Lisa Shock

I am looking to get a refractometer to improve my sorbets. I have noticed some on eBay which seem to be very good deals, and was just wondering if anyone has any experience with THESE -or can tell if this sort would work out ok for me. The 2 scales seem useful, as I do make jellies and jams on occasion. I am an experienced pastry chef, and pretty good at keeping my tools clean, safe and in working order. I also have experience using other scientific test equipment, including microscopic equipment. I know that I need a refractometer to take my work to a better, more uniform standard. I have taken master level classes in sorbets and gelatos and understand the mathematics involved in formulating them. -I'm just so tempted by the price, it's less than half the price of the ones I have seen elsewhere.

If anyone cares to try very authentic pizza, I found this place called Garibaldi in Gotanda (yes, Gotanda) where the owner/chef apprenticed himself for several years at a couple of the best pizza places in Naples. Here's a review.

I only maintain about a half cup of starter and do just fine making one pizza and one loaf of bread each week.

I like Last Restaurant Standing, so I'll be giving this show a try, too. Looks like it premieres on March 11 in the US.

Hehehe... I made sorbet at home several times a year, because I love it. I was astounded by Richard & Scott's lack of insight in naming their place Sorbet & Seasons. I mean, I occasionally dream of being able to make a living off my sorbets, and a seasonal, vegetable and fruit based menu restaurant in a well-to-do european town would be simply a dream come true. I think their issues really boil down their inability to articulate a viewpoint about food. I never got a sense that they had any sort vision for their place, they just dreamed up a name they thought was cool without trying to put any real meaning into it. Mike & Harriet will probably be blindsided by some common restaurant custom and taken out because they lack the flexibility to roll with the punches and make a good night out of a disaster. Mike seems fairly brittle to really handle front of house, and Harriet seems clueless about the kitchen. I keep wondering if they have done any research at all in how to run a restaurant... Laura & Peter's premise is really weak. I mean, honestly, Chinese cuisine covers a huge amount of geography and ingredients. I'd expect any decent Chinese chef to find ingredients he recognized in a Welsh market, and he could make fabulous Chinese food from it. Just because you use fresh items grown in Wales doesn't make it fusion food. Neither does having a few recipes from your Welsh grandmother on the menu. Unless they can suddenly come up with fusion dishes as good as the Chinese curries I've had, they simply don't have a chance as a middle to fine dining place. I don't expect Stephen & Helen to win, either. The comments keep coming in about her cooking being average for a home cook and not up to par for restaurant food. As I said before, I am not fond of Michele & Russell's attitude, and their lack of organization will probably get them into serious trouble fairly soon. Honestly, after what Michele said at the end of the last episode, after the first challenge, I would not want to work with her on a long term basis. Of the remaining three couples, I think they each have strengths and weaknesses I don't see a clear winner right now. But, that's what makes the show fun!

Cakes made with oil do tend to be moister. They may not have the strength to hold up as a massive wedding cake, but, for cupcakes, strength is not an issue. You might also look into moistening with simple syrup, either plain or flavored.

Actually, beauty supply places, like Sally in the US have a much better selection of bottles.

So far, this season is off to a pretty good start, IMO. I couldn't believe that Michele & Russell argued with Raymond at the end of the most recent episode, and I suspect that they will not last very much longer. I expect to see them in the next challenge.

You can also put boiled sugar into a quadruple thick piping bag (careful here, you can burn your hands very badly) and just randomly squiggle in all directions over your foil form, and quickly dust with the nibs.

It kind of depends on what you want to do with the shell. Pulling is probably the easiest, you'll also get shinier, better looking sugar that way. The catch is, to keep the high gloss, it must cool fairly quickly, before the air bubbles get out. You can hand-form shapes, or push sheets of sugar into or on top of molds. I took a class with Kanjiro Mochizuki at the World Pastry Forum in 2006, where he demonstrated some sweets he serves at the Imperial Hotel in Tokyo. One of those desserts was a sort of cookie that he finished by pushing through pulled sugar, like a nut spike (see my avatar pic) so that the cookie had a thin shell all around it. He pulled it to a high sheen, so the cookie looked like it was enrobed in gold. You can do some interesting, though limited, things with net (sometimes called bubble) sugar which is baked. You can manipulate it while it's cooling.

