Lisa Shock

You could substitute 3 eight inch round pans. You need to think about distributing the 10 cup capacity, one cake round will be woefully inadequate.

So sorry about the bacon issues! I'm used to commercial bacon that comes in a big box and is all cut very consistently. I will remember your issues the next time I recommend this to someone. I'm glad it worked out in the end! It looks like your reputation is intact!

If you bake with a water bath, you can temp that -just assume that it's about 5 degrees F hotter. So, they are cracking the day after baking? How are you storing them?

Yeah, Mjx is probably right. It doesn't sound like you want to use the powdered stuff from a box in there, nor would you use the concentrated applesauce type in that recipe. (there are also dry and wet mixtures of ground flax seeds, and Eggbeaters -and probably a few more that I don't know about)

There are several types of egg substitute depending on the type of recipe. What is the recipe for? What makes this particular recipe so special that you don't just use another one that features real eggs?

Oh yeah, I got a jar of the Biscoff at a CVS drug store, in their tiny, half-aisle of food items.

Here's a bit of history of the spread. It's a new thing, so, there's not a lot of tradition surrounding it, thus not a lot of expectations about flavor being one way or another. I have made a spread from an almond cookie and used it as a cake filling.

Sometimes, I think that Slate is just a bunch of people writing contrarian articles in an effort to appear to be ahead of the curve in everything.

I like gin Daisy variations (cassis is a personal favorite) and those are easy to make with liqueurs of seasonal fruits. Cobblers also seem 'right' right now, IMO.

Run some tests on the bacon. Good news is you can refrigerate and reheat your efforts, so anything that works out isn't wasted. Different bacons will shrink at different rates and give slightly different results. Running a few tests will help you get it right later. You may wish to garnish with bacon roses. I make mine like making ribbon roses. Here's a video: Do not use thread. Hold it together til it's done and then run a toothpick through the base to hold it together. Bake on a cookie sheet until crispy.

I did an online search and learned that apparently the baby hot brown doesn't usually involve gravy. -Which was what was confusing me with the apparent contradiction of 'snack' and 'hot brown.' If you want to be clever, you could make the base out of bacon or prosciutto. For bacon, coil raw bacon in a muffin tin (or mini-muffin tin) and place a second tin on top to hold it in place and bake til crispy. You can also weave bacon and place it in the muffin tin, or, for a larger cup, turn the tin over and place the woven bacon over the cups. (over doesn't work for coiled bacon, it separates too much as it shrinks) or prosciutto, just carefully place it in the cups and bake for a few minutes until crisp. You could also make cheese cups as the base. Bake small piles of Parmesan cheese on a silpat. When they just start to brown remove with a spatula and quickly place on top of an inverted cup or inverted muffin tin to form a cup shape. If doing either a cheese or bacon base, cut bread rounds with a cookie cutter to fit inside and toast them briefly. For extra points, figure out how to make spherified gravy and garnish with that.

There can be a lot of variables here, but the main thing for me has always been the temperature of the room. Maybe a hot light was on it or something?

Bread is really another topic. I was responding to "How did American bake lovely desserts for centuries using volume-only measurements?"

Kenji, over at Serious Eats, coupled the baking steel with the kettle pizza and also threw in wood to his coals and managed a glorious looking crust. http://slice.seriouseats.com/archives/2013/04/the-pizza-lab-combine-the-kettlepizza-and-the-baking-steel-for-the-ultimate-home-pizza-setup.html Thank you! I have been procrastinating/debating about getting a grill (I'm a vegetarian who would mostly use it for pizza.) vs saving up for a wood fired bread oven I think this setup wins! (well the cost is a lot lower than installing an oven)

Oh man, I meant to put a smiley face in the parentheses, just goofing around about the char! I am not taking sides on that very minor issue.

