Edward J

In most commercial kitchens we use the following process: -Use a s/s pot scrubber and plenty of elbow grease. Key operative words, s/s. Steel wool will break off and lodge in crevices where it will rust. Don't bother with any non food-grade chemicals, soaps, or degreasers. They are what they are: Not food grade. -Don't worry about any residue as it is food grade. If not re-applied, it will eventually wear off. It also protects your tray from aluminum oxidizing which has the nasty habit of turning everything it touches grey/black. In other words, think of it as "seasoning".....

I think you're half way there, Nickrey, but not at the final destination. -Of course different brands of flours have different hydration rates, ash content, gluten content, as well as particle size. Everything makes a difference. -Of course different kitchens have different r/h (relative humidity) and different ambient temperatures. As well as different ovens, mixers, etc. Here's how I look at things..... At my gun club, we have an ex- S. African Olympic shooter. Guy lays down, sights, and gets consistent bulls eyes. Always. Drives me nuts. Chatting him up, he tells me one of his biggest things is to always compensate on the fly. Most of the time it's automatic and he doesn't even think about it. 300 meter range with a heavy s.e. wind? He compensates. Indoor 50 meter range? Different type of compensation. Different gun, different body position and different sets of compensation, even if he's using the same ammunition. Left shoulder stiff from a work accident last week? Another type of compensation. Main thing is, this guy knows that EVERYTHING matters and must be factored in. But for me, out of a total of 100 shots he gets 99 bulls eyes. That's like clamping the gun in a vice and using a remote control to fire. It's very consistent and precise. p.s. One of things I learned from Reinhart's "Bread baker's apprentice" was the dough rest. After mixing the dough for a few minutes, when it's still a shaggy mass, he turns off the mixer for 20 minutes. Among other things, this ensures proper hydration.

Mine were the 2/3 hotel pan size. Bought them from a reputable pastry supplier in Vancouver in 2007. Thermostat was always wonky, I was constantly out of temper, and then 6 mths after purchasing, I came in one morning to find a melting, stinking bubbling mess on my chocolate counter, I was lucky I didn't start a fire. Brought the mess to the supplier who issued me with a new one--same model, but he didn't offer me much hope. The local C C (Community college) had the same problem with two of thier 1/2 size melters and they were sitting in his store room. With both of my units, I found stress cracks right around the screws that held the bottom to the top of the unit-with the first two weeks. The plastic was very thin and very brittle. Within a month, stress cracks appeared on the inside corners of the unit. I noticed the same issues with the C.C.'s units when I was at the dealers. Since the warranty on my replacement unit was basically nil, I took the unit apart after the first cracks started appearing. I glued in strips of 1/4" hardboard with heavy duty construction glue to inside of the unit in the hopes of slowing down the cracking. There was no internal ribbing or additional support within the unit. My "alterations" didn't work, cracks appeared in new areas and anyway after about 4 mths the thermostat crapped out on the replacement. By that time the inside bottom of the unit had cracked, melted and warped so bad that the pan didn't sit flat anyway. The dealer assured me that Martellato knew of the problem, would not address it, would not compensate him for the replacement units, and would not communicate with him. Hence the broken units in his store room. The one frustrating idiotic thing that irritated me to no end was the on/off switch at the back of the unit. You would always inadvertantly switch it off when you pushed the unit up against a wall, or something brushed up against it, and there was no thermostat light at the front of the unit to tell you if power was on. I often dreamed of ways to torture the eejit who thunk up where to put that switch--perhaps tying boat anchors to his feet and drowning him in pail of glucose... Then again, that was back in 2007, maybe the company smartened up by now.....

Commercial bain-maires--like for soup are the right idea, but unfortunately the thermostats are not very accurate under 60 C, they become quite accurate in the 70-90 C range however. You can retrofit them with much more accurate thermostats, but the thermostat is around 200 bucks itself A very cheap and quick fix for a "dry" melter is at your drugstore-an electric heating blanket. Get the cheapest one with NO auto-shut off, and the basic, Low, Med. and High settings. Set a 1/2 or 2/3 steam table insert on top of this and you should be good to go. MIght have to experiment and fool around a bit with the settings, but hey--you can take it bed with you if you like! Commercial melters like the Mol d'art are good and very accurate--no fooling around. What ever you do DO NOT BUY the Martillato brand of dry melter that are advertised in trade mags and the like. The plastic housing cracks weithin two weeks, and within 6 mths the thermostat wil crap out and burn your chocoale. This happened to me twice--the second one was a replacement.

