scott123

Salt is cheap and I speak of it loftily. So is bacon and pork fat. By the way, there was a time when salt was NOT cheap. Entire empires, such as the ancient Lebanese sea traders and the entire port nation of Sicily was built on it. Same with black pepper. Tell that to the Spanish!!! ← Canela es mas importante- Seriously, I don't have a finger on the pulse of the Spanish people, but for the sake of argument, lets imagine a world without paprika vs. a world withous saffron. How would the Spanish approach that quandary? Would they pick paprika? I think so. Is paprika treated as reverently as saffron is? Nope. I'm not trying to trash saffron, I'm just attempting to point out the possibility that it's public perception might be driven, to an extent, by it's cost and that there are quite a few other ingredients that are more indispensible and yet treated with less reverence.

That's your opinion and you're entitled to it. Me, I am -majorly- disappointed when I dine at a Spanish restaurant and I have a Paella or Arroz con Pollo and discover that they didn't use saffron and used something like tumeric. Its enough to turn me away from a place completely. ← Jason, I think Fatmat brings up an interesting point. I know this is an extremely rhetorical as well as a subjective area, but imagine a world without saffron and a world without salt. A world without salt would be catastrophic, would it not? Yes, there are a handful of dishes where saffron plays an integral part, but would losing saffron be even a fraction of the loss that salt would be? I think you could take this discussion even further than saffron and salt. Imagine, if you will, a world without pepper. A world without paprika. Nutmeg. Cumin. Cinnamon. Cinnamon certainly has a devoted following, but you don't get the same reverence for cinnamon that you find for saffron. And yet, within the bigger culinary picture, losing cinnamon would involve a far greater hit than losing saffron. If one were to look at saffron's indispensibility as compared to other ingredients, even the biggest saffron devotee would rank a substantial number of ingredients higher. Ingredients, that, although not as expensive, deserve proportionate praise. If saffron were cheap, would it be referred to in the same lofty tone? I, personally, think not.

I'm not a big fan of saffron and I've purchased it on many occasions from reliable sources. I did start off using quite a bit of it, causing a bad first impression, but even using it in miniscule amounts, the taste doesn't send me soaring. I will second Rebecca's recommendation to combine it with garlic. If a dish doesn't combine it with garlic, I won't go near it.

Twin cities in Elizabeth has them. They're standard Hispanic grocer fare. The littlest bodegas all have them. Union has bodegas, right? Here in Morristown, we have them on almost every block. I'm sure Union is no different. Most of the places I've found them have them in the frozen section. Look for flat dark green rectangular packages.

Sorry I can't help you with a recipe, but every Ethiopian restaurant I've been to uses pureed chickpeas in their shiro watt. The menus almost always say "chickpeas" and the taste is undeniably hummus-like. That's one of the two red colored dishes on the veggie combo. The other (I forget the name) is made with red lentils.

..... you totally lost me! Cream based in what way and foamed in what way? .... this one sounds excellent, actually. I assume I should heat the marmalade first, then chill to combine with other ingredients? .... you also lost me with ceviche. Sorry for all the dumb questions.... ceviche and foam I don't know from but at least I have saffron, wasabi & mirin in my cupboard, so at least I have good ingredients going for me, right? .... and I do have xantham gum so that's good. ← I would say, yes, heat the soy sauce and the marmalade together and then strain/chill. Unless you want the zest from the marmalade in the recipe. It might just work and save you from having to wash a strainer. If you've got mirin on hand, you might want to add some of that as well. Foam Recipes Ceviche is a Latin American dish of raw seafood that's marinated in citrus juices. The acid in the citrus 'cooks' the fish (to an extent) without any heat. Ceviches can include a variety of ingredients including garlic, onions, tomato, cilantro and chopped red or green peppers. Although serving ceviche marinade as a dipping sauce for cooked shrimp is highly unconventional, I'm certain the flavors would work. The trick, though, would be adding a bulking agent to get the marinade to coat/cling better. You have xanthan?! Wow, I'm impressed. After much consideration, I'm going to backtrack on the xanthan, though. By the time you add enough xanthan to get the marinade to cling, it'll be slimy as heck. The problem with most thickeners is that they involve heat. Ceviche marinade and heat are not friends. You could take the whole thing and blend it (almost like a thick gazpacho). That might give you a coating consistency. Or maybe blended with a little xanthan. Hmmm... maybe blend in a little cooked rice. Or bloomed gelatin. Or... blend the ceviche marinade with a banana. Sorry, once I start riffing, I can't be stopped. Here are some new ideas that came to me while replying: Tzadsiki (Strained greek yogurt with cucumber/dill and sometimes garlic) could fit the bill here as well. Mojo (Latin American garlic marinade/dipping sauce) is really great stuff is you want to go heavy on the garlic. Satay dipping sauce (peanut/coconut/garlic/lemongrass/chili) Wasabi may not have quite enough depth of flavor when combined with the mayo. Dijon is very complementary, if you have it. Horseradish mayo is pretty good too. A chutney perhaps.

