Grainlady...

18 years ago

I am amazed at how much you know. Do you have your own website or have any that you recommend? Baking is definitely my sore spot and need as many pointers to understand flours/yeasts/risers etc and you really do provide so much useful info. Now, you only need to post some pics, would love to see your stuff. I did pick up a book on cakes and am amazed at the outcome. I am even reading it not just looking at the pictures and trying the recipes! Thanks again for some great info.

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Comments (7)

grainlady_ks
18 years ago
last modified: 11 years ago
Cookie8 -

Don't be amazed - REALLY. I owe it all to classes, books, workshops, knowledgable folks on message boards who are willing to share information, experts on the subjects I'm interested in, college text books, and practical experience - all focused on a fairly narrow area of food preparation and the science behind it. Anyone spending that kind of effort can't help but learn a little something - no matter the subject. Even more amazing, I'm always learning something more about it. Then I add my own "twist" by creating recipes and trying to increase nutrition using my rather odd assortment of ingredients. What a fun hobby!

ME, I'm amazed by everyone on this board and their ability to cook. That's completely beyond me...

I'm also computer stupid. I have no idea how to post a picture - don't even care to know. I had all the "stuff" to accomplish it at one time and never used it, so I gave the camera and "stuff" to our son. I just never waste time of things I'm not interested it... (a personality flaw of mine).

Besides, I make food to eat, not for pictures, and it would never occur to me that anyone would ever care to see it. Although I must admit, when I send goodies out to work with hubby, they seem to be glad to see it.... To me, it's another loaf of bread - big deal - come back next week and you'll see another one.... A fresh baked loaf of bread and other baked goods are all common around this kitchen. If I don't make it, we don't have it because I don't purchase it.

When you bake a couple times a week, you are no longer amazed by a success NOR a failure - they both happen with great regularity the more you bake. Bread is one of the most humbling things in the world.....even when you make it every week. Which reminds me, I have a 2-1/2 hour old sponge I need to add some ingredients to here in a few minutes.

