paulraphael

I started making bread for the first time in several years this summer. The goal was to finally make pizza that can compete with what I normally spend too much money on in restaurants. I live in Brooklyn, so the standards for serious pizza are daunting ... among other things, they requires a sourdough culture, which I'd had no experience with. So I started with regular sourdough bread, just to learn the process. Short version of the story: my pizza is still nowhere near good enough, but the bread is so good, that even though I live in a town with bakeries like Sullivan Street and Amy's and Balthazar, I'm never buying bread again unless I mess up and run out. I'm certainly done with commercial yeast. The flavors I'm getting out of the sourdough culture are insane ... like nothing I've had before. And the process isn't so hard. I was very worried about the hassle of dealing with the starter. Almost to the point of abandoning the project before starting. But I'm glad I didn't. My starter stays in the fridge, and I take it out the morning i need it. I feed it, and an hour later it's ready to go. This is likely because I use it about once a week and so it never goes completely dormant. If a couple of weeks or more go by, I'll try to take it out of the fridge and give it a small feeding the night before. But it's really a pretty low-maintenance pet. My advice to anyone who wants to try sourdough: do not start your own starter. There are reasons people buy or borrow starters that others have kept around for decades. Some are unusually good—not just in terms of flavor, but in terms of robustness and ease of use. And if you buy a starter that other people are using, you have an instant support group online. I'm using the Ischia Island starter sold by Sourdoughs International. It seems like 3/4 of the people in the world who make Neapolitan-style pizza use this culture. If you have questions about it, someone's got answers. It's a matter of making your life easier. As someone put it, if you want to learn how to surf, AND learn how to build surfboards, that's great—just maybe don't do both at the same time.

If you come across the red, hand-cranked Berkel prosciutto slicer, I suggest buying it just to display in your living room.

I've been using the My Weigh KD8000 for a couple of years. It works fine. It's sometimes handy that it holds a full 8kg (like if I want to measure food directly into a Dutch oven). This scale has a pretty unique feature in that it lets you measure with bakers' percentages. I invented this feature for them ... in an email exchange about service for an older scale, I asked them if they had a scale that did percentages. They were intrigued and said they'd give me a free scale I plotted out the user interface and the math for what I was talking about. I designed the thing for them, they sent me a (very nice) free scale, and that was that. A few years later the nice scale broke, and since I didn't have a receipt or warranty card, I had to shop for a new one. Lo and behold, there was the scale I designed. So I bought it. It's a perfectly good scale, but I have to admit, I've never once used the feature I designed. Does anyone use this scale, and if so, do you use the bakers' percentage function? Edited to add: I use an AWS scale for smaller quantities. It reads to 0.01g and holds up to 200g. Was cheap ... under $25. It's ok, but it can be slow to stabilize and give an accurate reading. This is inconvenient when you're measuring things like gums and leavening ingredients in tiny quantities. When it dies I'll try to find one that's better (hoping one exists).

That was no kind soul, that was me I'm glad that method's working out for you. It's an amalgam of techniques I've picked up along the way, with cooking times calculated by the SV Dash app. I haven't had a chance to try all the sizes, but it's been spot on for the couple that I've done.

I've had no trouble doing this when making the dough with instant yeast. If you're using a sourdough culture, it's likely to cause problems. I mostly use sourdough for pizza now, so instead of freezing half the batch, I make a loaf a bread out of it.

Great find. I was shopping Amazon and the restaurant stores. Never saw a set of the casters for $40.

My biggest argument against casters is that they're shockingly expensive. I priced out some wire shelving a couple of years ago and the casters cost more than than everything else put together. I ended up improvising some light duty ones (which required some drilling ... I used the kinds that go on the bottom of a desk chair). But if you want the standard heavy duty ones that go with the shelving, you need to be a smarter shopper than me or plan a bigger budget.

Probably most of them, but the one I linked above is 25-1/2.

I just did a quick look on webreastaurant store. They have many under $2000. I just don't know anything about the quality or the noise level.