Try adding wasabi to mayo and letting it sit for the flavor to develop. Make a cream based saffron lemon zest foam. Combine soy sauce, strained orange marmalade, cayenne and a tiny amount of minced ginger/garlic. Pesto mayo works wonderfully with shrimp as well. Ceviche marinade thickened with a xanthan gum (or any other thickener that works without heat)

I make a LOT of chicken wings and find myself spending quite a bit of time separating the wing from the drummette with kitchen shears. I initially thought that I could figure out some anatomical insight that would allow me to make quick work of it, but the more I understand the anatomy, it seems like brute force is the only way. I've tried a knife and it seems to take even more time than shears do. A cleaver would probably make quick work of it, but I like to cut the wing right at the joint and I feel like my cleaver technique would be too imprecise and I'd end up cutting on the bone instead. There has to be a better tool out there. I think a longer pair of kitchen shears would be ideal. The ones I have are 8" and they just don't give me the required torque. I've looked around for longer shears and it seems like they're all pretty much the same length. A pair of stainless steel tinsnips, if such a thing exists, would be fantastic. Regular tinsnips would work, but having to worry about rust would be a huge hassle. Any ideas?

I'm guessing you used frozen blackberries, correct? Those'll probably give off more water than fresh. Also, I'm guessing you went with sour cream, correct? Some brands of sour cream are looser than others. Refrigerators can vary as well. If you give it some more time, it might set. If, after chilling overnight, it isn't set, return everything to a sauce pan and add more bloomed gelatin.

Part of the reason why I stopped eating vegan was that I was always hungry. Protein takes longer to digest and gives you a full feeling that you just don't get from starches/veggies. If you give them a meal of starches/veggies, their level of satisfaction won't be as high as if you included some protein in the mix. Including some high quality vegan protein, though, can get tricky, as a previous post mentioned. When I say 'high quality' I'm refering to something other than beans. Beans are great and I definitely recommend including them, but if you want an eternally grateful vegan dinner guest, you'll need to go the extra mile and find a higher quality protein to work with. Tofu, as previously mentioned, can get really nasty if cooked incorrectly. If you cook it right, though, it's the ideal high protein canvas for other flavors. My recommendation: Extra firm tofu sliced in 3/4" pieces A fatty marinade (coconut milk works well) Long slow dry heat (275 for a couple of hours) The goal is to dry out the tofu, not brown it too much. As it dries out, the texture gets meatier and the flavor intensifies. Fat also helps to create a satiated feeling, so make sure to use plenty of it. Unrefined coconut oil (or thick coconut milk) is one of the tastier vegan fat options. This is why I tend to go Thai or Indian when I cook vegan. If you go the pastry route, I recommend palm oil (green crisco), as it will give you flakiness without the dreaded trans fats of regular shortening.

It's a known issue with instant yeast: http://www.baking911.com/Asksarah/_disc4/000029cd.htm http://www.baking911.com/asksarah_oldsite/...c4/000029d1.htm Switch to regular yeast and you should be fine.

