paulraphael

People develop recipes all different ways. Some are more systematic than others, making the process more efficient, and making it based on reasonable decisions rather than guesses. I'd suggest, for starters, 1. Find a couple of food science books/sites that are written to your level. Take the time with them. Without the basic principles you're flying blind. 2. Use principles from those sources, and use recipes you know to be excellent as starting points. 3. Use weights only. Ideally find professional sources that started out in gram measures; otherwise convert, like you've been doing. If no one else shares a good conversion table I can put one up somewhere. 4. Figure out proportions, so you can see how the ingredients relate. Baker's percentages were invented for flour-based recipes, but work well with anything. Make the main ingredient the 100% reference. Or figure out ratios, or overall percentages. Whatever's easiest to wrap your head around. 5. Try to be methodical. I'd say "be scientific," but in reality few of us have the patience or resources to follow the standards of good science. We're probably going to change more than one variable at a time, and we probably won't double-blind test every result. So just do your best, within reason. 6. Document everything! Keep your old versions. I keep everything as text files on my computer, labeled v.1, v.2, etc.. My girlfriend thinks I'm crazy not to use GitHub, but that may be beyond my personal nerd horizon.

After a lot of years' trying, I think I've finally made a good chocolate ice cream. This is by far the hardest standard flavor, and one that's usually just ok—if you're looking for both intense chocolate flavor and good texture. The basic principles for were -very good chocolate (I used Michel Cluizel Vila Gracinda single origin, 67%) -very good cocoa powder, to increase the chocolate content without excessive amounts of cocoa butter (I used Michel Cluizel dutch process) -low milk fat, to compensate for the added fat from chocolate (I went to 10% milk fat) -no eggs. no need for yet another fat source -all added sugar in the form of trimoline and dextrose. These sugars soften the ice cream, fighting the cocoa butter's hardening effects. -lecithin as an emulsifier, since there are no eggs -a stabilizer blend that's tweaked to get the texture right. The results are pretty insane. My only complaint is that it's a bit like pudding when it melts in your mouth, but I'm not sure what to do about that. It IS pudding. Formula for about 1L: 460g (1 cup 7 oz) whole milk 45g trimoline 50g cocoa powder (best quality) 65g dextrose powder 3g soy lecithin 1.2g salt 1.2g locust bean gum 0.6g guar gum 0.6g lambda carrageenan 130g (4.7 oz) bittersweet chocolate (best quality, 67–72% cocoa solids, chopped or in pastilles / chips) 240g (1 cup) heavy cream 10g vanilla extract (optional) (Add trimoline to milk. stir together powdered ingredients. add to milk in blender, blending on highest speed for a minute. add chocolate. blend on high for 2 minutes to emulsify. briefly blend in cream and extract. cook to 80°C. homogenize for one minute in blender. chill. It's going to be very firm after aging. Zapping with the whisk attachment of a stick blender will thin it enough to spin in the ice cream machine) I'll do a more thorough post on chocolate on the underbelly blog. Maybe after a couple of minor tweaks.

There are other types of maltodextrin. The tapioca version is usually used for solidifying fats (like in instant cake recipes, or experimental dishes). The other kind I've seen comes from brown rice or corn. I don't know the functional differences; I've just heard about it being used to boost solids in industrial ice cream. Edited to add: I just looked around and it doesn't seem like there are any functional differences. Edited again to add: There ARE functional differences. You might have to talk to reps at the manufacturers to sort them out. Here's a bit of info.

