pastrygirl

@Lisa Shock exactly what I was going to say - "wash" with flour first to get the excess dough off @andiesenji unfortunately some sticky things are too sticky to handle with gloves on, they stick to the gloves and pull on them, can even pull them off. I was making something recently where gloves just made it a huge pain - rum balls, I think it was.

Buttery crust and mushy inside sounds about right. You can use less water when you cook the cornmeal the first time if you like it firmer.

File under maintaining: the peanut crisp struck again and I had to replace a few wires. I made this little video for anyone who can't decipher Dedy's instructions and needs to replace a wire. Hope it helps! (And I hope this works) https://youtu.be/LT2es_3xFQQ

Thanks. Yeah. obviously it's not going to be Christmas every day (thank goodness!) or a chocolate festival. I like your idea of being conservative on revenue and fluffing expenses. I do have records from the past 2-1/2 years of business that I could pay more attention to, and I do hope to get more wholesale accounts before pursuing a brick & mortar. And I should charge more! I did raise prices a little bit before the holidays and nobody complained. My margins are decent when I sell retail but a lot harder at wholesale. I just looked at some properties yesterday, seems like there is potential but it's a neighboring city/suburb that I don't know that well. But much lower rent than in Seattle proper, might be good for a production kitchen with less focus on retail. There was a couple on the tour with me with no restaurant experience but who want to open a bakery. Part of me wanted to scream at them "don't do it! It's WAY harder work than you think it is!" but I didn't.

How good were your guesses? How does one make better guesses? That part of it is what scares me. There is so much turnover in restaurants now, of course everyone sets out to sell lots and pay their rent and be successful, but ...

So incredibly productive! The miseries of the world usually just inspire fantasies of moving to Australia or New Zealand. Y'all need any chocolatiers down there?

Hmmm, I don't know. Maybe explore recipes for Italian crumbly cake, torta sbricciolona. Fairly dry and crumbly with cornmeal and almonds. Or depending on what shape you need, how about a biscotti dough but only once baked? I'll admit, coarse and dry are usually not my goals when making cake!

Like pound cake? Or drier?

@Kerry Beal have we told you lately that you're awesome? Thanks for putting that together!

@Tri2Cook summed it up well. Many items are pre-portioned during prep time for speed and efficiency during service, even pasta. And what are they supposed to do with the other half? That said, I don't think it is offensive or inappropriate to ask as long as you are prepared to take no for an answer. Some items are pretty easy to halve or split, or the chef may have an odd size piece of fish from the end of the filet that s/he'd be happy to move. Otherwise, tapas and apps are a good strategy.

@kriz6912, can you melt and re-use the jelly? Looks like fun!

you could sever it with a saber

I'm tempted to say that bad recipes do exist, but apparently a lot of people like what we consider bad food, so maybe someone out there would be excited about mushy or bland or whatever the problem was. But yeah, sometimes you can tell when a recipe isn't going to be worth making. To me, Jacques' pear example points out more the necessity of specificity, not the uselessness of recipes. Shouldn't you specify a firm Bosc instead of trusting the cook to know to adjust when they have a ripe Bartlett?

Actually, DR has a free shipping offer for orders over $200 until January 8 so it's a good time to shop!

Yes, I know a guy here in Seattle who does playlists for businesses.

But cream that has been heated an cooled will whip just fine, so why couldnt it be over-whipped or churned into butter?

Thought I'd add pics showing the shelf in case I didn't describe it well. Everything compact and stowed Bottom shelf rests on crossbars

I have the one from Design & Realisation and a Dedy single guitar: https://www.dr.ca/cart-for-chocolate-guitar-cutter.html It only has wheels on 2 legs but that doesn't really bother me, I don't move it too far too often. I had a piece of <acrylic? some sort of hard plastic about 3/16" thick> cut to fit on top of the lower bars of the frame to make a shelf, that way I can put the guitar base away and tuck the whole cart under my work table. The favorable exchange rate ought to cover shipping from Canada, the main question would be whether Martellato and Dedy have the same size frames.

Interesting! It never seems apparent in the cooked texture that there is pectin, or at least not the pectin texture I know from candy making. So maybe acid would help! No of course not all are dry and mealy and starches do change as they cool. McGee can tell you more if you have access to his On Food and Cooking.

Potatoes have pectin? I'm not so sure about that, but since dry and mealy is a normal texture for potatoes, it may just be the variety in that bag. How is the texture when you warm them up again? Stale bread and cold hard cooked rice soften again when heated, so maybe your fingerlings will too?

Yeah that's a ridiculous amount of baking powder - must be st least 2 TB for scant 2 flour. You can't taste it?

I'm always skeptical of candy recipes that call to set and be stored in the fridge. This looks like something a blogger tried to do once and it sort of came out OK so they just went ahead and pretended it was quality content.

Bonbons! across the top: rosemary caramel, yuzu-passion fruit, milk chocolate salty caramel middle: coconut & black sesame, orange, dark raspberry in Zephyr

Was it Dinner Lab? I though they shut down ...

Such fancy flavors! Did you get fresh yuzu? Good luck selling and have fun!