Once upon a time, superfine sugar was a fixture of the sweetener section of every grocery store. That’s before the shelves came to be crowded with a.) dozens of artificial sweetener products and b.) dozens of “natural” and “raw” sugar products. Between the forward-looking diet crowd and the backward-looking natural foods crowd, a pastry baker […]
READ ONTrained pastry chefs are taught elaborate techniques for fashioning pastry bags out of folded paper. I admire that, but I also have things to do and places to go. So when I need to do a little piping, say of jam into a doughnut, I go the pre-fab route. The basic components, tips and couplers, […]
READ ONPre-baking, also known as par-baking, also known as blind-baking is a common technique among tart bakers, especially when they’re planning to employ an especially dense and/or wet filling. The idea is to bake the crust through before it becomes sodden and won’t bake up at all (think pumpkin pie). The crust is inserted into a […]
READ ONI’ve been asked about this subject — rolling pie and tart dough — so many times now I think it deserves its own separate post and spot under the Techniques menu. It is the single biggest stumbling block to home baking that I’m aware of. Thousands, I’d even speculate millions, of very well-intentioned bakers get […]
READ ONLet’s clear about something: I have no problem whatsoever with canned pears. They make perfectly good pear tarts (to say nothing of great late-night snacks, at least for me). A truly exceptional pear tart, however, starts with homemade poached pears, which allow you to bring flavors to the party that you wouldn’t be able to […]
READ ONThere’s something so elementally satisfying about the process of rendering lard, I…I don’t know how to fully express it. A sort of manly do-it-yourself pride combined with the boyish thrill of breaking a food taboo. As George Patton might have said: God help me, I do love it so. The obvious question is: why? After […]
READ ONInfusions are highly useful things in the world of baking and sweets. If you’ve ever wondered how your local pastry shop gets the flavor of thyme into a tea bread icing, or how confectioners introduce the flavor of earl grey tea into a truffle, infusions are the answer. They allow a cook to import a […]
READ ONRegular commentator Hans writes in to ask: So what’s this about food not browning well in really-fresh oil? I’m glad you asked that, Hans! For indeed people who really know frying will tell you that perfectly clear, fresh oil doesn’t cook food particularly well. That’s very true. The question is: why? The answer, again, is […]
READ ONHow long does it take for good fry oil to turn bad you mean? That depends on a number of factors, chief among them the type of fat you’re using. In general, you want one that’s fairly stable (i.e. resistant to breakdown) and neutral flavor-wise. For me that means either vegetable or canola oil. Solid […]
READ ONTo understand how the ’76 Steelers can turn into the ’08 Lions, we need to back up a bit and talk about fat composition. Kitchen fats are what are known as trigycerides. Which is to say their molecules are made up of three long-chain fatty acids attached to a “backbone” of glycerol. Imagine a capital […]
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