rickster

Wow. I gave mine away a few years ago in a paperback book exchange

Interesting tip. I've considered it, but I thought the stone might crack in the heat of the self cleaning cycle.

The NY Post review: Rocco's Review

I agree, I think Beranbaum overcomplicates things too but the recipes generally work and the books are pretty exhaustive. Malgieri's Perfect Pastry was one of my first and favorite baking books. It's not incorporated in How to Bake. I'm not sure it's still available.

I was limiting myself to Westchester and CT. It is surprising we have not got better Chinese restaurants here. I don't know why.

Mount Kisco is about 25 miles from Bronxville. One thing you learn in the burbs (at least in Westchester and CT) is to never recommend ethnic places to people who have just moved from the city, because nothing will be as good as what you could get in Manhattan. I've lived on the border of Rye Brook and Port Chester and worked in Westchester for 20 years and never heard anyone recommend a single Chinese restaurant in the county. I could recommend Lenny's Bagels and th Rye Ridge Deli in Rye Brook as the best in bagels and deli around here, but I have no idea how they stack up to what's in Bronxville.

I thought about Baking with Julia, but my issue with the book is that it is really a collection of specialized recipes, ie, the recipes that the bakers made on episodes of her show. It is broad in the number of types of baked goods it covers, but narrow in that there are very few recipes for each type of product. I'd agree with all the other books you mentioned. I don't think though that the Pie and Pastry Bible is that advanced. I would recommend the Hensperger books before Reinhart for a beginner in bread.

I'd recommend How to Bake by Nick Malgieri, or just about any book by Nick Malgieri, but this is the broadest. Also The Cake Bible and The Pie and Pastry Bible by Rose Levy Beranbaum. All three are good introductions that cover a wide range of baked goods other than bread (although I think the Malgieri book has some breads in it). If you're particularly interested in bread, I'd go to one of Peter Reinhart's books like the Bread Baker's Apprentice or one of the books by Beth Hensperger.

Inspired by this thread, I made some pizza last night using the last of my "tipo 00" flour. The problem I have with this, which I also had with a David Rosengarten recipe that used the AP and cake flour mix to mimic 00, is that I find ir impossible to stretch the dough without it tearing. I think it's due to the low gluten. I ended up having to roll it out, which did not get it super thin. Note that I am making a fairly large pie, which may also be part of the problem.

Wow! When I lived in Montreal in the mid 1970's, you could easily fit several fingers through one. Very different in appearance from a NY bagel. Much better tasting too, but less adaptable to being schmeared with stuff.

Tried this technique last night and it worked great. I only lost one macaron out of 2 sheet pans. Only problem I could see, and I don't know if it's the Silpat or the freezing, is that some macaron recipes do not call for a filling to stick the 2 halves together and rely on the stickness of the fresh baked macarons to hold them together. The ones I baked on a Silpat and froze were too dry and smooth on the bottom to do this (I was using a filling anyway).

I have a similar problem and I suspect my dough tends to be overproofed.

I've found chilling the base like this to be the key to getting decent results from my machine. Sometimes I even put the base in a bowl in the freezer until it begins to freeze around the edges before putting it in the ice cream machine.

OK. I couldn't resist testing this tonight and ground some almonds and pistachios with the KitchenAid grinder. A great improvement over the food processor. Wish I knew this before I ordered that almond flour from King Arthur . Only issue I could see is that the grind was a bit oilier than using the processor (did not see your advice on drying the nuts tan319 before trying this) and I clogged the grinder with the almonds, which I think would be remedied if I chopped them a bit more before grinding. May need to try making some Macarons later this week.

Interesting about the food grinder. I own one and never thought about using it, figuring it was just for meat. I folllow the amateur recipes that call for chopping the almonds in a food processor. The Bugat cake and cookie books call for chopping the almonds with the confectioners sugar and then passing the almonds through a sieve, then returning the leftovers to the food processor, chopping again and sieving them again, repeat several times until almost all the almonds go through the sieve. This can be a somewhat tedious process. I will have to try the grinder.

For a thicker chewy crust, try using King Arthur Bread Flour (or anyone's bread flour). I also agree with the comment to kick up the salt. I usually follow the recipes and find the crust grossly undersalted and bland tasting.

If you're grinding the almonds yourself, I find it to be a bit of a pain, since a food processor does not do a good job of grinding the almonds into consistent small pieces.

Not a US source, but I ran across this site: Tant Pour Tant

Bandits

That area has been difficult for restaurants I think due to the lack of close by parking. The Barcelona space was many other restaurants in its prior life. Barcelona seems to be hanging in pretty well.

I've made a recipe similar in execution to the peaches with mascarpone that turned out very well, except that the filling was a mixture of amaretti cookies and almonds ground in a food processor with some softened butter to hold it together and a little amaretto. Broiled the same way as the previous recipe.

I can't imagine this place would close prior to the show going on air with all the free publicity they're going to get.

I own a knock off of a Krups machine called a Maverick which has the canister that you put in the freezer and my experience has been the same as yours. I resorted at one point to running the machine in the freezer to try to get it to work. The only way I have gotten it to sort of work is to chill the mixture virtually to freezing by putting the mixture in a bowl in the freezer (ie. mixture begins to freeze around the edges) before putting the mixture in the ice cream machine. It still requires some post churning freezing to set up completely but gets pretty close.

Where is Taka? I used to go to Telluride a lot several years ago, after movies in Stamford, but it priced itself out of that category of restaurant and I have preferred to try other places instead. However, I really enjoyed it back then and would recommend it.

FWIW, in this past Sunday's New York Times Connecticut section, Mark Bittman praises a meal he had at The Olive Garden as being better and more enjoyable than one he had at one of Connecticut's more noteworthy and expensive Italian restaurants (not named), particularly when cost was taken into account.