18 hours ago, paulraphael said:Wondra is designed to thicken sauces without any requirement for it being cooked. It won't give you the raw flour flavor that you'd otherwise get (which is actually the flavor of partially cooked flour ... raw flour is pretty tasteless). And since the starch has be pre-gelatinized, it will dissolve easily and have full thickening power right away. It's basically so you can use wheat flour the same way you'd use a purified starch, like corn starch or arrowroot.
Since the whole process of making roux, including skimming the released fat, will fully cook and gelatinize any flour, I'm not sure what advantage you'd see from wondra. My inclination would be to go for lower protein flours, rather than higher, since the proteins in the flour just contribute to the scum that you have to skim off. But really, whatever flour you have will work fine.
How are people getting lumps in their roux? I've never noticed a tendency for flour form lumps that the requisite whisking wouldn't take care easily enough. Roux should be pretty foolproof. The only thing to keep in mind is that the darker you brown it, the less thickening power it will have.
I'm a long time 'Escoffier' fan. It's my hobby to duplicate as precisely as possible some of Escoffier's recipes. Sort of like a friend who is a fanatic about getting the precise lettering/insignias on the model airplanes he builds as on the original ones.
Anyway. It often occurs to me that the ingredients used in Escoffier's days had to be somewhat different than today's.
Especially dairy products and the types of flour available.
For anyone interested here is Escoffier's basic roux recipe and method for making any sauce etc with it.
6 parts flour/5 parts unsalted clarified butter. Regular table butter contains milk solids which affect the texture and flavor of the roux. In addition the amount of water in table butters vary so much it's not possible to know exactly how much butter fat you are actually getting which can have guite an impact on the finished recipe.
Heat the flour separately over very low heat to first dextrinize the flour. If you want a darker sauce let the flour turn a bit golden.
Add in the butter and combine over very low heat. In a couple of minutes you should end up with a 'grainy' looking roux. You want this. Remove from heat and refrigerate to cool the roux.
When I make a roux I make enough to fill a couple of icecube trays. I use trays that make small ice cubes about the size of a large grape. Not the trays that make the bigger ice cubes. I freeze the roux in the trays then transfer the roux cubes to a Ziplock freezer bag. When I need to make a sauce/soup/gravy I always have the roux handy.
When you want to make a sauce of soup or gravy have your boiling broth or stock ready. Put one or two frozen roux cubes in a heavy large pot. Med. high heat. Pour in about half the boiling broth/stock over the roux cube and begin whisking. Soon the stock/broth will melt the roux cube and you'll get a soup/sauce gravy happening. Add more hot stock/broth to get the consistency you want. Don't 'drizzle' in the hot stock/broth. You'll get wallpaper paste which you will have to keep adding the liquid to anyways. It takes some practice to know how much hot stock/broth to have on hand.
Season. This makes for a silky smooth gravy/sauce/soup with no 'oily' film on top because the roux was cold when the hot stock/broth was poured in.
