teonzo

Here in Europe we use some words with different meanings from what you use in the USA. "Praline" is referred to what you call "chocolate bonbon", that's the main use. If you say "praline" then a European will instantly think about a chocolate confection filled with a ganache. I must admit I was really puzzled the first time I opened an American book where filled chocolates were called "bonbons" and the term "praline" was used for the New Orleans confections. "Praliné" (please notice the accent on the last letter, similar word but different pronounce) is referred to the ground mixture of 50% hazelnuts and 50% caramelized sugar. If you talk about "praliné" without specifying then it's always hazelnuts. Almond praliné is used on a minority of cases, the tradition here is hazelnuts and hazelnuts. In recent years there appeared also pecan praliné and pistachio praliné, quite rare to see something on sale with these. "Gianduja", as @pastrygirl wrote, was first created in Turin in 1806, just to face a cocoa shortage caused by Napoleon. Up to around 1950 Turin was the chocolate capital of Italy, there were dozens of bean to bar manufacturers. Most of them disappeared after the chocolate industrialization (caused by fellow Piedmontese producers like Ferrero and Caffarel). If you say "gianduja" without specifying then it's with hazelnuts and dark chocolate (not milk chocolate). If it's made with milk chocolate then you need to specify. If it's made with other nuts then you need to specify too (be careful, here in Italy you will be considered an heretic if you define "gianduja" something without hazelnuts). It's worth to mention Gianduiotto, it originated from gianduja and is probably the first wrapped chocolate bonbon in history. Here in Italy we have another term (never seen used outside Italy, but it's a staple here): "cremino". It's made with 50% nut paste and 50% tempered chocolate. Percentages can vary. The nut of choice is hazelnut, of course, so if you don't specify than that's what you get, but the term can be used for other nuts too. For type of chocolate the usual choices are milk and white. The most famous confection is "cremino bicolore" (mostly known just as "cremino"), it's made with 3 layers: first layer is cremino made with hazelnuts and milk chocolate; second layer is cremino made with hazelnuts and white chocolate; third layer is cremino made with hazelnuts and milk chocolate. Just 3 visible layers, not enrobed in chocolate. This is the best seller of almost all chocolate shops here in Italy. About pistachios, I always suggest to try to source the Iranian ones at some ethnic store. They are usually better and cheaper than the ones from other countries. A huge amount of what is sold as "Sicilian pistachio" is actually sourced from Iran or Turkey: the productive capacity of Sicily is much smaller than what is demanded and what they label and sell as Sicilian, so a lot of dishonest people (guess who) buy inexpensive pistachio from abroad and re-label it as Sicilian, selling it for much more. Teo

Satomi Shinzo - "Sushi Chef: Sukiyabashi Jiro" This is a perfect example on how difficult it is to find infos about Japanese restaurants if you live outside Japan. I'm ignorant on Japanese culture, but I always wonder why they are so closed about promoting themselves. Jiro Ono came to worldwide fame after the release of the documentary "Jiro Dreams of Sushi", before that he was an icon in Japan and totally unknown outside his country. This book was originally released in 1997, it took the documentary boom to get it translated. I dare to say it's a masterpiece. Ono doesn't hold back on anything, he explains in great details everything he does (or better he did 20 years ago, there are different things in the documentary). The section on tuna alone is simply stunning, never seen anywhere else such passion and attention to details. Hats off to this master. I don't think much people will use this book to mprove their sushi making, but I would put it among the best restaurant cookbooks, if not the best. Teo

Let's say I'm glad I borrowed it. It's a good source of informations on who to look for, with great photos, but as far as content goes the author could have done a much better work. At least now I know that the favourite movie between Japanese chefs is The Godfather "due to the strong family bonds" (as an Italian I find it quite cringeworthy). Teo

Andrea Fazzari - "Tokyo New Wave: 31 Chefs Defining Japan's Next Generation, with Recipes" This book tells the stories of 31 Tokyo "young" chefs, the older is around 45 if memory is right, 30 are Japanese and 1 is French. Each chef gets a brief description by the author and a brief interview. Some of them give a recipe. It's a nice read because it's really hard to find infos about what happens in the Japanese restaurant scene. It's much easier for me to find infos about Chile and Peru, which is a bit absurd given the great food culture in Japan. There are a lot of great photos made by the author herself (she started as a photographer). The drawbacks are that the infos about each chef are really short and concise, we just get a superficial description of their work. The interviews tend to get a bit boring, since they are based on almost the same questions repeated to each chef. It's hard to show your personality when you get asked "what does being Japanese mean to you?" or "which is your favourite word?". Teo

The culprits were clearly the morning pastries. It's called the Revenge of Montezooma. It happened because you did not make a photo of them and posted it. Teo

I would suggest to give a try to these 2: - Belcolade (no lecithin if I'm right); - Weiss Teo

In my mind spruce calls for porcini, maybe you can try to infuse some dried porcini in a spirit (gin?). Teo

