‘Steel Cut’ oats, or ‘groats’ are too dense and unprocessed to use in baking cookies, so resist the urge even if you’re trying for a healthy rustic angle.

The rolled oats will stay whole even after they are baked, giving you that nice oaty look and bite that is so satisfying.  The quick oats will become part of the dough a bit better, giving you a nice taste, and also help with the oaty texture.

Try using both quick oats and rolled oats in cookies is a post from: Culinary Tips

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Now while I loved my old bread machine, it took a tumble and fell off the counter and then didn’t work so well.  So, we got a new one – a Breadman BK1060BC. Maybe it proofs a little warmer than the old one, or maybe it’s the new yeast I bought, but we haven’t had much luck with mixing and baking our old bread machine recipes in the Breadman.  It is perfect for making dough, however, and we have a convection oven to bake in anyways.

I almost prefer to mix my bread in the machine and bake it in the oven.  That way you get to make it whatever shape you like and with our convection oven, it comes out beautifully.  Most bread machines seem to come with at least one dough setting (our old one also had a pizza dough setting, and our new one has an “artisan dough” setting which takes over 5 hours!).

Here’s a recipe to try out in your machine, it’s my new favorite, Potato Oat Bread.

Potato Oat Bread

The gluten powder and the lecithin are optional, but recommended.  I posted before, about the benefits of lecithin, but the gluten powder is a new ingredient for me.  Gluten is the protein responsible for trapping the gas the yeast produces, allowing bread to leaven.   Adding an ingredient to bread that does not have gluten (anything but wheat flour), can mean that the bread gets a bit dense or becomes crumbly and lacking structure. Adding the extra gluten powder can give the bread a helping hand when it comes to rising.

As an extra ingredient, gluten was never mentioned at school, and I’ve never come across any information about it in any book I’ve ever read, but I’d seen it at a couple of stores and thought I’d try it.  Galloways carry it, and I had seen it at Save-On-Foods in the bulk bins listed as Super Gluten 100.  I use it now in any bread dough that is not strictly a white wheat flour dough (it is also good for whole wheat breads, as proportionally whole wheat flour has less gluten than regular AP/bread flour).  I also add it to any dough that needs extra structure such as pizza dough.

Home made Potato Oat Bread is a post from: Culinary Tips

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The principles are quite simple. Half melt your chocolate, scald your liquid(s), pour one third over at a time and emulsify with the stick blender (or for those with too much time on their hands, a whisk).  Just like using the stick blender at any time, it is important to use a deep container.   Also, since you are working with chocolate make sure you don’t incorporate any air.  If you aren’t sure as to how stiff you want a ganache, make a stiffer one with less liquid than you think you will need, and slowly add you liquid till you get the correct consistency.  Keep in mind that your ganache will be stiffer once cold and can be warmed to thin as needed.  Finally, once homogenized, let your ganache set up in the fridge overnight to achieve crystallization.

Tips for making the perfect ganache is a post from: Culinary Tips

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Tuile [or tuille], French for tile, is a wafer thin cookie that can be spread to almost any shape before baking and when still hot from the oven can be set in 3 dimensions.  It doesn’t change its shape at all in the oven, so whatever shape it is before, it will be after.  It can be formed into cones, or baskets, or rings, or well, just about anything.  Tuile batter is incredibly easy to make and freezes well enough that you can pull it out when you need it.  The recipe here was given to me at school, and makes a lot more tuile than you think:

Beat 4 egg whites and 175g sugar till frothy.  Add 100g melted butter and mix well.  Add 100g AP flour and mix well.   Chill before use.  That’s it. 

To bake  – make a template of whatever shape you like and spread the mixture inside.  The ideal thickness is about 1-2mm.  At work most of the time we use old plastic tub lids to make stencils, and when I’ve done tuile at home, I’ve done the same.  Bake tuile at 325ºF until lightly golden.  Only do a few on a tray at a time if you are shaping them once they are baked because they will cool too fast otherwise. 

They are a really nice way to make some ice cream a bit fancier.  You can also sprinkle them with chopped nuts, or chocolate or sprinkles or whatever before they are baked.  A couple of neat easy tricks are to drape hot baked circles of tuile over a rolling pin to cool so they have the curved shape of the rolling pin; another is to sandwich tuile circles between 2 mini tart shell forms after they are baked to make a basket shape.

