paulraphael

Table salt is definitely corrosive, even to the highest grades of stainless used in cookware. It's just that normal cooking doesn't present the kinds of conditions where this will happen. I'm not totally convinced that throwing salt into a pot of cold water will cause pitting. Maybe if the salt sits for a really long time before dissolving completely? I'm not going to test it. My stainless lined pans that are over 10 years old have a couple of little pits here and there, but these could just as easily be from someone jamming a fork into them when I wasn't looking. The most important rule of thumb is not to use the pan as a storage container in the fridge, especially for anything acidic. And definitely don't brine anything in it. If you need a pan surface that's completely inert, it's hard to beat enamel. My enameled iron dutch oven is the only piece of cookware that goes from stove to fridge.

It's called galvanic corrosion. It's real, but shouldn't come up too often with cookware. Edward's experiment is explained in the wiki article ... scroll down to "lasagne cell." There are other ways salt can attack stainless stell (anyone who's rock climbed on sea cliffs knows about chloride stress corossion). The most likely issue for cookware is if salt or a strong salt solution is left in contact with the pan for a long time. This won't happen in cooking, but needless to say, don't brine a turkey in a stainless stock pot. And clean your pans well after use. Several of the acids present in food (including citric, acetic, etc.) can similarly pit the 300 series stainless steels used in cookware. But these also need a lot of time. It won't happen unless you're careless. The most corrosive thing in the kitchen for these metals is chlorine bleach. I don't use it around stainless steel at all. I scrub pans with BKF (oxalic acid = good for stainless), and sanitize with quaternary ammonium.

I prefer freezer bowl machines over lower powered compressor machines. The most important thing is speed of freezing. I don't like the spinning process to take more than 20 minutes. 10 to 15 is even better. The longer it goes, the coarser the texture. There are compressor machines that can work that fast, but they're expensive. Until I have the budget and the space for one, I'll use the freezer bowl for my stand mixer. The quality it excellent. The drawback, of course, is it can only do one batch in a 24 hour period. This can be a real issue. Even if you get a second bowl, you have to have room in the freezer for it.

You can do everything by hand, one way or another. Just keep in mind that bakers a century ago were built like iron workers. If you stick to recipes that don't require creaming room temperature butter, or whipping foams, then mixing things by hand ranges from easy to moderate. A stand mixer definitely makes things easier and more fun. It's like having an assistant that can do the dumb, heavy lifting while I'm doing something else.

The simple way is to go by appearance. The best way is to go by drawing temperature, and to tune your recipes so that they freeze to a firm, dryish texture at that temperature. The research I've seen suggests the ideal drawing temperature is about -5°C, or 23.5°F. Just stick a thermometer into the ice cream when it starts to look right, and turn off the machine when you hit the right temp. If you do it this way, you'll minimize ice crystal size and all your recipes will be equally scopable at the ideal serving temperature of -12 to -14C.

The Peterson book is excellent, but I think of it as a modern Julia Child ... it's rooted in classical French, but liberally updated both for the realities of home cooking and for contemporary tastes, ingredients, and techniques. At the very least I think you should have a copy of Escoffier's Guide Culinaire. Almost everything is conveyed in a kind of shorthand, so it reads more like someone's notes than like a textbook. But the scope is encyclopedic. It can answer all your questions about what a particular term means, or what ingredients were traditionally used in a certain dish. Classical French is an autocratic cuisine, and Escoffier was the 20th Century autocrat, so it's maybe the one cooking tradition where there's such thing as a definitive answer. Larousse Gastronomique is also a good reference. Both of these can be grabbed for pennies on ebay.

I should also add that when I use a scale to measure liquid ingredients precisely, measuring cups are often the most conveniently shaped vessel in the kitchen. I agree that the handles are a bit of a nuisance (on both the pyrex and stainless ones) for stacking .

I grew up in Chicago with Giordano's being my holy grail. My family had it every year for Christmas, with champaign. Now, after almost 20 years in Brooklyn, I can't stomach that stuff when I go back. It really isn't pizza. For a while I thought, "ok, this isn't pizza, but it's delicious." Now I'm thinking it's actually kind of disgusting. The thing I like about it is the pastry-like crust. It's flaky and sort of buttery (although I don't think there's really butter in it ... not sure what they do) and generally very well made. But the toppings are so thick and gooey, and not very good. If the thing were maybe half as thick, and with better quality ingredients and more refinement, I'd like it a lot as a unique snack for when I'm crazy hungry. But it its traditional form, thumbs down. I've been spoiled by the relentless striving for pizza nirvana in NYC over the last decade. There are at least three new-school places in the city that make better pizza than I've ever had before. I used to be a serious pizza maker at home. Then Roberta's opened in my neighborhood, and I gave up. There was just no point anymore.

Interesting about beating to develop a meringue. I wonder what that does to the texture overall. My method doesn't actually introduce extra sugar to the recipe ... it just redistributes it. The amount I sprinkle on top is subtracted from the rest of the sugar. The only issue is that it's not quite the same kind of crust that arises naturally from other methods. It's funny, one reason I use professional baking pans is for consistency in texture from edge to corner to center. If there's crust on top but never on the edges, then there's a pure democracy of brownies. No elitist grabbing for the crusty ones (or the moist ones).

You're preaching to the choir about convenience. I have a pile of digital scales. I even designed the bakers' percentage scale interface for MyWeigh. The recipes I develop all use weights, as do the professional ones I use for reference. But some things are just a cup of milk and a stick of butter and an egg or whatever. My pancake recipe is something I can make before my eyes are open enough to read a scale. I use the measuring cup as the mixing bowl. Precision isn't important here ... you never even know how much liquid the flour will absorb on any given day. I find it useful to have a couple of measuring cups around.

