Patrick S

Exactly right. High water content actually facilitates the bonding of glutenin and gliadin (gluten proteins) to such an extent that kneading can be completely or nearly completely eliminated in some high-hydration recipes (e.g. no-knead breads). Obviously there are other factors controlling gluten formation, such as pH, fat content, flour protein content, temperature, etc, but definitely water promotes and does not inhibit gluten formation.

Dinner was two 5.5# Portuguese roasted chickens flavored with anchos, smoked paprika, loads of garlic, red wine vinegar, olive oil and coriander. These were roasted over a bed of about 3# of waxy red and gold potatoes along with a few carrots. Served with CI's almost no-knead bread, which has become a staple at my home.

Thank you! I didn't invert it, and it didn't really deflate much at all as it cooled. But of course, I think that is only because the crumb is more dense than it should be - it was more like a brioche or challah than the commercial pannetone I fell in love with. I'm excited to try the recipe Franci posted in the bread topic, with its fantastically open structure. In terms of the dough's development during preparation, it was very well-behaved in the sense that the recipe accurately described the way the dough would look and rise during the process.

Thank you! I used a plain packaged dry active yeast. I haven't worked with wild yeast before, but I do plan on creating a starter soon and exploring the sourdoughs.

That looks amazing! The large voids in that pannetone are exactly what I'm after. The translator on my browser seems to have done a reasonably good job translating from Italian, so this is going onto the to-try list! Molte grazie, Franci! Thank you so much, Lindag!

I was in the same boat a few years ago, and made a whipped filling with mascarpone, heavy cream vanilla and sugar that was so well-received and so delicious that I've never used eggs since!

Pannetone flavored with brandy-soaked cherries and golden raisins, clementine zest and vanilla.

I finally got around to trying a couple more panettone recipes. The first was actually a no-knead recipe (recipe here). Not bad, and certainly easy, but not what I'm looking for. The recipe called for a 1 hour 40 minute second rise, but mine wasn't risen enough even at 3 hours. Also, with the recommended baking temp of 375F, the top browned more than I'd like, even though I foiled the top for the last half of the bake. Great flavor, though getting the flavor right has never been the problem for me. The second recipe, from Serious Eats, turned out much better - indeed, probably the best of all the recipes I've tried so far. I used a 50/50 mix of dried cherries and golden raisins soaked in brandy, plus clementine zest and vanilla. The biga proofed for 12 hours, and the final dough for about 10 hours. My kitchen was a bit cold (winter finally arrived in Kentucky), so for the last half of the second rise I used a warmed oven. The clock was running out on me, otherwise I would have proofed for at least another 2 hours. The texture is not as gauzy, cottony, shred-able as I would want, but closer. The crumb is still more cramped than it should be. But I'm encouraged enough to continue experimenting. Next time, I'll plan ahead better and allow more time for proofing. A watched pot won't boil, and a rushed pannetone won't yield a cloud-like texture. This bread is reminding me that patience is a virtue.

I intended to try a few recipes before Christmas, but didn't get around to it in time. But I did finally get some paper molds, and right now I have a very large no-knead pannettone completing the second proof. I'll bake it before I go to bed and post some pictures tomorrow. The recipe I'm using is here. I'm using a little more honey and a little less salt than the recipe calls for, and I added some orange zest as well.

Made a Buche with espresso buttercream, ganache glaze and cocoa meringue mushrooms, along with some orange croissant/challah bread pudding for Christmas dessert. Also, Santa brought me this book, which I'm looking forward to working from:

I spent the weekend experimenting, the end result of which was a caramel overload tart. The shell is Herme's pate sucree, filled with a dark caramel stabilized with a single sheet of gold bloom gelatin. On top is a white chocolate vanilla cremeaux, frozen in demisphere fleximold and covered with a caramel mirror glaze. I also got the camera and Speedlite out and tried to get some decent pictures (I've been lazy recently and mostly just using my phone). The glaze turned out great - look closely, and you can see a perfect reflection of the photographer and his kitchen. I hope everyone has had a great weekend!

Looks great! Your braids kept their shape just fine, unlike mine. How did you like it?

Thank you!I'd love to share the process, in the form of a cook-off or something along those lines. I want to buy some paper molds first, and find a promising recipe and some fruit. There are some no-knead recipes that look good. I really want it to turn out sweet and moist with a gauzy crumb like the commercial ones, like Maina. I think I'll need a really wet dough to get that. Somewhere on the forums are my pitiful attempts from years ago. Edited to add: here are my first tries from almost 14 years ago. I had a wave of nostalgia looking at those - so much change in my life since those posts! http://forums.egullet.org/topic/58229-panettone/?p=798802 http://forums.egullet.org/topic/58229-panettone/?p=800584

