From one of my favorite sites, Stuff White People Like January 4, 2009 by clander #119 sea salt Regardless of how much a white person cooks or how long they have lived in their current home, they all have a tube of sea salt in their pantry. In fact, it's one of the few foodstuffs that white people will actually bring with them when they move. This is because sea salt is expensive and while white people have money, they didn't get that way by throwing away $7 packages of salt. When white people think about regular salt, all they can think about sodium and poor health. When they think about Sea Salt they think about France. So it's no surprise that it has become so popular. But Sea Salt is like Trader Joes, Banksy, or The Shins-entry level to their respective field. Therefore, it is important that you learn about other more expensive salts so that you can complain about not having them. To a white person, this shows that you know and love expensive things but feel sad that you can't yet afford them. From here you can fill up an entire evening by making the same complaints about art, real estate or Europe. Here is a link that might be useful: Stuff White People Like

Sel gris is salt that is harvested from the sea water in salt water pans - the depth of the colour depends on the quantity of minerals in the water - the time of year, the depth of the water etc. Fleur de sel is much purer. It is harvested from the surface of the water where the salt crystals form naturally. So, the best flavour comes from the Fleur de Sel. The grey salt is very cheap and you pay a top price for the white. The best quality comes from near here in Guérande.

This has been an interesting thread to follow, and I would have to say cooking is both an art and a science. In fact, I would say food at its best is a blend of art and science, after being a foods judge at fairs for many years. Leave the salt out of a bread recipe and see what you end up with? Bad science. Add the salt twice, an easy mistake, and see what you end up with? Bad science. Add the salt early and the gluten is harder to develop. Add the salt late in the gluten-development and it's easier to develop and won't require as much kneading. All science! The same goes for adding too much water, flour, sugar (or other sweetener); or flavoring ingredients which can affect the gluten-development in bread when you add too much - like cinnamon and nutmeg when added directly to the dough (this is why we sprinkle cinnamon/sugar on the dough surface for cinnamon rolls, rather than adding large amounts of cinnamon TO the dough. Add too much dairy and you'll end up with loaf with characteristics like - low-volume, poor symmetry, poor cellular structure and texture..... That's pure science. When people have a failed recipe, it's generally not from bad intentions or bad artistic interpretation, it's from bad science. Most modern baked goods are based on a ratio of ingredients. Stick to the common ratio whether you use a scale to weigh each ingredient, cups, pint canning jar, tea/coffee cup or mug... for your measuring tool-of-choice.... So take a moment to marvel at the science. "A standard plain cake has, by measure, 1/3 as much fat as sugar, 2/3 as much milk as sugar; and about 3 times as much flour as liquid." This ratio works whether you are making one small cake, one large cake, or enough batter for 100 cakes. Alter the ratio, such as trying to make a low-fat or low-sugar cake, or changing the type of flour used, and you will need to alter the known science with different ingredients and/or mixing methods. This science is most important when you develop recipes because you need to keep in mind ingredients that are tenderizers (fat and sugar) and those that are structure builders (flour and eggs), along with the other ingredients. Back to measuring flour for bread. This is one area that is completely without a standard for a scale or a dry measure, as all measurements for flour in a bread recipe are just a "good (or bad) guess". Add to that the way each person fills a cup with flour which will get you completely different amounts of flour if you were to weigh the amount on a scale, and the measuring cups themselves have NO standard in manufacturing. This is one area of baking where experience (art) along with science will help improve your bread. Due to the differences in the amount of gluten and moisture in flour, and those differences vary from brand-to-brand, season to season (moisture high during the rainy season and low during a dry winter) as well as from bag-to-bag of the same brand, you need to develop the "feel" (art) for bread dough. Your hands will "know" more about the dough than an exact measure. This is why you need to hold back 1/2-3/4 cup of flour during kneading. You may not need to add all the flour once it has the correct "feel" - and you may use all of the flour and require even more than the recipe called for..... It is also better to err on the side of a loose/wet dough than a hard/stiff dry dough. But I would also encourage EVERYONE to get a scale. There are lots more uses, along with measuring ingredients (especially if you find a recipe that is all weight measurements). It's the best tool in your kitchen when you MUST weigh something. It's far more accurate to measure 4-ounces of shredded cheese on a scale than it is to try to measure an equivalent in a cup - do you pack it tight/loose???? You can scale (weigh) the amount of batter in two cake pans to make sure you have an equal amount of batter in each of them so you have cake layers that are the same size. I even scale dough for burger and hot dog buns so I can adjust the size wanted/needed and make them consistently that same size, as well as the amount of bread per serving (a serving of bread is considered 1-oz.). When buns/rolls/loaves are the same size, they will bake more evenly. A reason to weigh the amount of salt is because of the size of the grains of different salt products. The finer the grind, the more salt grains there will be in a teaspoon (or whatever measure) because they will pack very closely together, while there will be less total salt when you put coarse-grinds of salt in the teaspoon because there are more voids of air between the larger chunks of salt. But the difference will probably not make a really huge difference in this bread recipe, but it IS a science factor you may want to keep in mind. And plenty of bread has successfully been made with plain old iodized table salt - even though I personally stopped using it many decades ago. So many things are choices, and neither totally right or totally wrong. -Grainlady

The best resource I’ve ever found for fermenting is the book Fermented Vegetables by Kirsten K Shockey and Christopher Shockey. It answered many questions I’ve had for years and some I didn’t know I had. Here’s a little on what the Shockeys say about salt: ….there is no reason to settle for kosher pickling salt or other highly refined salts, which contain additives that are not helpful to your ferment. These refined salts are salty in a way that assaults your taste buds. When people come to us with talks of too-salty kraut, the first question we ask is, what kind of salt did you use: The answer is almost always pickling salt. Mineral –rich salt added to nutrient –dense food is a good solution [to the issue of mineral deficiency]. Because all salts are not the same, density, and therefore weight, will vary according to mineral content and coarseness. That is partly why the amount of salt given in these recipes is not exact. We have made the same recipe, changing only the salt variety, and had very different results---another good reason to taste your ferments when salting. We are not concerned with the trace amounts of iodine in unrefined salts.