teonzo

I'm just joking, teasing people who fall in love in that way is one of my favourite passtimes. Teo

So @Alleguede got married and we haven't seen a single photo of the marriage??? Thanks for the photos of the Laiskonis desserts, impressive stuff as usual! Teo

It was more than 10 years ago, I don't remember the details. You can ask to the guy who started this thread: He is developing a business on this. Teo

Spreading the rice is the best thing for sure! But it's better to use an empty freezer for the process to be quicker. Much depends on the freezer you are using, if you have a big chest freezer that is almost full then the freezing process will be slow. At least this is my experience here, I don't know if there are differences from Italy to USA / Canada on how powerful freezers are. I've seen this process of pre-cooking rice and pasta in some restaurants to cut corners. Don't think it has much sense at home, if someone has really few time then much better buying pre-made ravioli or similars. It's possible to make a big batch of ravioli at home and freeze them. Or making tagliatelle (or other shapes of pasta made with eggs) and freeze them fresh (instead of drying), their cooking time is really quick. Same with fresh pasta made with flour and water (orecchiette and so on). Teo

Par cooking rice depends on what rice you are using and how you are cooking it. If you are talking about plain boiled rice then you can drain it 2-3 minutes before it's cooked, then freeze it immediately. When you need it, you pick it from the freezer and put it back in boiling water, finishing the cooking (don't watch the time and taste it to know when it's done). Pasta is similar: boil it for 2 minutes less, drain it, put it in ice water to cool it fast, then freeze it. When you need it, you pick it from the freezer and put it back in boiling water, finishing the cooking (don't watch the time and taste it to know when it's done). Some words on freezing. If you want good results then you need a blast freezer, which costs some money. If you don't have a blast freezer then use a small freezer just for this use, this way the freezing process will be much quicker than putting the stuff in a big freezer full of other stuff. You goal is to go below 0°F in less than 2 hours. Personally I don't see much sense in pre-cooking rice or pasta at home, you save really few time. You still have to put a pot of water on the stove and wait for it to reach rolling boil. Usually you need to prepare the condiments for rice or pasta, you do that while rice / pasta are cooking. Freezing food can have sense for home made stuff like lasagne, ravioli, gnocchi (freeze them after boiling them, not when still raw). If you have few time for preparing your meals and want to avoid industrial frozen food, then there are plenty of other choices: bread, cheese, charcuterie, pickles... Teo

You can freeze it, but you need to refresh it at least a couple of times before it comes back to the usual activity. It's better to thaw it in the refrigerator and keep it there for a day before proceeding with a refresh. Teo

I would say 200-220°C, much depends on your oven as usual. The most important thing is avoiding tearing the dough during the various turns, if you tear it then you ruin the lamination effect. Another important thing is to not develop too much the gluten during the mixing stage, since you continue developing it with the rolling and folding. You got this perfect in the photo, the croissant section is really high and did not flatten. So do not worry if the dough resists rolling, that's normal. The dough tears if the butter is too cold, to avoid this you need to put it in the warmest part of your fridge and keep it controlled, if it gets too cold and becomes hard then you are screwed. Never put the dough in the freezer during the rolling and folding. Teo

Seems like a mix of concurrent factors: - you tore the dough, that's the main cause for the not perfect honeycomb; - they are a bit underproofed (section is a bit dense); - oven was low, the crust should be darker. Teo

Wise words here! You know you are not the one with decisional power (see above). Jokes aside, thanks for the review and the photos! Teo

Laiskonis is back on the plate? Great news! Can't wait for your report! Teo

Usually the same chocolate is cheaper in bar version than in callet version, so better going with bar. The only problem is to break bars in pieces. If you chop them with a knife, then it's time consuming and you have a cutting board to clean. You can break them using a rubber mallet: lay the unopened package on a surface that can stand some hitting without getting damaged, then smash the package with the rubber mallet turning the package on all the sides. You need to give light hits, not strong ones, otherwise you end up breaking the outside plastic. After 30 seconds you have a nice package full of chocolate pieces. Plus side: it's stress relieving. Teo

There are various kinds of starters and various methods to keep a particular starter, so it's not a perfect science like "this is the perfect method and the others are worse". Your starter is in the liquid starter realm (1 part flour 1 part water), there are the solid starters too (about 2 parts flour and 1 part water). So you need to choose a method that works for a liquid starter. For example you can find a long and detailed explanation on "Tartine Bread" by Chad Robertson. Every time you feed it you need to keep a given amount of starter, then add same weight of flour and water. The ratio of starter compared to the flour and water amount depends on the method you are following, there are no fixed rules. In general, the lower the starter ratio, the longer the time for it to proof. If you make a feed with 100 g starter and 500 g flour + 500 g water (ratio 1:5), then it will take much more time to triple in volume than if you made a feed with 100 g starter and 200 g flour + 200 water (ratio 1:2). This choice depends on the use you are planning: if this feed is for keeping reasons (you are not using the starter for a recipe, just for keeping it alive), then better using a low ratio; if this feed is for making a recipe, then better using a low ratio to make it more active and alive. Storing it in the fridge is for practical reasons: low temperature means slower fermentation, means you feed it less frequently (less work for you). When you are planning to make a recipe you need to do at least an active feed to wake up the culture. It's possible to make a recipe starting from a cold dormant starter just out of the fridge, but there are some risks, fermentation times will be much longer and it's not effective 100% cases. When you make the feed you will always end up with excess starter from the previous feed. If you are going to make a recipe, then the starter to be used in the recipe must be taken from this excess starter (you always need to keep a part of the starter for your storage). So you need to plan accordingly, depending on the quantities of the starter you need. If you are not making recipes (it's a mainteinance feed) then you are going to put to waste the excess starter. So you need to plan the quantity of the starter you keep in storage according to your uses. If you bake a lot of bread, then you need a good amount of storage starter (1 kg or more, for example). If you bake a batch of bread per week for family use, then you need a small amount of storage starter, otherwise you end up wasting too much flour. Teo

