paulraphael

There are many ways to get a creamy mouthfeel and freedom from ice crystals that don't require a 100% cream base, or even a 50% cream base. Milk fat is actually less effective at suppressing ice crystals than milk solids, and neither can compete with hydrocolloids, which work their magic in minute quantities. When you're no longer dependent on the cream for texture, you have the freedom use it purely for its effect on flavor. Some flavors work better with high fats than others. A high-fat vanilla or caramel flavor works well. Fruit flavors (in my opinion) lose some of their mojo unless the fat level comes down. High milk fat chocolate ice cream is just lousy. And for coffee ... it really depends on if you want a latte or a macchiato. I've never had a latte in my life and don't plan on it. I'm more biassed than many people against high milk fat ice creams. For me 15% or 16% is a nice point for flavors that play well with fat. I find 18% fat cloying, and 30% gross.

I'd suggest that the 100% cream and the coffee are fighting each other. Milk fat mutes coffee flavor, softening any brightness and slowing its release. To get all the flavor I was looking for, I started with my typical 15% milk fat and ended up backing down all the way to 10%. The creamy body comes from lots of milk solids, which don't mute the flavors anywhere near as much as fat. I'd also suggest that with proper extraction, you get so much natural caramel flavor out of most coffee beans that you'd only want to add actual caramel if you were going for something along the lines of caramel latte.

There's never just one right answer, but I found it surprisingly challenging to answer a more specific question: how can I get the full, thee-dimensional flavor profile of a single-origin coffee into ice cream? How can I get the kinds of intense flavor sensations I get from a one-in-a-hundred, brilliant espresso shot from a master barista? This is something I'd never experienced before.

That's true, unless you're using the raw processing software made by your camera maker. This will usually import your camera style settings. In general I think it's a poor tradeoff; camera companies usually write lousy software, and insist on keeping your files in proprietary formats that could cause problems down the road. The exception being PhaseOne, but if you have one of their cameras you don't need my advice on anything. I'd suggest that using camera styles is a shortcut, similar to shooting in jpeg. It's designed to speed your workflow, but isn't relevant if you're going for the best image quality. Using styles (or jpeg) is about trying to do your processing in-camera, using the built-in, small, not very good screen to make your judgements. Raw workflows are generally about capturing as much high-quality information as possible, and fine-tuning the color balance and density curves when you're in front of a good monitor. Nevertheless, I find that my default Lightroom settings are good enough for posting casual images online much of the time, without any tweaking.

If you shoot raw format, it should be easy to get good color balance from any light source. The only thing that will cause problems is mixed lighting—like, light coming from the window on the left and an incandescent bulb on the right, or incandescent bulbs with different color temperatures, or worst of all, an old-fashioned fluorescent tube somewhere in the mix. There are other reasons you should be shooting raw if you're at all serious about picture quality.

I've made several versions now with different coffees. It's striking how the origin quality of the coffee comes through the ice cream. Right now there's a batch in the freezer made with Stumptown Ethiopia Duromina, and one made with Long Miles Coffee Burundi Gishubi natural process, roasted by my friend at a local coffee shop. The difference is night and day. The first is like cocoa, caramel, and blood oranges. The second is like blackberries, blackberries, and more blackberries. I stopped by the shop last week for a quick espresso, and they pulled me one of the best shots I'd had in my life. It was the blackberry-bomb from Burundi. The owner happened to walk in, I told him how much ass the espresso kicked, and he said, "come back tonight, the producer is giving a talk." I came back with a pint of Ethiopian Stumptown ice cream. The shop owner and the guy from Long Miles flipped out that they could really taste the coffee. The Long Miles guy ate the whole thing. They gave me 100g of the Burundian natural process, which went into the next batch. Next experiment will probably something from Indonesia, just for something entirely different. This project is turning me into a coffee nut.

