jackal10

Thats not what I've found. When I switched to soft flour for making baguettes (intensive mix) I got a much more open texture

THere is not a lot of difference in formulas for soft and hard wheat, maybe a little less water. The main difference is that soft wheat doughs need much more gentle handling, and are less tolerant of wrong proof times. Use of a preferement, maybe of about 30% of the flour,is advisable Try your usual bread recipe, but add a little less water and see if the dough still feels right, and shorten the proof time (like half). In general softer flour means bigger holes...the bread will be different, but still good. Most European bread forms, like baguettes were developed for the local soft wheat. The bread will stale more quickly, unless its sourdough.

You can overwork gluten in a high speed mixer, such as a food processor. Its very hard to impossible to do so by hand. Left alone it recovers.

Its just the same as any other cooked meat With leftover pork I usually make Bao

Need more information about what recipe/formula you are using, and your method (machine mixing or stretch and fold) Texture is very sensitive to the amount of water. For an open dough you need about 70% hydration (total water/total flour) where total includes the flour and water from the starter/sponge. Wholemeal will always give a dnser crumb and not support large gas cells, as the bran pierces the cell wall. You might also try a weaker flour like AP. NOt all spelt flours are created equal. Brown spelt flour has bran in it - make sure you use white, and of breadmaking quality. If you are using spelt a pinch of vitamin C will help Finally are you over-proving? My sourdough, unless retarded takes 4 hours fom mixing to baking at warm room temperature

I think that you may be referring to the problem that these temperatures are well below the pastaurisation temperatures. Bacteria will grow and not be killed at these temperatures. The usual safe time is taken at that for a 10x growth of pathogens. The speed of growth depends on the temperature. The FDA codes appear to be based on a maximum of a 10x generations (doubling) of pathogens such as Listeria onocytogenes at 41ºF and Salmonella / Staphylococcus aureus at 115ºF. At 50C/122F this is 5.6 hours - the code specifies consumption within 4 hours of moving to an unsafe temperature. See, for example CALCULATING THE TOTAL GROWTH OF BACTERIA IN COOKED FOOD USING THE FDA CODE CONTROLS by O. Peter Snyder available online at http://www.hi-tm.com/Documents2001/time-temp-calculations.html If you cook for 3 hours at these temperatures, then you need to be sure that the food is consumed within an hour or so, less than 4 hours from when it was removed from the fridge and that furthermore it was fresh, safe and had a low pathogen load before cooking. Maybe possible at home if you have a good fishmonger, but much harder in a restaurant or service environment

Has anyone tried he Kenwood cooking chef http://www.kenwoodworld.com/en/CookingChef/Home/ which builds an induction cooker into a mixer, albeit at a high price? The web stite states temperature control in +/- 5C, with a precision on 2C, and this for a stirred system. It seems to me that the manufactureres are missing a trick here. At the high price they charge it surely could not have been that expensive to add a more precise PID temperature control...

Has anyone tried he Kenwood cooking chef http://www.kenwoodworld.com/en/CookingChef/Home/ which builds an induction cooker into a mixer, albeit at a high price?

Pork normande results. 36 hours at 60C was definately too long or too hot, giving the pork shoulder cubes a fuzzy blotting paper texture. 24 hours at 58C is about the upper limit, for melt in the mouth texture. If you are planning on re-heating I would scale that back to 18 or even 12 hours

The shoulder is cubed before cooking. Maybe brined.The skin crisped and puffed seperately I ws going to seal it with some apple juice, apple brandy (not burnt off - only a small glassful), some cider vinegar, softened onions, bay leaf and seasoning. After cooking, reduce the bag juice and finish with creme fraiche and caramelised apple slices. I think red cabbage, rice or mashed potato might go well,

Anyone have a pork normande SV recipe or experience (pork with apples, cider, cream)? My instinct is to cook the cubed shoulder pork somthing like 12 hours at 60C in the hard cider, then finish with cream, apples, vegetable garnish etc Its not confit - it needs to be meltingly tender but retain some structure

Popping this thread up as I am in Oman on business in early October. Staying at the Muscat Grand Hyatt Hotel. Any food reccomendations?

