paulraphael

That Kaloric oven looks pretty nice. I wonder how it would be compared with the Cuisinart brick oven. I lean toward the commercial unit. The home ovens always look so great in pictures but feel so flimsy in person.

so how is it that this substance that you'd only drink if you were dying of thirst is incapable of giving something else an off taste?

It smelled terrible while I was mixing it. I didn't dare taste it. I'm just worried about putting it in something delicately flavored (like a vanilla or herb flavored ice cream), in case any of that stink remains.

It seems that a lot of professional ice cream recipes call for this, in order to boost milk solids percentage. I'm hesitant, because the times I've used it it's just smelled terrible. Some web research reveals that the problem might be freshness; that the stuff oxidizes easily and can pick up bad flavors. First, is it true that when fresh the stuff can taste and smell good (like fresh milk)? And second, is there a way to store it to keep it fresh? I'm thinking plastic bags with the air evacuated, in the freezer ... or something to that effect.

I've had viral bugs like this several times before (once every few years or so). It seems different frome. For one thing, I always get the virus when it's going around and I've had direct exposure to other people with it. Not the case this time. This hit me about a half hour after lunch, which was the only real meal I'd had all day. When I finally tossed up lunch, over 5 hours later, it was completely undigested. The one other time I experienced something like this, the aparent culprit was a calzone! I suppose it could be completely unrelated to lunch, but i'm still suspicious.

I just had my first sick day from work in over 10 years. flat on my back, couldn't keep food down for 24 hours. Finally feeling better. The culprit: a Panino from a takeout joint (only food I ate since breakfast yesterday). Is there anything you're supposed to do in this situation? Call the panino place? The health dept.?

Chantiglace, I'm not sure why you're lecturing me on Richard Dawkins neologisms, or implying that I'm some kind of lemming, blindly following a herd of gelatin users off the edge of a cliff. Maybe it would help if you read my initial question. I wasn't actually looking for different stabilizers, because I'm getting excellent results with the current one I'm using. I'm familiar with gums. I've already outlined my reasons for not using them, at least at the moment. Your defense of them confirms my reasoning; I just don't have the time or resources to experiment with all the reasonable combinations. I can be more productive working with a smaller number of familiar ingredients. If you have any actual information on why gums might be superior (you haven't offered anything besides implication) I'd be happy to hear it. All the advantages I know about apply more to industrial applications, but perhaps I'm missing something. As far as starch goes, I don't know what to say except that you're wrong. Cornstarch has a long history of working effectively in ice creams and gelatos. Freeze-thaw cycles do tend to reduce its thickening ability, but that's not at issue here. Other starches, like arrowroot, are unaffected by freezing.

For the ice cream, I'm trying to use fewer egg yolks, simply because I don't like the egg flavor, and I don't want too much heaviness. But I like the smoothness and mouthfeel of custard based ice creams, and also the freezer stability. So I decided to cut down the yolks (from 6 to 2) and make up for the rest with some stabilization. I want to get the mouthfeel and the melt just the way I like it, and I want to be able to keep it in fridge for a week or so without getting any iciness. I'm not willing to put up with any off flavors or aftertastes or any weird films left behind in your mouth. I rejected arrowroot based on this last issue ... it gave me a slight sense of pastiness after the ice cream melted in my mouth.

The composition of the ice cream also influences the overrun (amount of fat, emulsification, etc. etc.). But I'm still skeptical of the whole egg foam thing for the same reasons you are. In order for whipping the yolks to make a difference, either the foam would have to survive (which I agree seems unlikely), or the eggs would have to be altered on the molecular level (which I've read does not happen from whipping). I do think it would be a reasonable to base final judgements on the churned ice cream, but only if you can eliminate all the variables in the churning process. Not easy to do.

Are these cooked sorbet bases, or do you have some other way of disolving the gelatin?

Sure, but that's going to be some blend, based on someone else's ideal ice cream characteristics, of three or more gums. I'd rather control the recipe. And I'd also rather not be dependent on a proprietary ingredient.

The trouble is that there are many blends, and an almost infinite number of possible blends, and all produce different textures and different results. I'd go crazier testing all the possibilities than I would testing the possibilities of a couple of simpler ingredients. Also, from what I've read, the main advantages of the more contemporary gums are price (not important in the quantities I'm making), extended shelf life (not important for my purposes), and the ability to work in minute quantities (actually a disadvantage for accurately weighing portions for a small batch). So far I'm getting impressive results with simple ingredients that I already keep in the kitchen. I'm just in the process of tweaking the details and am curious about other people's experience with this.

The reason I'm skeptical of this is that the egg foam structure just isn't likely to survive being disolved into the hot milk. I believe it will disappear entirely. And also, David Lebowitz says he's compared both methods side by side (whisked and unwhisked eggs) and can't tell any difference!

I've been experimenting with gelatin as a stabilizer in ice cream. So far I've disolved it in the traditional way, by blooming with a small amount of liquid (in this case a portion of the milk) and then mixing it in and heating it. But I found an article that says you can just mix it thoroughly with the sugar and disolve it that way. Is this a good idea? My understanding is that blooming is just to keep the the gelatin from clumping together and becoming difficult to disolve. It makes sense that dispersing it with an easy to disolve solid could help in the same way. Does anyone have experience with this? Also, I'm finding the gelatin is working in bizarrely small quantities. Recipes I've seen call for up to a tablespoon per quart of ice cream. I've found that using more than half a teaspoon (0.15% by weight) is too much ... gives a dense, puddingy consistency. I'm using it in conjunction with a bit of starch (3 to 6g) and a couple of yolks per quart, but it still seems strangely powerful. Thoughts?