Usually, it's Lee Lee market in Phoenix, a huge Asian market with items from all over the world. They sell home-use quantities as well as bulk containers for food service.

The eels reminded me of the original Iron Chef, which showed several ways to (some more successful than others) to process live eels.

If you want Nutella lava cupcakes, make balls of nutella, freeze them solid, then place one on top of each cup of batter and bake. The balls will fall a bit as they bake, but the cake solidifying and rising at the bottom will keep them in the middle. (see lava cake thread) I agree that filling with icing is probably the best way to go. The icing will have a light texture that's easy to eat and easy to inject into the cake.

This might be the path to take. If you can afford it, take whatever employment you can (part or full time), learn and start planning. As for the wardrobe, most places will provide hats/hairnets, aprons and jackets, you'll just have to get yourself the white pants. In most states, you will need some sort of sanitation certification to work handling food. In some states it's handled by county government, in others by the state. At any rate, it will be worth your while to get your food handler's card in advance of looking for work. (my county has the study materials online, you go in, take a 20 question test, pay $12 and get a card, very simple) I forgot to mention that my local community college offers a culinary degree for about $4,000. I don't know if they allow you to just take individual classes, or if you must take the whole program. Anyway, you may have some low-cost classes available to you at a local college. And, colleges have placement offices to help you find a job... You can also buy the books used at the CIA and Cordon Bleu on eBay or Amazon, and study them at home. The LCB uses Professional Baking by Wayne Gisslen. I believe that the CIA uses Baking and Pastry: Mastering the Art and Craft by the CIA. (I could be wrong, I attended LCB.) Anyway, we read the book and made the recipes at school. The only exception was in advanced artisan breads, we used materials prepared by the instructor based on BBGA materials. If a person were diligent, they could do pretty well studying at home. Bo Friberg's The Professional Pastry Chef and The Advanced Professional Pastry Chef are also excellent books that contain all of the knowledge you need to get started. As for a kiosk in the mall, as a former district manager for several chains of mall-based stores, I can tell you that the rent will be the highest possible in your area, with plenty of add-ons like common area maintenance fees, a percentage of your gross take as part of the rent and much more. I will also warn you that unless you can get a supply of hot water, you may not be allowed to sell food at all -depending on the health department in your area. So, you may not be able to run the business from a kiosk, and may need a small regular space, which costs more. There has been a sharp decline in mall shopping in the past decade, so, I'd look long and hard at the mall itself before making a commitment greater than maybe just November & December when all of the temporary stores like Hickory Farms (which used to have a full service store in every major mall, year round) appear and disappear. Maybe you have a great local mall with lots of people buying snacks year round. If so, run with it! While you are starting out and learning, I'd start keeping a journal and start researching people in your area in terms of what baked goods they buy and where they buy them. Eventually, the market research will pay off. Bon chance!