My measuring spoons are all inaccurate, even though they're formed out of metal. So I can only assume the silk screening on the outside of the cups is way off. I use the cups for convenience in the kinds of things where precision doesn't matter much.

Interesting topic. I'm hoping to concoct a carrot cake recipe one of these days, and one of my goals is to use butter instead of oil. Because, as everyone's saying, butter tastes good. It makes sense that all else being equal, an oil-based cake would seem more moist. I say "seem," because oiliness is not moisture, even if it gives a sensation of moisture ... just like in traditionally braised meats, which are as dried out as can be, but seem moist because of the rendered gelatin and fat. So I'm wondering if there are better ways to modify a recipe ... butter for flavor, and actual moisture for the moisture. Using invert sugar and other ingredients that hold on to water (non gluten-forming proteins, etc.) might be one way. But I'm only a journeyman cake tinkerer. Any other thoughts?

Here's a post on the Fresh Loaf. They talk about the importance of a sharp blade, but I suspect that if you did some tests you'd find that thin blade is just as important. Those options they show are all very thin. When freshly sharpened my gyuto is sharper than a commercial razor blade, but not quite as good at slashing sticky dough.

Ha. As I guessed, people were leaving the blades in the bread. That sounds like a hazard at a very high volume operation. The advantage of a razor is that the dough sticks to it less than to a fatter blade, so you can get a slightly cleaner cut. If you're going for esthetic perfection it makes a difference. Also, the higher the hydration of your dough, the stickier it will be. I used to make really wet, sticky bread doughs, and razors were easier to use. No one eating the bread will care (assuming they don't bite into your razor blade).

Maybe not quite as crusty. If a really thick, buttery crust is a priority, there may be other ways to encourage it. Maybe some butter with a bit of glucose syrup and a hint of baking soda. Personally I don't want the crust to steal the show; I just want those browned flavors and a bit of crispness as a foil to the rest of the meat.

What about something consumeable? People are picky about their tools, and you never know if they already have the thing you're picking out. Who wouldn't like a nice bottle of wine or scotch or something? I wanted to get a thank-you present for a pastry chef, and thought maybe wine, but I knew he worked at a place with one of the best wine cellars in the whole country. So I got him a bottle of Belgian Lambick. They go with desserts, and I knew there was nothing like it on the restaurant menu. It wasn't hard to find advice on a great one in my price range.

I have a pyrex 2 and 4 cup, and a professional stainless 2 and 4 cup (formerly from the darkroom). I use the pyrex more. It's nice being able to see through it, and 4-cup is wide enough for mixing things, which streamlines some simple stuff. It's also handy that they can go in the microwave for melting butter etc.

The only reason I can think of is the hints they're dropping of a an even better version.

That's funny ... sounds like the kind of law we'd have in the U.S. that the French would scoff at. A box cutter is would also work fine. I have no idea what kind of tragic accident could be precipitated by a razor blade ... except maybe some goofball baking one into the bread. Were there really accidents and is this really a law? I can't find anything online.

Razor blades work especially well for that. Probably better than any knife, because they're so thin.

Thanks Mitch. Those Bleecker butchers were my faves before discovering Jeffrey. I'm going to snoop around and see what's available in Brooklyn. Food culture out here is in high gear, and there are a lot of artisinal butcheries. They lean in the direction of local beef, which has not made me real happy yet. I don't think New York State is great cow country.

I've done it a lot for making financier batter. Either whole or slivered almonds, it doesn't matter. I like to toast them lightly in a skillet, and then grind them as fine as possible in whirley-blade coffee or spice grinder. I always have to do it twice. After the first grind, I pass through a regular coarse-mesh kitchen strainer, which stops all the larger chunks. These go back for a second grinding. After straining a second time, the volume of big chunks is usually too small to worry about. Just toss them. This has worked fine in every recipe I've tried. Just be aware that the flour will be nowhere near as fine as commercially milled almond flour. So far this has not added a coarse texture to the finished product, in my experience.

I've read that it's easier to get a crust in recipes that have a high sugar content. I couldn't confirm the science, but it sounded plausible. I don't like overly sweet brownies, so I experimented with a simple technique. I withold a half ounce or so of sugar from a recipe (one that would fit in a 9x13 pan) and then add it back at the end, by sprinkling on top. This creates a high concentration of sugar right at the surface, which is all that would matter. I like the results. It gives a crisper crust. The look and texture aren't identical to a conventionally crusty brownie, but I'm ok with it. For sprinkling the sugar, I find it easiest to use a spoon, and just tap the edge of it while going over the whole surface. A small strainer with superfine sugar might be even easier.

Jeff, what can you tell us about LCD longevity issues? I wasn't aware of any. What have you encountered in your testing? I like the looks of LCDs but would be bummed if something as solid-seeming as your circulator crapped out after a couple of years. I like to buy equipment with the expectation of more longevity than that. One of the things that attracts me to your unit is that it's designed to be easily maintained. Along those lines, updateable firmware would be a huge selling point for me.

If you did have an egg crack open, would gum up the Anova in any serious way? I've just looked at pictures, but it looks like there's no enclosed anything that would be hard to clean (iike the pump assembly on a Poly Science). Just a free-hanging impeller and a washable housing, yes? Not that a broken egg would be super fun, but it doesn't seem like a disaster.