We're shopping for a new fridge, and are dismayed by how many of them seem crappy, or expensive, or both. It's also a bit of a challenge to find one that's relatively shallow (doesn't jut out far beyond cabinets) and that will fit in our 31" wide slot. This got me thinking about commercial reach-in fridges. We could get a separate freezer for not too much, and put it ... somewhere. The commercial fridges are so much better designed than the consumer nonsense that I want to round up everyone from LG to Sub Zero and stone them to death. I don't know why everyone isn't making a fridge that's rectangular on the inside, easy to clean, and with an unlimited number of adjustable shelf positions. For extra credit, it could be configured to hold sheet pans instead of shelves. My fear is that it would be loud. They advertise 1/4 horsepower to 3/4 horsepower compressors, and this makes me think of a portable generator or sump pump. Not something I want to cohabitate with. Also, I wonder if the affordable brands (like Avantco) are reliable. Would the actual good ones cost as much as the high end consumer fridges? Anyone with experience with these things? I'm assuming it will turn out to be a bad idea, but wanted to double check.

Agreed. And please don't call heavy cream, egg yolk, and a pinch of salt "ice cream." It's not.

My girlfriend says watermelon is a superfood, and I choose to believe.

I just figure that where there's food, there's smoke ... If you can't sear at high temperatures (or if you're dealing with something thin and especially vulnerable to cooking through) you can get some help from chemistry. I keep a blend onhand that's about 1 part baking soda to 5 parts dextrose. sprinkle it onto the food right after drying it. Shazam. Nearly instant maillard reactions. This could help get a good sear if you're forced to use a nonstick pan.

Sticking shouldn't be a problem with steak on any surface. Just don't try to move it until it's started to brown. Assuming the pan is hot enough, and the meat reasonably dry, it will release. Sticking problems are always technique problems.

I can't find much research on hydrogen peroxide as a sanitizer, except in specialized situations like breweries. Which seems strange—it's great stuff, is very safe to use, is non-corrosive to metals, doesn't damage textiles, etc. etc.. When I worked in a commercial kitchen ages ago we used Ajax-like stuff that said "oxygen bleach cleaner" on the label. It was peroxide based. The idea is that it wouldn't attack stainless steel the way chlorine bleach does. But I never see this stuff anymore. I recently found a Clorox hydrogen peroxide disinfectant online. The stuff is great—I used it to clean up the house after a recent bout of norovirus left the place disgusting and infectious (I won't go into details). This stuff is packaged for hospitals, with a huge label that tells you how to use it to kill everything. It's non-toxic and actually smells good! But it's a strong disinfectant, not a sanitizer. My only guess about peroxide's unpopularity is that weak solutions of it are unstable. They just last a little while, and then you just have a bottle of plain water.

Is this based on any research? Sounds dubious to me. Sandpaper comes in grits finer than the fiber structure of the wood. And I don't think the problem is microgrooves; it's deep grooves. FWIW, David Smith the Boardsmith finishes his wood boards with a belt sander before shipping them to customers. The surface is like glass.

Just don't use a planer on an endgrain board. You'll destroy the board and probably also the planer. 2nd hand advice from the Boardsmith.

Sandpaper (in a palm sander) has worked fine on all my boards. It probably depends on the depth of the grooves. I cut lightly, and use a serrated knife on my bread board only, so I'm not dealing with deep valleys.

Thanks for posting, Lisa. That's all very interesting, although it doesn't suggest that the quats are getting into the environment kitchen sanitizers. The small streams / muddy areas suggests that these quats did not originate in kitchen sinks that's drain to municipal sewers and sewage treatment. I suspect further study will show that the environmental quats are coming from other sources. Some of these sources they mention are new to me ... hand sanitizers and shampoos. These strike me as bad ideas.

In response to the original question, the most important thing with plastic cutting boards is to throw them out when they get deeply scored. Someone around here said they had luck sanding them smooth, but most people say they melt and make a gummy mess if you sand them, which makes them disposable. Beyond that, washing them thoroughly in hot, soapy water is the most important step, and is usually all that's necessary. Sanitizing is a perfectly reasonable precaution (I do it just as a good habit), but unless you're cooking professionally or cooking for people you know to be immune-compromised, it's optional. Vinegar is slightly effective. I think quaternary ammonium compounds (from the restaurant store or online) are the best all around (see above). Doing a thorough job with the washing is always most important. Sanitizers of all kinds (bleach included) are ineffective if there's any food residue on the board.

