It's highly likely the lactic acid bacteria in your starter (these were living on the wheat in the field, some maybe from your hands) are more active than the yeasts. You need to dilute the acid out of the starter, feed it more often and keep the whole shebang above 16°C, preferably 18-20°C (although you can still store it in the fridge). Low acidity, more feeding and 18-20°C will raise the activity level of the yeasts relative to the bacteria and generally keep the yeast enzymes, bacteria enzymes and wheat enzymes in harmony.
Consider Ed Wood's "washing" process, it's a very effective starter management procedure. It's going to be a bit different for a mother dough method but the ideas are still the same. I've written about this here before but for somewhat different questions.
Don't pour off the hooch. This stuff is the dark liquid that forms on top of a starter when dormant in the fridge. It is protective (acids, alcohols and enzymes) for you and the microflora, and helps the microflora digest food. It actually increases starter activity. Ed Wood says the starter is contaminated if the hooch forms in the middle or the bottom.
Don't worry about weighing exact amounts of flour and water when you're feeding it. Just focus on the sourness and the consistency. A thicker consistency gives a home cook more flexibility with time and it's easier to gauge the activity level.
Molds are really quite slow compared to yeast and bacteria, especially with hooch retention. The starter has to sit there for a long time to become moldy.
Ed Wood's Washing Process

Stir hooch into starter.
Increase the volume 3-5 times with tepid water
Stir until homogeneous
Pour off 4/5ths of it
Tip in flour and stir until homogeneous
If not a consistency you like then add more flour or water and stir.
Wait until it has risen double or triple, don't worry about how long it takes.
Repeat several times if it still tastes sour.

Good Luck


The main concern with smoking large whole turkeys is that heat may not get into the cavity, so the inside may not get up to temperature fast enough. When you spatchcock a turkey the heat can get to both sides evenly, so you take away this problem and a 20lb turkey should be fine. Kamado Joes (I have a Classic 2) have excellent heat circulation so I wouldn't expect you to have a problem with a whole one, but spatchcocking will give you better results.


When baking, is it better to use a gas or electric oven?

For baking cakes and breads it is important to control the humidity in the oven. In early stages of baking one typically needs the humidity to remain in the baking chamber, which is hard to do with a gas oven.  Two of the bakeries near my house use electric ovens with brick lined baking chambers; the other uses gas.

Expansion

Gas and electric ovens can be built to bake the same way if cost is not an issue.  Most home gas ovens will circulate the combustion products (mainly water vapor and carbon dioxide) in the cooking chamber.  As the flames burn, combustion products need to be vented out of the baking chamber.  Electric ovens also need vents in the baking chamber to help maintain the pressure as the air inside expands.

Steam is essential in the initial stages of baking for good crust formation in breads and crack-free cake surfaces. The oven cavity can hold much more steam than released from the gas combustion and it is my inference that the steam content of an electric oven will be higher  (I cannot find published steam measurements inside ovens). After the dough expansion, the vapor coming off of the dough or batter needs to removed quickly for browning and for the inside to cook well.  The constant flow in a gas oven makes it better at that. In an electric oven a peep or two during the last baking stages will handle excess moisture.

Two bakeries near my house use electric ovens, the other, which makes excellent French baguettes, uses a gas oven.  The baker there has had both electric and gas ovens and he prefers the caramelization of the gas oven.  But note that he can handle the moisture problem with the steam injector of his professional gas oven.  He also noted that using gas ovens require skill as they have temperature and moisture quirks.

Recipes may be adapted to either gas or electric ovens.  In the US the majority of recipes are designed for the electric oven (they're more popular).


Acetate sheets or strips should not be heated, so do not use them to line a pan that will be put into the oven.


Perfectly safe.

From the Henning's Market FAQ:

  The shiny, greenish, rainbow like color on sliced ham is a sign of oxidation that occurs when the meat is exposed to the metal on a knife or slicer. The nitrate-modified iron content of the meat undergoes a chemical change that alters the hams pigmentation. This effect can also be seen in sliced beef, such as roast beef. It is not an indication of spoilage.

And also see this Daily Mail article "Revealed: Why you sometimes see the most spectacular rainbows in a slice of beef":

  On the USDA website under the heading ‘Iridescent Color of Roast Beef’, this strange phenomenon is explained to be in fact perfectly natural and caused by iron and fat that exists in meats such as roast beef and processed ham.
  According to the USDA, when light hits a slice of meat it splits into colors like a rainbow due to the elements present in the meat and this is called a ‘diffraction grating’.
  There are also various pigments in meat compounds which give it an iridescent or greenish cast when exposed to heat and processing.