Host's note: this topic is continued from The Bread Topic (2014-2015). There are so many truly impressive breads here. Bread has never been my culinary focus, though I've dabbled a bit. Recently, after a years-long hiatus during which I was occupied by other things, I've gotten back into the kitchen and dabbled a bit more. Believe it or not, I am only just now jumping on the no-knead bandwagon. Last weekend, I made the CI almost-no-knead bread, and Jessica Fechtor's no-knead challah. They were wonderful, and we assaulted them both like zombies at a MENSA convention shortly after they emerged from the oven. The challah braids lost most of their shape during the second proofing, and I'm not exactly sure why. I did proof longer than the recipe specified. The dough was very tacky, at the very limit of workability, when braiding. But I assume that is the norm with no-kneads. In the months ahead, I very much would like to make baguette and have it turn out half as nice as some of the loaves I'm seeing in this thread. Also, I'd like to try once again to create good panettone. I tried a few recipes years ago, with uniformly disappointing results. But I'm ready to to give it another go. http://food52.com/recipes/38241-jessica-fechtor-s-five-fold-challah

Oli, I made that cake a few weeks ago for my sister-in-love's birthday. The cake was made using Hershey's chocolate cake recipe. After all these years, I still find it one of the best chocolate cake recipes. I bake in 8" rounds, bake using cake strips, cut each cake in half using the cake saw. And I only use Dutch process cocoas. https://www.hersheys.com/celebrate/holidays/recipedetail.aspx?id=184 The buttercream is RLB's neoclassic buttercream infused with vanilla. Again, an easy and reliably delicious recipe. The salted caramel sauce - I can't recall which recipe I used, but I made the sauce and applied it with a squeeze bottle. I also applied the sauce between the layers, on top of the buttercream.

The rolls are butterflake rolls. So good. I was recently on a carb kick, and made a lot of rolls. Love the butterflake rolls and Parker House rolls also (attached). Also in the post was a blueberry cream cheese danish, and italian meringue macarons filled with white chocolate ganache infused with dehydrated powdered strawberry.

My, how the time flies. I think my last post on eGullet was about 6 years ago. It's good to see that at least some of the same members are still about, still sharing delicious experiences. Here are a few of the things I've done recently. The cake was a chocolate cake with vanilla buttercream and salted caramel sauce.

Add to that list -- dont eat any fruits, vegetable or other plants. All plants produce endogenous pesticides to prevent or reduce their being consumed by pests. There are about 5,000-10,000 natural pesticides in our diet. Anyone who is interested in this can start by checking out a classic paper on this subject: Ames et al, 1990. Dietary pesticides (99.99% all natural). Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 87, 7777-7781. Anyone concerned about exposure to benzene and wanting to reduce that exposure should first and foremost avoid proximity to automobiles, since exhaust is by far the largest source of exposure to humans. You wont avoid it altogether though since all outdoor air contains benzene, in concentrations ranging up to 30 parts per billion. This is actually much higher than the level of benzene found in drinks containing both ascorbic acid and sodium benzoate, which have rarely been found to contain levels of benzene above 5 parts per billion. See for instance: http://www.fda.gov/Food/FoodSafety/FoodCon...e/ucm055815.htm

I think I found a solution -- just use my splatter screen, which has a finer mesh. CB, what do you pay for the 5kg? Right now I am paying $12US for 1.1kg blanched slivered almonds. I just did a brief google and found that I am probably paying too much. . .

More macarons. These were made with an italian meringue and are filled with a white chocolate ganache flavored with powdered dehydrated strawberries.

That's not really correct -- most cocoa powders still contain 10-12% cocoa butter. My favorite cocoa powder, Callebaut, is about 22% cocoa butter as I recall. So recipes using cocoa powder do still have some cacao fat. Also, as I'm sure you're aware, chocolates do vary in terms of their cacao solids/cacao butter ratio. Valrhona's new Coeur de Guanaja, for instance, having 34% cacao butter.

I'm not sure I understand the logic here. Cocoa butter is bland and has very mild flavor. The flavor is concentrated in the cacao solids, not the fat.

A few personal observations based on my own successes and failures during my latest round of macaron making: 1. A few times I think I overbeat the whites before adding the syrup, and the meringue never firmed up enough, and I never got a good 'bird beak.' Now I beat them just until they have very soft peaks before adding the syrup. 2. Some of the Italian meringue recipes required a lot of folding and mixing before they took on a shine and reached the right viscosity. 3. At their best, French meringue macarons have (to me) a better texture, while Italian meringue macarons have better appearance. Obviously this is just my personaly opinion and your own mileage will vary. 4. With the French meringue recipes I have tried (and I haven't tried them all!), dehydrating the egg whites for 1-2 days results in smoother surfaces on the macarons. 5. I've made peace with the idea of using colors. With chocolate macarons, browning is a non-issue, but with non-chocolate macarons you have to be careful for browning. You can bake low and long, and risk drying out too much, and you can cook higher and shorter, and risk browning. Colors give you a little insurance so that browning is not so apparent. Question for the egulleteers: Inevitably when I grind my TPT, no matter how long I grind, I have a very small bit of almond (maybe 0.5%) that does not want to grind fine enough. I sieve it out as best I can with my kitchen strainer. The problem with my strainer is that it is not fine enough, and some of those small bit get into the mix. Can anyone recommend a fine sieve or strainer or other tool that will help me?

More macarons -- chocolate french meringue macarons with sea salted caramel filling: Also made some italian meringue strawberry macarons that turned out really well,

I have tried that before, and visually they turned out fine, but they were really delicate. Here's what they looked like (from waaay back in 2004): I would recommend instead trying a different recipe though for non-chocolate macs. There are some good recipes that work so that you dont have to adapt anything.