KitchenSavvy

A Pizza Find

For years, I have been trying to make a good thin crust pizza.  When my wife and I were in Italy several years ago, we really enjoyed a pizza we had in Rome, near the Trevi Fountain.  The crust was so thin and crisp that it was almost cracker like.

I tried everything I could think of to make a crust like that -- varying the water/flour ratios, making the dough with or without olive oil, rolling the crust thinner, using different oven temperatures, placing my pizza stone on a rack as high as possible in the oven, super-heating the pizza stone for a few minutes using the boiler before putting the pizza into the oven, even changing the order of ingredients on the pizza.  These all made some difference.  None of them gave the crust I was looking for.

Then, this past weekend, I pulled "Brother Juniper's Bread Book" by Peter Reinhart off the bookshelf and turned to his section on pizza.  In the inset on Memorable Pizza there was a suggestion I hadn't even thought of trying -- that the pizza stone should be put on the bottom shelf or even right on the floor of the oven and pre-heated for at least 20 minutes at 500°F (260°C) or higher.

Since I use parchment paper to keep the crust from sticking to my peel (actually an old piece of 1/8 inch plywood) I have to keep the temperature at or below 450°F (232°C), but I could certainly try putting my pizza stone on the floor of my oven.  My oven is electric, but the heating element is under the floor so that isn't a problem.  Other than that, I made a plain lean pizza dough with just water, flour, yeast and salt.  No fat, no sugar and no flavorings.  I rolled a thin crust and assembled the pizza in the traditional North American order of sauce, ingredients and finally the cheese on top, and baked it for 13 minutes.

I knew as soon as I sliced the pizza that this was the missing link.  I could hear the knife crunching through the crust.  The result was the cracker thin, crunchy crust I had been trying for.  Because the stone had been heated directly by the element, the crust cooked quickly, before the other ingredients could make it soggy, as sometimes happens.

I know there is still some room for improvement.  Next time, I need to let the dough relax a bit more as I roll it out, and I think I'll try adding a little oil.  Both of those should help the overall texture, but I'm pleased with the result so far.

So, if you have been trying for that thin crunchy crust too, try lowering your pizza stone.    It may just be the secret you are looking for.

If there is nothing to get in the way, try putting the stone right on the floor of the oven. If you have an electric oven with the element above the floor then you will need to use a rack in the lowest position and put the stone on that.   If you are worried about safety, or the warranty on your oven, you may prefer to use a rack at the lowest position.

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Due to the volume of questions received, not all can be answered.
© Lost Hobbit Enterprises 2004 onward

Making Cinnamon Rolls with Self-Rising Flour

I have a question about self-rising flour. I have a recipe that calls for yeast and warm water. I was wondering if I can substitute self-rising flour and avoid all the yeast and it's complications (like water at 110 degrees etc.)? The recipe is for cinnamon rolls.

Thank you so much for your help.

--Shannon

Self-rising flour is a lower protein all purpose flour with baking powder and salt added in.  The amount of salt varies by maker.

You could substitute self-rising for bread or regular all purpose flour but what you will end up with will be more like a cinnamon tea biscuit.  In bread making, proteins in the flour form glutens that trap carbon dioxide gas produced by the yeast, similar to a balloon filling with air, to make the product rise.  During baking, evaporation of alcohol also produced by fermentation of sugars by the yeast cause the bubbles to inflate further.  Because yeast produces lots of gas over a long period, the gluten structure is needed to trap the gas and make bread recipes work right.

Unlike bread, cakes, biscuits and cookies don't rely on gluten to trap gases.  Instead of releasing lots of gas over a long period, baking powder releases relatively less carbon dioxide fairly quickly, mostly as the product is baking.  Starch in the flour or proteins from other ingredients like eggs set as the gas is released.  A balance of ingredients, temperatures and timing need to work together to make the the product set.

Self-rising flour is used in cakes and biscuits, not breads, and shouldn't be kneaded like bread.  If you do knead it, any gluten that forms will work against the baking powder, resulting in less rise and a flat, tough result.  So if you replace the yeast and flour in your recipe, you shouldn't knead the dough, which in turn means that you will end up with a cake or biscuit like texture.

