teonzo

Abandon hope all ye who enter here. Dante

Can you write some comments about these, please? Teo

She was so elegant that no single crumb dusted her dress while eating pastries in front of Tiffany. Teo

Seems like we are on the same wave length! Katharine was a better actress, but Audrey was the very definition of elegance and beauty. So if the Katharine Hepburn brownies are super yummy, then the Audrey Hepburn brownies must be the best pastries ever! Who has the recipe? Teo

I can only imagine how good the Audrey Hepburn brownies could be. Teo

Beware that sucrose inversion is not linear. If after X amount of time you get a 50% inversion, then after 2X time you won't get 100% inversion, but 75%: every X amount of time the remaining sucrose gets inverted with a 50% rate. So your inversion rate goes this way: 1X ----> 50% 2X ----> 75% 3X ----> 87.5% 4X ----> 93.75% 5X ----> 96.875% X depends on temperature and pH. The higher the temperature, the lower X. The lower the pH, the lower X. You can find some tables online, like this one in Italian. This means that at home you don't have exact control on the inversion rate. If you use the boiling method then you start to get some browning after around 1.5-2.5 hours (depends on many factors), well before you reach a high conversion rate. Reaching the browning point has not much sense, you get different molecules than the ones you want. Stopping before the browning point means having an unknown conversion rate at medium levels, plus a syrup with lots of water. So ask yourself if you really need invert sugar for the recipes you are planning to make, and if that invert sugar can be of the home made kind. Professional recipes that call for invert sugar need the industrial one (conversion rate nearly 100%, minimum amount of water), they are balanced for that invert sugar, if you use the homemade one then you go way out of balance and risk ruining the final result. Non professional recipes that can use homemade invert sugar are really rare. The only case that comes to mind is for candying citrus peels (or candying of other fruits), where a syrup made with invert sugar gives a better result than a syrup with only sucrose, and if the conversion rate is 80% and not 99% then it's not a problem. In all other cases it's much much better if you buy invert sugar for professional uses, nowadays it's easy to get even for the amateurs, it's cheap, it's the only way to get the real stuff you need for the recipes that call for it. Teo

If you want to experiment by yourself, a good start would be writing about what you tried and how it failed, just to have an idea. As a starting point I would try mixing whole eggs with rice flour, see what happens, then work from there. I suppose you need to avoid gluten like hell. Teo

Try asking directly to the restaurant, usually they are pretty open about their ideas. Teo

I'm skeptical about both these things. If fat was not "locked up in the emulsion", then it would separate with time. Butter fat at room temperature is not liquid, it's semi-solid. If you try to cut butter at room temperature with a knife then it does not lubricate the knife, it sticks to it. Can't see why this would change in a caramel. Teo

You would loose water during cooking: the water in butter would add to the water in the caramel, to reach your desired temperature you need to boil it out. This way you would end up with less water in the final result, which will make for a stiffer caramel (and possible separation troubles). So you would need to rework all the temperatures and the recipe balance. I don't have much direct experience on these, for some strange reasons there aren't artisans making them here. Even the industrial ones have poor sales. It's one of the products that never caught here, like marshmallows. You need to look at these caramels like a mix of 2 phases: the syrup (caramelized sugar dissolved in water) and the fat (tiny droplets, emulsified in the fat-in-water emulsion). So at room temperature the texture is given by the combination of both. Butter fat is (usually) soft at room temperature, it holds its shape but is pliable. The texture of the syrup depends on the amount of water, the more water there is the softer the syrup is. You need enough butter fat for it to be pleasantly chewable (imagine a syrup cooked to the soft ball stage, not so pleasant to eat). You need to avoid having too much water otherwise they don't stand up. So those are the 2 windows to consider. I don't have practical data because I never experimented. If you want to have more control on the final result then I would suggest using clarified butter. You cook the syrup to desired temperature, so that the amount of water is totally under control. Then add clarified butter. If you add standard butter, a part of its water will evaporate, this will depend on many factors (batch weight, which pan you are using, room temperature and humidity, so on), so you don't have control on it and you end up with varying results. If you add clarified butter then you are adding pure fat without water, so it's all under control. Taste will change a bit because you will loose some maillard reactions (no casein in clarified butter); if you want the kick of the maillard reactions, then use brown butter instead of clarified butter. Beware that butter fat is composed of many different kinds of fat, which have different melting temperatures. Different butters have different textures at room temperature, there are semi-hard ones, soft ones, even liquid ones. It depends on their composition, which varies from producer to producer, if the butter was fractionated and so on. Liquid butter has been fractionated to keep only the low melting fats. Butter for laminations (sheets of butter for making puff pastry, croissants and so on) has been fractionated to keep the high melting fats. This will impact the final texture of the caramels. If you want the caramels to hold a better shape then you can add cocoa butter, like Genin does. Teo