Is there a way to stop marshmallows from melting off the stick?

If you can, just get better marshmallow skewers/forks. If there are two prongs on the end, the marshmallow can't rotate. (And as long as you're not holding it at a really steep angle, they'll have a hard time sliding off the end too.)

You can get fancy ones with nice handles, but just plain metal is fine. And it doesn't have to be super strong, so you can probably even just make some out of reasonably thick/stiff wire or metal coat hangers.

The ones I grew up using (for marshmallows and hot dogs) looked like this:

(though I always put the marshmallows on straight).

I couldn't quickly find a picture of exactly the same shape, but if you're wanting to try to make your own, this is what I'd go for:

<===>----------<===

A loop on the end to give you something to hold, then repeated twists through the middle section to make it stronger, then opening up into the two-pronged fork on the end!


Why running tap water over mussels not kill them, but soaking does?

Rinsing them doesn't kill them because a small amount of fresh water isn't toxic to them and, even if it were, the mussels aren't going to absorb much from a quick rinse. I've not seen this instruction about keeping them under running water other than to clean them. It makes sense during the scrubbing process but not as much as a holding method since mussels are just fine out of water for a few days, let alone the time between cleaning and cooking.
The line in the Serious Eats quote doesn't mean that the mussels are soaked in fresh water. It's clean water - meaning water free of silt. But it's still saltwater and it's done professionally, knowing how to preserve the mussels - which someone in a home may not.
A company that sells mussels offers the following:

Don't soak in water
Don't immerse them in water - fresh or salt. Freshwater will kill them; if left for too long in static salt water the mussels will use up the oxygen and suffocate. This practice used to be done to purge the mussel of any grit, these days all commercial mussel have been purged and purified in a UV deputation system.

You'll note the emphasis here is static salt water. Moving, oxygenated salt water is fine but people don't generally have the ability to do this in their home (I suppose unless they have a saltwater fish tank).
The end result is - lots of people have different methodologies for cleaning mussels. What it sounds like from both Serious Eats and The Cornish Mussel Shack (and many other places on the web) is that soaking (whether in fresh- or salt-water) is an outdated practice unless you're using wild-caught mussels (presumably including ones you've collected yourself).


How to minimize smoke/liquid output when roasting chicken?

As far as smoking: Use a roasting rack in the pan, and put enough water in the pan to not allow the dripping fat to burn. Keep the chicken above the water and check the water level during roasting.

As far as the liquid exuded: Be sure that you are using a chicken that has not been "pre-basted" (injected with a flavor/sodium solution). Slash the skin of the chicken, especially the dark meat, before roasting. That will give extra liquid an avenue for escape. Don't slash the breast meat, as that will likely dry out the chicken before it is done.


If you're going to store anything leafy in a plastic bag, I wrap it first in a paper towel, then in the plastic bag, so none of the leaves touch the bag.  This prevents the issue where the outer leaves turn to goo.  (I'm not sure what the actual biological issue is ... moisture/condensation? poor respiration?)

Don't wash it before storage, as the extra moisture will cause it to rot faster.

I think I've gotten as long as a month out of flat leaf parsley, when I buried them in the back of my crisper drawer and forgot about them.  (of course, I wasn't constantly opening the bag as you would when using them, and I'm not sure exactly when I placed it in there, as I had forgotten about it).


The simplest answer is: buy the Pike coffee blend from Starbucks, they sell their beans.

Brew it at home with any method you prefer.  The coffee maker you use is a matter of preference.  Starbucks themselves use a large drip pot, which is the most common home type.

If you want to avoid using Starbucks beans, from the description of the roast (I haven't tasted it in quite a while, and it didn't make an impression), it sounds like a mountain grown coffee, something like Kenyan would be a good choice.  Since they describe it as low acidity, I am guessing that it might be somewhat less over-roasted than Starbucks coffee usually is, so I would suggest a Full City Roast, or perhaps a Vienna roast.

Its certainly a blend, so no single bean will replicate it.  I would suggest finding a blend from a reputable coffee roaster that you like, or simply buying the Pike blend from Starbucks.


Is there a difference between paneer butter masala, matar paneer, malai kofta gravy?

Paneer butter masala, malai kofta gravy and matar paneer are part of the North Indian cuisine where the base is mostly the same with some minor variations (like excluding cumin seeds).

So essentially, you have a common base gravy for sweeter dishes like these and then you have a spicier gravy for other dishes.
Many Indian cuisines have this pattern. For example, Gujarati cuisine will have red chili powder, turmeric, garlic-ginger, mustard seeds, cumin powder, fenugreek, cilantro and jaggery, etc. as a general base with some additions and subtractions of the vegetable ingredients.
Similarly, you'll be able to find common base gravies across Indian recipes and cuisines.