I worked at entry-level at a couple of M&Ps when I was in my early 20's with essentially no experience, and earning minimum wage. I gave it up for better pay in middle-management in other industries. Later on, 2005-2007, I decided to take the plunge and attend culinary school. So, I got myself the Patisserie & Baking degree (with honors) at Scottsdale Culinary Institute: a Cordon Bleu USA school. My favorite classes were artisan breads, showpieces and advanced cake decorating. I wound up doing my externship at the supermarket, as a decorator, which was pretty horrible, but I learned all of their secrets and developed lightning fast decorating skills. The baker at my location quit at one point, so I was lucky enough to learn his position along the way. Pay was minimum wage, with an offer to rise to $7.50/hour in six months, so, I did not stay. A local high-end grocer starts bakery employees at $11. I landed a job as the general manager (with pay in middle/average for a small restaurant/retail manager) of a wine bar where the owner had plans to start an in-house line of cold case cheeses, snacks and possible meals that I was in charge of developing -and it was great, while it lasted. The economy went bad, especially for realtors who were our primary customers. So, as they stopped wining and dining clients at the end of 2007, the owner blamed my management skills and decided to run the place herself and let me go. I've been doing a series of contract jobs with caterers, taking advanced classes (World Pastry Forum, ACF events), and looking for work ever since. As far as I can tell, the experience and 2 culinary diplomas are doing me no good at all. Oh yeah, I am an ACF certified chef, and a member of the BBGA. I can't really see having a bread bakery in Phoenix, where I live. There are several really good ones here and they are struggling. (I do not want to wind up as a sandwich place, like Panera, Atlanta Bread, etc. -although that is one path to success.) Rent here is way too high to support a general bakery where people would buy pastries. Ideally, based on a couple of years of research, I'd like to have a specialty cake bakery in the more well-to-do part of town, and make fancy cupcakes, figural cakes and bonbons. But, right now, I would need to find an investor who believes in me and is willing to part with a couple hundred thousand dollars. (If anyone knows such a person, PM me!) Sometimes, I dream of moving away to a small, cheap-rent town, and opening an artisan pizza place. Then, I come back to earth and realize that I probably wouldn't have any customers.... For the most part, general bakery work (especially bread) is hard labor for low pay. If you really want to have your own place, I'd look long and hard to find the sort of place you are thinking about and talk to them. See how and why they are successful when in general, the supermarkets have gutted the industry. There are some great places, generally in big cities, where the clientele can taste the difference and seeks them out. It kills me to say this, but the average american accepts really crappy versions of pastries and breads as 'normal' nowadays, and simply won't make an extra stop or pay more to get the real stuff. I stayed in Japan for two weeks last year and I was amazed at how much good pastry was all over the place, even in convenience stores. You can learn cake decorating basics fairly quickly and easily. Call your local Micheal's store. Many of them have classes; if that particular one doesn't they will know which does. Each class is one night a week for a few weeks, and you get good materials to work with and some one-on-one help. I realize that decorating isn't your main interest, but having the skill may help you in job hunting, and you'll meet professionals (and aspiring ones) along the way. The main benefit for me in belonging to the BBGA has been the classes, although the formula books they offer are also interesting.

I have worked in a couple of mom&pop places and nationwide supermarket chain. The supermarket chain had 3-4 positions in the bakery, each one specialized, with no real advancement, except for the ability to transfer to another location if you moved. The stores I worked at were higher volume locations in my state. The positions were: baker - baked breads, fried doughnuts and thawed breads (more than half of the breads were shipped in frozen -already fully baked), worked at night decorator - decorated cakes (cake was brought in frozen) made cream pies, etc. worked days and was responsible for cashiering in addition to filling display cases with food, made frostings & fillings from mixes assistant decorator - decorated on the decorator's days off, helped package items on other days, cashiered PT packager - packaged items like bags of rolls on days the AD didn't, worked 2-3 days a week +++ At the mom & pop places there was no real room for advancement, since the family ran everything. At one place I 'moved up' to being bookkeeper when 'dad' retired. At another, I was general manager when a son opened a second location. +++ I did learn a lot of things about how to run, and not run, a bakery and about what customers expect. I'd like to have my own place some day, but I am painfully aware that most Americans simply do not purchase their baked goods at artisan bakeries. And, here in Phoenix, rent is very high, so making a go of it is pretty dicey. (I have plans, but, until an investor shows up, I am about 5 years away from making my move. -Gotta pay off my culinary school loans...) The other pitfall is that some things you may learn on the job are customs and procedures unique to that company, and are not things to replicate in your own place. (like mixing the chemical sludge that the supermarket calls custard and uses in everything from doughnuts to fruit tarts instead of real pastry cream) The #1 thing I learned at the supermarket was that the ingredients in all of their baked goods were very reprehensible. One resource I have really enjoyed is my membership in the Bread Baker's Guild of America, www.bbga.org. They sponsor classes, meetups and offer a lot of educational resources, including reading lists. So, wherever you are, you can get an excellent education through them at a reasonable cost. Individual memberships are $80 a year.