Google Goggles for wine

Does the crust formation, besides cooling, affect flavour and texture? I can imagine it would cocentrate salts, and also change the condensation/adsorbtion of compounds from the smoke. Conventional wisdom in cold smoking requires a dry surface pellicule. In other words why don't BBQ cooks wrap their meat or pre-dry it, for example overnight in a fridge?

Will ther be a launch event/party/conference? Maybe an opportunity to re-establish the equivalent of the Erice conferences, with chefs and scientists.

Palmitic (about 60% of saturated fat in meat) at about 145F/62.8C and Stearic (30% to 35%) at 157F/69.6C

I think the stall is more likely due to the fats melting than collagen to dissolving to gelatine. Nathanm would know the definitive answer, since he is also a prize winning BBQ pit master

I'm puzzled by the halibut brandade recipe. a) The yield is given as 800g, but adding the ingredients (except the water) comes to 545g. What is the other 250g? b) What do you do with the water? 1kg (or even 250g) would make a very liquid puree - Escoffier uses about the equivalent of 50g of milk to loosen the puree c) 250g seems like a lot of potato - one and half times the amount of fish? d) THe illustration shows I guess the salt halibut in a different plating (no caption), rather than the recipe

Best asparagus locally (Cambridge UK) is at Burwash Manor in Barton http://www.burwashmanor.net/02_news_050810.asp They have been picking for a week, lovely great thick spears. They are having a Asparagus Day on May 8th, wih cookery demos, funfair, tractor rides to the asparagus fields etc,

This might help: http://www.cookingissues.com/2010/02/02/coming-soon-sous-vide-and-low-temp-primer/ with pictures. "Salmon cooked at various temperatures. Interesting: fish often go through two zones of goodness: a low temp zone usually described as having a fudge-y texture, and a higher temp zone that makes a more classical texture. Fish cooked between these zones squeaks when you chew it. The exact temperature of the two zones depends on the fish itself, the season in which it was caught, the fat content, etc."

French Provincial Cooking P 293 "Choux Rouge a la Aigre Doux" No chestnuts, but the receipe immediatley preceding is cabbage stuffed with chestnuts. http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=5PbUYzYe-xMC&pg=RA1-PA252&dq=elizabeth+david+french+provincial+cooking+red+cabbage&ei=7mhLS4TsK4aszATUh-XNAg&cd=1#v=onepage&q=&f=false

The alcohol will make it melt easier (lower freezing point) Leave out the gin and pour it over intead of putting it in the mix Youll get more taste and a better sorbet McGee in The Curious Cook suggests for lemon or lime water ice 1/2 cup juice, 14 tbs sugar, 1 cup water. YOu could replace the water with a good tonic,

I've not got above 17% (say 34 proof) or so by volume even at deep freeze temperatures (say -20C). Theoretically ethanol/water at 40% by volume freezes at -23C/-10F but there are sufficient other salts and stuff in cider not to get that. AS the article points out, fractionation by freezing does not get rid of the fusel oils and other nasties that distillation can do, so its pretty heavy stuff to drink, at least in terms of hangover... Try at your peril.

Are you sure its illegal? Applejack is an old tradition, INAL but can you quote a source? I thought that in most places heat distillation and any form of alcohol sale is illegal unless licensed, but other forms of concentration for personal use was OK.

The meat was yeast food, Making hard cider is easy. Just take fresh apple juice and let it ferment (under an airlock). The apples carry enough natural yeasts. If you press the apples in say October, it will be drinkable by Christmas. Making good hard cider is more difficult. Normal eating apples do not contain enough sugar or enough tannin, resulting in a weak thin product. YOu can make it more palatable by freeezing and filtering out the ice. That is why special varieties of cider apples are used. You can add sugar (look for an OG of around 1.065), and maybe tannin or oak chips if you are not fermenting in an oak barrel. Getting clear cider is also harder - the pectin in the apple juice clouds. Various high tech methods (pectinase enzyme, finings, filters) can be used, but the traditional French method is keeving - forming a pectin gell that filters. Google will point as sites with the method.