I usually put up some pictures and/or deliver on my recipe at the end of the week. This time I didn’t, mostly — again — because of the weather. It was great: sunny with a high over 55. And since I had a couple of free hours to burn, I decided not to spend it […]
READ ONA reader took mild umbrage yesterday over my cryptic comment about “pure, simple” cream, when I mused as to whether it does, or ever has, existed. The implication being that of course it did, back in the good ol’ days, until nasty old dairy companies intervened to ruin the fun for all of us. I’m […]
READ ONAlan Scott, a man whose innovations as an amateur architect and engineer allowed thousands of people to rediscover the joys of brick oven baking, died of heart failure on January 26th in Australia. Mr. Scott’s death is a great loss to the baking community, though the many ovens he designed and built will live on […]
READ ONReader Bill chimes in with this advice on sourcing fresh farm cream: Seek out cream from a herd of Jersey Cattle. When I was a kid our family kept a Jersey as a family cow. I can still recall the butter my would mother made from the cream. The color was a deep yellow unlike […]
READ ONAnother question came in yesterday, asking what effect pasteurization has on cream, and more than that what effect ultra-pasteurization has. The answer is that any time you heat milk or cream up to any significant degree, you change its flavor. This results in a denaturing (science speak for “messing up”) of the whey proteins, which […]
READ ONSo what is it that makes cream so darn fabulous? I mean…technically. What’s so special about cream? Some argue that it’s cream’s texture that makes it so attractive to our senses. And indeed, cream’s texture is unique in the realm of food, often imitated in food science labs, but never quite duplicated. Cream has a […]
READ ONSomething about the pure delight of unadulterated cream, yes. So what’s with the buttermilk, then? Isn’t that turning the clock back to the days of yore, when microbes made cream tangy-tasting as a result of spoilage? I suppose it is, yes. But then as I also wrote this morning, the modern palate has become inured […]
READ ONOne misconception about panna cotta is that it must always be served turned-out, standing on its own like a flan. That to me presents a fundamental problem, which is to say, too much gelatin. My personal feeling is that panna cotta needn’t be terribly firm, just enough to give it a silky and elegant mouthfeel. […]
READ ONYou know, it’s easy to be blasé about cream. Top-quality, sweet, neutral-tasting cream is everywhere. In fact it’s fair to say it’s in too many places, just another garden-variety indulgence from the refrigerated dairy section. It wasn’t always so. Before, say, the mid-1800’s, if you were looking for a little cream to whip up and […]
READ ONUnknown. In fact not only do we not know “who”, we don’t even know “when”. Panna cotta almost certainly evolved from custard, which has a long, long history on the continent. However the fact that it’s thickened with gelatin means it can be no older than 200 years, because commercially-produced gelatin wasn’t around before then. […]
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