Yeah, someplace around here is a thread where a bunch of us rag on silicon cake pans and the worse-than-useless cupcake liners. (at least for cupcakes, I am sure someone cooks mini-meatloaf in them or something, with some success) There's another thread about how most of use hate the floppy silicon molds being sold for chocolate making as well. (make ice cubes, make cheesecake bites, mold sorbets, but, don't try to make filled bon-bons in a silicon mold!)

I have only seen the oven over or next to the fireplace in later-era colonial estates who employed a large number of servants, just like the one shown. Read House, in your link, was built in 1801. (I have visited it.) That's a LONG time after Plymouth's founding in 1620, and you can definitely tell by the modernity of the kitchen. There were major kitchen design changes and improvements in the late 1700's and Read House definitely reflects a wealthy family keeping up to date with fashion and architecture styles of the new century. But, it's not an appropriate example of how settlers of far more modest means 180 years earlier lived. The original settlers of the 1600s lived in houses that were timber frame, wattle and daub, thatched, one room affairs with sleeping lofts (family and servants/slaves all slept together in the loft) and modest sized fireplaces. -No separate kitchen room. The beehive ovens came later, and not everyone had one. The mid-1600s saw fancier, two-room houses (parlor and everyday room) with one central fireplace. The cracker box wouldn't come around until the 1700s. http://www.takus.com/architecture/1colonial.html There eventually were rooming houses and townhouses in villages and towns where there was no yard for a beehive oven and only a small fireplace to heat rooms. People living in 5th floor apartments did not have wall ovens. They went to the village baker, or ate what the roominghouse served which was generally a lot of porridge. People in this thread keep referring to daily baking. Your reference on the food timeline notes that working the beehive oven was an arduous and time consuming task so most families baked once a week, not every day. (edited to fix malformed HTML)

If you happen to be in the mood for real Neapolitan style pizza, try Pizzaiolo Garibaldi Gotanda. The owner is a chef who worked for several years at Pizzaeria Del Presidente in Naples, and was the pizzaiolo on duty when President Clinton ate his pizza there. The oven is near the front, behind the area with the cold cases of fresh, house made cheese, pickles and toppings. The dining area is in back, the reviews online do not show it, it's fairly nice sort of reminded me something from the american west in the early 1800s. They also serve a full menu of real, not americanized, Italian foods with names americans may not be familiar with. The only down side is that they do not speak English and the menu is katakana which in this case is entirely phonetic Italian. Having a good knowledge of the names of real Italian dishes is very, very helpful here. Anyway, it's top notch real Italian food. http://bento.com/rev/3212.html http://blogs.yahoo.co.jp/hidenoochan777/17092536.html https://maps.google.com/maps?q=35.625613,139.724923 http://tabelog.com/tokyo/A1316/A131603/13020343/ (note the char on the crust)

I avoid the silicon pans for cakes, they are made from insulating material and increase the baking time needed, they prevent formation of bloom on the sides and bottom while allowing the top to overcook, and cake tend to stick to them. I only use them for custards and cheesecakes. Cheap metal pans work very well, and are what real bakeries use.

I think that is the opposite of what should be done. It isn't McDonalds. Would you go to a fine wine tasting and belt back as many bottles as you could in record time? I live in China and on the street where I live there has to be at least 20 tea shops. There are literally thousands in the city. Drinking tea there is a slow, relaxed sedate process. That's a key business decision that the TC will have to make. Will he be able to make enough money to cover his rent and other business expenses by table service alone, or does he need a strong carryout clientele to make it profitable? Can't say without knowing more about the location. I HAVE known people to go under by ignoring carryout in a small location where the seats would have to be turned 9 times a day to break even -and they were only open for 6 hours a day serving breakfast and lunch.

