Custards run the gamut from sauces and flans to cheesecakes and flourless chocolate cakes. What all these preparations have in common is that they are semi-solid gels that use egg proteins to set what would otherwise be rather runny liquids (this is of course less true of something like a flourless, whose ingredients are solids […]
READ ON…and now, of course, it’s flour. No surprise there since farmers like all other business people are driven by profit. If corn is where the money is and they have the option to grow it, then they’ll grow it. That of course leaves less land on which to grow other things, like wheat, which means […]
READ ONI try not to venture into politics much here on joepastry.com since, well, this is a baking blog. And anyway the blogosphere is already stuffed to the gills with wannabe pundits masquerading as a food experts and movie reviewers. However sometimes the bigger political subjects have direct application to the world of baking, and today […]
READ ONEverybody’s had the experience: you’re standing in a line, or sitting on a train or in a bus, and you share a laugh with a complete stranger. A comment about a politician or a movie star, or some scandal in the news, and suddenly you find yourself in a conversation. The first few moments pass […]
READ ONThis past October/November I spent many weeks going through the various mixing methods in detail. For the new year I thought it might be fun to do the same thing with the various leavening techniques. For while I frequently refer to the different forms of leavening in the day-to-day course of the blog, I’ve never […]
READ ONSo what is it about high-fructose corn syrup (HFCS) that causes people to become so unglued? Personally I think many of us just don’t like the idea that commercial food makers have mastered the science of sweetness. Knowing what a powerful attractor sweetness is to human beings (especially children) we worry what kind of confectionary […]
READ ONLast week I mentioned briefly that while ginger was known to the Romans, they didn’t actually eat it, preferring to use it as a medicine. It turns out they weren’t exactly crazy in that regard, since modern science has proven that ginger does indeed have medicinal properties. Now, I should insert here that I’m not […]
READ ON…it’s the bacteria in my intenstinal tract! Or so sayeth a new Swiss study that claims populations of bacteria living in our guts are responsible for the food cravings we experience day-to-day. Could it be true? Or is it the best Devil-made-me-do-it excuse ever conceived? Stay tuned, ladies and germs…
READ ONVery wet bread doughs (up to about 80% hydration, or in other words, quite sticky) are very, very popular these days. Why? Well there are two reasons for that. The first is that wet bread doughs create big holes — or “open crumb”, a thing that is very much desired in bread baking circles, since […]
READ ONWhich sauces go with what pastas? That there, my friend, is what you call your can of worms. A question that’ll start a fist fight in any trattoria this side of Brindisi. And in fact selecting accompaniments to different shapes of pasta is more an art than a science. The best maxim I’ve ever heard […]
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