Beyond that, you will likely need to reduce the amount of liquid since lower protein flour absorbs less water.  The amount of water you want to use will be enough to make a dough the consistency of rolled biscuits.  You will also want to reduce the salt in the recipe if your self-rising flour contains salt.  The exact amount you need to reduce it by is not easy to predict but may be as much as 1/2 teaspoon per cup of flour.

You may find that you need to alter the amount of fat in the dough, too, to get a satisfactory texture.

Finally, you may need to increase or decrease the amount of sugar in the dough to get the right balance of flavors.

The exact amounts for all of these changes is hard to predict, since they depend on the initial recipe, as well as other factors and personal tastes.  A better starting point might be to begin with a recipe for rolled biscuits using self-risng flour and take it from there, rather than starting with a yeast recipe.

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Due to the volume of questions received, not all can be answered.
© Lost Hobbit Enterprises 2004 onward

Adding Eggs and Dry Ingredients in Baking

Why do you have to add eggs one at a time, or add liquid and dry ingredients alternately in baking?

--Mark & Nancy

Many cake and cookie recipes start by creaming together a solid fat, usually butter, and sugar.  After this they say to add the required number of eggs one at a time, incorporating each one before the next is added.  Then, the dry ingredients and other liquid ingredients are blended in, alternating dry and wet ingredients.   This is probably the most common procedure in home baking.

If you add the eggs one at a time and blend each of them in well, the fat will emulsify with the eggs, similar to making mayonnaise, only in this case you are adding the eggs to the fat rather than the other way around. 

And just like making mayonnaise, if you were to dump all of the eggs into the bowl at once and try to beat them together, it is much harder, if not impossible to get a smooth result.  Try that some time, and you may have the butter turn into grains that don't blend in.  This isn't fatal to making a cake, but could result in some larger pockets of fat that melt during cooking creating an uneven texture in the finished product.  Also, according to Shirley Corriher in BakeWise: The Hows and Whys of Successful Baking with Over 200 Magnificent Recipes if you over-beat the batter once the eggs are added, you may get a hard, shiny crust on top of your baking that separates from the rest of the food.  This is because the eggs have been beaten to a partial meringue.  If you add all of the eggs at once, you may blend the batter too long trying to get it smooth, resulting in this crust effect.

Once the eggs are incorporated, the instructions say to add some of the dry ingredients, which have already been blended together in a separate bowl, and then some of the other liquid ingredients.  Usually they say to alternate one third of the dry ingredients, one third of the liquid, and so on.  Sometimes it is by halves.

In baking, you want to avoid as much as possible the formation of gluten, which result from the combination of certain wheat flour proteins with water.  Because gluten is elastic, and because chemical leaveners are not very strong, any gluten that is formed will inhibit the rise of the baked product.  Gluten in cookies will make them tough and leathery.  Gluten is desirable in bread making, but not baking.

If you follow the typical instructions to alternate dry and wet, the first batch of dry ingredients you add gets coated with the fat, both from the butter or other fat, and the fat in the egg yolks.  The fat interferes with the formation of gluten.  From there you want to add liquids and dry ingredients mixing as little as possible while still getting everything evenly blended.  Too much mixing will cause more gluten to form, resulting in a denser, more bread-like loaf. 

If you dumped all of the dry ingredients in at once, the batter at that point would be very stiff and may be lumpy.  In an effort to get a smooth batter, you will likely mix enough to form lots of gluten.  On the other hand, if you added all of the liquid ingredients first, you wouldn't get the benefit of the fat interfering with gluten formation.  The balance is found in between, neither adding all of the dry ingredients first nor adding all of the wet ingredients first, but rather in alternating them according to the recipe.

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Due to the volume of questions received, not all can be answered.
© Lost Hobbit Enterprises 2004 onward

Creaming Butter II

My wife says I have to cream butter and sugar with electric beaters in one direction only. She says this will help incorporate the air into the mix and make it creamy.  I seem to be getting results moving the beater through the mix ad hoc. Is there any science to beating in one direction for the purposes of creaming butter?

