teonzo

This sems like another case where simply scaling the recipe from big to small is not the best thing. If my memory serves right you studied engineering so you are good at math. Think about 2 spheres where you want to keep constant the difference in radius: the volume ratio is not costant if you change the radius. This is not the perfect analogy, just to point out that there is a limit on how thin you can (have sense to do) stretch a dough, so when you go very small you need to reduce the inclusion/dough ratio. To avoid the explosion you need to pick a rolling pin and roll/stretch the exterior sides (the uncovered dough) as thin as possible, until you are able to close them without extending the covered dough. Bit of a PITA to do. Teo

To get a good distribution of the inclusions I would suggest to add a fraction of them (say 1/5), make a simple fold, add another fraction, make another fold and so on. Teo

Ask your granddaughter for a pair of barbecue gloves. Making puppy eyes helps in your case too! Teo

Good! I heard of way too many people (both professionals and amateurs) ruining their machines in this way. At a restaurant where I worked the chef continued to say that Kitchen Aid Artisan sucked because they always broke after few months... he mixed bread at maximum speed to save time (and waste money). Refrigerator is fine, but it takes more time for obvious reasons. This temperature range is important for gluten development, yeast survival, but more than all butter texture. To get a proper mixing you need the butter to be soft. If it's hard it tends to break the gluten structure. If it starts to melt then it's a trouble. This is one of the steps where professionals and home users diverge. Professionals use "bread machines" (can't recall the English term, I mean the ones with 2 mechanical arms) or spiral mixers, if you add the ingredients at the proper temperatures then you don't incur in these kind of troubles. Hook mixers (the ones used at home) have a much higher friction rate, so the doughs get heated much more, this causes the trouble of going over 26°C each and every time. For normal breads it's not a big trouble, for enriched breads it is. This is one of the themes where I'm wondering about the quality of this book set. As far as I understood they are covering both the professional side and the home user side. So hopefully there should be the explanations on how to adapt things for the home use. Probably they explained this stuff about temperature (and how to remedy) somewhere in all that huge number of pages. If they didn't then it would be a serious oversight, because home baking needs a very different approach than professional baking on a lot of things. The main problem is that a lot of times you can't simply re-scale recipes to get them working. You need to adapt a lot of minor details. The raisin bread seemed like a case where the home recipe was simply scaled and not controlled. If a person makes a small loaf and a big loaf and wants to get 2 spiral rounds on each one, then he/she need to adapt the quantity of smear: the smaller one will need to be rolled thinner, so it needs more smear. This is why I wrote that probably it was an error by the book. It's really hard to catch these errors while proof reading, because when you proof read you tend to check if the numbers correspond with the ones on the original files/recipes, then you check the ratios to see if they are correct. But if you scaled the recipe dividing by 20 and not by 10, then this error slips very very easily (there is an Italian book where almost all recipes have this defect) For home use I think it's much better to mix together whatever ingredients you are adding after gluten development, then add them in small doses and frequently. In this case I would mix soft butter with sugar and salt, then add around 1/8 each time. The first addition takes a bit of time to emulsify, the other ones are quick. The difference is much more noticeable when you need to add butter and eggs, if you mix them together instead than adding them separately then you get a better result. The problem of adding butter to a dough is that fats act as a lubricant between gluten strands and as a barrier to develop more gluten bonds. The more gluten bonds you create, the more elastic / extensible the dough is (you see this with the difference in the windows test with standard bread). It's similar to the case of pulling 1 spring or 2 spring in a series (not parallel): more gluten means more "springs", so it's easier to pull the dough. When you add butter yu add fats, which prevent the formation of new gluten bonds: some get formed, but much less than what happens if you continue mixing without adding fats. After adding all the butter you get a window test that gives similar results than what you have with full gluten development in a standard bread recipe (no fats), not because you reached full gluten development equally as with standard bread, but because fats are acting as a lubricant, making it easier for gluten strands to stretch. So the process of adding butter to a brioche dough is more about getting a correct emulsion than reaching full gluten development. You could object "well, why not reaching full gluten development before adding butter?". It's a matter of compromise: gluten can't stand indefinite mixing times, each flour has a parameter that indicates how much time gluten takes before collapsing (I'm pretty sure it's explained somewhere, this data is much more difficult to get from flour producers because it's an indication of flour quality, the ones with poor quality are reluctant to give this number for obvious reasons). If you reach full gluten development before adding the butter then you reach the stage where gluten starts collapsing, so you end up with a texture more similar to melted cheese than the one of a proper dough. You can try for curiosity, but the results after baking will be catastrophic. This is why making panettone (and similars) is one of the more difficult tasks in the pastry world. Ah, I was forgetting one thing. For this step (adding butter to a brioche) it's better to use the paddle attachment and not the hook. Disclaimer: what I write is what I learned from other professionals or by direct experience. So I can't swear that what I write is correct and precise, we all know that most explanations by professional chefs are not that scientifically perfect. I'm curious to know what the Modernist Cuisine team says to be correct and what wrong. Teo

