Panaderia Canadiense

Thanks. I'll adjust accordingly, then, and see if it works better for me.

For seasoning, I use flor del mar, which is extraordinarily fine sea salt collected by evaporating seawater in earthenware ollas - this is what you probably know as Fleur de Sal; it's the salt that collects on the outside of the olla. For salting water (ie for boiling pasta or bagels), I use the coarse pink rock salt that comes from mines in Loja province (I live in Ecuador). For pickling, I use a coarse rock salt from Ibarra.

Here's a question for you confection gurus. I'm aware that at high altitudes, the temperature at which water boils is reduced (for example, at 3,000 meters, where I live, water boils at 89.8 C.) Does sugar behave the same way: to wit, do I have to calculate a much lower temperature than I'm used to for firm-ball syrup? If so, do I use the same ratios I'd use to compute water boiling time to figure out what my new temperature is? I ask because my syrups have been cracking out well below the temperatures I'm used to using, but if I'm overshooting by tens of degrees I wouldn't be surprised by that.... Otherwise, I'm not sure what's causing it - my instruments are all spotless and without the kind of flaws that would normally cause this kind of behaviour, and neither the sugar I use (98% sucrose from the San Carlos mills in Guayas) nor the water (distilled) has changed. Thanks in advance. (edited to fix a non-sequitur)

I like to incorporate pieces of sundried tomato in oil into my Focaccia. And the oil that they come in is also beautifully flavoured stuff - it adds a sweet hint of tomato to whatever you'd normally use olive oil in....

A hearty vote here for the Black and Decker convection model, which is smaller than a Breville but still large enough to roast a good-sized hen or a small duck. My current one cost me just a hair over $100 (but bear in mind those are Ecuadorian prices - they're surely cheaper stateside!) What Jaymes has said about hot-weather climates and toaster ovens holds especially true, but she missed one lovely feature of the TO that's essential to hot-climate cooking. When it's 110 out and you absolutely don't want to add even half a degree more heat to your house, a toaster oven is portable and you can set it up outside. Which means that if you've got a hankering for garlic cheese potatoes to go with your grilled meats, it's a snap to pull the oven out onto the balcony or deck and plug it in there. EDIT - I should also mention that I have never used my toaster oven to make toast, but that's a function of always having fresh bread available and not liking toast all that much. It's no comment on the oven's ability to toast bread.

Kim - it shouldn't be a problem. If it were, I'd expect the yeast to die in the chilling process, but it just goes into hibernation. That's why these rolls are proofed at 200F.

Kim - the method of dusting/rolling the flour and yeast over the butter is what's retarding your rise. When working even with very fresh yeasts, if they get encapsulated by fats (butter in this case) they suffocate and die off, leaving you a nice yeasty flavour but doing nothing as far as leavening goes. I had this exact problem when I started to work with yeasted puff pastry, and until I figured it out I'd get the same result you're seeing - tender and flaky and with the yummy yeasty flavour, but not very tall. Looking at that recipe, I'd hydrate the yeast in the orange juice or make a paste with it and the water, but otherwise proceed as written. That will give the beasties a bit of a head start, and should prevent them from becoming as trapped in the butter. That, in turn, should result in taller, flakier buns. EDIT - alternately, you could approach that recipe in a very different way. Since you're mixing in the liquids for the dough right at the end of the process, you could try this: rather than mucking about with the ziplock and the rolling pin, cut about 3/4 of the butter into the flour/sugar/salt mixture as though you're making shortcrust. Once it's cut, add the liquids (with the yeast hydrated in the OJ), then roll out as suggested and coat the sheet with the remaining 1/4 of the butter (knead it under cold water to make it flexible enough while keeping it cool - this is a croissant trick). Then roll up and proceed as written. You'll still get flaky pastry that way (and if you're crazy like me, you'll fold the dough a couple of times before you roll it up and chill it, to increase the interleaving), and it should definitely resolve the rise issue since you'll be boosting the yeast with butter puffage.

Just out of curiosity, where are you moving to? Some of the things you mention may be available there for less than the cost of shipping.... You may also want to investigate international air freight, which isn't quite mailing - it's air cargo shipment. That's often an option that's less expensive than FedEx or similar carriers. Much of my kitchen equipment (my stand mixer, cast iron whatnots, and other too heavy for checked baggage stuff) came to Ecuador with me that way, and apart from having to explain to a customs officer exactly what my sets of nesting canning funnels were for it was quite a breeze.

