Baking Class Debrief

Reader Ruth wrote in to ask about the baking class I did over the holiday season at my daughter’s grade school. I meant to follow up on that but didn’t — so thanks, Ruth!

I may have mentioned that the organizer of these after school classes felt that baking was a subject better suited to older kids than to children my daughter’s age, and I had to agree. Fifth and sixth graders were much more responsible around heat sources and hot objects. I expected at least a couple of burns and/or cuts over the course of the six classes, but no one received a single injury. Which is not to say that they kids listened as well as I’d hoped they would. The science mostly passed right by them, and I frequently had to get, shall we say…insistent when it came to impressing the proper procedures on the group. I had only five, but lord, they were handful at times.

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Short Stuff

Reader Meredith asks: why do they call a short crust “short”? Great question. For that matter what’s “short” about shortcake or short bread or shortening? A short crust is “short” because it never gets tall. That sounds like a glib answer to the question, but it’s true. “Short” cakes and crusts are short because they don’t rise or get puffy. And it’s all due to the fat they contain.

Fat, by lubricating (or generally gunking up) the bonding sites on gluten molecules, prevents gluten networks from forming. This has the effect of making those crusts or cookies or biscuits tender. But since gluten networks are also what trap steam bubbles, fat (also called “shortening”) has the added effect of keeping those same items rather flat.

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Linz’s Least Favorite Son

Linz, Austria is a city with an interesting history, some of which we’ll probably get around to later in the week. However I’d be remiss if I didn’t point out that these days Linz is mostly remembered as the childhood home of Hitler. Hey, the guy had to come from somewhere, right? Unfortunately for the PR team at the Linz chamber of commerce, Linz was the place.

Or well he didn’t come from there. Hitler was actually born in a small town called Braunau am Inn which is smack on the German-Austrian border. What, you didn’t know that Hitler was actually Austrian? Well now you do! Of course Hitler didn’t recognize much difference between the peoples of those nations. To him (and a lot of others) the German-speaking peoples of Europe were all one large volk, divided by artificial political borders. This what made the Anschluss, the annexation of Austria into Nazi Germany, a relatively simple and painless affair.

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What is Linzer Torte?

You’ve seen one, I promise you. It’s a tart-like creation with a layer of raspberry preserves on the top, criss-crossed by strips of short crust. Of course it’s no ordinary short crust, but one that’s well infused with almonds, either ground almonds or almond flour. Sure, sometimes people use hazelnuts or walnuts, but almonds are […]

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Next Up: Linzer Torte

Linzer torte is a holiday treat in most places, however it’s popular in the States around Valentine’s day because it’s red and homey-looking. So I figure…why not? This might also be helpful for all the folks (and there were several of you) who asked for Linzer cookie recipes this past December. Alas, with a packed […]

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Back from Wisconsin…

…but tomorrow I’ll judging a science fair much of the day. Hope there are some buttercream exhibits. Don’t be surprised if it turns out to be a light posting week all the way around. More soon I promise! – Joe

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Making Banana Leaf Tamales

Rick Bayless calls these Juchitán-style tamales, which is a word I love to say: “hoochie-TAHN.” Juchitán is a city located in the southeastern Mexican state of Oaxaca (also fun to say: wah-HOCK-ah). It’s a town known for food, art, cross-dressing and indigenous languages. Don’t ask me about the third thing, it’s a long story…Mrs. Pastry will tell you all about it if you ask her, she was in Juchitán in November on a research project.

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Making Classic Tamales

Now just to be clear, I don’t have to eat the wrapping too, do I? I remember quite clearly asking that question when I was first confronted with non-convenience store tamales. How the heck do you eat these things? It’s a fair question for any inexperienced tamale-eater, since very few foods land on our dinner plates still in the wrapping…unless of course Dad got lazy dishing up the Happy Meals at the kitchen table this week (something you can pretty much count on at our house).

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Nixtamalization and Nutrition

The functional advantages of nixtamalization are just the beginning of what the process brought to the ancient Mesoamericans. For in the act of making their corn easier to handle and eat, Mesoamerican cooks accidentally unleashed a torrent of nutrients that would otherwise have been unavailable to them. For nixtamalization, it turns out, vastly increases the amount of free niacin present in corn, and renders the protein that it contains much more absorbable by the body.

What’s niacin? We know it as vitamin B3. It’s an essential nutrient, without which the body’s metabolism begins to slow down. Left unchecked a severe niacin deficiency leads to a disease called pellagra. What’s pellagra? Well, Europeans — especially Italians — found out all about it when

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