--Ling

Because of its complexity and the fact that cooking has evolved over thousands of years, it tends to be filled with both sound, provable science and popular folklore.  For example, one similar "rule" is that you need to stir in one only direction when making a custard and that changing direction or  whisking in a random pattern will cause the custard to curdle.  I can say with certainty that the custard thing is false, because I never bother to stir in just one direction and my custards don't curdle.

I know of no science that would either support or disprove your wife's theory but looking over my various references, I can't find any that say creaming needs to be done by beating the ingredients in only one direction.

On the face of it, I also can't think of any good reason why it would be so.  As I explained in the posting "Creaming Butter" the purpose of creaming is to incorporate air into the butter to help leaven the final product.  According to Corriher, creaming is perhaps the most important step in making good cakes.  Air bubbles are incorporated both from the air trapped between grains of sugar when mixing starts, and then by air blended in by the mechanical action.  Neither of these would appear to depend on what direction the beaters move during blending.  In fact, at the level of the beaters, regardless of how you move your hand, one blade is going clockwise while the other goes counterclockwise!

To test whether the direction of beating makes a difference, you would need to compare cakes made by creaming the butter by beating in only one direction versus cakes made when the beating is in random directions.  You would need to be careful to control every other aspect of the cakes -- the ingredients would need to be accurately measured, the butter would need to be at the same temperature starting and ending, and the beating time would need to be the same duration.  The cakes would then need to be cooled to the same temperature and under the same conditions.

After all of that, what I'm guessing you would learn is more likely that there are so many steps, involving so many factors, that ascribing differences in the result to the direction in which the butter is creamed is too simplistic.

The bottom line is that if your "ad hoc" beating technique produces good cakes, then you have shown that direction doesn't matter.  Now, go and enjoy your cake.

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Due to the volume of questions received, not all can be answered.
© Lost Hobbit Enterprises 2004 onward

Out of Date Cake Mixes

I have several out of date cake mixes, probably about two years old.  I assume they would not rise properly as the baking powder in them has lost its potency.  Would they work if I added fresh baking powder?  What would be the proper amount, if so?   Thank you, although I suspect the answer will be, "try it and see."

--Geri

You are likely right that the potency of the baking powder will have lessened during the time the cake mixes have been sitting on the shelf.  How much potency has been lost depends on a number of factors, so it would be hard to estimate how much fresh baking powder would be needed to bring things back to where they should be.

But that may not be the only reason that the cake mixes are no longer good.

Pretty much all cake mixes contain fats that will go rancid with time.  It goes rancid through the oxidation of fat molecules.  This happens easiest in unsaturated fats.  Saturated and trans fats are less prone to oxidation but can undergo chemical changes that break the fat down into simpler molecules that can then oxidize.  Rancid fats have an unpleasant flavor and a sharp stinging odor that ruin the taste of foods, and may not be healthy to eat.

Another problem is that the flavor compounds such as vanilla, lemon, chocolate and so on, that are used in the cake mixes lose their potency over time.  An old cake mix may well taste more bland than a fresh one.

So, this time I wouldn't recommend a "try it and see" approach.  For food safety reasons, the motto "when in doubt, throw it out" comes more to mind in this case.

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Due to the volume of questions received, not all can be answered.
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Breadmaker Jewish Rye Bread

If you own an automatic breadmaker and are getting tired of the same old loaf with the paddle hole in the bottom, then you should try using it for something new.  I frequently use my bread maker as a mixer/proofer and then shape the loaf by hand to cook in the oven.

The following recipe is for Jewish-style rye bread, based rather loosely on the book Secrets of a Jewish Baker: Recipes for 125 Breads from Around the World by George Greenstein.  It reminds me of the caraway rye bread that my father used to like.  Somehow, when we were kids, Dad convinced my siblings and me that the best part of the bread was the heel - the crusty end of a loaf of bread.  Whenever there was a new loaf of bread, he would ask "Who want the end?"  Four voices would cry out, "I do, I do!"  Dad would make a big show of deciding who had yelled first, and then cut the end off the bread and hand it to one of us.  So, in honor of Dad ...