If you create the stage name Rob Acornoley then it's perfect. Teo

Prepare a lenghty Christmas list to give to your granddaughter, this year you deserve more gifts than usual! Chris already wrote that you need to watch the gluten development and not the mixing time. The other critical point is adding butter in small amounts and not all at once (otherwise you break the emulsion), but I'm confident it's well explained in the books. I would add that it's better to read the manual of your stand mixer (or whatever machine you are using). If you are using a stand mixer for home use (small Kitchen Aid, Kenwood or whatever) then they are not engineered to work at high speed with heavy doughs. Brioche is not as hard as a low idration bread dough, but it's still in the heavy dough category. The mechanics of small stand mixers are not built to stand the stress of mixing heavy doughs at high speed, you don't break the machine immediately, you keep ruining the gears and they will break in the medium term (few months / a couple of years with average home use). This is the major reason behind home stand mixers maintenance: people don't read the manual and mix heavy doughs at high speed. For example with a Kitchen Aid Artisan Tilt-Head you don't have to go over speed 2. So please read your machine manual before slowly damaging it. Slow speed means more mixing time, just watch gluten development. Or to be more precise: watch the emulsion. With brioche you add the butter when you already developed the gluten, the critical point is keeping the emulsion, not developing gluten since it's already developed. The final window test with brioche is meant to check that it's perfectly emulsified. Another critical factor, expecially with enriched breads that have a lot of butter, is watching the dough temperature. Ideally you should remain in the 22°C-26°C window. The best thing to do at home is to check the dough temperature every 5 minutes. If it reached 26°C then transfer the dough in the freezer for 5 minutes, then resume mixing. If you have enough space in the freezer then just put the mixer bowl with the dough inside, less work and more effective. Teo

The logo is easy: a camel with a R and A on the two humps. Teo

That's the best way to go! You have more fun and it's more useful, since you learn much more things by making mistakes first hand. Teo

You need to try other breads now, that's the best way to spoil love your granddaughter! This can depend on the type of flour. Flour with the same protein (total gluten) content can give pretty different results. Different ratios between glutenin and gliadin make for very different results in doughs. In this case I would go with a pizza flour, which is more extensible than a standard bread flour. To know the difference in extensibility of the various kind of flours you need to check the P/L ratio. For sure it's explained in the books. Less sure is to find it written in the flour package, but usually you just need to e-mail the producer to know it. The main difference is about taste. Personally I think that when I taste a flavored bread I want to perceive the flavor and then the bread, not viceversa. But this is just a personal preference, to each his own. The second difference is structural. If the smear is dry then it will absorb a bit of moisture from the dough (water migration), making it drier (this can explain why you felt it was dry, too). Hahahaha, I was not trying to induce you in buying a sheeter, that's a non sense for home use. It was a masked compliment: to get a perfect spiral you need to roll the dough at the exact same thickness in each point. This is easy to do with a sheeter (it's automatic), almost impossible to do with a rolling pin, especially with an elastic bread dough. If you don't have a good hand with rolling pins then you don't get a spiral but a monster. Teo

First of all, congrats, if it wasn't for the tunnel you nailed it at the second try! The tunnel forms because the dough is not attached to the inner spiral. The dough in the outher spiral grows bigger during proofing time, so it tends to detach from the inner spiral. If the dough is just laid over the smear without being "glued" then you will have this trouble. Usually spreads/smears are soft and wet, this way they are easy to spread and act as "glue" between each spiral. Judging by the photos (I don't have the recipe) the smear for this recipe looks to be on the dry side, this prevents the spiral to be "glued" together. It's not a problem for the inner ones, since they find an outer spiral that keeps them in place. Since you prepare an egg wash for the final surface, then you can use it as "glue" when you roll the bread. Just brush some egg wash over the smear and the raisins, then roll the bread the tighter you can. You need to avoid air bubbles, act a little torsion to the roll while you form it making it tighter, pressing on the lower dough sheet while you roll. This way all spirals will get "glued". This kind of breads are much easier to make in a professional kitchen, a sheeter is a HUGE help, so if you see a professional loaf with a perfect spiral, well, it wasn't the baker, it was the sheeter that did the job. Teo