In what sense is quaternary ammonia less eco-friendly? It's non-toxic at working dilutions. It doesn't damage stainless steel or textiles like bleach does, it doesn't form carcinogenic dioxins like bleach does, it doesn't produce irritating fumes like bleach does. The only time you need test strips is if you're using it as the final rinse in a hand-washing sink and you want to make sure it hasn't been exhausted. Or if you want to check that your employees have mixed it properly. If you're mixing working solution in a spray bottle, you don't need test strips. The shelf life of the working solution in a bottle is over 6 months. I bought my 1-gallon jug of concentrate in 2008 and it's about 2/3 gone now. The concentrate has an indefinite shelf life. When it's gone I'll probably get tablets, like these. At under $9 for 150 gallons of working solution, price isn't much of an issue. I can see just two potential issues with quats: they're not effective against norovirus, which is one of the more common sources of foodborne illness. And they leave a germicidal residue on surfaces. This residue can remain active for many hours, possibly even a few days. There's some concern that this could play a part in creating sanitizer-resistant strains of bacteria. This is a hypothetical concern with quats, but the same phenomenon has been shown to be real with triclosan, which has led to efforts to ban triclosan in antibacterial soaps and hand cleaners.

The idea of extended cooking is somewhat misunderstood around here. It can potentially do just two things: -increase the solids content through evaporation. -get the milk proteins to work more efficiently as ice cream emulsifiers For the first function, this method is no better than simply adding solids in the form of nonfat milk. I'd argue that it's worse, because it's less controllable and is time-consuming. The second function is irrelevant if you have other emulsifying ingredients in the formula. Like egg yolks. Commercial ice cream makers like Jenni's use heat denaturation because they want to avoid eggs (an esthetic choice), and they want to avoid additional emulsifying ingredients (a marketing choice). If these aren't your concerns, then there's no compelling reason to go through the trouble. There's a slight chance that if you made two versions side-by side with identical final formulas (one made with heat reduction, one made with additional cream and nonfat solids and other solid ingredients) you'd get slight textural and flavor differences. But I've never seen this done—certainly not in a controlled, blind taste test. If you want to experiment with heat denaturization, at the very least do it logically and leave the eggs out. I've written about using denatured proteins as emulsifiers here, and as stabilizers here. The truth is that the published science on these topics, with regards to ice cream, is scarce. Most of the practical knowledge lies behind closed doors at places like Jeni's and Haagen Dazs. Jeni might give you some hints if you ask nicely but the big guys won't.

Some chefs / restauranteurs will buy just about everything used except refrigerators and freezers. They're money pits if anything's wrong with them, and you have to know an unreasonable amount to to effectively inspect them yourself. If any are local, maybe you could hire a repair person to inspect it? I see the dilemma. Blast freezers cost a fortune.

There shouldn't be any health concerns. The meat isn't breaded, so you're not adding fat. I haven't used the deep fry approach, but people I know who do this all fry after sous-vide, so they don't lose the crispness to the water bath. And they all get a deeper brown and more serious crust than what I'm seeing in your pictures. I'd suggest playing with oil temperature and time, and either just sticking with the post-fry, or try it both before and after.

Thanks Diana, the starter's going great. My goal is pizza, but have been making one or two big boules a week and am gradually refining the process. I've been finding most of my information online. I realize I don't care too much about formulas and styles; I'm not trying to build a repertoire of different kinds of bread. I have an idea of the kind of daily bread I like (a S.F.-like sourdough boule with a bit more subtlety) and what kind of pizza dough (about 3/4 of the way from NYC to Naples). What's most helpful is sources on the science and on techniques. The folklore and self-contradictory advice and anti-science makes me lose my mind. I don't know how anyone puts up with it. My best source so far has been at pizzamaking.com. I've found things like temperature/activity graphs for wild yeasts and lactobacilli. Between this and understanding gluten development it seems you could make whatever kind of bread you wanted. I've already disowned a lot of what I've learned from Peter Reinhart. I've made pretty good bread by his methods, but his arguments go against the science. You can make the same bread or better bread by faster and simpler methods. I'm intrigued by Hamelman ... maybe I'll get his book. But may be content with the web for a while. I'll check out wildyeast blog and perfectloaf. Thanks again!