I've been so busy lately that I've been completely remiss in posting the yummlies I've been making. So here's a whole bunch, all at once. Moist peanut-butter cake with peanut-butter cream filling and milk chocolate swizzle Gigantic (20" across) carrot cake for a friend's baby shower. Cheesecake with spiced vanilla peach topping. Coconut chiffon cake, filled with cherry, decorated with coconut IMBC Key Lime Pie (yes, I know, but the customer is always right, even when he's wrong....) My grumpy friend Tuny's birthday cake. Detail of the grumpy birthday gnome. And finally, since I did so much ICBM I had beaucoup egg yolks left. So I made Pasteis Encocãos, which are like Pasteis do Belém but with lots of shredded coconut in them. That's vanilla helado de paila with the tart, topped with Reine Claude and vanilla jam.

I use silicone mats (mine are a mix of exopats and silmats from silicomart) for cookies, bagels, croissants, buns, and many other applications; I've never roasted veggies on them (I have casseroles for that). I use wax paper for roasting half squashes, bearing in mind that a half-squash for me is about 30 lbs. Silicone mats are a bit of a PITA to clean, but it's a lot more environmentally friendly, and they're a one-time cost outlay. Parchment paper is difficult to source here and expensive when I can find it, which means I am reluctant to buy it and use it.

In shade plantations, the shade can come from a number of different sources. For R de C, it's often coffee (which is part of what contributes to the complexity of flavour that they acheive) and for Kallari, it's rainforest canopy and all of the diversity that that entails. Other plantations will mix cacao in with citrus and banana. The plants use different soil resources, so there's little competition between them. In the case of coffee and cacao, if they're interplanted with papaya it's a complete guild and the plants actually give each other disease resistance. The largest difference between Belgian and German processing techniques is the use of an alkalinizing agent in the sintering process. The Belgians (and the Dutch, who pioneered the technique) use it, and the Germans don't. The main difference, from a chocolate eater's standpoint, is that alkalized cocoa is more soluble in water than non-alkalized, and this will boost the flavour of milk-based chocolates significantly. Non-alkalized, on the other hand, preserves more of the cocoa nib's natural bitter flavour. The complexity of Belgian chocolates is therefore most evident in their milk-based (even dark milks), where the complexity of German ones is found in the true darks. As far as Pacari goes, their gran cru bars are much better than their flavours. Their general quality is quite high, but whoever is in charge of marketing has gone all faddy. It's hard to find the gran cru Pacari anymore unless you're in Pichincha (they're based in Puerto Quito), and that's sad in my book.

Bamboo, all the way. I have several bamboo boards, and they are my hands-down favourites. Pros: much easier to keep clean/sterile than plastic, looks a whole lot better, heavier and therefore less prone to go sliding off the countertop while chopping. Can be refinished with a sander and a bit of oil. Does not swell or warp when wet. Heat resistant. Does not mold. Does not seem to accumulate smells/flavours - I can chop onions on bamboo, give it a good wipe, and then chop fruit, and no onion flavour will transfer. Cons: bamboo fibre is wicked hard on knife edges. If you've got a good steel, no worries. Otherwise your knives will go dull a bit faster on bamboo than any other board. As for plastic, Pros: lightweight, cheap, disposable. Kind to knife edges. Can be soaked in bleach with few ill effects. Cons: much harder to keep clean/sterile unless you're comitted to soaking it in bleach, accumulates knife marks quickly, stains easily, ends up looking really ugly. Melts if you accidentally hit a hot pan with it or (and I found this out the hard way) are working too close to a hot oven. Can accumulate mildew in moist climates. Some boards are so light that they can go sliding off the countertop while chopping (this happens to me more often than I'd like to admit, so it bears mention). Holds on to smells/flavours - I have a dedicated plastic board for garlic, because I simply can't get that smell out of it, not even with repeated bleachings.