Have you ever seen them together? Teo

Your explanation is correct. You need proper water/fat ratio and proper method to get a fine emulsion. Which does not mean your method is not correct: what matters is the final result, if during the preparation you face separated phases but at the end you get the proper result, then it's not a problem. See the Valrhona technique for ganaches, they willingly separate the emulsion in the middle stages. You got a separation of phases because when you added the first quantity of butter there was too low water for emulsifying the fat in butter. You are starting with a caramel at 118°C, which means really few water (I don't have the tables here, I'm pretty sure in one of your books there are the tables of the water content in syrups at each °C). Then you add butter. When you mix this butter you are going to reverse its phases: it's going to change from a water-in-fat emulsion (butter) to a fat-in-water emulsion (caramel), so you need enough water to coat the fat droplets. Butter is around 82% fat and 15% water (at least here), the water in a 118°C caramel is really low, so you don't have enough water to produce a proper fat-in-water emulsion at that stage. Beware that the critical stage is the beginning: you need a high enough water-to-fat ratio to create a proper fat-in-water emulsion, then you can add more fat and maintain the emulsion (think about making mayonnaise). If the ratio is not in the correct window then the emulsion separates, you can get it back when you restore the correct ratio, which is what happens when you add the fruit puree. So you don't need to think you are making something wrong, it's just part of the method you are using. When adding butter to caramel you are always going to reverse the butter phase. Which means that when you are reversing it, the butter emulsion separates, then it re-emulsifies with inverted phases (from water-in-fat to fat-in-water). During this stage the original butter emulsion is separating no matter what, that's the goal of the recipe/method. Most of the times it's happening at microscopic level, droplets separates and re-emulsify quick, so you don't see the separation stage because it's on a small scale (and you don't see if you did it properly, see the case when caramels separate after days). With the method you are using you see a separation at macroscopic scale in the middle stages, which is not a problem. The problem would be if you did not get a proper emulsion at the end of the method, which does not seem to be your case. Teo

Really nice and personal! Counting from the top left, my vote as best choices goes to numbers 2, 4 and 6. Teo

She must have been walking on rainbows the whole day!!! Teo

You can peel and core a couple of apples, cook the pieces in the microwave (full power for 4-5 minutes), blitz them with an immersion blender to get a puree, add a bit of cornstarch (depends on the apple puree weight), blitz again, then add this to your filling. If you want it to be sweet, then add sugar to your taste. Not much experimentation for this. Teo

Dried raisins absorb lots of liquids and become full and plump, almost like before being dried. That's the good side of using them, they pack their flavour plus the apple flavor. When you bake with raisins the end result should always be hydrated (absorbing liquid during cooking, or being soaked before cooking), if they remain dried then they do not taste good. Now I understand what you mean with "gooey". You can't get that result with only apples and cornstarch, there's too much "goo" if compared to apples. If you want that effect then you need to add a jam / compote to the filling. Or juice some apples, thicken the juice with cornstarch and add it to the filling. No way to get that effect using only the liquid released by apples. Remember that industrial food is made with the idea to minimize costs, so using a byproduct from another process is a way to cut costs (byproduct juices cost less than apples, sugar costs less than apples) . About overcooking, it depends on the size of the apple pieces yes, but it mostly depends on the cooking times of the crust, which tend to be higher than the cooking time of most apples, even in big pieces. Besides that, apples are different than quinces: quinces get better with long cooking times, apples don't. Teo

