Hey everybody. Well, how do you store your beautiful freshly baked country boule? I used to store mine in a plastic bag in the refrigerator. Now I don't due to learning that storing bread in the refrigerator actually makes it go stale faster (Thanks Jacob). So I have now moved to a plastic bag on my kitchen counter. I might switch to a paper bag sometime.
I would love to hear any tips and tricks from y'all.
Cheers,
Dave
Do all grains benefit from toasting? And a follow up to that, how dry do they have to be before toasting? I always rinse the extra starch off of my rice, quinoa, barley, Farro, etc., and I try to dry them the best I can. What is everyone's method for this? I tend to like the toasted flavor on more things, but for some things, like a Chinese style rice or something it isn't necessary.
Sound off!
Hi,
I see three basic approaches to roasting temperature:
1. One temperature throughout, say 180C - very common in books and on the web.
2. Start high finish low, say 200/220C then 180/160C - many chefs seem to recommend this.
3. start low finish high - I haven't come across this so often, till Jacobs comment in a thread on preheating roasting pans. He said start at 200/250F, which is 93/121C.
This seems unusually low to me. Even Greek style slow cooked lamb appears to be usually cooked at around 140/160C.
Is this a thing to do? I saw something somewhere that was saying how you should be preheating oven pans that you'd be roasting in. When i do a roast veggie dish, especially like carrot or other root stuff, i always mix it in the pan and then put in the cold pan. Does it make sense to heat up the pan in the oven and then go in with it?
I have two large hotel pans that i usually do roasted veg in, and some other pans as well. What's the deal?
Does anybody have experience using an induction cooktop?
I just played with one recently and it seemed pretty awesome. More control than my gas (so it seemed), efficient, fast.
Except for not being able to actually flame something up, I can't see any drawbacks.
Would love to hear opinions and experience. Thanks!
Prosciutto and melon is one of those age old flavor pairings. It's so common place, it almost has become cliche (although I'll never pass on prosciutto and melon, simply because it's so damn good).
I needed a new intermezzo for my tasting menu, and I was working with the watermelon scraps generated from out watermelon and pluot salad. I was starting down the path of gazpacho, and even got as far as blending the watermelon with some strawberries and filtering.
For about a year now, we've been doing various Lunch Lectures at Stella. The most recent was a four part series on French regional cooking. We construct a multi-course tasting menu paired with wine, and I give commentary on the food and do some demonstrations. The whole idea is to give attendees a solid overview of various techniques and approaches, while feeding them delicious food and wine.
Ah summer, time to fire up the smoker and get some ribs going low n' slow...
6 hours at 225-240, no foiling or spritzing.
Here's a glance at our daily bread production at Stella. From bottom left to right: challah (served with an order of coffee), "Everything Boule" (caramelized onions, poppy and sesame seeds, fennel), pre-formed sourdough baguettes, sourdough rye swirl, brioche, Eastern European Style Brown Bread.
Also not pictured, we do scallion-sesame brioche buns.