With the starch and the starch converting enzymes present in dough, there is almost an unlimited supply of nutrients for yeast. As long as you are making additional sugars available to the yeast by punching down/redistributing the yeast throughout the dough, the yeast will continue to survive. I'm guessing you could probably do this for days. Eventually, though, the excreted alcohol will create an unhospitable enough environment to curtail yeast activity severely. As the dough ferments, yeast activity drops and the rising time lengthens. I'm sure you've noticed that the initial dough doubling time is significantly longer than ensuing rises. This is the increasing yeast activity. Ideally, you want to bake the bread when the yeast activity is at it's peak. Once it hits it's peak (and this amount of time will be different for every dough) the doubling time will increase rather than decrease. If you plotted yeast activity on a graph, it would look like a hill. Besides creating an inhospitable environment for the yeast and impairing them from doing their jobs, the alcohol created by excessively numerous degassing cycles will include potentially bad tasting by-products. Fermentation itself is not a bad thing. It's when you overferment a dough that you are asking for trouble. I've seen different recommendations by different authorities about the number of times to let a dough rise. Two seems to be pretty popular. Amy (from Amy's Breads) recommends three or maybe even four. I take a different tack. I'm an adherent of the long cool rise. That's a slightly different ball game. Cold (retardation) will slow down yeast activity/alcohol production and, imo, allow the taste of the wheat to shine more brightly. Another reason why I utilize the long cool rise is that it's the technique my local pizzeria goes with. Replicating their bread (crust) is my ultimate goal.

Lynette, welcome to the forum! Although it sounds like you have found a way of eating that works superbly for you (and sounds delicious!), I would say there's a few key differences between what you describe and Atkins. 1. Grapes are very high in sugar. Although they may make it into latter stages of Atkins, they would definitely be approached sparingly, if at all. 2. Sugar (like hydrogenated oil) never makes it onto the 'okay once in a while list.' Atkins is big on the 'no more sugar,' ever, philosophy. 3. A huge part of the Atkins process is the stages one goes through. A strict sugar free fruit free starch free two week induction period is seen by many devotees as being vital for success in the program. It does sound like you've taken some pretty big steps away from South Beach with your approach to healthy fats and what I'm guessing could be a more liberal approach to fat consumption in general. That's definitely Atkinsesque But no clear cut induction, 'lots of grapes' and the occasional sugary treat... that's definitely a different direction. Not bad, mind you, just different.

Any theories as to why this might be? Dark chocolate doesn't suffer from this trait, does it? Maybe I'm oversimplifying a bit, but isn't white chocolate just dark chocolate with the cocoa particulate matter subbed out with dried milk? Can it be some aspect of the dried milk that's causing this? The lactose perhaps? The whey? Is dried milk more hygroscopic than cocoa?

*Doing a double take* Clay Oven?!? Really? I've done the buffet lunch there twice now and both times it was dissappointing (limited selection/no lamb, mediocre tasting food, old/shoddy/musty decor, bright orange carrot halvah,). I don't see how you could mention Clay Oven and Moghul in the same post. For me, the two are worlds apart in quality.

Fatals in Patterson (pick up some tahini while you're there!)

Besides the idea itself being just plain goofy, the way in which they went about presenting it to the public involved some especially poor planning. Sure, if Whole Foods wants to announce that they're 'looking into better treatment for lobsters' that's fine, but using phrases like 'discontinuing sales' or 'ban' shows especially poor business saavy. Lobster sales represent a pretty large source of revenue for these guys. Regardless of how strongly whole foods believes in lobster rights, I find it ludicrous that someone in their marketing department couldn't forsee that a large portion of the public/shareholders/potential shareholders might find the topic trivial. Lobster rights and potentially lost revenue are not a good combination. Did they really need to 'put their money where their mouth is' on this topic? Sure, the stock will probably continue to rise, but actions such as these don't instill a lot of shareholder confidence Would it have been that difficult to present the problem AND the solution at the same time? I also believe that they're mistargeting their demographic. Sure, they have a large number of crunchy customers, but I think foodies comprise the larger number of their customer base. Besides, I don't think they're going to attract any more crunchy customers than they already have by this type of extreme animal rights philosophy. A large part of their success has come from a gradual shift toward the center, like selling more conventional produce, for example. This is a move in the wrong direction. Stupid idea and bad business. Very bad business.

