cookman
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Anna, Thank you for that recipe! Made it today and really I liked it, too. Very chocolatey and nicely crisp.
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I am trying to find a god recipe to make these from scratch. Thanks!
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Very Interesting. How do you define a dense/English recipe? Is it a recipe with less flour? The last recipe I made had 2 cups flour/9 cups mixed dried fruits (all hydrated for a week in bourbon)/5 eggs/ 1 cup butter. It tastes great, but is impossible to cut neatly. The plumped fruit just pulls from the crumb, rather than slices through neatly. I was hoping for "stained glass". Could plumping the fruit make it too moist to cut through cleanly?
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I have a general question about fruitcake texture: Over the years, I have made many different recipes for fruitcake. All the recipes contain dried fruits and nuts. Some recipes seem to produce a dense loaf that can be easily sliced into thin slices, while other recipes produce a loaf that is full of moist fruit and have a moist crumb, but crumble when sliced, necessitating that one cut thick slices for serving. I can't seem to figure out what determines the final texture of the cake. Any ideas what makes a cake that can be thinly sliced and what makes the type that must be served in large chunks?
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Kerry, Thanks. That looks promising.
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Establishing and Working with Homegrown Sourdough Starter
cookman replied to a topic in Pastry & Baking
HI Mick, Thanks for all the great information! Your posts have been incredibly helpful! If you are trying to convert a recipe from commercial yeast to a sourdough recipe, how do you know how much starter to use? I have read that you want ~30% of the recipe's flour to come from the starter.Is that about what you would recommend, too? -
I'm trying to find a recipe for date nut bread that will produce a loaf similar to Neuman's Date Nut Bread, a round, somehwat sticky loaf sometimes found in supermarket deli sections. Anyone have a recipe that's seems close to that one?
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Barrytm, thanks for the detailed info. It does sound like there is some real learning curve in using this machine. Its relatively low price and the ability to use non-quilted bags, however, still makes it an attractive option.
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Anyone have any experience with the Sinbo brand of vacuum sealers? They are snorkel-type machines that make it possible to use the same inexpensive nylon (or even Mylar) bags that chamber-style vacuum machines use, rather than the more costly quilted type of bag. Here's a link for a Sinbo machine that they also claim can be used to seal liquids: http://www.vackpak.com/Sinbo.html
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I'm interesting in trying to make hard (sugarless) candies from xylitol. What I have found about it on the web says it is difficult to do. If any of you have tried it with success, can you please share the technique? Thanks!
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Any of these mandolines tough enough to julienne a celery root?
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My favorite recipe with the best detailed directions for puff pastry is in Flo Baker's The Simple Art of Perfect Baking.
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I was able to find the pages describing this technique on Google Books. Also had a miserable failure. The mixture started bubbling and fermenting after a few days, despite following the directions. Obviously the sugar concentration in the early steps was insufficient to inhibit growth of bacteria/yeast.
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I'm bumping this topic back up because Whole Foods had organic oranges on sale today for .79/lb, so I now have 10 lbs that I want to slice and candy. I've done this yearly by slow simmering in a crock pot, but I'm always looking for alternative techniques. I'd like to try Wybauw's 2-week increasing sugar concentration soaking technique, and even have a refractometer, but I can't find the details on how to do it. Does anyone have these details? Also , I keep thinking there must be a way to do this with vacuum packing and sous vide. Has anyone had success with this technique?
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Does the difference in vacuum make a difference for sous viding? Is there a problem with bags floating more with the VP210 vs the VP215 because there is more air left in them?