-Grainlady
Terri_PacNW
18 years ago
last modified: 11 years ago
Cookie, just pick her brain with a question..I always do. And I appreciate it greatly!
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Thanks, Grainlady. That's fab! They've been calling Zep heavy metal since the term was invented, and they're mentioned in every definition I've seen. I get it why you don't get it, but there it is. A lot of their work wasn't that heavy, but they were among the first. Though speaking of drums, I always expected it was Keith Moon whom Bill Graham was referring to in his story about the self indulgent drum solo. :) People still talk about them playing Whole Lotta Love at Winterland.
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This has gotten to be a big challenge - probably due to the length of my post. I posted this yesterday and thought I fixed it this morning, but only part 2 shows up. Here is the first part I posted, but I think I'll have to divide it as well, so I'll entitle it Part 1A and 1B. Sorry for the delayed response and mix up. -Grainlady Part 1A There is an abundance of information on the subject when you start to study it. In fact, it is quite an interesting subject when you get into it. What we think of as a tasty broth/stock to enhance the flavors of sauces, vegetables, and soups, is really much more than that. So when you see someone cooking/poaching a few boneless chicken breasts for broth/stock, that's one time they're doing it wrong. I look at broth (especially bone broth) as a supplement to my diet - a gelatin-rich food that helps just about everywhere in the body. These are foods that have all but disappeared from the modern dinner table and we are less healthy for it. Here's information according to "Nourishing Broth" by Sally Fallon Morell and Kaayla T. Daniel, PhD, CCN. I would suggest it for further reading on the subject. -You want bones that have lots of cartilage along with those small amounts of meat for flavor. Meat contains only about 1% by weight of collagen, while bones contain about 20%. Skin - like chicken skin (think schmaltz) and pig skin (think pork rinds), contains up to 30%. Veal knuckles contain up to 40%. What this means is when making chicken stock include the backs, wings, and necks. For beef and veal stock, use cartilage-rich knuckles or oxtail (tailbones) along with more cartilage-rich meaty bones like short ribs or shanks. -To ensure plenty of gelatin - include feet -- chicken feet (and heads also! - although I've never used the head - even when we raised our own chickens). For beef include calves' feet. For pork broth use split pig's foot (fresh, not smoked). You can add a split pig's foot to any kind of broth to increase the gelatin. -Some ingredients yield gelatin more than others, some add flavor and color. Adding vinegar helps extract minerals from the bones as well as the vegetables you add. Any kind of vinegar can be used. -You will get better gel using pasture-raised chickens than conventional (battery-raised) OR simply organic chicken. Pasture-raised will also be more nutritious.
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Merry Christmas Ginny- Not much time this busy morning for posting, and this is probably too late to be helpful. Recipes for soft dinner rolls are as common as flip-flops in the summer, every common post-WWII cookbook like Betty Crocker, Good Housekeeping, Pillsbury, and the web sites for the yeast companies, will all have recipes for white dinner rolls made with active dry yeast. Prior to that, the homemaker used fresh yeast, and those are the soft white dinner rolls I remember my mother making. If I close my eyes I can still recall the wonderful smell you can only get by using fresh yeast, which is all but unavailable these days. Wal-Mart carried fresh yeast during November and December, and that was the last time I could find it in local stores. It's been at least 15-years since I last bought fresh yeast. The one thing those recipes have in common, and the one tip I can give when making them, is to use all-purpose flour like Gold Medal or Pillsbury, which are National Brands. That was the type of flour used. It wasn't until the advent of the automatic bread machine in the late 1980's that "bread flour" was available for household use. Nearly any recipe that has butter and milk in it will be the one to pick. Avoid using King Arthur All-Purpose or Robin Hood All-Purpose flour because they are higher in protein. If that is the type of flour you have to use, add a little more butter to the recipe (1/2 to 1 T.) to help cut the gluten-development. Hard rolls require flour milled from high-protein hard wheat flour (like bread flour), while soft rolls are best made with flour that is a mix of soft wheat and hard wheat - like National Brands of all-purpose flour. I have a rather interesting bread machine recipe for Soft White Bread that uses 1 cup of white cake mix, which is milled from low-gluten soft wheat, and that is the "secret" ingredient for soft bread. Before going gluten-free, when I wanted to make soft dinner rolls using whole wheat flour (I mill my own flour), I used a 3:2 mix of hard white wheat and soft white wheat (or used a low-gluten flour for the soft wheat like spelt or einkorn). I've been gluten-free for 4-years as of Jan. 1. I now find the smell of bread repulsive. For me, flour was a poison to my body, and for many people it's an addiction. The two isles of the store I try to avoid are the detergent isle due to the onslaught of all the toxic fragrances, and the bread isle. Best of luck on your gluten-free journey. My best advise is to stay clear of processed gluten-free foods due to the high-glycemic flours and starches they are made from. I use coconut flour and nut flour for baking, and have recently added banana flour to the mix, along with milling my own gluten-free flours from a variety of grains/seeds/beans, and I keep rice flour and starches, which are common to all-purpose g-f mixes, to a minimum. When I use rice flour, I soak, sprout, and dry brown rice myself, and mill it into flour to reduce the arsenic found in rice. Nearly all commercial g-f mixes and foods contain cheap, high-glycemic, rice flour. So you are trading one issue - gluten - for another potential issue - blood glucose (and diabetes). I've even been considering a 10-day grain detox to see if I should also eliminate corn from my diet. But I need to get through today, and get the visiting family on their way back to their homes (12-hours away) before the snow storm hits Saturday, before I can even contemplate a detox plan (lol)! -Grainlady
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I know it's late but fyi, a vacuum sealer CAN be used successfully for soft items, like soft breads and such, even liquids. The trick for soft things is to take a fairly strong plastic container (Tupperware, Rubbermaid, Sterlite or what have you) and poke holes in the top of it so the air can get sucked out by the vacuum sealer. I'd guess the cheap "Ziploc" type containers would crush so be sure you use a heavier type. The intention is good but a friend tried to give me a treat by sending some of her cinnamon rolls and, well, stale rolls just are not a treat IMO. Especially considering the cost of FedEx, UPS, packaging, etc... well, I'd rather have the cash to buy something at a bakery! OTOH, I've had good luck with frozen items and can freeze them a week or two and they're very palatable. But that would require some dry ice to ship it. There again, there's a cost issue. But admittedly, I'm cheap. The other possibility is freeze the unbaked rolls then bake them up fresh. I'm sure there would be some loss in the process but as the old commercial went, hot from the oven beats cold from the box any day. Hope things worked out well and hope they enjoyed the treats.
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deborah_ps
18 years ago
last modified: 11 years ago
I too am one of those that admire your wealth of knowledge Grainlady.
My question for the day :))
What is in pudding that makes a cake so much richer? And could a person get the same results with other ingredients?
cookie8
Original Author
18 years ago
last modified: 11 years ago
Ouch, that hurt, just a loaf of bread. When I was pregnant with my 1st, I made a loaf of bread every week for about 3 months and none of them turned out! My husband's uncle and wife to visit when he was born and she made bread like that (hears snap in background). Yep, definitely research in order for me! I want to purchase The Bread Bible as I just got The Cake Bible and am very impressed - made my first homemade cakes - white and chocolate. So superior to my normal boxed ones! Thanks, I will keep at it and keep posting for tips and the sort.
grainlady_ks
18 years ago
last modified: 11 years ago
deborah ps - No surprise here, I use neither cake mixes NOR pudding mixes (they are simple to make them from scratch), so the two have never gotten together to make a "cake" in my kitchen. So no personal experience on the subject to draw on.