The biggest concern that I'd worry about is how physically fit you are. (I'm throwing this out there because I don't know anything about you.) Baking is very physically demanding, and as the new person, you will be doing the drudge work. Sacks of flour, sugar, etc. weigh 50 pounds each. Shortening and icing mix base used at supermarkets comes in 95 pound cubes. You will be expected to mix up 100+ pound batches of dough, icing, etc. and expected to move it around all day. I have often been the only female (and the oldest person there by a decade+) at bakeries I have worked at, because all the other women and people over age 35 washed out in their first week; unable to lift commodities or move batches of product.

I'd go with Italian buttercream.

From the Nestle Website: "What is in a BUTTERFINGER? Freshly roasted peanuts are chopped, and made into a creamy peanut butter that is blended with a sugar candy. This unique substance is kneaded, rolled, cut and covered in a chocolatey coating." I love the use of the 'word' chocolatey, which has no legal restrictions.... Anyway, I suspect that if you use pure peanut butter, containing only peanuts, and add some salt, the sugar part will seem sweeter than it would with a PB that contains sugar.

I learned to make it by taking 2 parts dark chocolate and 1 part cream, you heat the cream to just under a simmer then pour over the broken up chocolate allow to sit for a minute or two, and stir until mixed. (add vanilla or other flavor if desired) Then chill, form into balls about the size of a ping-pong ball and freeze. Any chocolate cake recipe will do. My husband swears by the Miracle Whip chocolate cake recipe. I prefer American style cocoa cakes made with hot water; there's a great version in Rose Levy Beranbaum's Cake Bible. (and she uses weight measurements) If you need the recipe fast, search for the Hershey's Cocoa cake recipe from the the back of the canister of cocoa. I also adore Rose's Domingo cake, and it should work well as a lava cake. You mix up the chocolate cake, pour into some sort of small mold, drop a frozen ganache ball in the center of each one and bake. The rising cake will envelop the ball, which will be molten as the cake is cooked through.

I know that Butterfingers have confectioner's corn flakes in them, and they primarily affect the texture. My other thought is that I have always thought of them as related to what my family always called honeycomb candy, and some call Cinder Toffee. These have an appearance eerily similar to what Ewald Notter calls 'straw sugar'. When I get them from commercial confectioners, they have sloped ends, like a Butterfinger. But, they have distinct air holes in them, and Butterfinger does not, so I don't think a recipe will be very helpful. I suspect (but don't really know) that the commercial candy tastes sweeter because the sugar may be worked a bit before adding the peanut butter, so there are small stripes of peanut surrounded by candy shell. In other words, try cooking sugar (using any real-sugar recipe for pulling sugar) pull til glossy. Then lay it out as a wide rectangle, spread peanut butter on the top, and a dash of salt, for contrast. Leave a good centimeter of edge clean for a good seal, and begin pulling and folding the bar very carefully under your heatlamp. When you've folded it 6-7 times, trim with scissors, cool and dip in chocolate. After a practice run or two, you might be able to add cornflakes with the peanut butter for a more accurate bar.

There are books like this all over Amazon, it's marketplace sellers who have just one or two copies of a book and who list it high in hopes that a wealthy person from another country, or with an expense account, will buy it. To find more oddities, simple search for a word in the Books category and sort by price, high to low.

I do like how they show what everyone cooks in detail, while it's being cooked. I don't think the commercials for it do it justice, promising extremely exotic & challenging ingredients that turn out to be.....tofu!

Looks like BBC America will be airing the new season of this show starting Tuesday 1/27 2009. I can't wait!

I usually just make some cinnamon toast, or toast dope toast, or toast with jam. I also keep a jar of Cajeta Quemada, the traditional goat's milk type, in the back of the fridge for just such occasions. The friend who introduced me to the stuff (Coronado brand at the time, I now get locally made) when I lived in Santa Fe back in the mid 80's insisted that there was simply no better use for it than eating it from a spoon -and it was an essential pantry item for his fridge. One time, when the local market ran out, we drove to Mexico to get more.