This is the flour I recommend. I didn't know it at the time, but compared to Spring King flour, King Arthur's was pure angst for me. The slight chemical smell/taste, the stickiness of the dough (regardless of the level of hydration), the tendency towards tearing, the resulting dense/rubbery crumb that King Arthur's flour cursed me with - once I started working with Spring King, that misery was fully revealed. I put up with it for months because I thought the problem was me. I thought that somehow I needed to learn more about breadmaking. Eventually I just said "forget this" and went looking for another brand of flour. Since King Arthur's was the only brand my supermarket carried, I went to my favorite Italian bakery and asked if they'd sell me some of their bread flour. They did. That flour turned out to be Spring King. I'm not talking slightly better flour. This is night and day. Suppleness, manageability, oven spring, crumb, taste, smell, resistance to tearing- the Spring King is vastly superior. What's the downside to this flour? Well, you won't find it in a supermarket. Call your local bakeries. See if they use it/if they'll sell you some. Even if it's not Spring King, try the bread flour they are using. Chances are excellent that it will be better than King Arthur's. I have a strong feeling that just about any commercial bread flour is superior to King Arthur's. That's how little faith I have in it.* Don't get me wrong, great flour isn't going to make your pizza crust for you. You'll still have hydration/gluten formation/rheology issues to deal with. Still, though, I promise you that this flour will bring unbridled joy to your breadmaking/pizzamaking. *One caveat. I don't completely hate King Arthur's. They (Taylor and Sands) make a seriously kick butt unbleached white pastry flour. Again, though, you won't find it in stores. Maybe it's because commercial bakeries are more demanding, but, whatever the reason, retail consumers are stuck with some pretty crappy high and low protein flours. Don't even get me started on Softasilk. Supermarkets do fine with all-purpose (Heckers makes a good cookie), but if you need application specific flours, you're out of luck. Go to a bakery instead.

Interesting, I didn't know that. One site says baked flour can keep for 6 or more months. Might the level of refinement have something to do with it? Diffferent white flours contain different amounts of the wheat germ. Maybe using a very highly refined flour would slow the process down. If you have a look at the pictures, oven baked flour is remarkably regular in browning. I couldn't spot any variation at all. Pan toasting might be different. ← I'm not making this up Heat, light and air all contribute to accelerating the demise of fat. Any unsaturated/unhydrogenated fat will succumb to these elements over time, it doesn't matter. They're equal opportunity rancidifiers. I have to agree that when I saw your final picture I was impressed by the homogeneous appearance, but I'm afraid the naked eye isn't telling the complete story here. The size of the flour particle necessitates a microscope in order to witness the uneven coloration. Without the superior conductivity of fat, you're going to get uneven flour particle browning.

Let me guess, King Arthur's Bread Flour? Without a doubt, the most salacious lie perpetuated on the novice bread baker is that King Arthur's makes the 'best' bread flour. Since changing from King Arthur's my crusts have gone from pitiful to sublime.

