar and away they go, in fluff heaven. It's very cool to witness. Making these guys is really simple. It takes less than 15 minutes to get it into the whipping bowl, another 10 to whip. I let them cool/dry for about 24 hours, then cut them on a guitar. They are the goooooiest things I've ever worked with - until you get the sugar/corn starch coating on. But my golly how people love them! Cheers,

I added this comment on pate de fruit to another thread yesterday: The receipe will vary somewhat from fruit to fruit, but the basic ingredients are: fruit puree, sugar, glucose, pectin and tartaric acid (some people use lemon juice). The Boiron puree people have a great brochure with formulas for 26 different pates de fruit. Here's the one for Raspberry: 1000g puree 860g cane sugar 25g pectin 200g glucose syrup 15g tartaric acid Start by bringing the puree to a boil, stirring constantly. Thoroughly dry mix 110g of the sugar and the 25g of pectin and pour slowly into the boil. Boil again, add half the remaining sugar. Boil again, add the rest of the sugar. Always keep stirring. After the sugar is dissolved, add the glucose. Cook until the temp reaches 225F. Turn off the heat, then add the tartaric acid. Pour into a half-sheet lined with parchment (or a Silpat). Let rest for 24 hours. Cut into squares (usually 1-1/4") and roll in sugar. I use a digital thermometer, letting the probe stay in the mixture. I also use a refractometer to check the sugar level at the end - usually aiming for 75 Brix. Stirring is critical to the process - a whisk works well. The type of pectin is important. The stuff I get comes from Patisfrance and works reliably. Look for apple pectin, not citrus. I've never had much luck with the brands you find at supermarkets. Vitpris is, apparently, some kind of French gelling agent. Not sure why Martha Stewart has it in one of her receipes - I've never seen it in the States. Good luck and let us know how it goes. Cheers

You can buy a 2-1/2 pound container of Nulomoline (another brand of invert sugar) for $6.75 from Sweet Celebrations. They also sell 2-1/2 pounds of glucose and lots of other useful baking/pastry items. The prices are a little steep, but for the person who needs just a smidge, this is a good source.

You can get around using one, but a refractometer is invaluable for measuring the sugar level in pate de fruit, to let you know when it's time to stop cooking. Before I had one I just did time, temp and eyeball, and my results were pretty inconsistent. With the refractometer I'm able to check the progress of the batch, and know precisely when to turn off the burner. Using one is pretty simple. I use a wooden chopstick to drop a daub of pate on the prism window. You then close a frosted plastic cover over that, point it at a bright light source and read the level where a dark area (the sugary daub) and a clear area meet. As I recall, the Boiron pate de fruits table lists readings in the 68-75 Brix range. So you'll want to have a meter that reads a range of 40-82% (standard Brix meters only go from 0-32%). I actually have two now - one in the higher range, and a less expensive one that reads 0-80%, that I use as a back up and also, because we make so much of our own puree, to check the base sugar level before starting. A top notch 40-82% will cost $150-200, but you can find brand-new Chinese refractometers on Ebay for half that.