paulraphael

Here's the dough recipe that I've been working on. It's intended for a home oven; I bake at 550F, but people get good results at 500. Results are a bit crisper and chewier than traditional Neapolitan. I don't think the flavor is as good as the best doughs made with starter, but it's the best I've had from commercial yeast.

100% manufacturing defect. A some kind of forging or heat treating mistake. Time bomb waiting to go off. Even if you'd used the knife to pry open a vault, I doubt it would have broken in that spot. I've seen spontaneously snapped knives before, but never quite like that, south of the bolster. Maybe it's time to let go? You might be able to get Wusthof to replace it, but it wouldn't be your baby anymore. And there are many knives that perform much better for the same or less money.

Evilchef's recipe is completely dependent on a blazing hot oven ... he says 400C, but I bet that's pushing it on the low side. 46% hydration will give you a crust like shoe leather in a home oven, where baking times are more like 6 to 8 minutes. And 00 Italian flour works especially poorly at low temps / long times. Here's a tip on the tomato sauce: Use good quality canned tomatoes (the genuine Italian ones are often good but not always) ... remember any brand that you like, and TASTE the tomatoes, every time. I don't think any brand is consistent. Unless you're very lucky, most canned tomatoes have a bit of bitter / metallic taste to them that needs to be handled. Here's a method that I find works with a range of tomatoes (provided they're basically good): - pass tomatoes through a food mill using the fine disk. this should remove any stray skins and most of the seeds. - pour into a very fine strainer or chinois that's set over a bowl. do not force through the strainer. allow liquid to drip through for 10 minutes or so. Pour this strained liquid back into the strainer, and allow to drip for another 10 or 15 minutes. The liquid that drips through the strainer this time should be mostly clear. -taste the liquid that has dripped through. if it's not bitter, you're done. If it IS bitter, discard the liquid. add a few ounces of water to the puree in the strainer, and wait 10 or 15 minutes for liquid to drip through. Repeat until liquid that drips through has lost its bitterness. -pour puree from strainer into a bowl. Taste and carefully season. The traditional seasoning is salt and nothing but. However, canned tomatoes are often presalted and may not need any added. Depending on the quality of the tomatoes, they MAY need a bit of added acid (like red wine vinnegar) and in rare cases a bit of sugar or honey. I'm also partial to black pepper. Add herbs at your peril; the neopolitan police may kick down your door.

Cool ... that's perfect. I wish I had that one. The trick now is to make sure you buy from someone who has the new version in stock. Some web stores are unclear about this.

How about an eGullet-sponsored petition to the cookbook publishers? Maybe we could get a thousand signatures? Might not change anything, but it couldn't hurt.

Dorie Greenspan presumeably has a fair amount of political capital, as authors go, and she only seems to win this battle once in a while. I asked her why one of the Pierre Hermé books had no weights while the other did ... she said, "I tried!"

I've never heard of a case of recipes being protected as intellectual property, with the exception of copyright protection being extended to the wording of a written recipe. The ideas themselves seem to be a free for all. While I haven't heard it put just like this, I think the solution of most contemporary chefs is the opposite of secrecy: they publish their recipes freely. This guarantees that they get credit for their ideas, since there's no practical way to stop other people from copying them.

I think trussing makes sense for roasting chickens on a spit in front of a fire; that's what the technique was developed for. Everything I've read in favor of trussing an oven roasted bird fails in terms of physics and logic (and in comparison to an untrussed bird done the same way). I think the chefs that insist on trussing do so for esthetic reasons; a trussed bird is prettier. The rest is rationalization.* Here's why: the challenge to cooking a whole bird lies in the different cooking temperatures of the white and dark meat. The white meat is leaner and is actually a different muscle fiber type; it's done at round 10°F lower than the dark meat. But the dark meat actually comes to temperature more slowly, because the folds of the leg against the torso create the thickest section of flesh on the bird. Trussing pins the legs against the torso, effectively making that part of the bird even thicker. It eliminates airflow between the legs and torso, and covers a fair amount of surface area, making browning there impossible. Sometimes I'll have a bird that's so floppy that legs will hang against the edge of the pan and tend to scorch there. If that's the case, I'll do a very loose truss ... just enough to get the legs to behave a bit, but not enough to disrupt airflow. Incidentally, there was a practice developed for spit roasting that we've discarded, but shouldn't have: barding. Birds used to be covered with a thin layer of fat (like pork belly or bacon). Smart chefs then figured out they could get perfectly cooked birds by barding just the breast meat, and removing the barding around halfway through cooking. This technique works as well in the oven as it does on a spit, and has resulted in the only perfectly cooked birds I've ever had. If you don't want to go all out with bacon, a trippled sheet of foil works as well, if not as tastilly. *Julia child said that untrussed bird looks "wanton." Maybe it's the generation gap, but I'm not sure that's a bad thing.