Breadmaker Jewish Rye Bread

This recipe is made to work with my Black & Decker B1630 Breadmaker, which can make loaves up to two pounds in size.  You may need to adjust it for your breadmaker.  The recipe has a starter, which is mixed and allowed to proof overnight, followed by making the actual dough.

Starter
Amount		Measure	Ingredient
1	¼	c	Rye Flour
1	⅓	c	Water
1		tsp	Active Dry Yeast
1		tsp	Caraway Seeds - optional
	¼	tsp	Onion Powder - optional
Dough
Amount		Measure	Ingredient
	⅓	c	Water
2		tsp	Salt
1		tsp	Caraway Seeds - optional
3	¼	c	White Flour
1		tsp	Active Dry Yeast

1. If using caraway seeds, start by grinding the teaspoon of caraway that goes into the starter mixture.  Following your breadmaker's instructions, add the ingredients for the starter.  As soon as mixing has completed, turn off the breadmaker, or unplug it.
2. Leave to proof at room temperature in the pan of the breadmaker overnight or up to 24 hours.  The longer it rests, the more sourdough flavor will develop.
3. Set the breadmaker to the dough setting and add the rest of the ingredients.  Allow to run through the entire dough setting.  If your machine doesn't have a dough setting, then just shut it off or unplug it after the dough is complete and has risen, but before it starts to cook, about 2 hours depending on your breadmaker.
4. Turn the dough out onto a lightly floured surface, punch it down and then shape into a round or elongated loaf.  Place onto a baking sheet or, if you have a large enough pizza stone to hold the loaf, put the loaf onto a piece of parchment paper.  Cover loosely with a lightly floured cloth and let rise until nearly doubled.
5. Meanwhile heat your oven to 375°F (190°C).
6. When the bread is ready to cook, uncover the loaf, using a sharp knife or razor blade make a few slashes in the top and place it in the oven.  If you are using a pizza stone, use a peal to transfer the loaf on its parchment paper onto the stone.
7. Cook for about 40 minutes, until brown and the loaf makes a hollow thump when tapped on the bottom, or until an instant read thermometer reads 205°F (96°C).

Per Slice: 82 Calories; trace Fat (3.3% calories from fat); 2g Protein; 17g Carbohydrate; 1g Dietary Fiber; 0mg Cholesterol; 179mg Sodium

NOTES:

1. During the resting period the top of the breadmaker pan can be covered with plastic wrap to prevent drying.  Do not operate the breadmaker with the plastic wrap in place.
2. If you want a shiny crust, typical of some rye breads, make a solution of 1 tablespoon of cornstarch to ½ cup of cold water.  Heat it in your microwave or on the stovetop, stirring occasionally, until it thickens.  Brush this solution onto the loaf just before slashing the top.

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Due to the volume of questions received, not all can be answered.
© Lost Hobbit Enterprises 2004 onward

A "Grate" Secret for Tender Biscuits

For years, I have heard of the technique of using frozen butter to make better biscuits.  It's one of those ideas that you say to yourself, "I'll have to try that some day," but somehow you just never get around to it.

By grating the frozen butter and then gently mixing it into the dry ingredients, you avoid having the butter soften to the point that it actually blends into the flour.  For light biscuits, you want flour and butter to be distinct, so that the flakes of butter melt and release steam into the dough, making it light and fluffy.  If the butter is melted into the flour during blending, this won't happen.  In addition, the shards of frozen butter trap some air due to their shape, which adds to the lightness of the finished product.

Recently Chef Michael Smith wrote an article for the Globe and Mail describing this technique.  Well, it finally was time.  This past weekend I made a beef stew, and decided to serve biscuits with it, using Chef Smith's technique.  To start though, I had to modify his recipe a bit because I had planned to make buttermilk biscuits.  Chef Smith's recipe called for plain milk.  To change the recipe, I had to replace some of the baking powder with baking soda to offset the acidity of the buttermilk.   The general rule is that you need about ½ teaspoon of baking soda per cup of buttermilk (see Baking Soda and Buttermilk).   A half teaspoon of baking soda will give the same rise as two teaspoons of baking powder.