Here in Italy we make something similar called "torta di mele". The crust is made with standard shortbread / shortcrust, it's not flaky. The filling usually includes raisins and pinenuts, recalling the usual filling for strudel. Spices are a bit of cinnamon, cloves and sometimes nutmeg, but they are used lightly. Personally I think this is a rustic pastry and needs to remain rustic. So I'm against all the technical solutions like the ones by Lopez Alt. The most important thing is the choice of apples, I think reinettes are the best ones. I'm against the pre-cooking of apples, this way they end up overcooked. I'm against adding flour to the filling, if you really want to then go with cornstarch and avoid wheat flour. Here we use to add a generous sprinkle of bread crumbs (or cookie crumbs) on the bottom crust before adding the filling, and add a bit of crumbs to the filling before mixing it. They work well for absorbing the liquids released by the apples, the taste is much better than if using flours. If you use dried raisins in the filling then they will absorb almost all the liquids, which is a great thing if you like them. A bit of lemon juice is mandatory for the filling, it makes a big difference. Teo

You could try approaching him/her saying something like "your chocolate is different from the store bought bars, these shades make it look more natural" and see which reaction you get. Is he/she is reasonable then your message will reach through. If it's a case of self inflated ego, then you will hear a good amount of crap on how untempered chocolate is really natural, unlike the industrial shiny bars, so you'll know to just let it go over your shoulders. Teo

Seems like this guy jumped a bit too early in the market. Those mistakes are kind of amateurish. Putting that photo on his facebook page is something a savvy professional would never do. Usually these are signs of someone with a hiigh self confidence and unable to admit his/her own faults, those people are not too keen to receive criticisms, so you should be really really cautious when trying to point out those troubles. Teo

You can try spraying melted clarified butter on the shells before filling them, fill them with the nut based center, spray again melted clarified butter on the centers, then cap them. It should help acting as a barrier. Teo

You need to look for somethng that has 2 knobs, one to adjust frequency, the other to adjust the width of the vibrations. Usually all dental tables have at least the knob for the width and it should be enough. A couple years ago I saw a vibrating table on Alibaba that had the 2 knobs and was sold for about 200 eur, but I lost the link, sorry. Teo

I think it's perfect: direct to the point and effective. It's advertising, it needs to do its job in the few seconds of attention span of current people. Adding more would deter from that. EDIT: the booth is missing some EZtemper blimp balloons. Teo

Pierre Hermé is doing some precision decorating like that on some of his latest macarons. A couple years ago I saw a prototype of a robot (a cross between a machining center and a 3D printer), seems like the guys at Relais Dessert put their hands on it. Teo

The best book on the how and why is the one by Paula Figoni, so you already covered that. Some personal comments on some titles: Bo Friberg - "The Professional Pastry Chef" This is great for getting the correct foundations on classic pastry. Underscore "classic", nothing modern here, but you need foundations before building the roof. Ecole Ferrandi Paris - "French Patisserie" As Jo wrote, this is really good if you want an overview on both classic and modern. Regan Daley - "In the Sweet Kitchen" This is overlooked, but it's the only one that talks about how to work with flavors, all the others are technique based. Michel Suas - "Advanced Bread and Pastry" This has some great explanations about bread and viennoiserie, it's for professionals though. The other sections are skippable. Wayne Gisslen - "Professional Baking" I liked it quite much, but if you have the ones by Friberg and Suas then you won't find much more knowledge. The Culinary Institute of America - "Baking and Pastry: Mastering the Art and Craft" It's good but not as much as the ones above, if you have the ones above then it's redundant. Nick Malgieri - "How to Bake" I gave it a look but did not impress me enough to spend money on it. Sarah Labensky - "On Baking" Same as Malgieri. French Culinary Institute - "The Fundamental Techniques of Classic Pastry Arts" This was a big disappointment, I really regret having spent money on it. Jacquy Pfeiffer - "The Art of French Pastry: A Cookbook" I had the chance to give it a read and it did not seem any better than the one by the French Culinary Institute. There many other books in this vein, like the ones by Cordon Bleu, Richard Bertinet, Philippe Urraca, Eric Keyser... Neither one of them impressed me after a quick look, so I left them there since I already have many more than I really need. Once you have 3-4 titles of this kind you are really covered. Beware I'm talking about the explanations, not the recipes. I never tried any recipe from these books. If you are looking for recipes for the home use, then these 2 are classics: Rose Levy Beranbaum - "The Baking Bible" Rose Levy Beranbaum - "The Cake Bible" If you like Austrian and Hungarian pastries then this is a must: Rick Rodgers - "Kaffeehaus: Exquisite Desserts from the Classic Cafés of Vienna, Budapest, and Prague" Teo

Many people here say great things about the Paragon induction unit with its mat. Considering it's cheap and you can use it for a boatload of other stuff, I would say it's the best choice for you. Teo