Here's my current template for sorbets. I believe there's room for improvement; after some more experimenting this summer I'll do a sorbet post. No matter what, all fruits are different, and so this can't be anything more than a general suggestion (this will be pretty close for berries, way off for lemon). I'm glad you did that experiment with reducing some of the watermelon. It sounds like it didn't hurt. I'd be curious to know if it made much positive difference. Crumbly textures are always the challenge with sorbet. You get them because there's just so much water, and therefore so much ice. There's no milk fat making things creamy, and there are usually far lower solids levels displacing and controlling the water. I have yet to make sorbet that's as creamy as ice cream, but it's definite goal. For approx. 1000g final product: -70% (700g) puree (after hulling, pitting, straining, etc.) you may need up to 33% more than this in whole fruit. -Total sugar, including sugar from fruit (measure or use chart) should be 18% Sugar composition should be: -0-30% sucrose -40-70% dextrose (reduce or eliminate if using alcohol) -20-30% trimoline (I’ve been using more and more dextrose, since it’s least sweet and suppresses freezing the most) -Water for syrup: -30% minus weight of added sugars -Stabilizers: -0.2 to 0.3% of sorbet stabilizer blend: 4 : 2 : 1 : 1 LBG - guar - lambda carrageenan - kappa carrageenan for 1000g: 1.5g LBG, 0.75g guar, 0.38g lambda carrageenan, 0.38g kappa carrageenan -0.07–0.1% salt -In citrus flavors, up to 3% / 30g nonfat dry milk -In herbal flavors, up to 0.7% / 7g herbs -up to 1% / 10g lemon or lime juice to balance acidity (optional; taste puree) -1% / 10g fruit brandy optional in fruit flavors or for alcohol-centric flavors: -up to 7% 80-proof booze (no more than 3% pure alcohol) (reduce water to equal amount) -total solids should be 33% -fruit solids: see chart -sucrose / glucose solids: 97% -trimoline solids: 82% -glucose syrup solids: 63% ********** -disolve all solid ingredients into water (pre mix stabilizers into sugar). -bring to a simmer and remove from heat -if using herbs, cover and let cool at room temp for 30 minutes -chill at least 4 hours -blend to break gel into fluid gel -strain any herbs from syrup -puree and strain fruit / add any citrus juice / alcohol. chill. -mix syrup and puree; spin in ice cream machine -draw at -5°C / 23°F -harden in freezer

Interestingly with ranges, the very high-end products (DCS, Bluestar, Wolf—at least before they were bought by sub zero) are much simpler than lower end models. Fewer electronics, simple controls, etc., and yet they still seem to have poor reliability records. At least this is what I've read over the years. I've always had cheap ranges, which perform poorly but almost never break.

I'm activating my very first sourdough starter and am wondering if anyone has recommendations on the best sources for sourdough bread knowledge? I have Ed Wood's book ... it's alright, but goes out of its way to take a folksy tone and to avoid technical talk. I'm not sure if it's up to date on modern breadbaking techniques. Also have Reinhart's Breadbaker's apprentice. What's the word on his approach to sourdough? Any other great sources, online or off?

I think a restaurant would have to put a notice on the menu. Vegetarians also want to know if there's gelatin in the sorbet.

If you're cooking it a long time over lower heat (like Ducasse) whole butter won't be a problem. If you're searing at high temperature and then finishing on low heat, the old trick is to sear with a neutral high-heat oil, then spoon butter on after you turn the heat down. Keep letting it brown, and keep basting it over the top with a spoon. The steak isn't going to "soak up" the butter flavor no matter how you do it; you're just giving it a coating of butterfat that's been flavored by all the browned butter solids.

Well, maybe, with caveats. You can make a delicious meal with any pasta, but if the pasta itself isn't excellent, some of your cooking craft is going into compensating for this. If you're starting with premium pasta, you'll have other options open ... like making dishes that foreground the pasta itself. I can't buy any of my favorite pastas in my neighborhood, so usually what's the shelf is a couple of mid-level brands (like DeLallo, which I find much better than DeCecco or Barilla, but still not special). I just make different kinds of dishes with these pastas. I use more sauce, and make the dish about the sauce.

Pastry chefs often add milk powder to citrus sorbets. You could say this technically makes it not a sorbet, but it stays sorbet-like. I think industrial makers add things like maltodextrin. It's a sugar with a high molecular weight that adds practically no sweetness ... it's more like a starch. It also has very little effect on freezing point. I haven't played with this because I'm sure there are better ways to get solids. I'd go with powdered milk first. Also, I said "watermelon juice" above but should have said watermelon puree. I suspect this would get some added flavor and color in addition to some solids. If you experiment with reducing some of the watermelon let us know how it goes. I'd like to know what that does to the flavor.

Thanks sweettreat. Good question about the commercial Trimoline. I'll guess that it has a higher percentage of inverted sugar, and so its differences from table sugar will be a bit more pronounced. When you make it yourself, you can get about 85% invert syrup ... the rest is just sucrose syrup. Manufacturers probably have a few more tricks (like chemical or enzymatic catalysts) that let them invert more. The other possible variation is the water percentage. I'm not sure what's in the commercial product. The DIY version has whatever water level you want. The hotter you cook it, the drier it will be. I cook to 235–237°F, which gives a bit under 20% water. This is dry enough so that it doesn't add too much water to the ice cream, and so that it has a long life in the fridge, but not so dry that it's completely annoying to work with. Edited to add: please feel free to ask questions like this in the comment section on the blog, also. It will help me clarify this stuff for everyone.