Armed with these substitutions, I used the following recipe for my Biscuits:

               

Buttermilk Biscuits
2		cups	All-purpose flour
1	½	tsp	Baking Powder
	½	tsp	Baking Soda
	½	tsp	Salt
	¾	cup	Butter, frozen
7		fl. oz.	Buttermilk

1. Preheat your oven to 400°F (205°C).
2. Combine all of the dry ingredients in a mixing bowl and set aside.
3. Measure and set aside the cold buttermilk.
4. Using the large holes of a box grater, grate the frozen butter into shards.  Add the butter to the dry ingredients and then toss with a spoon just to blend, breaking up any clumps of butter that may have formed during the grating.  Do not over mix.
5. Pour in the buttermilk and stir in with a spoon, just until the ingredients pull together.  Turn the mixture out onto a lightly floured surface and knead the dough gently, just a few turns, to bring it together into a single mass.  If necessary add a bit more buttermilk or some water.
6. Shape the dough into a rough circle and cut into wedges, or roll out and cut to any desired shape.
7. Transfer the biscuits to a baking sheet that has been lightly coated with cooking spray and cook 15 to 20 minutes, or until golden brown.

Makes 8 to 12 biscuits.

If you want, you can brush the surface of the biscuits with milk to given a nicer finish when they are cooked.  Chef Smith suggests sprinkling them with coarse salt and fresh ground pepper before baking.

To make it easier to grate the butter without skinning your knuckles, start with a larger piece and mark the ¾ cup measure onto the block with a sharp knife.  Wrap the unused end in the paper the butter came in, and then grate down to the mark, holding the wrapped end.

This recipe uses regular, salted butter.  If you wish to use unsalted butter, increase the salt in the recipe by ¼ teaspoon.

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Due to the volume of questions received, not all can be answered.
© Lost Hobbit Enterprises 2004 onward

Creaming Butter

So many cake and cookie recipes say to cream together the butter and sugar.  Why is this done and how do I do it right?

--Amber

To cream butter means to beat it together with the sugar in the recipe until it is light in color and no sugar crystals are visible.  With white sugar, the butter will take on a light yellow color, almost white.  If your recipe uses brown sugar, then the color will turn to a light tan.  While it is possible to cream butter by hand, it is much faster and more convenient to use an electric mixer.  The purpose of creaming is to incorporate air into the butter to help leaven the final product.  According to Corriher, creaming is perhaps the most important step in making good cakes.

Creaming also softens the butter and makes it easier to blend with the other ingredients.

To cream butter properly, start with cold butter.  While some recipes say to start with butter that has been allowed to soften until nearly room temperature, this runs the risk of having it become too warm during mixing.  T0 trap air bubbles, it has to remain below its melting point of 68°F (20°C).

I usually start with butter straight out of the fridge which I rough cut into small cubes, maybe about a quarters of an inch (2 cm) to a side.  Exact size doesn't matter.  Put the butter into the mixing bowl and blend at slow speed until it starts to soften, then add the sugar.  Beat for 5 to 10 minutes, depending on the power and speed of your mixer.  As long as the butter remains cold enough, there is no risk to beating it for too long.

During beating, friction from the beater may warm the butter and it may start to melt.  If this happens, then put the mixing bowl and beaters into the fridge until the butter becomes firm again, about 15 to 30 minutes, and then pick up where you left off.

Remember during this step to stop occasionally and scrape down the sides of the bowl so that all of the butter is creamed, otherwise it may not blend completely with the other ingredients and could affect the quality of the final product.

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Crystals in Honey

A few days ago I was planning to make cookies using a recipe that had honey in it.  When I went to measure the honey, it had large grains of something in it.  What were these, how did they happen and what can I do?