There is a procedure called "rigenerazione" in Italian, literal translation is "regeneration", don't know which is the correct translation in English. I don't even know if there is a term, never seen this process described in any English book. It just consists in reheating a cooked dough in the oven. You bake a good amount of cookies, store them in some place, then "regenerate" the required amount. You just need to put them in a 180°C / 350°F oven for about 3-5 minutes (depends on the oven, the cookie size and so on). Cookies get warm and almost as freshly baked. So you can cook a big batch only once during the day, then rewarm if needed and following requests. Teo

If you start from apples then you will taste them in the background. Apples have a mild and neutral taste, ginger and lemon are strong and overpowering. You don't risk to get something that tastes of apples and ginger and lemon, you'll get something that tastes of ginger and lemon, plus a bit of apple in the background (most people won't even notice it). Besides this, you can adapt it to your taste, just add enough ginger and lemon until it tastes just like you want. This is said if you choose the apple way. If you want to minimize your work, then the recipe suggested by Jim is the best choice. So it's just up about your priorities. I would suggest to taste and adapt it following your taste, instead of following a given recipe. The intensity of ginger and lemon can vary quite a bit, being them strong flavours it's always better to taste and adapt, instead of following given quantities. You are the only one that knows the taste you are aiming for. Teo

Please call it "charlotte", it's one of the most traditional desserts in classic French pastry. It went out of fashion in modern pastry shops, but it deserves to be rediscovered. Teo

If you want something firm without using powdered pectin, then a good solution is using apples. You can start from apple puree, add immediately some lemon juice to limit oxidization (and browning), then add sugar (half the weight of the starting apple puree). Then add grated ginger, lemon juice and lemon zest to suit your tastes (remember the jam will reduce while cooking, so the final taste will be more concentrated than at this stage). Then cook to 105°C until the jam reached gelification point. Keep an eye to the pot and stir when needed to avoid scorching. As said before in the thread, better putting the seeds (both lemon and apple) in a tea ball and cook them with the jam, to add pectin; crush the seeds for them being more effective. If you plan to use this for a cake, then you can add small dices of candied ginger when you are building the cake. If you can avoid cooking them then better. If you need to put the jam in mason jars for future use, then you can add the candied ginger at the last minute during the cooking phase. To prepare apple puree: buy your preferred apples, peel and core them (keep the cores for the seeds), add some lemon juice, then blitz them with a hand blender until you get a puree. Teo

You can try to sell it as a piece (or multiple pieces) of modern art. Teo

I would say your best bet is a spice grinder. Teo

Each cream cheese is different, you need to read the label of the one you are using, there you can find fat content and so on, then input those data in your spreadsheet. Teo

About the black locust ferment: is it made with the flowers or with the pods? We are full of black locust trees here, using flowers is traditional but I never saw anyone using the pods, I don't even know if they are edible. Thanks. Teo

If you care about your molds then don't do this: freezing causes the formation of microfractures in the plastic used for those molds, after some time those microfractures will propagate, causing cracks in the mold. Teo

If you don't have it, then getting a VPN is a wise and healthy choice under such circumstances. Teo

I don't have direct experience with Felchlin, but I worked with sugar-free (maltitol) dark chocolates made by other producers, never got any issue about tempering and molding, they worked just the same. Remember you need to make sugar-free ganaches too, vast majority of recipes need to be re-formulated. Teo

I don't see the point in this article. Lots of plants never got the "human influence" but we still continue to eat them without troubles. Pretty hard to artificially evolve stuff like white truffles and porcini mushrooms, we still crave them and pay huge money for them. The guys that own the kamut copyright are making huge profits on this issue. Saying that we drink the same wine as ancient Romans is pretty misleading too: our wine is totally different, since production methods are totally different. Romans added honey for good reasons. Teo

Only possible explanation that comes to mind is that there was a thin film of oil / liquid fat on the cavities surface before spraying the cocoa butter. This could act as a lubricant, preventing the cocoa butter and chocolate to stick to the mould, so when the mould is inverted almost all chocolate falls out. Pretty difficult to know if this is really what happened, and if so how it happened. Did you use the spray gun for some other use before this batch? Is there any possible risk that the moulds were stored in a place where some oil was in the air (like in the nearbies of a deep frier)? Teo