Thanks, Prasantrin. To clarify, I am looking for a thin crust, crispy on the outside, very airy and slightly chewy inside with big air pockets. ← That sounds to me like my favorite kind of pie, which is typical of a NYC vulcan oven type of pie (which in turn is very different from a Neopolitan wood burning oven style, which, just to confuse things, is popular in NYC as well). To get those air pockets, thin crust and slight chewiness, I promise, you need a higher gluten flour. Also, in order for the gluten to develop sufficiently, you need a lean dough. Other than oiling the dough for rising, thin crust style dough requires no additional oil. This is very important. To obtain the right crispiness, you need a decent sized thermal mass on your pizza stone. A good barometer of whether or not your stone is thick enough is the time it takes for your pizza to cook. After pre-heating to around 550-600, a pizza should take less than 8 minutes to cook. An even better way of determining proper stone thickness is the time it takes for your second pizza to cook. In other words, if your oven isn't recovering fast enough to cook another pie in a similar rate to the first, the stone isn't thick enough. The intense, sustained heat from a thick pre-heated stone is what gives you crisp puffiness while at the same time protecting inner moistness. It will be especially difficult to recreate pizzeria style pizza without the right stone, the right flour and a lean recipe. Peter Reinhart is a legend in bread making, but as far as his "NYC style" thin crust pizza goes... I'm sorry, but he dropped the ball there. New York pizza is, imo, the best on the planet. His recipe doesn't even come close.

No, you can't. I used to make 'dry' roux all the time. Flour has a trace amount of fat. By toasting it in this fashion, you're accelerating the oxidation process. Although it's fine to cook with immediately, if you stick it in a jar in your cupboard for a few days it will be rancid the next time you use it. Nothing's worse than spending a half hour (or more) on a sauce only to find out you used rancid roux. As far as the dry roux behaving as if it were significantly darker when cooked when compared with a fat based roux of the same appearance, it's a matter of perception. Anything wet will appear darker. You just have to take this into account and toast your dry roux to a lighter shade than it's wet counterpart. If you make dry roux a few times, the adjustment becomes second nature. One huge player in the wet vs. dry roux game is the conductivity of fat. Fat conducts the heat in such a way that all the flour particles, with careful stirring, are being toasted evenly. With dry roux, oven or pan, you can stir until your arm just about falls off and you won't get the even toasting you get with fat. That even toasting plays a huge role down the line in consistency and taste.

It's kinda pricey, and, much like paraffin, it's probably not something you have on hand, but grain alcohol works wonderfully. It burns perfectly clean. Don't try it with vodka, though- the proof just isn't high enough. Just soak the lump charcoal in grain alcohol and light. I know Dave mentioned using twigs in combination with an oil sprinkled crumpled newspaper, but I think if you had enough twigs (and a decent sense of pyrodynamics), you could get away with only using twigs. Dry bark is extremely flammable- twigs give you lots of bark surface area. I'd create a mesh of intercrossed twigs/bark on the lower shelf and place the coals on the higher. It should work.

If you're looking for a better deal, my suggestion would be Parks, which has an address in chester, but I really consider to be Mendham. From Morristown it's a very quick ride (maybe 12 minutes) and simple too, just straight down 24/Mendham Road. Wightmans is a little closer, but generally isn't quite as competitively priced.

Vulcan style ovens (what most pizzerias use, i.e. the non neopolitan route) rely to a great extent on heat retention. Until I came to eG, I was under the assumption that good pizza was about super high temps. That's true for wood burning neopolitan style pies, but not for your average neighborhood pizza, which, as I said, happens to be my favorite. The superior heat retentive qualities of these units stem from thick hearths, walls and ceilings. That's my secret for vulcan style pizza at home- a thick stone box surrounding the pie. I'm also a huge fan of a very lean, retarded (cool rise) dough, made from commercial bread flour and commercial yeast, pulled extremely thin. A thin crust can be really hard to work with but I find it guarantees the characteristic floppiness and also helps to transfer heat up to the cheese far more effectively. I've done a lot of tests with cheese and have found that I far prefer cheese that bubbles from intense bottom heat rather than browns from top heat. Bubbling cheese releases so much more of it's butterfat, and is, imho, more flavorful/better tasting than a cheese that's browned on the top but relatively undercooked below. Again, this is a Vulcan style pizza issue, applying more to packaged mozz, rather than the fresh stuff. I've noticed that fresh mozz has a tendency to bubble regardless of where the heat source is originating, be it top, bottom or side.