I don't like fluffy ice cream either. But as it relates to this topic, I seriously doubt that making custard with foamed eggs would lead to a foamy ice cream.

Hmmm, I never thought of that one. This should work even without sugar, right?

News flash: plastic gets brittle in the freezer! I'm breaking all my plastic containers by scooping out of them. Casualties so far include ziplock storage containers and reused chinese restaurant containers. Any better ideas? Am I just supposed to be patient and wait for the ice cream to soften (fat chance!) ...?

Does he mention this in the context of ice cream? Stable foam is important for some things, like flourless chocolate cakes, but I'd think that any foam you make would vanish when you incorporate it into the crem anglaise for ice cream. Which I think is why you can incorporate the sugar any way you like with ice cream (but not everything). here's Lebovitz's short essay on gelato, where he mentions cornstarch: http://www.davidlebovitz.com/archives/2007...ats_gelato.html

Does anyone know anything about dasher speed? I'm using the Kitchenaid mixer attachment to make ice cream, so there's a huge range of speeds available. KA recommends the lowest speed. This is really slow. I've been looking for research-based articles online, and get a lot of conflicting information (faster=smaller ice crystals / faster=bigger ice crystals ... that kind of thing). I've also seen some suggestion that most of the overrun happens in the last couple of minutes of freezing, so maybe it makes sense to use a different speed at the end. Has anyone experimented with this?

I'd think it would work fine. The advantage of using milk and heavy cream is flexibility ... you can vary the fat percentage to anything you like. It does make a difference to use non-ultrapasteurized cream, especially in milder flavored ice creams. The flavor will be better. But it's probably a disadvantage to buy unhomogenized cream or milk from a small farm. The larger fat globules will result in less stable ice cream. I try to find the best quality, small farm, homogenized but minimally pasteurized cream that I can.

actually, I mean cornstarch. it's a common stabilizer in eggless, lowfat ice creams and gelatos. It's not mentioned in any of your books? That's what Lebovitz was anwering for me. He said in his experience it made no difference at all, just as you suspect. Personally, I whisk the sugar into the yolks when I'm using enough of them to disolve the sugar. Mostly out of habit, i guess. Otherwise I whisk it into the milk.

It might be interesting for your purposes to contrast some typical northern Italian recipes (higher fat, more yolks, more similar to French ice cream) with southern recipes (lower fat, often no cream or yolks, and often stabilized with cornstarch ... sometimes with a lot of it).

My guess is that sealing the surface with plastic wrap is mostly to prevent freezer burn (which is what Chefpeon is talking about). It can help prevent the surface from dehydrating, and ice crystals from growing on it, and also help keep flavors fresh. I doubt this will do much for shrinkage. Or with changes in overall texture, both of which seem to have more to do with the recipe and with consistency of freezer temps.

There's a primer here: http://forums.egullet.org/index.php?showtopic=31701 This takes things a step farther, telling you how to retrograde the starch so you can puree the bejeezus out of the spuds without making them gluey. It works; I've done it a few times. But it's a lot of effort. My preference is for la ratte potatoes, french fingerlings, or russian bananas (I like my puree to have a lot of flavor). Other kinds are preferable if you want a more neutral puree. I find the 50% butter by weight varieties to be pretty ludicrous. They taste more like potato-thickened butter sauces than anything else. 20 to 30% butter is really rich and delicious, and retains the character of potatoes.

That's my understanding of it. For some kinds of preparations this is probably important ... like when you're baking something that's leavened by the egg foam, or mixing anything where this is the only opportunity for the sugar to disolve. In an ice cream base (or similar creme anglaise) it's not a big deal because the sugar will have plenty of opportunity to disolve in the hot milk. Ice cream is a pretty unstable (and improbable) emulsion of frozen and unfrozen water, fat globules, other solids, and air. The only things stopping it from deflating spontaneously are the network of ice crystals, and whatever viscosity the emulsified fats and any stabilizing ingredients give to the liquid. Time, and especially warming and cooling cycles (like the self-defrosting of the freezer, and taking the ice cream out and putting it back) all conspire to deflate the foam. These factors also lead to the ice crystal structure changing, and the ice cream getting grainy. Commercial ice creams use stabilizers (usually tiny amounts of gums like guar, carob bean, and carageenan) and strong emulsifiers like diglycerides to give them shelf life. They also use mixes of sugars that include things besides sucrose, for their influence on texture and stablilty. Home made ice creams usually rely on lots of cooked egg yolk (the lecithin and other chemicals are emulsifiers), very high butterfat, and the fact that the stuff rarely sticks around more than a few minutes after you make it. I'm noticing that pastry chefs often take a middle path ... using some commercial ingredients like powdered glucose, starches and gums, etc... They seem less interested in long shelf life than in being able to get perfect textures without relying on a french custard base and lots of fat in all their recipes.