http://books.google.com/books?id=onEEAAAAYAAJ&pg=PR1&dq=the+cook%27s+own+book+boston&hl=en&sa=X&ei=W4t8UcO8CYParAHV8IHIAw&ved=0CEMQ6AEwAQ You can see in this 1832 book, by a Boston woman, Mrs. N. K. M. Lee, references to sending things off to the baker to be baked. On Page xvii it states, "A pig, when sent to the baker prepared for baking." Page 144 has you "beg the baker to baste it well." She discusses flavor differences between roasting (over a hearth fire) and baking. This book also uses weight measurement for dry goods, example Cake, Spanish "Rub, til quite fine and smooth, one pound of butter with two pounds of flour, then add a pound of good brown sugar, rolled fine; mix all together with four well beaten eggs: break the paste into small bits or knobs, and bake them upon floured tins." Professional bakers have always used weight based measurement. They buy dry ingredients by weight, and they sell their products by weight. (even if you don't see a weight listed on the shelf of the pastry case, trust me, someone weighed everything out during production) It provides a consistent experience for the customer (today's eclair won't be half the size of yesterday's) and it ensures accurate pricing -which is the core of any successful business model.

I made Crumb Layer Cake #1, with crumb from yellow cake doughnuts, and the soda was not enough leavening. I used the creaming method, which was apparently also a mistake. Oh yeah, I halved the recipe, and added 1.25 cups milk and had a stiff batter which probably should have been more liquid, next time I will go up to 1.5cups. It came out like a crumbly cookie. It didn't taste bad, several people commented that it was like a deluxe graham cracker or halfway between a graham cracker and fruitcake. Spice-wise I added .3 grams each of cinnamon and ginger and tossed in a heavy-handed dash of allspice and a quick grating of nutmeg. Once I get more crumbs I will try it again. (I got a lot of candied fruit on huge markdown in January, including a large tub of chopped mixed fruit.) I think I will separate the eggs and whip the whites in one bowl, then cream the butter & lard and add yolks/etc. (with more milk) and fold whites in at the end.

All the professional baking books I own, and I have them going back to 1811, use weight for dry measure.

I know that baking existed, but, those who had ovens in the kitchen building of their estates were upper-middle class or better. Those who actually read the wikipedia link on cooking stoves would see that the very first fireplace enclosure to allow pots, like ducth ovens, to be suspended over a fire was invented in 1735. Other people refined that design, but it wasn't until 1850 that a home stove designed for inside the house had an oven in it. The home that Downton Abbey is filmed in was built in the late 1800s. If it were to have been built in the 1700s the kitchen would have originally been outside. My family owns such a home. There are some older castles with kitchens including ovens in them, but, they tended to kill the staff by carbon monoxide poisoning. Bakers in royal homes were especially susceptible to this fate. Also, the average kitchen tended to have a major fire every few years, so building them outside protected one's investment in the house. Most people baked in dutch ovens or had the town baker do it for them. The wealthy, who could afford a separate kitchen building had servants to keep the fires stoked and to sweep them out after they cooled. Martha Washington also wrote a cookbook, and oversaw 316 slaves. She wasn't actually doing much daily baking. When I visited Mt Vernon, tour guides mentioned that the only time Martha herself was in the kitchen was to oversee the creation of a few holiday items which used a lot of sugar. Until the turn of the century, most middle class and better families had a servant or two who handled chores like cooking and weekly laundry. The lady of the house may have done some cooking, depending on how many servants she had and her decisions on division of labor, but most were not putting every meal on the table. That is another modern custom following the 'servant problems' of the late 1800s and early 1900s.

The dutch oven was the standard vessel for baking bread in the hearth, unless you had a village baker who would bake off your bread for you -a tradition going back to Roman times. Simple cakes were also made in them. You can see the people on Colonial House 'baking' in dutch ovens, it's painstaking because even temperature is difficult to maintain. Some large estates, especially those with a lot of servants or slaves to feed, had bread ovens. These things were large, made of brick, obviously wood fired, and would not have been inside a house. You're essentially running your own bakery, which isn't feasible for everyone, but a good economy for those running an estate with a lot of mouths to feed. Having a kitchen inside of the house is a modern custom, made possible by modern appliances. Stoves of any sort, meant to cook upon rather than just heat a house are a product of the 1800's.