I never measured its temperature with accuracy. This is how I proceeded: heat the neutral glaze in the microwave until it boils (a bit more than 100° C I guess); pour it in the gun; spray until it comes out easily; when it starts to give troubles, empty the gun and reheat the neutral glaze. I never measured the temperature of the glaze when I emptied the gun, sorry, I would guess it was around 70° C. The problem is that as temperature lowers even its fluidity lowers (it becomes more viscous). Plus you have the problem that when you spray it then it gets a significant cooling in the nozzle (like happens with cocoa butter). At some point you start to have clogging problems, this depends on the nozzle size and how the gun is set (if it's diffusing a wide or narrow shot, so on). Just start using it boiling hot then see what happens. Teo

I've done this using a 2.5 mm one, worked perfectly. Never tried with a smaller one, worst case scenario is that it clogs and you just need to clean it, so just go for it. Beware you need to use hot neutral glaze (heat it in the microwave till it starts boiling). Teo

If they wrote so, then it's simply wrong, unless they changed the laws of physics. This is one of the main reasons why now I'm pretty skeptical about this book set. I expected it to be highly reliable on a scientific level. Which means that some people with strong scientific knowledge should have proof-read the text various times (they should have learned the lesson after all the errors in the first edition of Modernist Cuisine). They can't slip such a basic physics error. Such a thing must raise a huge alarm to the eyes of a person that is proof reading a text. They are not marketing this book set as a series of experimental recipes, they are marketing it as the be-all end-all of scientific explanations on how bread works. Can't expect it to be so if they wrote such things. If someone writes such a thing on a scientific text then he looses all the credit. If I were Myhrvold I would be kicking major a__es after noticing such a thing (and I suppose he is doing so, considering all the things he does in his life I don't expect he read 100% of the text). Definetely. But there is oxygen too. Gas pockets in doughs are expanded during fermentation, not created. Those pockets are created during mixing, they are little but during formation they contain air (20% oxygen), this is why flour oxidizes the more you mix the dough. Fermentation releases mostly CO2 in those pre-existing pockets, expanding them, adding gas but not kicking away the oxygen that's already there. Botulism is not a problem with doughs in a jar. Here in Italy this method is used from some years by various pastry chefs, now it's widely spread (I could say it's the latest pastry trend). Before putting something new on sale you need to test it in a laboratory, especially in cases like this. Never heard of botulism troubles from those testings. Teo

Gas is circulating in the oven, pretty quickly at those temperature. You can't expect the head portion of the jar to be close to oxygen free during cooking, even considering the vapor pressure at those temperatures. Plus you are forgetting all the gas inside the pockets in the dough, which is the most important thing to consider in this case. There's oxigen there too and it's not going away during cooking, otherwise the dough structure would collapse. Urg, I got a cold thrill through my spine reading this...when subjected to a higher external pressure a sponge compresses, not expands. If you have a chamber vacuum machine try putting a slice of bread or a babà or something leavened and with a soft crust (just the dough, without putting it in a bag), then pull your desired vacuum %. If what you wrote was true then the dough should expand when the machine releases 1 bar air inside the chamber. It happens the exact opposite of what you wrote. Teo

I would say so. Just think about these 2 questions: 1- how could you get a vacuum in the jar if the tool you are using is an oven? 2- if there was vacuum in the jar, what would happen to the bread when you open the jar and the dough is subjected to a quick change of pressure from 0 bar to 1 bar? Bread in a jar is akin to jams or preserves, not to sous vide storage. Please notice I don't have Modernist Bread so I don't know what they wrote there. This sounds really interesting. If you can share what you find I would be grateful, thanks! Teo

Time ago, on the Dong people thread, you wrote they are famous for their wood-only bridges (no metals, no concrete, no screws, just jointed wood). This seems like one of them, right? Do you have a picture with an overall view of the bridge? Thanks. Teo

I would suggest to write to the consumer service of the producer and ask them. Usually this is the best course of action. Teo

The hook shape definetely affect the mixing results. Wide hooks (the ones with the bigger distance from the rotation axis) give the worse results, since the dough almost always sticks to the hook. If the dough sticks to the hook then the gluten development is not optimal, the dough is beaten continuously, not stretched and compacted alternately, this way the dough parts that are in contact with the hook get few / null gluten development. To try to avoid this you need a hook with a narrow and circular spiral, like the one at the center of your photo (as you correctly pointed out). Kenwood makes a dough hook that's more akin to a bar than a hook, of the ones I tried that's the one where the sticking effect was more limited (but still present). Overall a planetary mixer is far from being the best choice for bread dough mixing. It's the best compromise for home users, since spiral mixers and other kinds of machines are much more expensive and can make only that job. But it's still a compromise: you will never be able to get the correct strech-compact movement. You needed to drink another mai tai. When in doubt this is the solution. Teo

The croutage will be faster, this is not a problem at all. If you leave your almond flour bag opened for quite some time (hopefully it's not the case) then it will tend to get a bit drier, so it's possible you will need to add a small amount of egg whites to the usual ratio of the almond + sugar + egg whites mixture (if you use the Italian meringue method). Can't think about other possible differences. Teo