Fairway probably upgraded the oil quality. Bitterness is a desirable trait among the olive oil cognoscenti. If you want mild, are you sure olive oil is even the best choice? There are oils for cooking that won't add any flavor, and that come with other advantages. If you want olive oil flavor, you can add a bit of good olive oil after cooking. The truth is, virtually none of the inexpensive oil sold as extra virgin is extra virgin. Much of it isn't even olive oil. Some of it doesn't even contain olive oil. The industry is dominated by fraud at the distribution level, and the public just blindly believes that every bottle on the shelf can be extra virgin and can cost under $15. EVOO should be an exceptional oil, not the norm. It should be fairly expensive, and it should be used raw. There is never a reason to cook with actual EVOO. You're paying a premium for oil that tastes good because it wasn't exposed to heat! When I've needed a cheap, mild olive oil, I've had good luck with Whole Foods 365 store brand. It's labelled EVOO, which is almost certainly a lie. But it's inoffensive and affordable. https://www.motherjones.com/environment/2016/08/olive-oil-fake-larry-olmsted-food-fraud-usda/ https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2007/08/13/slippery-business https://www.oliveoiltimes.com/tag/olive-oil-fraud?page=6

I doubt many people get sick. It would take a lot of negligence and not a lot of ventilation. But this is the best explanation I've found for why nonstick pans eventually stick.

This study finds that pyrolysis of PTFE begins at 200°C (392°F). Zapp JA, Limperos G, Brinker KC (26 April 1955). "Toxicity of pyrolysis products of 'Teflon' tetrafluoroethylene resin". Summary is online here. It sounds like the reaction is very slow at this temperature. Abstract: Teflon (9002-84-0), a physically inert tetrafluoroethylene (116-14-3) resin, is discussed in a paper presented at the American Industrial Hygiene Association Annual Meeting in Cincinnati, Ohio on April 26, 1955, and it is noted that its pyrolytic products are toxic, and exposure to various mixtures of them will induce polymer fume fever in humans. The latter influenza like syndrome has not been reproduced in animals. Sufficiently intense exposure of animals to Teflon's thermal products, however, is generally lethal. The associated evidence of pulmonary edema, together with other early test results, originally suggested that hydrogen fluoride (7664-39-3) (HF) was the responsible toxic agent. The pyrolysis of Teflon starts at 200 degrees-C and proceeds slowly up to 420 degrees-C; at 500 to 550 degrees-C, the degradational weight loss reaches 10% to 5% per hour, respectively, depending on conditions. In the temperature range 300 to 360 degrees-C, hexafluoroethane (C2F6) and octafluorocyclobutane (C4F8) were identified as decomposition products. In the range 380 to 400 degrees-C, octafluoroisobutylene (also C4F8) could be detected and, at 500 to 550 degrees-C, the chief pyrolysis products other than tetrafluoroethylene (116-14-3) (C2F4) were hexafluoropropylene (116154), (C3F6) octafluorocyclobutane, and octafluoroisobutylene plus a complex residue of perfluoroolefins. Inhalation toxicity tests indicated that the octafluoroisobutylene gas, the most potent product, was approximately ten times as toxic as phosgene (75-44-5). The rat mortality factor seemed to be proportional to the product of exposure time and Teflon surface area as a function of pyrolysis temperature. Teflon 6, a lower molecular weight polymer than Teflon 1, produced more toxic pyrolysis products. Other kinds of industrial polymers were observed to produce lethal atmospheres under less drastic conditions than either form of Teflon There's nothing here about why 500°F would be chosen as the maximum allowable temperature; this might be based on some other studies. You can see from this summary that as temperature goes up, not only does the rate of breakdown increase, but the pyrolysis byproducts change. If you have an awesome commercial range and preheat your omelette pan to 500°C (932°F), you'll fill the air with octafluoroisobutylene, possibly helping with the vital task of population reduction.

This could explain why nonstick pans gradually lose their mojo. As I read it, they warn people about 500F because it's the point where byproducts can reach a concentration in the air that can cause health problems. 400F isn't very hot ... you'd have to be really careful when pre-heating a pan to consistently keep it cooler.