I just made my 3rd batch of brown chicken stock with the pressure cooker. This is definitely the most flavorful chicken stock I've made. It was a mix of frozen carcasses, some meaty "soup bones" from the grocery, and about 750g of chicken breast bought on sale. Total yield (I'm guessing) is about 3.5L. Since I'm pushing the size limits of my 10qt pressure cooker, I sous-vided the chicken breast (after grinding) 90°C for 90 minutes. Strained the resulting stock into the liquids that go into the pressure cooker. My cat is crazy about the remaining dry meat. My plan was to reserve 60g of this for the pressure cooker, to help clarify, but I forgot. I roasted the carcasses and soup bones and also the mirepoix veggies (about half as much veg as I'd use in a conventional stock ... you don't lose as much of the aromatics). The liquids were the s.v. stock from the breast, deglazing liquid from the roasting, defrosted s.v. bag juices from previous meals, and water. The result is dark brown, heavy on roasted flavors and aromas, with a very 3-dimensional chicken flavor. It's not clear, but not muddy or cloudy either. I think it will be aces in sauces for chicken; the question remains if it's too chickeny to use as a more all purpose brown stock.

Good idea about a post on solids. I planned to make half of the post on sugars about solids, but it ended up seeming like too much information. So yeah, maybe solids gets its own section. The calculator Jo links to is good. I’d love to include excel or google docs spreadheets on the blog, but I don’t know how to program them. And the thought of trying to learn pretty much defrosts my freezer. If anyone’s a spreadsheet whiz who has tips or is interested in taking on the project, please let me know. There’s also a subscription-only calculator at dairyscience.info, and also a bunch of purchasable spreadsheets (they do consultancy for commercial ice cream production)—I’d like to make something with that kind of functionality, tailored to artisanal ice cream, and make it freely available. Right now I mostly just muddle through the math. Which is a bit annoying, because almost every ingredient that you change will change more than one of the variables. For example, if you decrease the milk, you’re decreasing milk fat, milk solids nonfat, and total solids, but you’re lowering the total volume of the recipe, so the relative values of these ingredients might actually increase. Since I’m basically using grade school math, this process sends me around in circles a couple of times until the values work out Re: watermeon ice cream. That’s a great example, and one I haven’t tried. My first thought would be to make a sorbet … which doesn’t solve all the problems, but definitely helps get the most out of the delicate flavor. For ice cream, I’d make an eggless base, no more than 12% fat, use additional stabilizing and emulsifying ingredients, and add a lot of milk powder to get the solids up (think of this as turning the water portion of the melon juice into skim milk). Then I’d experiment with ways to get the watermelon flavor intense enough. I’d play with mixing a portion of straight watermelon juice with some reduced watermelon juice. And I’d almost definitely add some acid, like lemon, which brings out a lot in that flavor. Then you have to account for the sugars. I’ll get into this more when I post about fruit flavors. I have a table of typical sugar makeup of fruits. Watermelon is typically 9% total sugars, 1.6% glucose, 3.3% fructose, 3.6% sucrose. So you can figure out the total number of these sugars your adding, and subtract from the various sugars to compensate (notice that watermelon contains the exact sugars I use in the base recipe). Most of that is just arithmetic; the more interesting problem becomes getting a vibrant, 3-dimensional watermelon flavor. I think it will take some experimenting, but I’m pretty sure you won’t get it with a very rich, custard-based ice cream.

We might be a bit outside newbie territory when we get into specific enzymes... If anyone wants to go farther afield, I've distilled some research on long cooks here, looking not just at texture, but at flavor development. This aspect of enzyme activity doesn't get much attention from the chefs and scientists at Modernist Cuisine. There is some research suggesting that too much cathespin activity can produce off-flavors, which are not associated with calpain. Both these enzymes produce byproducts, which are further broken down by a series of enzymes called aminopeptidases. The flavors we associate with dry-aged meat are produced by these latter enzymes. With a careful choice of temperature, we can do a very low pre-cook that emphasizes these enzymes, while avoiding development of off flavors from too much cathespin. It's theoretically possible to get the equivalent of a few week's dry aging in a few hours of pre-cook.

