SethG

Really? That's very low. I have no expertise as to Patrsy's recipe (except for tasting the results!), but most pizza dough's are rather wet, using baker's percentages for water of 70% and up. 62.5% hydration would produce a very stiff dough, stiffer for example than most French bread doughs.

I'm really happy to see this thread revived, although I'm sorry your cake worked out so poorly, Bloviatrix. I made the Best Ever Brownies this weekend. The first time I made them, about a year ago, I think I cooked them until they were pretty set, and they were great. Others who tried them at the same time ended up with brownies that were more runny than they wanted them to be, probably because Dorie's advice on the cooking time is designed to leave you with less-than-set brownies, which in her opinion taste best. This time I pulled the pan out when they were still pretty gooey, and although they firmed up a bit as they cooled, I still should have left them in the oven a bit longer. They were hard to cut into squares and I found them easiest to eat with a fork! But man, did they taste good. I've been thinking about doing the mint ganache-filled cookies (are they called Nightcaps? I don't have the book with me). I wanted to bring them to work, but I noticed that the recipe recommends serving the cookies as soon as they're made, so I guess it'll wait for the weekend.

For some reason, I see the full fat milk powder a lot in stores that sell Mexican products. Nestle makes one, I know. I need to get back to Pierre. I've been lax.

Rochelle, that is quite an impressive kitchen! Does every sorority have a kitchen like that? Seeing how professional it is, I can understand why the students aren't allowed to use it. I can think of numerous restaurants in Manhattan (all of which, needless to say, serve more than 34 people for dinner) whose chefs would kill for a kitchen that size.

Thanks. Making anything for 34 sounds like a lot for one person to accomplish to me!

Wow. I woulda thunk that you'd make pizza a lot. Pizza is popular and easy-- a great combination. And you could make them to order, since they cook quick. What am I missing? Am I just a bread nut? I make pizza all the time. Good to see you blogging, Rochelle.

A lot of parents agree with you, but have no choice in the matter because some schools have very rigid rules about sending kids home under certain conditions.

I guess the key to Sam's statement above is his use of the term "noticably sour." I don't know how long you have to wait for the starter to become noticably sour-- it might be long enough to do damage to your starter's ability to cause bread to rise. I don't aim for sourness myself. I sometimes leave my refreshed starter in the fridge for three days or more before I use it and I think it adds a bit more sourness (which is why I mentioned it), but not a ton. I would agree that if you wait to use your refreshed starter and either leave it out overnight or put it in the fridge, it may be past its peak when you use it. But it will still work just fine, within reasonable limits. In her original post, jgarner53 says her dough doubles in two to three hours-- this is evidence of a very active starter indeed. Her bread will still rise just fine if she waits a bit longer to use the starter.

[Never mind-- merged] The wife and I went there this past Friday, and had a great meal.

I made my starter, whom I call Ringo, using Peter Reinhart's instructions in The Bread Baker's Apprentice, page 229. This particular starter begins with coarse rye flour, and once it gets going, you feed it with white flour until the rye is no longer a part of the picture. Reinhart has other methods which don't call for rye, but this particular method worked well for me. Rye flour loves to ferment, and my starter grew like gangbusters for a day or two. As I transitioned it to white flour, it seemed to stop growing, but with persistent feeding it became a working starter withn a week or so. I wouldn't recommend Silverton's method, mostly because of unneccessary stuff it contains (grape skins) and the impractical amount of starter it produces-- but it ought to work. Really any method that starts with flour and water and tells you to feed it at regular intervals should work. But I would tell anyone following any method to disregard the timetables in most of these starter recipes. If your starter isn't growing as much as it ought to be by day three or four, don't despair. Just establish some regular pattern of feeding, be it once, twice or three times a day, and keep doing it for several days, and you ought to have progress.

One other thing! You could also try using more starter as a percentage of your total ingredients. A lot of folks maintain, by the way, that the sour tang you get in San Fran is particular to the lactobacillus that is native to the area. Of course, you're there in that area, so maybe you have it!

Nice-looking loaf, j. I have a few thoughts: 1. You appear to be keeping a "stiff" starter, which some maintain produces less sour flavor than a "liquid" starter. Have you tried liquid (100% hydration, i.e. equal weights flour and water)? You could refresh it as liquid and save some of the refreshed starter for your next loaf rather than saving a piece of fermented dough. 2. You'll get a lot more sourness if you let your dough rise at a higher temperature. Jack Lang has reproduced a chart here in a few places which shows the bacterial development (which produces acidity and sourness) going off the chart as the temperature of your rising dough gets up into the 80s. 3. You're refreshing your starter and then using it immediately. If you refresh the starter, and then let it sit in the fridge for a day or two, it will still work (despite whatever Silverton might say), and the bacterial development will continue in the fridge, producing more sour flavor in your final bread. As for the slashes, yours look good to me! You get that raised ridge by holding your lame at a very shallow angle to the bread as you slash-- almost horizontal. It also might help to uncover your dough for a little while-- 10 or 20 minutes-- before you slash. This forms a little bit of a skin that can help define your slashes. I'd love to see your crumb. What percentage hydration are you using? You've given a mixture of ounces and grams in your formula, and I haven't the energy to figure it out for myself.