I suppose it has something to do with the latent heat of cristalization and the low surface radius on that side of the heart-shape (lower radius means higher latent heat in the time unit). Maybe that single mold was in a hotter zone or had less air circulation or something else that prevented the latent heat to be dissipated correctly. Try to put the molds in a colder place after pouring the first chocolate layer (the outer shell). Teo

You need limited radiant heat from above... there's a reason why wood fired pizza ovens have a high roof, while wood fired bread ovens have a lower roof. You don't need a microscope to notice the difference about results. It just takes few trials to see that cooking a pizza near the broiler is one of the first things to avoid. Teo

This is the side I was more concerned about buying this set of books. The Modernist team are not the only ones that studied bread baking, so I need good reasons to part with more than 400 euro. I need infos that I can't find on the dozens of books I already have, I need them to be reliable. Reading that they wrote that brioche in a jar are under vacuum makes me rise more than an eyebrow, from a scientific team I'm expecting something much more accurate. Cooking pizza in home ovens is a well studied problem here in Italy. There is a whole online community, a good amount of them have university degrees in physics, chemistry, engineering and so on. Putting the stone at the half of the oven is a no-no. It's something tried and re-tried by hundreds of people. I'm not happy to write this, because I have a lot of admiration for Myhrvold and even more for Migoya (I really love his previous 3 books), but from what I'm reading here it seems this book set is not what I was hoping it to be. That's perfect. Don't worry, I'm not forcing anyone to do what I write. We are here to discuss and learn together. Teo

If the price on Amazon.com was the same as on the .it then it would make for a fine joke/suggestion. Unfortunately the price on the .com is almost like a car, so it has no sense for you. Here in Italy it has a great success. It reaches 400°C so you get a much better result than with a home oven. Price is reasonable (82 euro). You spend less money about electricity consumption. It's quite small for what it does. So families who like to eat homemade pizza frequently buy it and are happy. Teo

Uhm, most probably I will sound caustic and pedantic, but I'm puzzled by reading this too. To cook pizza properlyit need to receive the heat mainlt from the bottom. You need to lay it on something really hot and with a high thermal mass, trying to avoid heat from above. Using a thick stone is perfect. Putting it at the middle of the oven not so much, it's better to put it the lower you can. Turning the oven at the broiler setting for the 5 minutes before cooking the pizza, well, far from optimal since it's going the give the opposite effect (more heat from above). I would strongly suggest to move the stone to the lower position you can achieve (the nearer to the lower oven's heating element the better), totally avoid to turn the oven to the broiler function at any time (best thing would be to use only the lower heating element, just the opposite of the broiler function, but almost zero ovens have this function), check the temperature of the stone before cooking the pizza (you need a "touch" thermometer like Thermapen but that can support temperatures above 200°C, the ones you are using measure the air temperature, not the stone temperature). With such a thick stone it's possible you need to pre-heat the oven for much more than an hour. People get better results with a steel sheet because it reaches the temperature in less time, so it's always hot enough when they use it, with a baking stone 1 hour can still be not enough. Judging from the photo of the bottom of your pizza I would say that almost for sure the stone temperature was well below the desired temperature (the one of the rest of the oven).. So next time try to put the stone at the bottom of the oven, pre-heat it for more time (I know, it costs more money) and check its temperature. If you still get burnt cheese, then (just after laying the pizza on the stone and before closing the oven door) place a cold baking sheet on the top position (near the top heating element), this will act as a shield and will retard the cooking of the cheese. Another solution: ask your granddaughter to buy you a Ferrari. A G3 Ferrari. Teo

I don't have the books, but I'm a bit puzzled reading this. If it's made properly then the final jar is not vacuum pulled, they are air-tight closed and pasteurized. Shelf life is longer for this reason. They are not vacuum closed like what happens with a vacuum chamber machine at full force. For example you can put biscotti in a jar, close the cap not tightly so air can escape, put it in a vacuum chamber machine, let it run at maximum, when it's finished you get a tightly closed cap (due to the difference in pressure the cap gets pulled down when the machine let air returns in the chamber) and vacuum (well, almost vacuum) in the jar. With leavened dough in the jar you still have gas inside the jar, including oxigen. It lasts more because it's air-tight and pasteurized. Teo

If a standard brioche is crumbly then usually it's due to overmixing. This has cocoa (at least I suppose so, I don't have the recipe / books), so it's a normal effect. When you add cocoa to a dough it becomes crumbly. You notice the effect from 2% (baker percentage) and rising, the higher the % the crumblier the final dough. Teo

I would prescribe an enigmatography exam to the doctor. (I'm joking of course, in case it is still not clear it's: camel + RA = caRAmel --- Rob initials are RC so they need rewording to fit) Teo

Since you live in Canada I suppose you don't have much troubles on finding a cold place that is not a refrigerator... If you have double windows then try to check the temperature between them. Teo