Price is really low, I paid almost 100 euro for the first edition. I just checked, my first edition is 32.5 x 23.7 cm while this reissue is 25.1 x 18 cm. So it's quite smaller. Number of pages and thickness are the same. First edition had printed colors out of balance, raw paper, was pretty difficult to open, so I'm regretting having bought it immediately. I strongly suggest to read Manresa, it's one of the few cases where written words can transmit the chef's passion. I suppose the first edition sold out and this book is in the limbo between the first and second edition. At least I hope so, it's such a good book that it would be a shame if it went out of print so soon. Something similar happened to Marque, it went out of print for a brief time, then the second edition appeared (with a different cover). That's the best way to go! I heard good opinions on Octaphilosophy, Benu by Corey Lee, Sola by Hiroki Yoshitake, Borago... In the past years there were a good amount of interesting French books (French language) and Spanish ones (by Montagud, bilingual Spanish and English), but I haven't seen any of them so can't comment. I don't have any more space for books until I'll renovate a couple of rooms. There is also the Compartir book by the people who were behind elBulli, the Moto book is coming out... way too many books in the past 5 years. Teo

Well, you followed the recipe this first time. Your attitude is admirable, but I would say this a case when it's better to go for the changes. Looking at your photo (before rolling) it's quite clear that there are few spread and raisins. If you roll the dough thinner to get a twice as long rectangle (which should be the correct thing to do) then it will be almost impossible to cover all the surface with such few spread, plus you'll get a raisin every foot, not every inch. I wouldn't be surprised if there was a printing error in the book, especially considering the HUGE amount of errors that were in the first edition of Modernist Cuisine (main reason why I still haven't bought this one, I've already been burned once). Teo

Definetely this. Anna, I would suggest to prepare more spread: from the photo it seems to be few for how you prepared that loaf, if you are following this suggestion (roll the dough thinner to get a bigger rectangle) then you will get a bigger surface to cover, which means even more spread required. Plus I would add much more raisins. But I'm biased, for me "raisins bread" means "raisins with some bread". Teo

Some names, without re-reading the thread: Joan Roca, Josep Roca, Jordi Roca - "El Celler de Can Roca" just put this as your top priority, I have the first edition, this is the reissue which is much cheapier and seems smaller (first edition had poor quality paper, bad printing and binding, so you did not miss much on that) Daniel Patterson - "Coi: Stories and Recipes" this is probably the best read across the top restaurant books, Patterson is a great writer and is totally open on explaining what's behind each dish David Kinch - "Manresa: An Edible Reflection" this book exudes passion from start to finish, great dishes and great reading Sat Bains - "Too Many Cowboys, Only One Indian" this is pricey since it's not released by a big publisher, so it went under the radar of the aficionados... a pity, it's simply beautiful, from the dishes to how it's printed Peter Gilmore - "Quay: food inspired by nature" I would say this is the best book from the Australian bunch, so if you liked Sepia you should go with this Ben Shewry - "Origin: The Food of Ben Shewry" this is my second preferred from the Aussies, the book is really huge (a thing I like), some really inventive stuff, for example desserts are far from being technical but they are really personal - now it's listed for crazy prices on Amazon, weird, I bought it for 30 euro when it was released few years ago Mark Best - "Marque: A Culinary Adventure" another top Australian, now it's closed for good, I prefer Quay and Origin but this one deserves too James Viles - "Biota: Gather, Grow, Cook. Redefining Regional Australian Food" this book went totally unnoticed, it's a good addition to the Aussie bunch Anne-Sophie Pic - "Le Livre Blanc" not as great as the Astrance, worth the money Paul Liebrandt - "To the Bone" this is a memoir with recipes, great read and great dishes, get it NOW: 4.97$ is a steal David Everitt-Matthias - "Essence: recipes from le champignon sauvage" David Everitt-Matthias - "Dessert" David Everitt-Matthias - "Beyond Essence: New Recipes from Le Champignon Sauvage" another British restaurant that deserves much more attention, the Dessert book is top class, a perfect example on what you can do if you are not a super technical pastry chef but have balls (aka inventiveness and personality) Most of these are under 40$, so you should be able to get 5-7 books. Avoid the Alex Atala and Frantzén + Lindeberg, wasted money. Teo

