Lisa Shock

Even though heat rises, heat is also lost in an oven, so, generally the lowest rack is hottest because it's closest to the heating element -in a traditional stove. Think of it as the source of waves that ripple outwards, the closer an item is to the origin of the wave, the better chance there is of the wave passing through it. Convection ovens cook more quickly at lower temps because they create a more even environment.

That post has interesting thoughts, I'd be really concerned about temperature. It's also going to be a mess to clean up. I have done the Robot Coupe trick and it's very quick and easy. It could probably be done in many home-style food processors.

I think, and I could be wrong, they are referring to the technique (developed by the Japanese for an early 2000's competition where they built a tree on a showpiece with it) where chocolate is run briefly in the Robot Coupe where it softens and becomes malleable but does not leave temper. There is a brief description of the method HERE.

I thought that condiment companies purposefully packaged their products in containers designed to leave a percentage behind in the container to increase sales volume.

If the thickness, depth, is the same, you do not need to increase cooking time by much. I'd add ten minutes for your gratin. Make sure your oven is pre-heated. Yes, the additional mass will initially cool the oven a bit more than a single batch, but, overall, thickness is the real issue. Most issues involve bringing a larger mass up to temperature. Like, a 4 gallon pot of water to boil potatoes will come a boil much more slowly than a 3 quart pot. Once the potatoes are in and the whole pot has rebounded and is boiling, the potatoes themselves take the same time to cook no matter what. I'd invest in a couple of probe thermometers (available at places like Target for under $25) and use them to keep tabs on what's happening.

I installed a Krystal Pure KR 10 a year ago and really like it. The filters last longer (1 year as opposed to 6 months) than some of the bigger brands. I got mine at Lowes. I was pleased that the company is located here in Arizona.

I like to sprinkle on kosher salt after the brittle is poured and shaped, so that it's coated like a pretzel. The contrast is very tasty. I have added cayenne at the beginning of a cook and it was fine -the batch was too spicy from too much cayenne, but it didn't burn. I have also added chile powder to my salt coating, but, some people found the powdery residue on the outside to be unappealing.

In the US, many community colleges offer culinary programs. They are affordable and you can often just take the classes you want without having to enroll in an entire program.

A vacuum sealer might be be a good thing for you to acquire.

I think the original method has to do with encouraging pectin precursors to develop into pectin and to have the acid and sugar present to ensure proper activation of the pectin once formed. Without the long simmer, you won't get good gelling, at least not without adding a thickener like commercial pectin.

Exactly how I do it, except I rotate the bagel a bit while cutting. I got into the habit of rotating by torting a lot of cakes. But, anyway, this is the standard procedure taught in school for cutting baked goods.

Years ago I was taught that if it was stored properly, it would last upwards of ten years. My guess is that since sugar is hygroscopic, the sugar in it has taken up moisture from the air.

For cooking at home, and some test items for clients, I use a three-ring binder and notebook paper. This way, no one but me sees the mistakes. Plus, I can document the entire conceptualization process and write down any random ideas for tweaks to try. Some of my pages are just lists of flavors to try, then, after I make the trials, I go back and redline them if they were bad with a notation as to why. A lot of my working notes are really brief lists of words, the kind of stuff that wouldn't make a comprehensible blog. The notebook also works for my showpiece idea sketches. Sometimes I get an idea for just one component, like a base, and I like to keep those for work on possible future projects.

You can always take a salad, ambra's looks delicious, and put it in endive leaves to turn it into more manageable portions for small/paper plates. There are also some good cold rice salads that incorporate veggies and cooked beans. I like to make pasta salad with more vegetables than pasta. Think steamed (cauliflower, broccoli, green beans) and raw (carrots, cherry tomato, mushrooms, baby spinach, celery, bell pepper, zucchini) vegetables. A smaller sized pasta will make it easier to serve.

I'd also be suspicious of employees, current and former. Having been a business manager for a long time prior to my culinary career, I can attest to the fact that a great majority of thefts are from internal sources. Don't be too surprised when someone suddenly quits and you shortly thereafter hear news of a new business they are running, featuring a menu eerily similar to yours.

