JohnT

Just a quick question to the OP - how thick is your dough layer once "pressed into a tray"?

Shortbread needs 100% butter to work properly. The following is a recipe I use when making the shortbread layer for millionaire shortbread, and works for me without a problem. Shortbread: 187g butter 157g caster sugar 210g cake flour 45ml cornflour 3ml salt For the shortbread: Beat butter and sugar together until light and fluffy. Sift the flour, cornflour and salt together and mix into the butter and sugar mixture until a stiff dough has formed. Press into a greased and lined 20 x 24cm rectangular Swiss roll tin. Prick with a fork and bake in a preheated oven at 180°C (160°C for convection oven) for 10 minutes then reduce the temperature to 160°C (140°C for convection oven) and bake for a further 10 minutes.

Try the slightest smear of glycerin on the suction cup before applying the cup to the counter surface, which must be bone-dry and degreased.

Here you go. I will take a photograph of the brown bread and nutty wheat flour and post them on the forum later when I have a bit of a gap in my day. SEED HEALTH LOAF (Makes 1 loaf in a 5 x 9 tin) Ingredients: 225g nutty wheat 210g brown bread flour 30ml wheat germ (optional) 5ml salt 5g instant yeast 30ml sunflower seeds 15ml sesame seeds about 375ml lukewarm water 15ml honey or golden syrup 15ml sunflower oil Method: Mix all the dry ingredients together. Add the wet ingredients and mix well. Pour into a greased loaf tin, cover and let rise until doubled in size. Bake in a preheated 180°C oven for 40 to 45 minuted. Cool on a wire rack. Edited to add: I have done a bit a phoning around to the manufacturers and found the following: In South Africa "Brown Bread Flour" is what is also known as "wholewheat flour" "Nutty Wheat flour" is white bread flour with 20% bran added. And, as I have always known, your AP flour is known here as "Cake Flour" HTH

@cakewalk, it is really what I would call a seed health loaf. It contains brown bread flour, nutty wheat, just a touch of yeast (4g per loaf), honey and then sunflower seeds, sesame seeds and flax/linseed. It also has a couple grams salt, sunflower oil and water. And I top it off with a sprinkle of crushed wheat. It is more a type of quick bread as the dough is mixed up and placed directly into the pans, where it goes through only a single rising before being shoved into a 180°C oven. I do not know if nutty wheat flour is available in N. America or Europe, just like they have different flours unobtainable here. If you want the recipe, I can post it and you can play around with it. I am sure you could use brown bread flour and a mixture of wholewheat and extra bran to try and replicate the flour content. I have made the bread since the 70's and only recently was asked by one of my retail outlets to bake it for their clients. It is something not made by the mass bakers.

I have not posted anything in this thread for ages (not that I actually bake much bread). Anyway, I had an order for 8 seed loaf breads, so baked 10 - 2 are for the house! Hot out the oven Cooled and sliced - had some for lunch with cream cheese. Tastes good, even if I say so myself!

No, mayonnaise - they also make a salad cream though. Apologies, I incorrectly stated Heinz but should have stated Unilever - I was talking about their Hellman product, which is not as popular in South Africa as the Cross & Blackwell mayo. This is most likely due to the fact that for many years the US had an embargo against South Africa and most people of that eara grew up with the C&B mayo and not the Hellman mayo, thus acquiring a taste for the one and not the other. I think, if a survey was done with youngsters today, the youngsters are most probably going to choose Hellman over the C&B product. I have never seen a Duke's product here.

It depends on what chicken parts are used. If the chicken is purchased as a pack of breasts and it was summer, I would smoke the breasts and then cut them across the grain and serve on a green leaf salad with a ramekin of sweet chilli sauce. If I was planning on making a straight chicken salad that could be served with a leaf salad or as a sandwich (chicken mayo style), I would roast a whole chicken (with sage, onion and breadcrumb stuffing) and then shred it by hand, with the exception of the breasts, which would be diced. I do not know what it is like in your part of the world, but here at the bottom end of Africa a whole chicken is actually cheaper than buying a pack of four breasts! Although we can buy the US style mayo, most folk here either make their own or use a mayo produced by Cross & Blackwell, which is the most popular - it is a smooth, slightly runny type rather than the thick gelatinous Heinz product from the US. When making a salad with a roasted chicken, I always add some of the stuffing to the mix - it adds great flavour to the chicken which really has little flavour in these modern days.

And that bottle sells for US$ 14,160.00 here in South Africa.