Open the oven door and look for a metalic sticker on the frame/rim of the oven cavity, most N. American models have it there and should give you the btu rating for the oven and stove top burners

I don't follow. Do you disagree that C.I. gives all recipie amounts in a mish-mash of volume and weight? Like you, I find the recipies well written and well tested. (See my above post) This I think we are all in agreement with, No? If you are going to write an intelligent recipie (or a $60 book for that matter), you better use an intelligent system of measuring out ingredients to compliment that recipie. Using volume measurements for things like jam, corn syrup, honey, butter, peanut butter, etc is not very intelligent. It is messy, time consuming, and uses "one time" measuring implements that need to be washed up and really slow you down. I simply can't comprehend the N. American mentality of using volume measurements for ingredients when it is generally acknowledged that using a scale is far more accurate, faster, and cleaner. Professionals acknowledged this well over a thousand years ago.... My collection of C.I. magazines spans the 90's and the first few years of the 2000's. I finally gave up on the mag when I had to convert a recipie for the zillionth time from volume measurement to weight. I think you should understand my perspective a bit, I o/o a bakery and chocolate store. I buy my ingredients by weight (as does everyone ),my reputation rests on the fact the each product I make is the same weight, taste, and appearance as the last batch. I also need to know how much my recipies cost in order to charge a fair price, and I also need to do inventory every month (Quick, how much is that batch of puff pastry in the freezer worth?) None of this is possible if I use volume measurements.

I have a love/hate relationship with C.I. ...... On the one hand, I find thier recipies well written, well tested, and well researched, AND a lot of science behind the why's and how's. Fair enough. On the other hand, C.I. doesn't pass my "one second test" criteria for buying ANY cookbook. What's that? The recipie amounts MUST be given in weight, a separte column for ingredients by volume is nice, but will never be used. Ever. Folks, C.I. can do better than that. C.I. admits that scaling flour is far more accurate than volume measurement, it's usually right there on the front/back cover of the mag. Thing is, they can't/won't admit that scaling sugar, butter, cocoa powder, nuts, dried fruit, etc, is ALSO far more accurate than volume measurement. Scaling corn syrup, honey, or jam is not only more accurate, but far less messier as well. Why the double standard? Cooks and bakers have been using scales for well over a thousand years now in their daily routines. The great unwashed public? Can they comprehend the concept of a scale? Well golly, truck drivers sure can, not only do they know their GVW, but also thier Tare. Anyone checking a suitcase at an airline counter can comprehend the concept of weight, as well as anyone who's jumped on a scale at the doctor's office. How many cups of clothes are in your suitcase, sir? Can C.I. comprehend that their readers purchase, flour, butter, sugar, cocoa, nuts, meat, etc by weight at stores? Flour comes in 5 lb bags, so does sugar, How many cups are in a bag? Who cares? So for me, C.I. doesn't pass my one second criteria.

Hmmm... interesting article. I do it back-azzwards. When I buy my beans from commercial purveyors, they come vacuum packed in 200 gr pouches. I take a plastic jar, fill it partly with sugar, bury the empty plastic pouch in the sugar, then bury the beans in sugar. This gets sealed airtight. When I need beans for crème anglaise or the like, I take a bean out, use some of the sugar, replace with new sugar and put the split bean and it's seeds in my liquid and let it "ripen" overnight in the fridge. Then I'll remove the bean, scrape it dry, wash off any milk/egg mixture, and toss it in bottle of vodka I have for that purpose.

I do about 10 kg of choc. covered hazelnuts per week. I don't bother with polish--nor do I know where to get a decent product from. I just tumble them in cocoa powder. What I've done is taken a portable air conditioner, attatched a "bonnet" to it, stuck a clothes dryer hose to the bonnet, and have the hose direct a jet of cool air into the bowl. I hear you on the bowl falling apart. I had an older D+R model that I had to have welded twice, I gave up at the third time and bought a new one. With all that being said, panning is a very time consuming process. For me, it would make more sense to bite the bullet and get commercial unit with a much larger capacity.

On this post, you have my quotes out of context, and you're not making much sense. Whole thing reminds me of the "cooling down large amounts of stock" thread, where, after giving you explicit instructions--twice--on the preferred method of cooling down stock (endorsed by many health dept's) you failed to use a cold water bath in your "experiment" and claimed this method was useless.