--Jamie

The granules that form in liquid honey are precipitated crystals of glucose.  Honey is a supersaturated liquid, meaning that there is more sugar in it than can stay dissolved at room temperatures.  Slowly glucose molecules separate out from the water.  As they do so, more glucose and some other sugars attach to the forming crystals, making them grow larger.  This is similar to what happens when you make rock candy.

Many factors affect the formation of sugar crystal including moisture content, temperature and even the kind of flowers that the bees visited in gathering nectar to make honey.  A friend who used to process honey complained about the difficulty in making a smooth honey from hives that had been visiting Sainfoin flowers.  Sainfoin  honey is very sensitive to how it is processed and will deposit crystals quite easily.

The best way to avoid crystals is actually to store your honey at temperatures below 50°F (10°C), although this is not practical for home use as the fridge is considerably colder and makes honey too stiff to handle easily.  Temperatures above 50°F encourage crystallization.  At temperatures above 81°F (27°C), crystallization is avoided, but the heat causes the honey to degrade quickly.  Honey should kept in an airtight container at room temperatures, and used within a year or so.

To remove crystals that have formed, either place the container of honey in a bowl of hot water for 10 to 15 minutes or microwave it for about 30 seconds per cup.  Stir after heating to help dissolve crystals.  If necessary, repeat until the honey is smooth again.

Two things to keep in mind, though.  First, as noted above, when honey is heated over 81°F(27°C) it starts to degrade so repeatedly having to heat honey because new crystals have formed since the lat time you used it will decrease the quality and flavors of the honey.  If you find you are doing that, consider buying smaller quantities.

Second, your recipe likely calls for butter or perhaps shortening.  If you heat the honey to remove crystals and then go straight to making the cookies, the heat of the honey may melt the fat and dramatically affect the end result.  You should be sure to allow the honey to cool down completely before proceeding.

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Due to the volume of questions received, not all can be answered.
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Making Gingerbread Cookies Chewy

'Tis the holiday season.  I really enjoy gingerbread cookies, but  every time I make them, my gingerbread turns out hard and flat.  I was wondering what makes a cookie chewy, but not necessarily soft?

--Lindsay

The first thing you need to check is whether the gingerbread recipe you are using is one intended to be used for making gingerbread houses.  Cookies tend to swell and round off during cooking.  Some gingerbread recipes used for making houses try to avoid this by using a drier dough and less leavening so that the pieces will fit together after they are baked.  That makes for a hard, flat cookie that isn't very good for eating.

Assuming that you have a recipe for cookies that are to be eaten, then here are some things you can try:

• If the recipe uses only white sugar and molasses, try replacing some of the white sugar with either brown sugar or honey.  Both brown sugar and honey are hygroscopic, meaning that they will absorb moisture from the air.  Your cookies may come out of the oven hard, but over a day or so they will become more chewy.
• When you add the dry ingredients to the wet, stir as little as possible to get all of the ingredients mixed.  Over stirring can build glutens which will make the dough tougher.
• If you are using all-purpose or bread flour, try substituting cake flour for some or all of it.  Cake flour absorbs less water per volume than all-purpose or bread flour, leaving a moister dough that will rise better and and a cookie that crumbles more easily.
• Finally, if the only fat used in the recipe is butter, try replacing some of that with vegetable shortening.  Different fats will react in different ways during baking.  Be careful though, because butter contains 16% to 18% of its weight in water, whereas shortening has none.  If you substitute 1 for 1, your dough will be drier, so you may need to add some water.  If your recipe calls for a 1/2 cup of butter, try using 1/4 cup of butter and 1/4 cup of shortening plus two teaspoons of water.

Some resources suggest that if you let the cookie cool longer on the pan before moving them to a rack they will end up more chewy.  I can't see the reason this would work, but it may be worth a try.  Just remember that because the pan is at oven temperature, it will continue to cook the underside of the cookies even after they come out of the oven, so they may end up too dark on their bottoms.

As always, when you fiddle with ingredients, you may need to try several combinations until you get the result you want.  Once you have a recipe you like, though, be sure to share it with KitchenSavvy readers.

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Due to the volume of questions received, not all can be answered.
© Lost Hobbit Enterprises 2004 onward