Oh that is very cool, Shambo!!!
I don't use anything else but my BTP coating mix. It's so easy and fun to make, and things just fall out of the pan.

I grease very lightly though, not sure of the "see the pan, need more grease" theory. Although one time I didn't do as good a job and one of my loaves of bread got a bald spot, when the some of the crust stayed in the pan. :-)

(raising hand over here) How do you use 100% shortening and 25% oil and 25% flour? Should that be 50% shortening? It's early and I haven't had a full cup of coffee yet. Am I just too foggy to catch on this morning?

I think of the formula as 'parts' i.e., 1 cup shortening to 1/4 cup oil to 1/4 cup flour or 1 part oil, 1 part flour to 4 parts shortening. I've used this in my bread baking in the past and it works very well. I would still be using it, but I 'feel the need for speed' when I'm baking for the farmers' market and so I've gone back to Pam.

Teresa

Mine is 1/2 cup each of shortening, oil and flour and it works fantastic.

If you do a lot of baking, it's worth mixing some of this stuff up. It's the best release agent I've ever used. You may need to go to a health food store to find the lecithin. This is healthy, too; no trans fat.

1 cup vegetable oil
1/2 cup lecithin (liquid or granular, but the liquid mixes up more readily)

Blend together in a blender, store in the fridge in a clean glass jar. Works great. This concoction is from 'Laurel's Kitchen Bread Book'.

Hmm....I just use cornmeal for bread....and butter for popovers and muffins, and parchment for cookies.

I mixed some BTB when I first read about it. Was going to use it for Christmas baking but got the flu and didn't bake. It's been in the pantry since then and my question is: How long will it keep? Bear in mind that, although this is the "cool season" for S.Texas, Summer is right around the corner. Will the heat and humidity affect the storage capabilities. Should I move it to the fridge and if so, does it just need to be stirred or should it be "whipped" again?

TIA

Pris

It will keep it the cupboard as long as any shortening will Pris.
If it separates due to the heat, just stir it and use.

Even here in the summer (Ontario) mine has separated. A quick stir and it works as good as new.

I've made this a number of times. It only makes a little container anyway. Depending on the amount you bake, or the season, a half-batch can even be made.

Is the consistency fluid enough to be brushed on? I'd like to give it a try. The lecithin one sounds interesting, too. Does it require flouring after application?

I ask because I often bake in my various bundt pans and getting the release agent into the detail is important. I tend to Pam and then flour or use Baker's Joy but Pam is drippy and Baker's Joy is both a bit expensive and makes me cough to use it.

I use either a brush or my fingers.
I use it in my bundt pan with no problems whatsoever.

I just think it's funny they'd publish a book with such a dumb mistake. I guess math wasn't their strong subject in school! HEEHEE!

Great, jasdip. Hopefully I can get back to my bread baking after the holiday is over. I need to make some cakes for family members too. This will be a big help. (I hate greasing and flouring. So messy.)

Arley, I've used liquid lecithin in the past as an emulsifier when I make my own low sodium/lower fat butter spread. When you use the lecithin/oil mixture in baking, does it ever leave a residue? I'm wondering about using the baker's formula and throwing in a couple of tablespoons of liquid lecithin for good measure.

Regarding the formula, Teresa is correct. The percentages are referring to parts. It's an example of professional bakers' special math and terminology. Many bakers work in percentages, especially when dealing with hydration. Quite a few recipes on "The Fresh Loaf" are written with hydration measurements. Here's an example:

Here is a link that might be useful: Bakers Math -- The Fresh Loaf

I've been using the BTP type concoction for several years....mine's 1/3, 1/3, 1/3 shortening, oil and flour but it works great. Just this week my husband cleaned out the fridge and threw it away, not knowing what it was. I made more today! :)

I don't think the math is a mistake...just another way to express parts of the total by weight/cups, etc...100% being the basis of the other percentages. This is from a pizza dough recipe from a "die hard" pizza dough forum. :)

Flour 100%
Salt 1.5%
Compressed yeast 1%
Water 68% (70F/21.1C)\

pfmastin, you're right about the formula. Since both you and Jasdip use equal amounts of flour, shortening and oil, your formulas would read:

flour = 100%
shortening = 100%
oil = 100%

The baker's formula mentioned above:
shortening = 100%
oil = 25%
flour = 25%

So if you started with a cup of shortening, both oil & flour would be 1/4 cup each.

If you started with a pound of shortening (16 oz.), then both oil & flour would be 4 oz each.

If you started with a tsp. of shortening, the oil & flour would be 1/4 tsp. each.