No, what I'm talking about is the coil all iced up. As I stated above, warm air contains more moisture than cold air, and this warm air, upon enetering the cabinet, sticks onto the (very cold) coil, forming ice. If enough ice builds up--that is to say that the door was opened multiple times for extened periods of time and/or the air is humid (ie hot August day, or a steamy kitchen) then the coil plugs up with ice, and the fan can't circulate properly. The temperature goes up, causing the compressor to run constantly, as opposed to bursts of 5-7 minutes every 15-20 minutes. The compressor, under full load, will consume much more electricity than in bursts of 5-7 minutes. Eventually the heat overload switch kicks and the compressor shuts down. While working in S'pore and S.E. Asia this was a common problem with walk-ins. The quickest and easiest fix is to shut down the unit, hook up a hose and give the coil and "Enema", that is, to wash it down with warm water and dissolve the ice. This does the trick, but it is prudent to install plastic strip curtains and to give holy sh*t to anyone leaving the door open for longer than a minute. Granted, chest freezers don't have this problem, but if using them for their intended purpose ice does build up on the walls, and it isn't all that fun to scrape ice off, or muck out the tub when it needs to be done.

I don't know about this, certainly it doesn't hold true for most commercial refrigeration units--either reach-in or walk-in. The problem with this formula is that it doesn't factor in that warm air contains more moisture than cold air. And typically kitchens are pretty warm places. When you open a fridge door, warm air flows into the chamber and will "stick" to the evaporator coil where it will ultimately form ice. If and when enough ice forms on the coil, the compressor shuts down and the cabinet temperature starts to climb--getting warmer and warmer. The defrost cycle SHOULD take care of this, and in most commercial refrigeration this is a 20m min cycle every 8 hrs. However, if a coil is plugged badly enough with ice, the defrost cycle won't have enough time to melt. This is why you will see plastic curtain strips on many commercial walk-ins, and why many new reach in fridges/freezers have an alarm that will go off if the door is open for longer than 30-45 seconds.

Absolutely. This is why I took the freezer to the city dump, paid my $20.00 fee for large appliances, and followed the city employee instructions.

Slightly off topic, but it's a good story about chest freezers anyway. Back in the late '90's I finally grew my catering business to the point where I could afford a commercial upright freezers, and I was jut itching to get rid of one chest freezer that was hogging space in the kitchen. I scrounged up a pick-up truck and drove off to the city dump. When I got there, I asked the city attendant where I should unload the freezer. The guy gets this gleam in his eye, and then instructs me, very carefully to unload the freezer at a very specific spot, yards away from anything. I figure what the heck, those are my instructions, and I'm just glad to get rid of the thing. So I shove the freezer off the truck and the guy asks me to move the truck back to the entrance and to stand well away from the freezer. WTF? So I do that. About a minute later the guy comes barreling out from a storage shed driving a fork lift at full tilt--aimed right for the freezer.... At about 2 yards before impact, the guy raises the fork to about chest height and then impales the freezer on the fork and continues to drive the whole mess towards a stack of likewise mutilated appliances. Pretty much sums up my opinion of chest freezers.....

Hi Hawkeye, Leet me tell you a little story to help you a bit with 0z-gram conversions: A looong time ago, my wife (then g-f) and I took a train to Italy. Among other things she wanted an Italian handbag, and I wanted a leather jacket. She went crazy converting the prices from Swiss francs to Italian lire, while I just looked for the jacket I wanted and at the lowest price. Don't bother converting! If the recipie says 1,360 grams, just keep pouring milk until the scale says 1,360, hit the "tare" button and add sugar until the scale says 680 gr., and so on with the corn syrup and cream. It's that simple. At work, I have a portable electric two burner stove--the kind with cast iron, (solid) burners, a hangover of the '80's I guess. I set the burner for "3 1/2" on the dial and let the pot "go" without stirring for at least 60-90 minutes. Once it starts getting some colour and gets thicker, I'll whisk every 5-10 minutes or so. After about 2 1/2 hrs the mix gets darker and thicker, and registers about 107 on the thermometer--that's when I stand over the pot whisking and babying it for almost 10 minutes until I get the consistecy I want. Hope this helps

I think there are quite a few other factors that need to be considered in the whole scheme of things 1) Geographical "challenges". A huge land mass that was sparsely populated up until the early 20th century 2) Most European countries had(and still have) food related guilds and apprenticeships. This is quite an intrastructure when you think about it, and has all sorts of influences on the public. 3) European exports. Most European countries were exporting food products like cheeses, wines, cured meats, oils, etc. a long time before the N. Americans started to get into the game 4) I politely disagree with your "High end culture". Common English food, like meat pies, treacle tart, bangers and mash, desserts like spotted dick and fool are well known. Ask any Swiss what typical Swiss food is, and Roesti (potato pancake) and fondue come to mind. Going across the US border to Quebec--which is fiercely French, and you find more common, but well prepared dishes.