Volumetric recipes are extremely unreliable. If a person considers wasting time and money to be a trivial matter, than accurate weight would be irrelevant for them. It's a basic principle in programming: GIGO. If the data you are processing is unreliable, then your results are unreliable. I'm also not convinced that the author has actually tested his premise and made the recipes then altered the ingredients to check results. (aka basic research) It appears that he just took a bunch of recipes and is using a simple if/then algorithm to swap them out whole cloth. The work doesn't look like any of the textbook formulas where you see minor adjustments or substitutions to specific ingredients to change parameters like spread, loft, tenderness, chewiness, crispness, flakiness, etc. When I asked about his tests, I got a reply about software, no word about any hands-on experience with baking or chemistry. Then there's the issue relying on online consumer reviews of amateur recipes to describe questionable results. There's a reason why many of us here are selective about what websites we trust to source recipes from. The sites that have professionals test and restest before publication (CI, the old Gourmet, Epicurious, etc.) have reliable formulas. Many home-user oriented sites have voting systems that are easy to manipulate into accepting multiple votes from the same computer. (people can also get their friends and family to vote up their submissions) And, many of the submitted recipes may be competent, but, they often aren't the best possible representation of the form. (is it an ok oatmeal cookie like the ones my mom who hates to cook makes, or an award-winning remarkably delicious one?) I don't think a meta-analysis of a site like allrecipes.com (or whatever) would be a useful exercise, and I wouldn't waste my time and money gambling on the recipes the OP has chosen to promote. If the site used accurate measurements and up-to-date data on the chemistry of ingredients and their interactions (like some of the charts in MC) it might be a useful tool. After all, we have a lot more hard scientific data available to us now than ever before. But, I am getting the impression that the author hasn't explored the chemistry he is trying to describe.

I agree as well. Honestly, a good pastry chef could probably reverse engineer your stuff if they really wanted to. And, there isn't that much out there that is totally unique. (it's not like you're the only people on earth who know how to make macaroons...) Like people have pointed out, most of us give recipes away all the time. I have a collection of gold medal winning recipes from various world-level competitions given to me freely by some of the best chefs in the world. Whoever stole it is, IMO, an inexperienced and incompetent shoemaker. Even if they open up next door and just sell stuff made with your recipes, they won't do it as well as you. That said, it's perfect for publicity, and if you can get the news to run the story, that's excellent free advertizing. Hopefully you filed a police report. This is exactly the sort of story news outlets love, and it might get regional or national attention online.

Most cooks outside of the US, aka most of the Internet using world population, already own a scale. It's considered to be a basic kitchen tool in most of the civilized world. I bought mine for actual money on eBay. This was a few years back. (2007, IIRC) It replaced an older one purchased in 1983 for $16. The exact model is no longer available. HERE is one for a similar price, with a similar weight range. If you are persistent, interesting things do appear on eBay from time to time. I wouldn't be surprised to see a better deal. Someone in the US who has baked a lot of cookies but is dissatisfied and wants to customize results is probably already heavily invested in kitchen equipment and has probably gotten wind of the whole baking/science meme. Chances are, if they don't already own a scale, they know that they should have one. Cook's Illustrated has started using weight-based measurement and recommending scales.

My kitchen scale, sourced on ebay for $39, measures to 0.01g. Kouign Aman is correct in that most measuring cups/spoons sold in the US to home users vary in size from brand to brand. Commercial cups, made for liquid measurement, are more accurate but that's because commercial producers are accountable to their states' weights and measures departments who inspect and verify commercial products.