That's really nice, Anna. I'd consider ending it at "...and keep." Rakuten's imagination seemed to wane a bit in the last three lines.

Well, you gotta heat the water. I can maybe see it for plastic cutting boards, but I don't want to dunk wood ones water that hot. And it's not so practical for sanitizing fixed surfaces.

Rakuten's automatic translations may be the best thing that ever happened to avant-garde poetry.

High temperature sanitizing works the same way as pasteurization and sterilization. It's the simplest to understand sanitization, because temperature/time/death curves for all pathogens are well known. I've never heard of a health department not acknowledging it. It doesn't come up so often, because for the method to be practical you need a heat-sanitizing dishwasher. Water from the tap isn't hot enough, and if it were, it would do the same things to the dishwashers' hands that it does to the bacteria. That quotation about dipping a cloth in quaternary ammonium is a bit of a straw-man argument. It's basically saying that if you use those sanitizers exactly the way the manufacturers tell you not too, they won't work well. There are mountains of legitimate research on sanitizers. Beware of treating a single, non-peer reviewed article as gospel. Vinegar has many shortcomings. It's fairly weak against lysteria and e.coli. It's useless against most viruses (quats are ineffective against norovirus, which is the one real strike I see against them). Vinegar is absolutely more effective than not using vinegar, so if you're looking for a bit of additional insurance, there's no harm. Just don't overestimate it.

Oh yeah, that's mandatory. The albumin will curdle. But it doesn't bring bad flavors with it, so if it's a sauce I'm planning to strain, I might just strain the globs out at the end.

The link you cited really just showed generic information on the behavior of a bunch of sanitizers. It doesn't address the measured performance of any of them when sanitizing produce (you can read the same descriptions of these chemicals, practically word-for-word, referring to their performance on nonporous surfaces). Here's an FDA study analysis that directly addresses sanitizers on produce. This is the only one I could find that even addresses peroxide. It's not surprising that H2O2 isn't so popular; It's effectiveness is spotty, and it causes browning of some vegetables, bleaching of others. Excerpts of shortcomings: "Treatment of whole cantaloupes, honeydew melons, and asparagus spears with 1% H2O2 was less effective at reducing levels of inoculated salmonellae and E. coli O157:H7 than hypochlorite, acidified sodium chlorite or a peracetic acid-containing sanitizer (Park and Beuchat 1999)."" "Use of a 1% H2O2 spray on alfalfa seeds and sprouts did not control growth of E. coli O157:H7 (Taormina and Beuchat 1999b)." "... however, obvious visual defects were noted on the treated lettuce." None of this is damning. It appears to be safe to use. But it's also only marginally effective, and can discolor food. If I were looking for a produce sanitizer, I'd keep looking.

Escofier's recipes? Those were written back when veal grew on trees. Maybe not literally.

After the smoke clears and you sweep the rubble away, the surfaces should be safe for preparing a salad.

Another source of minimalist stock is plain old sous-vide bag juices. I accumulate them in the freezer to add them to stock, but in a pinch have used them in place of stock. The flavor is pure and intense. Definitely benefits from some onion / shallot, and wine or other spirit, and it needs acid. But a little goes a long way, the flavors can be pushed in whatever direction you want.

Disinfectants and sanitizers are not quite the same thing. I use a peroxide-based disinfectant at home and love it; it's pretty non-toxic, it works well, and it smells good. There's no nasty residue. It's sold as a commercial product for hospitals, so it's not so easy to find ... I'm not sure why. Sanitizers are used in somewhat lower concentrations and in much larger quantities, and need to stay stable in an open sink for a whole shift. Peroxide is unstable even in a plastic bottle. In a sink it will off-gas to basically nothing very quickly. Peroxide is much more expensive than the usual suspects (quaternary ammonium, chlorine). For reasons I don't know, it hasn't been approved as a commercial restaurant sanitizer by health departments (at least not as of the last time I looked into it). It used to be a popular sanitizer for breweries. They used it in higher concentrations than household peroxide. Mostly for stainless steel and copper surfaces. From what I've read it's no longer popular; that industry has switched to stuff called PAA, which is a strong peroxide/acetic acid blend that is nastier than anything you'd want in your kitchen. It must be pretty effective for people to put up with it.

