…are some of the simplest sweets you can make with egg foam. Nothing but whipped whites, sugar, cream of tartar and vanilla. Of course if you want to sneak a few chocolate chips in there, I won’t tell anyone. You can tell I made these hastily because they’re covered with tiny cracks. A proper drying […]
READ ONI’m planning on starting a new content stream here on joepastry.com called The Pro’s Knows, whereby I’ll briefly interview professional bakers and/or pastry makers about their specialties and share any tips they might have. If you or anyone you know are a professional in the field and would like to be interviewed, please drop me […]
READ ONThe next stop on our Big Five Mixing Methods tour will be the Egg Foam Method. Of all the various mixing methods out there, the Egg Foam Method has the virtue of being the most direct, the simplest. For indeed, instead of spending time and effort to create the conditions most likely to produce gas […]
READ ONSo I’ve been putting a little time in on the oven lately. The bread oven, you know… that thing I started four months ago but can’t seem to get finished. Not because I’m lazy, but because I’m not talented. I have no brick laying ability. Thus I’m at the mercy of various contractors, none of […]
READ ONThe wife and I staged an impromptu breakout from Pastry Pen on Friday, and lit out for Bardstown, Kentucky, a small historic berg about 30 miles south of Louisville. We were only gone two nights, but with the amount of relaxation we worked in, it felt like two weeks. I’m still feeling lazy. Bardstown is […]
READ ONAren’t we all. So in the interest of helping keep a spring in your step as you stride out the door in the morning, I thought I’d point this out to you. What is it? Why, they UN’s State of the Future report for 2007, the latest in an annual series of publications about, well…everything. […]
READ ONI know you’ll be shocked and horrified by the following admission, but I can be something of a, well, snob. Especially where bread is concerned, I can be downright obnoxious. I turn my nose up at pretty much everything that doesn’t have a thick, crackly cust and a chewy, flavorful crumb (both hallmarks of long, […]
READ ONI think a big part of the reason that cookbook authors have favored stiffer, tigher doughs over the years is because home bakers tend to be less comfortable working with slack ones. Wet dough tends to be sticky if it isn’t well-floured, and that just plain flusters some folks. If there’s a trick to handling […]
READ ONI decided that my messed-with Peter Reinhart recipe was a little too weird to put up. Fortunately, my new favorite cookbook, Happy in the Kitchen has one that’s pretty darn good. I fiddled with it a tad of course (I can’t help myself), and here is the result. It works very, very well and makes […]
READ ONIt’s my opinion that if only a few people understood how easy it really was to roll a 2-ounce piece of dough, we’d have far fewer inferior buns in this country. Yet bun rolling and shaping continues to intimidate people. Well brothers and sisters, let me tell you I’m here to put an end to […]
READ ON