I've been making "Grewling's recipie" ( from his book "chocolates & confections")caramel on an almost daily basis forat least 5 years now. Caramels last at least 3 mths. From memory 1,360 gr whole (3.5% / homo) milk 280 gr 33% whipping cream 680 gr sugar 540 gr corn syrup I cook mine to 110 C. I've done everything with this recipie: Freezing, rolling out to 2 mm thick, glazing cakes, etc. Has never crystalized on me yet

Not only the cubic feet, but are we comparing the same dehumidifier?

Pastry girl beat me to it!

I dunno... nothing is stopping you from converting a p.o.s. chest freezer, and if you use it for bottled beverages you probably won't incur any spoilage--just warm drinks. But I've worked with chest freezers for a loooong time now. IMHO they are best for long term storage of bulky items, it's not comfortable or easy to access stuff in them on a muliple-daily basis. Mind you I've worked in places that have hooks and bungee cords hanging from the ceiling, or longish piees of 2 x 4 (construction timber, if you're English) to stuff in the chest and prop the lid open with. Keeping the lid open and still having a free hand to shuffle or move stuff around can be dangerous.... Thing is, most chest freezers work best with a layer of ice on the interior walls. They also have different "zones", with the stuff closer down to the bottom being colder. Kitchen staff use this to thier advantage, keeping the ice cream closer to the top so it's easy to scoop. They are also a pain in the rear to clean out spilled or crusted-on stuff, as you have to really reach in to get to the floor. And finally, they are a bit of a space-pig, as their "footprint" is much larger than a reach-in, and any space above the lid must be kept free (useless, dead space) to access the freezer.

My thoughts, based on 35 years in the hospitality industry, in 3 continents? Yes, it exists, but then show me any industry--or even an office environment where it doesn't exist. The lawyer and secret camera business? Maybe in the U.S.--I I dunno, I've never worked there, but understand it is a very litigagious (sp?) society. In mot parts of Europe and in Canada you go to the labour board with your complaints, they don't charge and they don't take a piece of any settlement for compensation.

I'll never forget the time a first year apprentice made whipped cream with an alumium bowl.... She had popped the bowl and s/s whisk in the freezer for a few minutes--as she had been taught, albeit taught with a s/s bowl, neveer aluminum. She started to whisk and whisk, and was getting very close to whipped cream, but something was wrong....... The whipped cream took on a grey/silver metalic colour, and the cream tasted metalic. The Chef popped a gasket, threw the bowl and cream into the garbage and issued orders for any aluminum bowl to be "quarantineed".

It's not the aluminum that bothers me, it's the fact that the bars are hollow--crud gathers in there and they are harder to clean. Like you, rather than buy bars on-line or through a confectionary/pastry supplier, I got solid s/s bars cut from a metal supplier. You can lay a sheet of cling film over the bars. Before I got the metal bars, I had a wood frame that I layed a sheet of cling film over and poured my ganache into. The only caveat to this is that you can't run a spatula or ruler across the bars to level the slab off--you'll pull the cling film or shred it.

Rather than turn this into a 5 pg science project, there are two common ways of preventing "skinning over" that are frequently used in pastry kitchens. The first is to lay a sheet of cling film or parchment paper directly on the surface of the pudding. As there is no air trapped between this and the pudding, it (pud) will cool down normally, and no skin will form. The second is to sift a thin layer of icing sugar over the still warm pudding.

Spending summer holidays at my uncle's farm gave me an appreciation for many things, including axes, since I had to split firewood while I was there. I never knew there was a difference between a felling axe and a splitting axe, a side hatchet (single bevel) and a double bevel . As I soon found out, a splitting axe need not be very sharp, it just needs to be very "fat" or have a wide bevel. Of course, at lot of "exertion" needs to be spent in getting the axe wedged in the wood in order to split the wood apart. Oh, and elm doesn't split, no matter how much you hack and chop. A nugget of info I gleaned after a practical joke from my cousins..... What's all that got to do with spuds? If you have a "fat" or wide bevel on your knife, you will need to exert a lot more force to slice a spud, since you are basically using a wedge to split apart the spud. Multiple this force by 8-10 spuds and you'll want to go to a knife with a thinner bevel.....