Tips for making great tuile is a post from: Culinary Tips

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The trick is to half melt your chocolate; essentially meaning that some of your chocolate is melted, but there are still some lumps of unmelted, but hot chocolate.  Half melting will heat your chocolate up enough that it will melt completely when your cream is added but still leep some of the stable cocoa butter crystals needed to make a perfect emulsion.

If you fully melt your chocolate, there are no tempered cocoa butter crystals left to remain stable, and that can affect the texture of the final product.  If totally unmelted your chocolate may not fully melt out with the heat of the liquid and might require further heating to do so, which greatly increases the risk of scalding, burning and curdling.

With your chocolate half melted, take 1/3 of your hot liquid (for an angliase, this can be done before or after  re-cooking as long as it is still warm enough to melt the chocolate the rest of the way), and pour it over all the chocolate.  Let it sit for about a minute, and then with your immersion blender, tying not to incorporate any air, emulsify your mixture.

It will be tricky and depending on the ratio of liquid to chocolate, tough on your blender, but do what you can before adding the next 1/3.  Repeat the process and you should be left with a totally smooth emulsion ready to be baked or served.

How to make a perfectly smooth chocolate creme brulee is a post from: Culinary Tips

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The restaurant I work at uses them for all kinds of things; horseradish pearls on a raw oyster, in cocktails, in desserts, you name it.  They are surprisingly simple for how fancy they are and only require 3 weirdish things, which aren’t even that weird.   You will also need gelatin - we use gelatin sheets here, but granulated will work as well as long as it is dissolved properly.

They are - a squeeze bottle, about a litre of oil (which can be reused and re-purposed), and agar, which is a seaweed extract used to thicken (try your local asian market, it’s pretty common).

To make pearls, first you need to thoroughly chill your oil.  Place it in a deep container in your freezer.  It’s best to use a neutral oil such as sunflower, canola, or grapeseed.  Do not use olive oil.  It is way too expensive, and it will get cloudy and rubbery when chilled.  You can still use it if it’s cloudy, but it won’t look as nice.  The oil is used solely as a liquid that can get colder than water.  You might be able to use something like vodka, which also doesn’t freeze, but I’ve never tried it.

The oil should be as cold as you can get it, so let it sit in the freezer for a while before you start making your mix.  For the mix:  for every 500ml of liquid, you will need to add about 5g of pure agar. (Agar often comes mixed with sugar, so read the packet before you buy it.  If you can only find the kind mixed with sugar, you can still used it for sweet applications, you just need to figure out how much agar is in the mix you bought.  Nutritional information is useful here as you can use the protein content as a guide.  It seems to be around 10% usually.)

You will also need 10 sheets of gelatin.  This will give you a nicely soft yet stable pearl.  You can adjust slightly higher or lower depending on your whim, but don’t go too much below 8 sheets and 4g of agar.  Warm your liquid, add the agar, and bloomed gelatin (for more on gelatin, look here), and whisk well to make sure it’s disolved and well incorperated.  Let this mix chill until it is about room temperature, or just starting to thicken.

Put the mix into a squeeze bottle, and slowly stream drops into your cold oil.  They should form little spheres and sink to the bottom of your container.  If your spheres are too large or you’re having trouble getting them to drop freely from the bottle, warm the mix up ever so slightly until it is just a bit thinner. If your mix is too warm, the pearls will take too long to set in the oil and may clump together and warm your oil up too fast.  Once you’re bottle is empty, and all the pearls are at the bottom of the container, strain your oil into something that will make it easier to pour back into the bottle, I like a measuring jug.  With the pearls in your strainer, rinse them really well under the coldest water you can get.  Rinse them until there is no oil residue in the bottom of the sink.  Keep them chilled until ready to serve.

Making gelatin and agar pearls or caviar is a post from: Culinary Tips

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Some handy facts about gelatin:

• 1 sheet weighs between 2-3 grams depending on which brand you buy.  I’ve really only seen one brand commercially in Vancouver and that’s Kessko from Germany.  Different brands of gelatin do have different gelling powers, so check with the manufacturer on the recommended amount to use.
• Leaf gelatin and powdered gelatin have the same thickening power gram for gram.
• You can substitute 1.2tsp of powdered gelatin per sheet.
• There are about 12 level teaspoons of gelatin per ounce, and about 10 sheets in an ounce.
• To substitute grams of powdered per sheet, use about 2.5g (about 0.09oz)

All gelatin has to be bloomed and melted before it can be used.  To bloom leaf gelatin, soak it in a cold water. The colder the water the better as gelatin melts at a very low temperature and the sheets will break up if the water is not really cold.  Let it sit until the leaves are soft and pliable, about 5 minutes. Drain well before using.  To bloom powdered gelatin, mix with an equal quantity of again very cold water and let sit until it thickens into a grainy gum.  Depending on what you will be using it for the gelatin can now be added to your recipe.