Working great. No complaints. It might even be on the original batteries. There may be a newer model that has an IR thermometer with a higher maximum temp; this would be a big improvement. I'd like to use it to check the oven when making pizzas, but my version tops out at less than 500 degrees.

You could par cook whole chickens sous-vide (ideal) or poached in something like court bouillon, then finish to order in 500+ degree oven, with foil or barding over the breasts for part of the roast time. put butter or stock in the sous vide bags. birds done this way are phenomenal. parcooked birds that don't get ordered can be used in braises, stews, or for stock. If you poach, the poaching liquid will be the foundation of your stock.

I know a few people who prefer cakes from mixes to cakes they've made from scratch. I think it's because the mixes use food science that makes it easy to get good results without good technique. A cake made from scratch with better ingredients and good technique would be better than the mix ... but this isn't the point of reference for these people.

Opening packages, mostly. They're also great for snipping the wing tips off of chickens and the bony fins off of fish. For most of the other things mentioned I prefer a knife.

Not exactly to the point, but I think we're mistaken in blaming things like preservatives and additives ... whatever an additve may be ... for making crappy commercial products crappy. Usually they're crappy because they're cheap, or because so many recipe compromises have to be made to give them long shelf lives. Sometimes they're crappy because it's hard to make great things in factory-sized batches, but I think this is only occasionally the case. You mentione ice cream earlier. It's an interesting case. The better industrial ice creams, like Haagen Dazs and Ben and Jerrys, achieve textures that most pastry chef's would be happy with. And they manage this with frighteningly long shelf lives and durability in the face of temperature swings and other kinds of abuse. But the flavors are typically only so so. They manage the great textures because the technology is available to stabilize ice cream just so. But they struggle with flavor because great, intense flavor is expensive. To make a pint of commercial ice cream with a deep, three-dimensional vanilla flavor (or fruit flavor, or chocolate flavor ...) requires expensive ingredients, and in many cases careful handling. I suspect it would just put the price out of reach of their market. Homemade ice cream typically flips the equation: great flavor, challenges with texture.

Absolutely. My reasoning in this case: IF we assume that benzoate is especially harmful to people (I'm suspicous of this but open to the possibility), we're still dealing with a preservative used in minute amounts in pectin, which itself is used in minute amounts (fractions of a percent by weight) in jams and jellies, which themselves are usually served in small portions and eaten only occasionally. So if we were going to crusade against preservatives in general, or benzoate in particular, pectin would be close to the bottom of my list of battles worth waging.

I'm going to try a rosemary ice cream. About how much do you use per 1000g? Does it infuse well into milk? Any other thoughts on it?

The collective will of the people exerts a strong influence. Diners vote with their reservations and their pocketbooks; restaurant owners have only limited sway. Of course someone like Robuchon might get customers if he insits on tuxedos, but he's in the exalted minority. Most chefs and owners work hard to get people in the door. Creating an environment that diners don't like (and this could include a dress code that's too strict or one that's not strict enough) will hurt business. That's why this debate DOES seem like a kind of negotiation between the restaurants and the patrons (and between the patrons who like to dress up and those who don't).

Merstar isn't just picking nits; in my experience the fat content will make a bigger difference to the success/failure of the recipe than the cocoa solids content. And unless you're dealing with professional couverture, this information can be hard to find. It's actually doubly important to find it, because knowing the cocoa % tells you very little. It isn't actually an indicator of cocoa solids (even though that's the name); it tells you the cocoa solids plus naturally ocurring cocoa butter. This is why unsweetened chocolate is labelled 100% cocoa. But it's cocoa plus cocoa butter. Not all 100% cocoa chocolates will be equally dark or intense, because they will have different proportions of fat to cocoa solids. Confusing, right?