I would like to point out that the idea of (enriched) breads in a jar is Italian. As far as I know the first one to do it was Alfonso Pepe with his baba. He was followed by Denis Dianin with his panettone. Teo

No, I'm sorry, no recipes... Here in Italy marshmallows are still a curiosity, they are not traditional. It's hard to find the industrial ones in supermarkets, almost impossible for the artisanal version in pastry shops. I know a couple of pastry shops that started to make them after the guimauve craze in Paris some years ago (you know, there are various pastry shops here in Italy that just copy French trends with a couple years delay), but stopped after few weeks due to no sales. Never seen marshmallow used in chocolates, they would not sell here, so I have no direct experience. I proposed to try (underscore "try") to use cocoa butter instead of gelatin just by intuition. Collagen (gelatin) starts to set around 36°C; how gelatin sets depends on the composition of the gelatin itself since there are various types of collagen involved (different types and different brands have different setting curves), it depends even on the composition of the recipe where it is used. You can have different curves (meaning some will set sooner, others later), but almost all of them will start to set at 36°C, which is above the working temperature of piping marshmallow in chocolates.This means you loose marshmallow fluidity (is "pipeability" a word?) when you reach the working temperature, this causes the troubles told in this thread. Marshmallow is just a meringue set without drying. Traditionally the setting agent is gelatin, but since the working temperatures of gelatin cause these troubles, why not trying a different setting agent that have more friendly working temperatures for this task? Cocoa butter has the perfect temperatures for this, for obvious reasons. It should even give a more pipeable marshmallow, since melted cocoa butter is more fluid than melted gelatin. I would pick the recipe you use for marshmallow, sub the gelatin with 5x cocoa butter (1 g of gelatin becomes 5 g of cocoa butter), whip the meringue to soft peaks (maybe stop even sooner), wait for it to reach around 50°C, melt the cocoa butter to 50°C, add a small part (around 10%-15%) of the meringue to the melted cocoa butter (it will deflate, not a big trouble), then pour slowly this mixture over the remaining meringue while folding carefully. Then wait till it reaches around 33°C, put it in the pastry bag and pipe in the molds. If I'm right you should be able to get a more pipeable marshmallow, if you work on the meringue fluidity you should be even able to get a self-leveling marshmallow, something it's impossible to get with gelatin. I suppose this is the trick used by the chocolatier linked in one of the previous posts. But it's just an idea, I can't say if it works or if it's pure idiocy, the only way to know is to try. Of course this can work only with the egg whites / albumin version, not the one with only gelatin (at least I suppose so, maybe it could whip even with cocoa butter, after all there exists the chocolate chantilly by Hervé This). If this works then you can sub egg whites with aquafaba and get a vegan marshmallow. Teo

Just finished giving a quick read. I must say I'm a bit disappointed, I was expecting more from this book. The restaurant was iconic, groundbreaking and whatelse, nothing to say about this. Kudos to them for everything they invented. Problem is that after all these years those techniques are globally spread, so there's almost anything new to read technique wise. The restaurant gets the honors for the inventions, but after all these years we've seen that stuff replicated here and there a lot of times, so there's not much new to learn. But this is not my main complaint, this was a given. My main complaints are these two. First, I hoped for more in depth descriptions about the creative process and whatever was behind their ideas and their creations. Coi by Daniel Patterson is a great example for this. There isn't much soul in the writing here. Second, they got 3 great pastry chefs there (I would say Stupak is in the top5 in the world as restaurant pastry chef). There are only a handful of desserts here, it's a total shame. I would say choosing Meehan as writer was not a wise thing. Teo

I would try to use cocoa butter instead of gelatin for the marshmallow as setting agent. It should be easier to pipe. Teo

Is there anything about techniques involving pregelatinized starch, like the "water roux" method (aka Tang Zhong)? Time ago some of the MC posts talked about enriched breads, for example Migoya posted about panettone in a jar. But you wrote that they stop at brioche regarding viennoiserie. Is there something about enriched breads like panettone? Thanks. Teo