I actually did turn my oven down about 25 degrees... to 400, as Paula recommends. My oven thermometer died a while ago, but it used to be that my oven ran 25 degrees too cold, not hot. Lately I've been wondering if it's gone the opposite direction. I gotta get a new oven thermometer, or have the damn thing calibrated. But the whole point of this particular dessert is for the exterior to cook faster than the interior, no? That's not a sign of trouble here, right? Edit: and thank you for the compliment, Wendy!

Okay, so now I know: my canneles last night were overcooked. Tonight I made four of them, and I removed one from the oven after one hour and twenty minutes, one at 1:35, one at 1:40, and one at 1:47. The one from 1:20 was definitely undercooked, and the one at 1:47 verged on overcooked. The one from 1:35 was just about perfect. Almost as brown as the ones from last night, but with a thinner, crispier exterior. Nice and moist inside. I wanted to post a picture, but it came out blurry, and the cannele is long gone! So maybe the tin molds require less cooking time than the tin-lined copper? Or maybe just in my oven.

Okay, so I used the tin molds, seasoned with the "white oil" (melted beeswax mixed with safflower oil). I couldn't believe that these things, each the size of a large shot glass, could be cooked for two hours at 400 degrees. It seemed to me that this would likely produce nothing but smoking, irradiating ruins. But I have nothing but faith in you, Paula, so I let them go almost the full two hours, even though the tops were a very dark brown already after about an hour and ten. I kept looking to make sure they weren't turning completely black, and they never did get darker than a very dark brown. I needed a little help to unmold them. I used a fish fork, pictured below: They looked a little raggedy, but basically correct. Then I forced myself to wait about 45 minutes before biting into one. To me it didn't taste crispy enough. My wife thought the dark outside tasted burnt, and that it overwhelmed the taste of the custard inside. Here's a view of one cut open: It looks a lot like yours, Paula, but I think the walls are too thick, causing the imbalance my wife described. (I also think the deep deep caramelization might be a bit much for both my wife and I.) I only made four last night, and I'm baking off another four as I write this. I'm going to try removing the molds one at a time, at fifteen minute intervals, and see what I think of each specimen. It seems to me like the tin molds ought to work, so long as the baking is done at the right temperature for the right length of time. Now I'm really curious to try one at Payard, just to know what a proper cannele tastes like. I'll let you know how tonight's experiment goes.

LOL! You're killing me, curd. Great work. Love the presentation.

You'd get bored with my pictures pretty fast. I bake bread every two or three days, and usually it's sourdough! I vary the amount of wheat germ/whole wheat/rye that I add to keep it from getting too repetitive. But seeing all these loaves makes me want to branch out a little more, like I used to. I also love that Pane Siciliano. I posted a picture of mine a loooong time ago that I may dig up and link to here later.

Upscale & French? I haven't eaten there either-- but I thought they were known for brunch, burgers and chicken wings. Check out the menu-- I guess you can make a case for French, but I think upscale is a little misleading. There's another branch of New York's Elephant & Castle in Dublin. My wife & I were surprised to find that this unassuming sandwich place had apparently been the foundation for the gentrification of a whole restaurant neighborhood there! Apparently the chicken wings are famous in Ireland, and at least as of 2000, E & C was featured in all the guides as one of the best restaurants in Ireland! We didn't eat there in Dublin, either-- but we had a number of very nice meals in Ireland that I'd wager were quite a bit better than E & C's offerings.

That Grenobloise looks great, Daniel. And I'm looking forward to lemoncud's Pave.

Behemoth: gorgeous! Vengroff: magnifique! I'm kind of in a sourdough rut. I gotta break out of the routine and get back to these rustic big-holed breads.

I know that photo from your book, Paula. And Richard posted the photo of Elie's to which I referred. It looks from the comparison that the tin molds produce a slightly thicker crust, but still nice and black and crunchy. Both look pretty good to me. I bought the tin molds months ago. I have bee's wax with which to coat them, and I'll post my results tomorrow or Tuesday.

I finally got around to making some canele batter this morning, using Paula's recipe. But I just noticed that she calls for yolks from extra large eggs. I reflexively (and mistakenly) used large eggs (almost universally called for in baking) without checking. I imagine there's nothing I can do to fix the error now. Will my caneles be okay? There's a lot of variation in egg sizes, even within each classification, right? We're not talking about a big difference in weight, when it's just four yolks, right? Or should I chuck it all and start over, throwing in another yolk? Edit: And wait, Paula, what's wrong with the tin molds? Too thin? Elie's caneles, above, look pretty good, no?

Thanks, man. Your mousse makes me want to whip up another batch, right now.

Today I made Herme's Korova cookies, which are not in CDBPH, but are in Paris Sweets, as discussed several pages ago on this thread. I couldn't make them look too impressive in the picture, but they are great cookies. If they'd existed at the time, I'm sure Dorie would have included them in CDBPH, as they are a perfect fit for the book: sable cookies, made with chocolate cocoa and including chunks of bittersweet chocolate. They are very buttery. They have some crunch but remain a little moist and chewy. When I served them today they were a big hit.

I've used the blanching in water with baking soda method and it's been a dream. Easy peelage.