It should be added to something warm or hot to ensure it disolves fully.  I heard a story once at school, about a mousse cake being returned because it had ‘plastic bags’ in it.  It was in fact unmelted gelatin sheets.  For something like a jelly, you can warm some of your liquid, add the gelatin to that, and then add that mix back into the rest of the liquid.  Keep in mind though that once gelatin is cold or even cool, you will notice it thickening.

If your master mix is too cold when you add your warm melted gelatin,  it might seize and form chunks.  If you’re making a jelly, or anything without incorperated air (whipped cream, or meringue…), you can warm the mix up slightly and that should homogenize it.  It gets trickier if you have something whipped though as the air will be knocked out at warm temperatures.  This is why a smooth mousse can be tricky.  Even the pros screw it up sometimes.  The best way around it is to try and keep all your liquids warm, and let them cool together once the gelatin has been added, then once that mix is just about room temperature, fold on your whipped cream or whites.  Work fast or the mix will set lumpy.

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Lately whenever I see that a recipe calls for butter to be cut into a dough or batter, I reach into my freezer, and grate, on the large holes of a box grater, the same about of butter.

It takes a bit of elbow grease, but once it’s all grated, simply toss the whole mix together lightly and you are done.  This method has the advantages of colder butter than if you used refrigerated butter, which is good for flakiness, and even sizes pieces.  No more worrying that you missed a chunk!

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Method one:

Take your fruit, cut it into small pieces, and freeze it on a sheet pan 1 layer thick.  The pieces of fruit should be as small as you are comfortable cutting – no smaller than a brunoise, but not large dice either.  Once the fruit is fully frozen, take it out and defrost it over a perferated pan or in a strainer over a container to collect the juice.  This will take a while, about a day or so.

Method 2:

Make a puree with your fruit, the smoother, the better, and hang the puree in a cheesecoth pouch.  To make the pouch, take a nice big piece of cheesecloth and fold it over a few times so it’s about 4-6 ply, tie it well, and hang in the fridge over a bowl for a day or so.  Resist the urge to squeeze the bag too mcuh as this may stop the juice from being clear.  The better you made the pouch, the more you can squeeze.  This technique is very similar to how you make yogurt cheese, and is used by some chefs still stuck in 2002 to make ‘tomato consomme’.

How to make clear fruit juice or fruit consomme is a post from: Culinary Tips

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The newer bread machines on the market do all kinds of things other than just regular bread.  They have dough settings if you want to shape the final loaf, they make muffins and batter breads and even jams.  A typical setting takes about 3 hours from start to finish, but once the ingredients are in, the machine is doing all the work.  It even has a delay setting so you can have fresh bread waiting for you when you wake up.

The Cons:

Unless you get one of the few machines that make ‘regular’ loaf shaped loaves, it will make an elongated squared loaf quite different than the standard shape you’re used to.  You can’t leave the finished loaf in the pan for too long after its done or it will get squishy since the moisture can’t evaporate properly.  Plus, since fresh bread lacks the preservatives that keep store bought bread shelf stable, your bread may go stale or moldy sooner than you’re used to.  Natural additives such as lecithin will keep your home baked bread fresh for much longer, though.  With this particular machine, you’ll need to follow the recipes included in the recipe booklet, and some of those recipes are silly and complicated.  Plus, occasionally the bread will rise too high and stick onto the glass – this would be due to user error such as too much yeast, and having the wrong temperature ingredients.

Pros – that fresh bread smell.  No weird chemicals in your bread.  Fully customizable. No more bread squashed on the way home from the store.  It also makes pizza dough.  You can select the size of loaf you want.

Overall:

The Black and Decker B2500C is a good home bread machine for an affordable price.  It makes bread, and really isn’t complicated to use if you follow the recipes.  It isn’t a Breadman or a Zojirushi, but it’s less than a third of the price.   As a dough mixer alone, I believe this machine is worth the price.

I Love my Black and Decker B2500C Bread Machine is a post from: Culinary Tips

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