Well, I think the company will tell you to rinse it off right away. One or two hours is a long enough time to do damage. Which isn't to say it will happen; just that it might. I always either deglaze pans to make a sauce, or douse them at the sink and wipe them out when they're still hot (basically the same process). When I do that there's usually just a bit of polymerized oil left on the pan. Some BKF and and a blue scrubber sponge makes short work of it.

I've read that it's a good idea to get it very active before freezing, since the freezer may kill a good number of the buggers. And maybe not try to keep it frozen indefinitely.

I'm no Steven hawking, but I have this crazy idea for a ketchup jar with a wide mouth that lets you use a spoon.

I'd be careful with that ... the oxalic acid can actually pit stainless steel if left in contact for a long time.

The Cluizel pack was helpful, although I think something was wrong with it. The sampler chocolates are kind of waxy, and the flavor takes a long time to develop, and seems muted. This is the opposite of my experience with cluizel in general, so I just assumed my palette was tired, or I was in a bad mood, or something. I could still tell the difference between them, and was able to pick the one I liked most. Then when the bulk chocolates arrived (these are repackaged in 1lb bags by WWC, as you can see) I tasted them and they nearly blew my head off. Shazazm ... this was the Cluizel I remembered. My girlfriend and I compared to the chocolates from the sampler pack, and indeed, those still tasted waxy and muted. I wrote to WWC to find out what they think. Could chocolate go bad? They didn't look bloomed, or have any of the textural qualities I've found in old chocolate. Re: Valrhona, my go-to blend was about 2/3 Guanaja and 1/3 Manjari. That gave a balance I really liked between the bright fruit of the manjari and and the intensity and long finish of the Guanaja. This is the first time I've bought Cluizel in bulk. It used to cost about twice as much as Valrhona, which put it out of my reach for cooking. But now the prices seem about the same.

Courtesy of worldwidechocolate.com. I bought a sample pack of all the single origin chocolates and picked the Vila Gracinda. And had to get some of the 99% as well They sent me 1kg of Cluizel cocoa powder last week when the Valrhona ran out. I'm looking forward to trying all of this in some ice cream.

I just wrote a long post on Ice Cream Emulsifiers. This will mostly be of interest if you wish to make egg-free ice creams, or if you really want get your nerd on.

This is discussed in another thread or two. 10mm is definitely better if you're making multiple pizzas back-to-back. The weight difference may be a deterrent. My 12mm steel weighs around 32 lbs. I love it but would not recommend to my mom. There's some opportunity with these things to pinch a finger or smash a foot, or dislocate an oven rack, or burn someone if they forget that it's still going be blazing hot an hour after you take it out of the oven.

I've been playing with this, and don't think it's good enough. Kappa carrageenan gives the wrong texture and lacks freeze-thaw stability. I'm now trying 4: 2 : 2 : 1 Locust bean gum : guar gum : iota carrageenan : lambda carrageenan

Yeah, it doesn't work well. When you freeze the cream, many of fat globules rupture, leaking unemulsified milk fat. Normally they're discrete and surrounded by a membrane of proteins that helps keep the cream emulsified, but if the fats leak out, the emulsion breaks. The cream may still be useable, but it will tend to be grainy and may have an oily texture where the separated milkfat has pooled together. If the cream is already partially coalesced, as in ice cream and whipped cream, it can be frozen without these issues. In these cases the original emulsion has been broken (partially) by churning, and the fat has formed a new structure that's not susceptible to freezing damage. I'm not aware of a way repair it so it will work in ice cream, unfortunately.

I have very little experience with pectin, but after glancing at some of gel cheat-sheets it looks like your problem might be syneresis, which is science talk for weeping. Pectin weeps (and then you, too, weep). Some gelling agents are more susceptible than others. It just means they eventually let some water break out of the hydrocolloid matrix. Pectin supposedly has less syneresis with the addition of calcium; someone here can probably tell you what form to use and how to use it. Additionally, there are other gelling agents that are much more stable. I'm not sure which ones best mimic pectin (or if you'd be interested in other textural properties). It may be possible to stabilize agar with locust bean gum (agar by itself has serious syneresis issues). Possibly also a gel with locust bean gum and iota carrageenan.