Oh, is there anything better than fresh, warm cobbler with a scoop of vanilla ice cream? I’d be hard pressed to think of it right now. This cobbler can be made with just about any sort of fresh, frozen or re-hydrated fruit. Begin by preheating your oven to 375. Next combine about six cups of […]
READ ONWe picked blueberries on Tuesday, so if I’m going to do that cobbler, I’d better get cracking. Those berries aren’t getting any younger. But then using fresh fruit to make cobbler isn’t what you’d call “authentic”. The fact is that the first cobblers didn’t contain any fresh anything, they were simply “cobbled” together from odds […]
READ ONWhite wheat flour is very similar to whole wheat flour, except that it’s made from a blend of hard and soft white wheats as opposed the more common (at least in America) red wheats. It has almost identical characteristics to conventional whole wheat flour, save for the fact that it has a milder taste. The […]
READ ONHere we have a far easier animal to classify, since whole wheat flour (called “whole meal” flour in other parts of the English-speaking world) is a 100% extraction flour, simply whole wheat berries ground to a fine powder. The types of wheat used in whole wheat flour may vary from mill to mill, but in […]
READ ONIts other names are “family”, “occident” or “plain” flour. It is by far the most common type of flour sold in stores, but at the same time, the hardest to define. Why is that? Because all-purpose flour is a blend of hard and soft wheats that almost every miller combines in different proportions. Part of […]
READ ONCobbler has come to be synonymous with a too-sweet top crust over a too-sweet filling. The result is, er…you know. This recipe sweetens both of the key elements only slightly, so as to let the taste of the fruit shine through. For the biscuit topping: 6 ounces (a generous cup) all-purpose flour 1 1/2 ounces […]
READ ONBleaching gets a very bad rap in many baking circles (I’m thinking specifically of artisan bread bakers), though it can be a very important thing when it comes to pastry making. Why? Is it so important that our flour be perfectly, pristinely white? And isn’t that racist? The truth of the matter is that bleaching […]
READ ONThe ground seed of wheat grass. How complicated can it be? In fact flour is a much more complicated subject than most people think. Far from being a simple white powder we buy in five pound bags, flours come in a bewildering variety of types and styles. High gluten and low gluten, high extraction and […]
READ ONI refer you to Mexico Bob’s masterful post on the subject, here.
READ ONThis week I’m going to deliver on a promise that I’ve made to several readers over the past six months or so, and put up some posts — some “crib notes”, shall we say — on different types of flour. The content will be used to make up a new category under Joe’s Baking Basics […]
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