Sanitizing works on clean surfaces (no organic matter hanging around) and there's no guaranteed way to get that stuff out of the deepest reaches of a hacked-up cutting board. That's why most sources say to toss a poly board when it gets scored. Or sand a wood or rubber board. Someone around here said they had a method for sanding poly boards that didn't wreck them. I'd be curious to hear it.

You can't count on me doing it all the time at home. But at restaurants and food trucks you can absolutely count on it. Health codes just about everywhere in the US require it. Probably elsewhere in the developed world. Commercial dishwashers are either heat-sanitizing or chemical-sanitizing. The latter runs a solution just like the one I describe through the rinse cycle. Commercial dishwashing sinks are all triple—for wash, rinse, and sanitize. If you don't have a sanitizing dishwasher or 3-basin sink, you won't get licensed to open. One of the first things a health inspector checks is if the three sink basins are properly filled and that the water isn't dirty. They cary test strips to make sure your sanitizer isn't exhausted. Commercial kitchens I've been in have a sanitizer-filled tub full of clean cutting boards, and bussing tray to throw used ones into. This is all commercial kitchen 101.

Extremely acidic. I like some brightness in a tomato sauce but this was over the top, at least in the Margherita where there weren't other fatty ingredients to balance it in any way.

In the basic sourdough recipe, with the machine mixing instructions, do they clarify what they mean by "mix to medium gluten development?" I use a 6qt KA mixer with a spiral dough hook, and have gradually been shortening mixing times when using medium to high-hydration doughs and autolyse steps. If I go longer than 90 seconds, the dough seems to get soupier rather than firmer. I'm assuming the gluten will break down if I go longer than this, but everyone online who writes about mixing bread mechanically mentions mixing times of several minutes. Should I ignore the apparent weakening of the dough and mix longer? My dough ends up being extremely extensible, but almost entirely without elasticity. At hydration levels above 65% my boules get floppy and almost resemble focaccia. (using half KA AP flour, half KA bread). But it's delicious ... like the best tasting bread I've had. When I lower the hydration, I get beautiful, professional looking boules that just taste ok. Should I mix longer or change the dough development steps in any other way? Right now I'm making the recipe as written, with regard to autolyse, mixing, and stretch / fold schedule. I've increased the hydration to 70%, and am using a lower percentage of starter, to facilitate a longer warm ferment. My starter gives the flavors I like if it gets a few hours in the 90°F range. For one trial I tried adding a couple of extra stretch / fold steps. This made a stronger dough, but gave a tightly organized crumb that was less chewy, and resembled commercial sandwich bread. Not awesome. Any tips on how to get a stronger dough that will hold its shape, without compromising flavor, will make me oh so happy.

Cocktails are maybe the preferred way to keep everyone healthy. When not imbibing, I use soap and water, and then give a quick spray with restaurant sanitizer. I bought a gallon jug of the stuff about 8 years ago, and have only used about 3/4 or it. One capful dilutes in a quart of water to make the working solution. Put it in a generic spray bottle. The stuff I like is made with quaternary ammonium compounds. It's colorless, odorless, tasteless, and doesn't attack metals or textiles (bleach attacks just about everything). It has a very long life in working solution, so you don't have to throw it out ever. It has a wetting agent, so you can use it as the final rinse when hand-washing dishes, and you won't get spots on glassware. As with all sanitizers, it's only useful on surfaces that are actually clean. Quaternary ammonium compounds work better than bleach on organic surfaces (like wood). They're less effective than bleach against some viruses, including norovirus. When my gallon jug runs out, I plan to replace with the same type of chemical in tablet form. This $5 bottle makes 150 gallons of working solution.