Here's some info. that made me thankful I use a 3:1 ratio of soft white wheat and oat groats to make wholegrain "cake flour" rather than use mixes or commercial cake flour that included flour that is bleached with chlorine gas.... I have avoided bleached flour for years and years, and for a good reason - I consider it as good as "poison".

A friend of a friend who delivers bleached flour in a huge tanker truck will put on a high-tech air-filtering mask before he discharges the load. Once the load is open, he runs to "safety" to avoid the off-gasing from the bleached flour. YUMMY!!! ...and we call it "food"!

Source: "Understanding Food and Principles and Preparation" ...commercial cake mixes have ingredients in them we don't use in homemade versions. Hydrophilic colloids such as gums and carboxymethyl cellulose, not to mention surfactants including monoglycerides, diglycerides, polysorbate 60, sorbitol--fatty acid esters, blycerol-lactic acid esters, and propylene glycol--fatty acid esters. These compounds improve texture and flavor, and aid in the emulsification of ingredients and the incorporation of air into the batter, which improves volume.

"On Food and Cooking" by Harold McGee: Commercial cake mixes often produce cakes whose lightness and tenderness are hard to match from scratch. This is due largely to two materials: chlorinated flour and fat emulsifiers. ...corporate laboratories have modifed these ingredients to precise specifications of particular cake formulas.

Flour chlorination, or strong bleaching with chlorine gas, has several unique effects, none very well understood. It alters the surface properties of starch and flour lipids and inhibits the gluten proteins from associating (bread flours are bleached, but never with chlorine). Chlorine-treated flour can tolerate more of the structure-enfeebling ingredients, sugar and shortening, than normal flour so can be made into sweeter, more tender cakes.

Emulsifiers are used in most vegetable shortenings to stabilize the fat-air form. In cakes, they prevent the shortening from reducing the volume of the structure by coalescing into large droplets, but emulsifiers help maintain an optimal droplet size. For a given level of shortening, then, the cake will rise to a greater volume with emulsifiers than it will without.

"Baking 9-1-1" by Sarah Phillips: (you can find more cake information at her EXCELLENT web site (www.baking911.com) ...Boxed cake mixes contain chemical emulsifiers, found naturally in egg yolks, which make them creamy and moist. Emulsifiers give cakes what is known as tolerance, the ability to keep their texture despite human error. Cake mixes also contain special leavening ingredients, which help them become fluffy regardless of the mixing technique used.
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I can only guess the extra sugar, starches and emulsifiers in the pudding mix contribute to that particular texture you are talking about. All ingredients, as well as the ratio of ingredients, coupled with mixing techniques, contribute to the end product.

-Grainlady
deborah_ps
18 years ago
last modified: 11 years ago
Thank you for the in depth explanation Grainlady :):)
msafirstein
18 years ago
last modified: 11 years ago
A friend of a friend who delivers bleached flour in a huge tanker truck will put on a high-tech air-filtering mask before he discharges the load. Once the load is open, he runs to "safety" to avoid the off-gasing from the bleached flour. YUMMY!!! ...and we call it "food"!

Creepy....and I'm not supposed to ever eat bleached flour due to some digestive issues. But I never did like the taste of bleached flour anyway...yucky!!

Michelle

Grainlady...

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