1. It sets my teeth on edge as well. I'm with Andiesenji - I flip my knife over and use the spine to scrape the board into the pot/pan. Scraping with the cutting edge is something I learned to never ever do, as it damages both the edge of the knife and potentially also the surface of the board. 2. (Bearing in mind this is my opinion, but...) Lettuce should NEVER be chopped with steel; it promotes rusting and blackening of the cut edges. I prefer to tear into bite sized pieces (about 1" square, although I'm not OCD about it). If you're producing industrial amounts of lettuce for salads, sharp plastic knives are available for cutting without reducing the shelf-life of the final product. As for things like carrots, I'll normally grate those, either very finely with the microplane or coarsely with the bigger box grater. I will rarely if ever chop carrots for a salad - the amount of crunch is too much. Snap peas get cut into thirds or quarters, bell peppers are cut into julienne strips 1-2" long, and cucumbers are sliced at 1/8" thick. The idea is to produce pieces that will easily and comfortably fit into one's mouth without sacrificing aesthetics. 3. You could always make your own buns..... 4. I've always thought that those were meant to be taken apart gently and eaten with knife and fork. But I'm not even remotely normal.... 5. Semantics, but basically a bread stuffing, which is properly a type of forcemeat, should be stuffed into meat of some description before cooking (chicken or turkey are two of the most common recipients of bread stuffings). Savoury bread pudding is the same recipe, cooked in a pudding bag or an oven-safe receptacle of some sort. Something else to consider is that there are, of course, stuffings that involve exactly zero bread (ask me sometime about the Ecuadorian approach to stuffing a turkey), but there is no savoury bread pudding without the bread.

You were in Ecuador and you didn't send me an email? Por vergüenza. I would have directed you to the shade plantations of pure Arriba in Guayas, which are much more interesting..... Sun-grown cocoa doesn't approach the flavour of shade-grown, as it seems you noticed in your tasting. The growing practices are also very different for the two methods. República de Cacao and Kallari are probably the best chocolates produced here, with both companies using primarily wildcrafted Arriba (nacional is a poor designation for this cultivar, as it is easily confused with the national cultivars of other countries this way. Arriba only grows in Ecuador...) The yield might be lower with wild plants, but the quality is easily the highest. R de C uses Belgian processing techniques, while Kallari uses German ones, and the difference is notable between the two. It's a shame you couldn't find Kallari's 75% bar, which is a standout and often wins international medals. It's got tremendous complexity without being too bitter on the palate. You're also missing one of the best coastal producers, Valdivian, who are mixed sun and shade growers on the northern coast. Their Gold bar is a standout with a very nice blend of smoky dark flavours and creaminess.

I've often done it by nesting several sizes of vertically-sided pans/trays one within the other for blind baking. But honestly, I prefer slope-sided trays simply because the finished pie/tart is so much nicer looking. I'm very curious as to where you've been getting cheesecakes with crust up the sides, though? I have never once seen one nor made one with more than a bottom crust - and I do muck about with parchment for the sides of those, even in large quantities.

If you'd ever been to a very large Latin American party, the use would become obvious. I have been commissioned to make sheet cakes that cover the entire surface of large tables - and at that point, a 2 foot long knife would become indispensable for slicing. When clients ask for this, I always make sure they've got one of the 2-footers for cutting, or else some other method, because once a cake goes past 18 contiguous inches, I will refuse to cut it for them. EDIT: because I normally contract a truck to deliver this volume of cake, I am reluctant to take any knife with me I can't hide in my roll. I've had drivers refuse to take me with openly carried knives, even when it's very obvious that they're for the event I'm catering.

The longest Tramontina cake knife I've ever seen was 24" - that's excessive for my needs, and doesn't fit in my roll.

This said, not all green mangoes are created equal.... In North America you'll mostly only find Tommy Atkins in unripe form, and for my 2 cents that's the worst possible mango to eat green - it's too fibrous for my tastes. If you can find green Julie, Kent, Keitt, or if you're very lucky, green Champagne mangoes, they are all superior to the Tommy.

The Ecuadorian version calls for both red bell and aji peppers, but the redness of the sausage is definitely due to the anatto....

Tramontina Linha Profissional. It's not even the longest cake knife they make.

I don't think that's controversia, tsp. This thread is asking what you consider to be an essential tool in your roll, and if you figure that's an immersion circulator, then it's an essential tool for you.

I did, last night. I had a (cocktail purists excuse me please) Spiced Peach Caipirinha which knocked my socks off. I would have tried the plum-vanilla next, but I realized that baking sourdough bread while more than half-snapped was a bad idea.... I prefer a slightly higher proportion of lime in this drink than Dan does, and I tend to leave the fruit quarters in the glass (a trick I learned in Manaus); it was mixed as follows, in an old-fashioned glass: 2 oz cachaça pura .5 oz syrup 2 limes, quartered and well muddled with the syrup cracked ice to about half-glass

I went to my local lab supply shop with the guts of the FP and just tried beakers until I found one that fit well. The owner of the shop is a very patient lady!

I have a tempered Pyrex beaker that's the same diameter as my FP guts. It's fabulous. I've dropped it onto tile, stone, wood, and cement, and it's scratched but still going strong.

Asparagus wontons.....