paulraphael

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.

Clarified butter unfortunately lacks a lot of flavor of whole (obfuscated?) butter. There are a couple of tricks. One is the long, medium-low Ducasse method. Which seems to work, although I'm not convinced it offers enough advantages to justify the added time. The other is to do a high temperature sear, and to finish at low temperature. When you do this, you can sear in a refined oil like canola or safflower, and then after you've turned the heat down, add butter to the pan and continuously baste the meat. The butter will brown and foam, and get more delicious, but if you manage the heat reasonably well it won't burn. Regardless of the method you use, it's beneficial to flip the meat often. Ideally once every 15 to 30 seconds. I've experimented with this since reading the science behind it, and find that it does indeed improve the crust and reduce the thickness of overcooked layer below it. It basically lets you cook the surface in short bursts, with evaporative cooling between them. It mimics the kind of intermittent high heat experienced by meat turning on a spit in front of a fire.

Very delicate. The edge is just tapping the board. In many cases he's using less force than the weight of the knife. Contrast with Western rock-chopping, where you push the blade down and forward against the board with a shearing action ... using enough force that cooks get calluses on their knuckle.

Me too. KC could get away with it, I can't. We had the same knife and he sharpened to an even more fragile angle than I did. I cringe whenever I see the edge scrape the board. I think he just had an incredibly light touch.

Yup. That's why chicken breasts are white (for bursts of power to flutter into tree limbs, etc.) and duck breasts are dark (for endurance for migrating). I don't know how or if this translates into the colors of pork. There are a lot of pigmented chemicals in meat, and I believe many of them are unrelated to this light/dark fiber type. Some of the heritage porks, like berkshire, are pink, even bordering on beef-red. The same cuts that are white on modern breeds. This corresponds with a huge difference in marbeling, but I don't know if these factors are related.

Officially, the danger zone is from 40F to 140F. These are the guidelines used by the FDA and most local health departments. Realistically, there aren't any foodborn pathogens that reproduce above 131F, and all the common ones stop about 5 degrees cooler than that. You can actually pasteurize food at 131F ... which means more time at this temperature actually makes it safer. I believe 165F is a temperature at which most active pathogens are killed within a few seconds. I would be careful with this number, though, because the exceptions are important. In certain kinds of food, like sweet and high-fat dairy products (ice cream bases) it takes a few minutes at this temperature. And bacterial spores will not even flinch. To kill some of the more common spores you need a rolling boil for 15 minutes or so. Spores are one reason cooling on the stove can be trouble. When conditions are tough for certain bacteria, like botulinum, they make spores. These can survive most environments, and then incubate when conditions are better (anaerobic storage, or the gut of someone who's immune-compromised).

The Modernist Cuisine crew believes working muscles in general have more flavor ... Fat is plentiful in many inherently tough cuts of meat. That's obvious to the naked eye . But there is a more elusive reason that tough cuts tend to be the most flavorful : their bigger and stronger muscle fibers contain a lot more of the molecular condiments that excite our taste buds. Dissolved salts, sugars, and, crucially, savory protein fragments and nucleotides from these big muscles become dissolved in the meat juices during cooking, with potent flavor-enhancing effects. With so much more of all these substances to contribute, tougher cuts create more intense flavors that keep our saliva flowing and the meat succulent to the end. I wonder how they'd address the apparent exceptions to this (I think rib-eye is at least as flavorful as chuck, and hanger is at least as flavorful as brisket, for example).