Croissant dough is essentially just puff pastry dough with some yeast and sugar added to it. It requires about half the number of folds (“turns” as they’re known in the trade), so it’s less time consuming to make. This dough freezes extremely well, for up to about two months, so make extra For the dough […]
READ ONAll this talk of butter and laminated dough the last couple of weeks has made me want to pick up and dash to Paris. Yet it’s fairly common knowledge that nowadays some of the best laminated pastry in the world is being made in Japan. Odd, isn’t it? Japan is not an historic wheat culture. […]
READ ONProfessional cookbook (especially baking book) writers frequently rend their garments in grief over the demise of real buttermilk. This recipe originally called for real farm buttermilk — oh for those happy wholesome carefree days! For indeed there is no actual buttermilk anymore, at least as it was once known and enjoyed. Today store buttermilk is […]
READ ONStop whipping that cream! You’ll beat it into butter!! This time that’s exactly what I’m setting out to do. And oh, how liberating it is. I have in my hand a pint of organic cream (not that it has to be, but you get a firmer butter when the cream hasn’t been ultra-pasteurized). It’s right […]
READ ONGlad you asked that. You see it all the time on butter packages, yet for most of us the phrase has virtually no meaning. “Sweat cream”? What on Earth can that be? It’s not sweetened cream if that was your guess. Rather it refers to cream that has not gone sour, i.e. it is “sweet”. […]
READ ON…and you’re sick and tired of being asked for your vote (how many years has this darn election “season” gone on anyway?). However a vote cast for yours truly could win you two tickets to Napa Valley on the 23rd for a weekend of chocolate and wine. It may not be Paris, but it beats […]
READ ONFrequent reader and question-asker Sally C. from Tip of the Iceberg writes: All right – I’m sitting here, holding my FASTCO Creamery Butter (a Fareway brand) and trying to find the percent of butterfat that you keep going on about. Where on the package should I look to find that? There is a USDA grading […]
READ ONIn the same way the discovery of the so-called “fifth flavor”, umami, changed the way people thought about taste and taste buds, the discovery, or should I say the possible discovery, of a “fat” taste receptor is changing the way some people are thinking about the development of the human senses. The discovery was made […]
READ ONNobody likes fat. Either that or everybody does. It’s hard to figure out which. Really it depends on the circumstance in which you catch people, talking about it or actually eating it. In principle nobody likes fat. You hear it from nutritionally educated types all the time: Oh my family and I avoid fats wherever […]
READ ON…butter. Simple, perfect, butter. No substance is more fundamental to the pastry-making arts. Flour? Necessary. Eggs? Nice to have. Chocolate? Optional. But take butter away and there would be no pastry, period. And at over five bucks a pound these days (and rising) it’s no wonder little beads of perspiration are appearing on the brows […]
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