I've just reread the last dozen or so posts, and they all break down to one central conflict: people who like to dress up vs. people who don't. All the arguments are rationalizations for these two sentiments. That's ok-- but let's recognize we're not talking about anything more profound that this. Are there social norms about dressing a certain way? Yes. Have they been changing over the last decades? Yes. Is this a good thing or a bad thing? From the restaurant's and the diner's perspectes? All depends on your feelings about dressing up. Obviously there will be conflicts about this. And it's obvious that arguments about who's right and who's wrong are going to be fundamentally pointless. The interesting issues are what people like (and dislike) about dressing up. And how to navigate the social landscape when the rules have become so vague.

I've read that yolks don't freeze as well, so I haven't tried it. One issue is that they contain fat, so they can rancidify. Not a concern with whites. I Just freeze them in a ziplock bag. I do it any time I use yolks in a recipe, and keep adding to the same bag. When the bag gets big, or a couple of months old, I'll consider making something like financiers. A few suggestons: -double bag them. ziplock bags often leak after being frozen and thawed -squeeze out all the air before freezing -write the date on the bag, and don't keep them around for more than a few months. Honestly, I've kept them for longer than this, with no obvious ill effects, but conventional wisdom says not to. -if you plan to thaw the whites to use a portion of them, and refreeze the rest, be aware of any time spent in the petry dish zone (warmer than 40°F). keep it to a minimum, and if you're not sure, toss.

Most recipes seem to tolerate some slop in egg quantities. If you need to be precise, as always the best bet is measuring weight. Figure 50g per large egg (18g yolk, 32g white). I keep whites in the freezer and always measure them into recipes by weight. Yolks I blindly trust.

I'm interested in if there are different mechanisms by which we perceive piquancy. Supposedly capsaicin works by purely chemical means to create a pain reaction; we then interpret that as a component of flavor, even though it doesn't involve taste receptors in the conventional way. I wonder if other chemicals, like the ones in mustards or horseradish that clear the sinuses, work on us different ways. Part of what makes this tricky is that our brains like to unify these disparate sensations into a unified one ... we take information from our aroma receptors, taste receptors, and other nerves in our mouths and noises, and integrate (or conflate) them into a flavor sensation. As far as the debate over temperature, I suspect you're both right. There does seem to be a threshold below which it all just feels f'ing cold. But I think that threshold is colder than -10F.

How do you define white bread? Is it any bread made without whole grain flour? Or is it a specific style (soft, loaf shaped, usually with dairy in it)? I see it used both ways and wonder if one definition is more standard.

Shouldn't matter at all. The surface is what's in contact with the eggs, and the surface of both kinds is nearly pure copper.

Lore and science support using copper bowls for whipping egg whites; copper ions bond to conalbumin molecules, allowing them to form a stronger and more stable foam. I got a great old copper mixing bowl on ebay years ago, and used to whip all my whites in it. But now that I have an aftermarket balloon-whisk type attachment for my stand mixer, that machine makes life easier even for a single egg white. But the bowl is stainless, and copper replacement bowls or liners cost more than all the meringue in the world. I've been getting by with using acid (cream of tartar) to stabilize the foam. This works, but not as well, and doesn't provide the kind of insurance against overwhipping as copper. So lately I've been experimenting. The common warning is to not use both copper and acid, because you'll liberate too many copper ions, resulting in foam that will taste like pennies and that may even be toxic. So I wondered, why not use the solvent power of the acid to get ions from a very small quantity of added copper? What I've been trying is acidified egg whites (made with the usual quantity of cream of tartar; about 0.4g/egg white)--plus pennies. I just remove tarnish from the pennies and throw them in the mixer's bowl. My starting point is one penny per egg white. So far there's no taste of copper in the end product, so I know I'm liberating too many ions. But I haven't yet compared to penniless foam, so I don't know if I'm liberating enough to make a difference. I'll do an experiment soon and report back. Does anyone else want to try this and see if it works?

Math may bug people, but think weights make it easier. Quick: what's half of 180 grams? Now, what's half of 1-1/3 cups? Everything I ever see is grams and kilograms. Once you get used to those units there's no going back.