America is the only major country in the world where publishers do not print recipes with weight-based measurement. As such, Americans are the minority in insisting on using volumetric measurement. The Internet serves the world, not just Americans. Your paragraph 2 has flawed assumptions. Sifting has a very specific purpose. I strongly recommend that you read Rose Levy Berebaum's Masters' thesis on the topic. Sort answer: yes you will get great biscuits by using weight-based measurement then sifting. Commercial bakeries around the world, including the US, do it every day. That's the standard procedure for baking as taught in virtually every baking program around the world. One would never sift then measure, it doesn't happen, so density isn't an issue. Cups are not a simple conversion from grams. A 'cup of flour' can be anything from 99.2233 to 195.611 grams. Yes, ingredients can have variations. But, all you are doing by using wildly inaccurate measurements is adding to the chaos not ameliorating it. Your research sample... is that a group of people you had controls set up for and ran measured tests with, or, did you just grab all the recipes off someplace like allrecipescom and hope for honesty in people's posted comments? -Because I don't see how a web browser is at all relevant to a person running their own tests. And, I don't don't trust online ratings much at all unless I personally know the rater, their work and what guidelines they are following. I follow ACF standards, and, I am an ACF competition judge. What standards did you impose? To your claim that there are no other factors involved in cookie production ignores the accepted industry parameters of whether a cookie is soft like Archway, crisp like Oreo or spritz, or chewy like many oatmeal cookie. These categories are critical for most consumers when deciding to buy a cookie, and most consumers prefer to purchase cookies in one of the categories based upon personal preference. I subscribe to industry trade journals and see currant market research regularly. But, you heartily disagree, so, so be it. Most good baking texts show options for tweaking various recipes to change results. And, most trained pastry chefs are educated enough to be able to calculate various results, like the tenderness of the crumb of a product by seeing the weight of eggs in a formula. I suggest you look into some basic education on the subject of baking. How Baking Works is a good place to begin. I have to agree with Mjx. If I ran across your site on my own, I'd leave as soon as I saw the volumetric measurement.

You are making a website for people who by definition are following you as some sort of cookie formula expert. You can't say that you are a leader, guiding them to great results through formulas, then in the same breath say that actually accuracy is irrelevant. Good data defines a software application. Bad data makes software worthless. Putting aside regional differences in protein content, a "cup" of AP flour can weigh anywhere from 3.5oz to 6.9oz depending on how the person measuring handles their tools, and, if their cup is accurate or not. (a lot of measuring cups/spoons sold in the US are not accurate) This is why when homemakers use old-fashioned volumetric recipes one person's cookies are vastly different from another person's cookies even though they used the same recipe. At the beginning of my course of classes, I have students measure out a 'cup of flour' and then we weigh them. I have seen hundreds of different numbers as results. However, since one person's 'hand' is often consistent, they can get similar results for themselves over and over again -but no one else may be able to duplicate their work. This is why test kitchens use lots of people (CI uses in-house testers and a crew of 5,000 home testers) to test and retest 'recipe tolerance.' I'd like to hear more details about the tests that your group ran on your recipes. I wasn't aware that there were so many types of chicken eggs. The ratio of yolk/white is fairly consistent across most sizes, but, in a commercial setting we weigh the yolk and white separately, which is the only accurate way to have a consistent result. I'd like to hear more about your concerns over the differences in eggs, in detail. Unsalted butter is also fairly consistent throughout the US, at 20% water and 80% fat/solids. What are the differences you have encountered with butters, and why is volume measure more accurate than weight because of these differences? Ovens differ, but, there are oven thermometers for sale to the public. And, time and temperature are given in recipes because they affect outcomes in important ways. There may be minor variations in ingredients, but, that doesn't invalidate weight-based measurement for formulating baking recipes. Volume recipes were the innovation of the late 19th century. We moved on to better, more accurate and consistent methods decades ago. Anyway, most ingredients in a cookie affect several parameters for which changing would change results. Not all of these parameters are covered in your selection options. So, your list doesn't sync up with even the most basic baking texts.

It won't be very useful if you're using volume measurement, as indicated in your post, instead of weight measurement. You should read The Kitchen Scale Manifesto. What sort of conversions will the converter be performing? And, how much experience do you have in tweaking cookie recipes? Sugar affects spread and browning as well as sweetness....

I just discovered a new feature: Last Chance Kitchen, a web series that offers an opportunity for eliminated contestants a chance to get back in.

Most of the other contestants appear to be top-tier talent. This season should be interesting.

If you are traveling via LAX, I recommend a visit to Encounter. Obviously not for your business meeting, just for a fun meal.