Fundamentally, leavening is about introducing gasses of various kinds into baked grain pastes in an attempt to lightening them and make them easier to chew. I think we all know what you get when you try to bake up a simple mixture of water and flour without a leavening agent: a cracker. Hardtack is what […]
READ ONThis past October/November I spent many weeks going through the various mixing methods in detail. For the new year I thought it might be fun to do the same thing with the various leavening techniques. For while I frequently refer to the different forms of leavening in the day-to-day course of the blog, I’ve never […]
READ ONWell it’s the Monday after New Year’s, which means even the most committed couch potatoes among us have to admit that it’s time to hoist our holiday girth out of the La-Z-Boy and get back to work. It’s been fun, but then I’ve watched little Josephine’s new DVD, Dumbo, entirely too many times. She can’t […]
READ ONI don’t know what you did for Christmas dinner this year, but here at the Pastry household, turkey was the order of the day. It had been a while since I’d made a good old-school turkey dinner. No fancy dried fruit and artisan sourdough stuffings, no braised figs, no wild mushroom gravy. Just great-grandma Pastry’s […]
READ ONThe good folks at Apple are at it again with a new proprietary ordering process through which you’ll be able to select, order and pay for food at any quick-service restaurant via your wireless device (iPhone), then (ideally) pick it up at a special drive-through window when you arrive. It reminds me of a newspaper […]
READ ON…is to do more savory baking this year. There’s a whole world of savory tarts, breads, pies, pastries, custards and the like out there to explore. And it’s timely, what with all the pastry chefs that are opening their own full menu restaurants these days. The boundary between savory and sweet baking has never been […]
READ ONWhen I said I’d be “back around the third” about ten or so days ago, I wasn’t thinking it was going to be a Thursday (though what day I thought it was going to be I have no idea). That said, it’s a little late in the week to be starting up any serious project. […]
READ ONSo now the fun part: the glazing. Of course we start with the slighty dicey part of, er, dicing them, but having chilled your cake you should be in good shape for cutting. Start by measuring out your cake to multiples of 1 1/2″ (a very nice size for homemade petits fours). Trim off any […]
READ ONAn interesting email from a reader on HFCS: I don’t think HFCS [syrups] are threatening solely because of their sweetness. As you explained, they are only “useful to the extent that they can be diluted down to approximate the taste of standard table sugar,” neither is it the fear of one glorious gobstopper that will […]
READ ONSo then, after all the hubbub about corn syrup we finally get to the nitty-gritty about what corn syrup does in a petit four glaze (fondant). And it only took me a week. If you were around for yesterday’s post about what makes corn syrup thick, you’ll remember that one of the defining characteristics of […]
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