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Chris Hennes

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  1. Chris Hennes
    I have not -- I don't really want bread with that particular texture, personally I'm happy with the non-Modernist version of White Sandwich Bread in MB.
  2. Chris Hennes
    Kohlrabi with citrus, arugula, poppy seeds, and crème fraîche (page 348) I don't think I've ever had kohlrabi before -- it's not the most exciting vegetable ever, but it was pleasant enough. This is one of those salads that looks and sounds quite impressive, and is totally inoffensive on the palate. Damned by faint praise, I know, but it's really a dinner party salad. People will ooh and ah, and everyone will be able to eat it.
  3. Chris Hennes
    Modernist White Sandwich Bread This is without a doubt the most disappointing bread I've ever made. It comes out of the oven looking and smelling great, but one bite and the illusion is shattered. And the worst part about it is that you do it on purpose! It starts out as a perfectly respectable white sandwich bread recipe. Then you add propylene glycol alginate and sodium stearoyl lactylate to modify the texture. And what you end up with is squishy, rubbery, bread-flavored cotton. I guess the recipe is a demonstration of how to produce knock-off Wonder Bread at home, but there's something deeply wrong with a fresh, warm loaf of bread having that texture. I'm definitely sticking with the non-Modernist version of this one. I even tried it in the one application where I actually like that style of bread: Nope. Still bad.
  4. Chris Hennes
    @Al Percival, maybe @JoaoBertinatti can comment since he just posted about making it a month or so ago. I can't speak to the Panettone directly, but quite a few types of additions cause a dough with good gluten formation to temporarily break down -- with the French lean bread and the sourdough the answer for me has been either a) more mixing (sometimes a lot more) or b) more time (sometimes a lot more!).
  5. Chris Hennes
    I haven't made that particular recipe, but I think that pH sounds like it's on target, I don't think there's much to be concerned about there. I've found Marianski's recipes reliable in the past, and the pH is dropping, so it's not like your bacteria have died. I think you're on track.
  6. Chris Hennes
    Parsnip soup with pine nut, currant, and celery leaf relish (page 360) I had lots of bread leftover from yesterday, so clearly more soup was in order. This is one of my favorite styles of soup, I love the contrast between the hot, rich base and the bright, piquant gremolata on top.
  7. Chris Hennes
    Sourdough with Pressure Caramelized Rye Berries I love pressure-caramelized rye as an inclusion for sourdough. I think this loaf was particularly successful because of a very long cold proof, 48 hours in the refrigerator. Also because I ate it without letting it cool all the way down, which I guess makes me a bad person. It was among the most flavorful loaves I've ever produced.
  8. Chris Hennes
    Celery root, cracked wheat, and every-fall-vegetable-you-can-find chowder (page 343) I had some leftover celery root puree so I made this soup for dinner tonight -- the puree is used to thicken the soup a bit at the end of cooking. I particularly appreciated all of the various textural elements. A delicious soup for a winter day (even if it wasn't particularly cold here!).
  9. Chris Hennes
    What weight are you making the buns?
  10. Chris Hennes
    @JoaoBertinatti -- as a first guess I'd say your oven temp is too low. You list a range of temps there, 180°C to 200°C. Are those temps you are setting to, or are you measuring them with an oven thermometer? I also don't recall the recipe calling for margarine, and I don't have it handy to double check that.
  11. Chris Hennes
    @gfron1 are you trying to do one-off custom boxes? So no exact duplicates? Or are you just doing small runs of identical boxes?
  12. Chris Hennes
    How different were the mixing times between the two?
  13. Chris Hennes
    Well, the important thing for comparison purposes is consistency, so as long as you are taking both doughs to the same gluten formation level it doesn't really matter exactly how well-formed it is. This is a more significant problem. I assume you mean that the Modernist recipe is at proof at that stage, but the other recipe you are using is not? Or are they both fully proofed immediately after shaping? The solution here in either case is to actively degas the dough as you shape it. I can't remember the details offhand but the chapter in Modernist Bread that talks about how yeast works goes into the details better than I could anyway. They actually go so far as to present a simple technique for fixing overproofed dough: you just give it another four-edge fold. I've definitely taken advantage of this technique when my schedule abruptly changed in the middle of a day of breadmaking!
  14. Chris Hennes
    You can move hydration around quite a lot and still get bread. I’ve been experimenting with a lot of different purées in my sourdoughs, many of which are resulting in small changes to the hydration, and while the finished texture of the breads is affected, it is never “putty-like.” I’d be very surprised if a small change in hydration had that effect. But of course it’s also easy to test. Adding the salt before the autolysis stage should decrease the effectiveness of the autolyse, but that will only change how long it takes the gluten to form, not whether it does or not. Do both doughs reach full windowpane? How are you checking for proof?
  15. Chris Hennes
    I don't quite know what to make of this: I've made the recipe many times now, and never had any issues with it, so there must be some difference between either our ingredients or our technique. I certainly think that this qualifies as a round boule: Do you want to try debugging? I'm always interested in trying to figure out what causes various types of bread failures (I murdered a raspberry sourdough this past weekend by adding the puree too early!).
  16. Chris Hennes
    This weekend I made the Ají Amarillo sourdough again, this time without the roasted potato inclusion. This is a fantastic bread. The purée is readily available on Amazon, I highly recommend giving it a go (if you like slightly spicy food! 🌶)
  17. Chris Hennes
    I got a question via the "Contact Us" link a few minutes ago asking if anyone here knew who the manufacturer of the David Burke line of cookware is -- anyone?
  18. Chris Hennes
    Is this the recipe you used? https://www.kcet.org/food/meatless-monday-recipe-cacio-e-pepe
  19. Chris Hennes
    What are you doing with the rest of the head? If you're making a pâté you could consider separating it out as a more solid inclusion.
  20. Chris Hennes
    I just include the whole cheek area when I am making guanciale. Honestly it never occurred to me to try to separate it out.
  21. Chris Hennes
    Yeah, 2’x3’ is probably reasonable — I have granite countertops and that’s probably about the size I work in for that amount of chocolate. I don’t think the exact surface matters, it just needs decent thermal mass.
  22. Chris Hennes
    Compleat Wheat (KM p. 109) It's interesting to make this bread again after several dozen other sourdough recipes: it's more obvious to me now that it's just a normal sourdough with the bran and germ added as inclusions. They are added at a higher percentage than is normally recommended for inclusions, but they basically work the same way. It's also far and away the best "whole wheat" bread I've ever had.
  23. Chris Hennes
    Modernist Sourdough with Olives, Capers, & Herbs The inclusions were added on an ad hoc basis to the normal Modernist Sourdough recipe. This was a huge hit in the office, people loved the heavy dose of rosemary.
  24. Chris Hennes
    Modernist Sourdough Baguettes I wanted baguettes for dinner tonight, so I just shaped the normal Modernist Sourdough following the baguette shaping instructions. Or trying to, anyway! I need some baguette shaping practice, and this isn't really the right dough for it. Tastes great, though, so there's that.
  25. Chris Hennes
    Pistachio Butter Sourdough (KM p. 72) Same as last weekend (I had extra pistachio butter).
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