Why is it…

…that whenever I have a cold all I want to listen to is 70’s-era Neil Young and Pink Floyd? Something about those slow, loopy grooves must go well with Sudafed. Or LSD.

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Ever met my friend Dan?

For about a month now I’ve been meaning to make an introduction, but have been too scatterbrained to set fingers to keys to make it happen. Dan Carberry is the fellow I’ve been wanting you to meet. He’s the driving force behind a new food site called ChopBiscuit. Dan is a man after my own heart: a former food business owner and comedian turned blogger. For a living Dan Works in R&D for Panera Bread. He’s got a brand new son, Paden, born on Thanksgiving Day, and a decidedly un-corporate attitude about food and drink.

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Daddy Sang Bass

Amazing how a good head cold really opens up those lower vocal registers. If this keeps up I might just blow this cyber popsicle stand and hit the road as part of a bluegrass quartet. Anyway, I’ll try to get something going a little later in the day. For now I’m going back to bed…

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This Year’s Gingerbread House

I promised I’d put up a picture of this year’s effort, an accurate representation of the Pastry family home — and here it is, an absolutely photo-realistic edible representation of our hundred-year-old bungalow. People don’t realize how daring the architects and builders of central Kentucky were in 1905, but as you can see the details are competitive with the most extravagant motifs of Gaudí-inspired Catalan Modernism. Eat your heart out Josep Jujol!

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Next Up: Tamales

No, they’re not pastry and not really bread, either. They’re not even baked now that I think about it. However last year I swore that when tamale season returned, I’d do them. Also given all the holiday breads, cakes and cookies we’ve all been exposed to I think they might make a nice breather from […]

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Let’s Talk Pans

Regular reader and commenter Linda writes in with this very interesting question:

I checked your archives and did not see anything about equipment, particularly types of baking sheets and pans and which are better. I made your mother’s banana bread over the holiday break and it was absolutely wonderful! However, I used some new loaf pans and while the top was browned to perfection, I thought the sides and bottom were much too crispy and overdone. The same thing happened to a Tuscan Coffee Cake I’ve made every Christmas for the past several years when I baked it in my new cake pans. I’ve noticed that whenever I use my “new and improved” non-stick, heavy duty pans from reputable outfits such as Calphalon, they seem to overcook on the sides and/or bottom. When I use my ancient, inherited from mom and grandmother thin aluminum pans that I’ve used for decades, everything comes out perfectly.

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On the Entertainment Value of Spam

I keep vowing to get a plugin to more efficiently handle the spam that comes into the comment fields here on joepastry.com. It would certainly save me the ten or so minutes I spend every day scanning all the e-missives that come in for approval and deleting them manually. On the down side I’d lose out on a lot of good laughs. Granted most of them are of the sardonic variety, the how stupid they think I am? kind of laughs.

I emit those dark chuckles when I see spamsters trying to get around my spelling filters with emails that offer free “pron” twenty four hours a day. On the other hand these people may have simply read a few of my posts and understand all too well how consistent I am at spelling. I get tons emails from a guy who calls himself “Best Waterfilter” and many, many others from a young lady with the unfortunate name of “Cheap UGGboots.”

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What’s the difference between panettone and stollen?

I received several questions to that effect last week — oh and…I hope everyone out there had a terrific Christmas and a not-too-painful post-New Year’s hangover. My speculation is that most of the people who asked this question own Peter Reinhart’s excellent book, The Bread Baker’s Apprentice, for in it the panettone and stollen both employ the same dough, the main difference being that the stollen has twice the fruit plus marzipan.

Much as I respect and admire Peter Reinhart, I’m not down with his implicit assertion that panettone and stollen are the same thing under the hood. Reminds me of the time my uncle claimed that his new $25,000 Toyota was exactly the same thing as a $50,000 Lexus. Sure it had a dissimilar appearance and handled completely differently, but inside all the important parts were identical. Call me skeptical.

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Merry Christmas!

That’ll do it for Joe Pastry for 2011. Thank you everyone for another highly productive, and frequently hilarious, year. Thanks for following along and — in many cases — contributing. Let’s do it again in2012!

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