A lot less often than you’d think. Which is why I only go out in search of one when I need it. Lots of pastry preparations call for vanilla, few of which would benefit in any significant way from real vanilla bean. Cookies, bars, cake batters and tea breads fall into this category. Creamy things […]
READ ONI think there are probably half a dozen posts on this site that include this process in some form, but I receive so many requests for a separate tutorial on it, I’m going to go ahead and put one up. It seems a lot of people out there are having trouble seeding vanilla beans. The […]
READ ONGelatin can be destroyed (or rather ruined) by heat. As the temperature of the mixture that it’s in approaches the boiling point, the normally forgiving molecules that make it up clench into knots that can’t be untied. This is the reason one must always allow a panna cotta mixture to cool before dissolving gelatin powder […]
READ ONMy dairy snipe hunt on Friday yielded an unexpected benefit. At the top of my half-gallon of local (unhomogenized) milk was an inch-thick plug of clotted cream. And if you don’t know what that is, well…that’s a shame. Back in Devonshire, where I had the great privilege of attending school for a year of my […]
READ ONItalian food science writer Dario B. writes in from the Continent, to comment on the topics from the last two weeks: I read your blog from Italy (too bad we cannot comment the various posts). I want to confirm that here in italy “biscotti” are what you in the US call cookies (well, sort of, […]
READ ONAnd by overwhelming response, the consensus is that yes, there was a time when simple (or simpler) farm cream was widely available. Granted, most of the people who’ve sent me email the last day or two are from places like Vermont and Wisconsin, but even so, it seems clear that local dairies did once provide […]
READ ONI 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 […]
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