Just score it with a sharp knife or Stanley cutter before it sets in the pan then when it is properly set, just snap the blocks off.

I must admit that I have not seen "candy canes" in our shops for quite a long time during the Christmas season. They used to go "gummy" or "sticky" in the summer heat, making it nearly impossible to remove the wrapper.

@oli, that looks interesting but what is it exactly?

It depends what or how you use it. If you mix it with water, it will remain hot. Just mix it with some mayo to get a milder mix. Lots of ways to "kill" it.

I can just imagine the wall of little ovens - and then trying to figure out when one goes "ping", which one it was. I doubt it would cost less but the electricity bill would sure kill off any profit!.

I am supprised @andiesenji has not chipped in here - she is a fountain of knowledge regarding these cast iron pans.

Jo, I answer with a question: Can you bake 16 off 9 inch tarts or cakes in your cuisinart steam oven at a time? Only larger industrial ovens can handle the capacity I need. By the way, I am not the OP - I was just throwing a few pointers in for the OP. John.

The installation of an industrial combi oven in a domestic home is very nice - I have one in my home for professional baking. But then I have another two for domestic use. The industrial or professional ovens do have a few pitfalls, other than size. Most of them chew power and are very high consumption items. Look at the wattage of the units you have been viewing and compare them to a high-end domestic oven. Also, when I purchased my oven a few years ago, the literature said it was a 230vac 50Hz unit. What they did not publish was that I needed 3 phase power. It cost me a fortune to get three phase installed in my home. My monthly electricity bills are around three times higher than prior to the installation. But the product that comes out of the oven is pretty good - far better than I could ever get out of my domestic ovens. However, it took a long time for me to be able to adjust my recipes, baking times and temperatures to get the results. I have seldom baked breads in my oven, but am now starting to - I am busy building a proving chamber at the moment to compliment the oven for bread baking. John.

In South Africa small eggs are clasified as more than 33g but less than 43g. I have not seen them being sold locally for many years. I have been having a dispute with a local egg producer / wholesaler who has been breaking the law on egg sizing over the last few months and after three letters to their senior management, which have been ignored, I have finally opened a fraud charge against them with the police. They have been selling medium eggs as extra-large and small eggs as large. However, during my own investigation I discovered that the egg producers have basically stopped trying to market their small eggs and they are now separated and sold as egg whites or egg yolks in bulk to the baking and catering industry after going through, I presume, a UHT process. Funnily, the biggest purchaser of these eggs is our military - not that we have much of a military remaining these days!

Reviving an old thread - anybody with experience of the OXO cookie press? There is not much of a selection available in South Africa and, going through the few available, the OXO unit appears quite good. However, anybody with first hand experience? John.

I do not have a "cookie press", although I have been looking for one for quite a time. However, I have looked at a recipe linked by @Shelby here it is very similar to a butter biscuit recipe in South Africa called "Eet-sum-Mor" and I think would be ideal for a press. It contains no egg or rising agent and is a real "melt in the mouth" biscuit - for clarity, your "cookie" is known as a biscuit here.

And now I have learned a new word - "lagniappe". Had to look that one up!

@pastryani Ah, a situation of crossed lines. A bit of a one-track mind on my side as I completely disregarded any thoughts of the products other uses. Well, at least I now fully understand your use of the lecithin. I will now shut up!

Not that I know of. I use the pan release made by Bakels, which is most likely the same as what you use - I think all the produces use the same recipe when making the stuff. It should not be refrigerated as per their instructions. However, I have not experienced any thickening. John.

@pastryani out of interest, how do you store yours?

Mampoer Eggnog So, up thread is @ninagluck's Eggnog recipe and this is an account of my version. A couple weeks ago I mentioned that I was having a problem getting 95% alcohol and ordered some from a pharmacy friend. Well, his pharmacy is around 30 kilometres drive from me and I have been delaying making the journey. Over the past weekend the phone rang and Garth, the pharmacist, asked if I still wanted the alcohol or did I want "something a bit better". It turned out that the "something a bit better" was Mampoer, fresh out of his illegal still. I chose the "something a bit better", which was offered to me at the very reasonable price of "free". So, Sunday I picked up a bottle of Mampoer (around 80% ABV) and today set about the highly technical task of mixing up the eggnog. From start to finish = 12 minutes = two 375ml bottles Mampoer Eggnog. Now, somewhere in my distant memory was a song "Take my breath away" - very appropriate, as that is what a sip of this beverage does. Roll on Christmas! (That is if it manages to last that long). John.