Actually, it's a pretty interesting way to increase or decrease certain recipes. Your comment about the die-hard pizza forum gave me a chuckle. It took me a while (and a few headaches) before I "got" the whole hydration & percentages thing. Even though I pretty much understand it now, I still mainly use cups & ounces.

I've used this pan release/pan coating for years. I think I originally found it on recipezaar...it lasts months and months and months and months in the fridge. I keep it in a tupperware container in the fridge.

1/2 cup corn oil or canola oil or vegetable oil
1/2 cup vegetable shortening, room temperature (Crisco shortening is good)
1/2 cup all-purpose flour

Place all ingredients in a mixing bowl.
Using an electric mixer beat until mixture has increased in volume slightly and resembles marshmallow cream.
The mixture might separate slightly so if it does, mix with a fork before using, then brush pans using a pastry brush or a clean paper towel or use your fingers.
:O)
Sooz

That's exactly the recipe I use Sooz, but I don't refrigerate it. It keeps forever in the cupboard.

Some other people wondered if lard can be used and if has to be refrigerated. I've never used it with lard, but I don't know why not.

I'm glad recipes are NOT in %'s because I would have no idea what the pizza recipe would be...for instance if you used 2 cups of flour, how much would 1.5% of 2 cups be (if 2 cups equals 100%)? Or how much is 68% of 2 cups? Now that would take some math know how!

I guess if you accept the "math" of 100"%" + 25"%" + 25"%" = 100"%", then that explains to me how Maury's circus performers can be "150% sure he's dababydaddy..."!

I was taught that going over 100% could be done in a comparison, i.e. this year's sales are 150% of last years. But I don't quite follow that 100% of the recipe's ingredients will be flour, then 25% will be something else, etc. Sounds to me that people are using the "%" symbol as an abbreviation for the term "parts" and as we all know, parts is parts. I've seen symbols misused before. For instance I've seen people log 1' 15" as 1 hour 15 minutes. Methinks this is what's happening.

I was just pondering what a court would do with a Will that said something like:
100% of my estate to Person A;
1.5% of my estate to Person B;
1% to Person C; and
68% to Person D

I have a feeling I know what they'd do! :)

As to the question of the lecithin mix: I never floured the pan after using it. Seemed to release well without flouring.

Some of the math contradictions come from the baker's percentage system, which considers all other ingredients as a percentage of the flour used. This system developed from the custom of bakeries using 100 pound sacks of flour. If you had a dough that was, say, 62% hydration, that meant for every 100 pounds of flour you needed 62 pounds of water. In accurate terms, the water is not 62% of the dough, but rather 62/162, or around 38%.

However, if you get into breadmaking big time, you'll find that it makes it really easy if you do four things: get a good scale that can read in grams and has a tare function, measure ingredients by weight rather than volume, use the metric system, and think in terms of the baker's percentage (i.e., list all other ingredients as a percentage of the flour used). If you know that the last batch of bread which turned out really good had a 60% hydration, here's how to replicate it: you put a bowl on the scale, hit tare to zero the scale, dump in the flour and weigh it, calculate what 60% of that weight is, hit tare to zero it again, and pour in water until the scale reads what that 60% figure was.

When I read the recipe, I understood that "100 per cent shortening" meant that the shortening was not mixed with anything else. I read the 25 per cent portions as percentage of the recipe and therefore came out with a recipe that is two parts of 100 per cent shortening, one part vegetable oil, and one part flour. I'm not buying the "100 per cent" means one cup! However, I think I like the lecithin recipe better.

Lars

Wow! I never thought this post would turn into a discussion of baker's math! I think arley explained it well: "... the baker's percentage system, which considers all other ingredients as a percentage of the flour used." That's the starting point for the percentages -- whatever the amount of flour is (whether 1 cup or 1 pound) THAT will be the 100%. It's "Baker's Math" not arithmetic math.

From "The Fresh Loaf" Website:

"Math?! Yes! Professional bakers don't usually talk about recipes, but rather about formulas. Bread is all about proportions, and baker's math is a way of breaking down ingredients into these proportions so that you can scale up or down as needed. It also makes baking much easier because, once you understand the basic proportions, you can freely mix and match ingredients to invent all kinds of breads on your own.

"It's not necessary to learn baker's math to bake good bread, of course, but it can expand your ability to mix and match ingredients and break free of recipes to create your own formulas.

"In baker's math, every ingredient is expressed in terms of the flour weight, which is always expressed as 100 percent."

Don't get me wrong. I don't use this method because my pipsqueak brain cannot handle it. But I can understand how this system would be helpful to professional bakers and also those "die-hard" home bakers that keep pushing the envelope on hydration, looking for the perfect artisan bread with both tons of hole & chewiness and adequate structure.

Here is a link that might be useful: Baker's Math Article