Shame on you! Teo

Very very nice! Go big with those molds! Teo

This is the way of thinking of discerning customers, meaning people who already know what they want before approaching the seller. They still are a minority, most of people are not that informed about food, they buy chocolate for gifts or for impulse buy. If you stop some random people and ask them if they know what bean-to-bar chocolate is, most of them will remain puzzled and silent. But they have money in their wallets and they buy chocolate, this ignorance will lead them to be more willing to buy a $4 re-melted Valrhona than a $8 bean-to-bar when they are going for something "fancy" (gift or special treat for themselves). Those people have money to spend and you want their money to have a successful business. Discerning customers pay your ego, non-discerning customers pay your bills. Pastrygirl is in a particular situation: she does not have a brick and mortar store, she does farmer markets and pop-ups (at least this is what I remember, please correct me if I'm wrong). This means she is exposed to much more casual passers. People who go to farmer markets don't go there specifically to buy chocolate, but they pass in front of her stand. You need something to attract them (look at it as a siren or a trojan horse), most of the time it has to be something familiar. Non discerning customers are not that familiar with creative bon-bons, filled bars and so on. But everyone is familiar with a plain bar. Those people are going to think that prices for bean-to-bar bars are too high (if not outrageous), so a fairly priced plain bar can be attractive to them when they need it for a special reason (gift or a personal award for passing an exam or similars). If you start to catch those fish then you can try to pull some impulse buys too and sell them few bon-bons or else. This is why I suggested to read a couple of books on marketing psychology. It's a dozen hour investment that will repay in the size of thousands dollars. It's an intangible investment but it's well worth the effort. There are various techniques to induce people in impulse buys, these buys make a sensible difference at the end of the year. I'm not meaning the difference between being polite and impolite to customers, it's something more subtle, but effective. You can still be ethical in your work if you pay attention to the quality of your products: you are not screwing people, you are telling them that the best way to spend their money is on your products. If you can add a good amount of plain bars to your revenue then you get various more intangibles. You sell more chocolate per month: this means you pay lower prices to your chocolate supplier; this means higher turnover so it's easier to manage your warehouse stock. You recoup mold investment in less time. It's easier to be able to afford the investment on a Selmi or similar, which is the biggest different for a chocolatier (not having it means thinner profit margins). Plus there is the advantage that plain bars have a much longer shelf life than filled products. I totally understand that as an artisan you get much more satisfaction producing difficult stuff, it's the ego of the "art" in "artisan". But more than all we are professional, which means money (profit) first. Please take what I wrote with a grain of salt. I'm not Pierre Hermé, these are just my thoughts and not general rules. Teo

Understood. In this case then just go big, spend more now to save much more later. You need to think about molds durability too: if you spend 1/2 now, but the molds will get ruined in 1/4 of the time, then you save money now, but you will loose later. There's not much sense to go the middle way on these things. I would strongly suggest to add plain bars to your production. I understand your reasons, especially with producer eyes, but the customers have a different view. Plain bars are always a good pull for other sales, meaning that most probably if you add them to your product choice then your sales of filled bars will increase too. The market for plain bars is way bigger than the market for filled ones. A person searching to buy a couple of plain bars will not stop at your business since you don't carry them; if you have them, it's possible he/she will add a filled one for curiosity or else. If in your market you are competing with a good number of bean-to-bar producers, then try to limit your costs, it's easier to sell a $4 bar (re-melted from Valrhona or others) than a $8 bar (prices for bean to bar operations are always much bigger). I would also suggest to go to a library and look for a couple of books regarding psychology applied to marketing. It's one of the best time investment a producer can make, there's a lot of stuff to learn on these things, a good amount of them are counter-intuitive. Teo

You can see some examples in this catalogue, page 23. Teo

Uhm, why are you scraping a molded chocolate bar? Did you include a ganache or something else? If the bar is pure chocolate, then it's better to pour the desired amount of chocolate into the mold (if you don't have a machine like the ones by Selmi, then use a ladle / pastry bag and a scale), then vibrate it. There's no need to scrape the mold, doing so is less efficient, plus it's a nightmare if the molds are a bit flexible. There is also another option: really thin thermo-formed molds (less than 0.02 inches), not re-usable, to be sold with the bar. This is what we did at the chocolatier where I staged years ago: put the molds on a pan (9 molds on each pan, 3x3), pour chocolate on each mold (having a Selmi with the automatic dosing mechanism helped a bit, but using a scale doesn't take more than scraping), vibrate the pan, let the chocolate set, then package the mold (with the bar still inside) in the carton box. Those kind of molds come pretty cheap (much less than a dollar) if you buy them in good numbers (more than 1000). They have various advantages: they help about packaging; they are an added value at the eyes of the customers; your costs are totally predictable (meaning you don't risk to break/ruin some sturdy molds and re-buy them); you save time on cleaning molds; it's more difficult for the bar to break during handling / storing / shipping. Teo