But, when you say:
"In addition - It seems to me that the same thing could be said about aloo gobi, chana masala, baingan bharta, and many other dishes - Basically the same frying of onions, ginger garlic paste and tomatoes, but with a different ingredient added at the end (for example eggplant for baingan bharta)."

You are making a generalization which is not necessarily true. These recipes can vary quite a bit based on regional tastes, specially baingan ka bharta. This dish is a signature dish and needs a seasoned hand to deliver it right.

So, you are right when you say there is a common pattern across recipes.
But certain dishes like aloo gobi will exist in different forms across the country. But rest assured malai kofta, paneer butter masala and matar paneer are only prepared in the North Indian style.


Method of canning without pressure canner?

Without a canner you are limited to canning high-acid foods.

Botulism spores don't die at 212F, the boiling point of water. A pressure canner boiling water at 15PSI raises the boiling point to 250F or so which will kill the spores.

The bacterium cannot grow in a high acid environment and so high-acid foods such as fruit and pickles do not need to be processed in a pressure canner. Look for recipes for such foods. As use2199 said they will involve boiling the jars for a while to kill things.

An excellent resource is the Ball Blue Book that can often be found near the canning supplies in grocery stores. It always calls for Ball products of course but it has a ton of good canning recipes and instructions.

Don't experiment. Botulism is not a fun thing. Your lips get tingly and then you die shortly aftwards.


Removing white Corrosion on my rice cooker heating element

From your brief description, it appears that you have a deposit of (lime)scale on your heating element.  Scale is mainly calcium carbonate and is commonly formed due to hard water.  It is often found in kettles, coffee makers, etc. which use hard water.
The usual way of dealing with it is to run the appliance with vinegar in place of or in addition to the water.
If what you have is actually corrosion of the element, indicated by dissolution of the element, then I would be hesitant to use the rice maker.


What nutritional changes occur to vegetables when you roast them?

1. The main nutrients destroyed by heating are vitamins from B complex and vitamin C (possible loss 50-70%). (NutritionData: Nutritional effects of food processing). The extent of this effect depends on the temperature, so roasting in oil can have more negative effect than cooking in water.

2. Minerals, such as potassium, are not destroyed by heating, but they can leak into the cooking water. So, boiled potatoes can have less potassium than roasted.

Boiled potatoes, in skin (1/2 cup, 78 g): 296 mg (USDA.gov)
Baked potatoes, in skin [should be similar to roasted, I couldn't find]: (80 g): 440 mg (USDA.gov)

A side note: sodium partially counteracts the effects of potassium in your body, so if you worry about potassium intake you may also worry about salt intake. (Advances in Nutrition)

3. Oil slows down stomach emptying thus slowing carbohydrate absorption and therefore lowering the glycemic index of a given roasted vegetable. Anyway, this sounds as overthinking to me. From the other viewpoint, roasted foods are heavier for the stomach, so they can increase the discomfort after meals.

4. Heating disinfects foods and makes them more digestible. I'm not aware that roasting in oil would be better in this regard than boiling in water. Roasted potatoes will retain more potassium than the boiled ones, but this alone is not already a "beneficial health effect." On the other hand you may consume more calories than intended vegetables roasted on oil.

5. Cooking, cooling and reheating can increase the amount of resistant starch in the food; this would, obviously, have a significant effect only in starchy vegetables (potatoes, red kidney beans, chickpeas) rather in greens (Nutrients Review). I have not found any reliable information about significant health benefits of resistant starches, anyway.

My conclusion:

I do not consider roasting healthier than cooking in water (boiling): more vitamins destroyed, heavier stomach after meals, greater unnecessary calorie intake from oil.


How do I finely strain fresh coconut milk?

Alton Brown made coconut milk on his show Good Eats a few years ago, and he suggested using a clean tea towel and squeezing the pulp until it has given up all the liquid.

Here is more on it: http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/alton-brown/coconut-milk-and-cream-recipe/index.html


Lightly defrost chicken in microwave to separate them

What you have done is fine. Not only are you not facing a safety issue, but because you didn't allow the piece that was to be refrozen to completely thaw, you're unlikely to even face the quality issues that refreezing poultry often sees. (Refreezing poultry tends to play a bit of havoc with the texture)

One small thing...our grandmothers rinsed chicken. It has been definitively shown that rinsing chicken (purchased from a reputable store) is unnecessary, and may actually do more harm than good because it doesn't significantly reduce pathogens on the surface of the chicken, but it will spread those pathogens (if present) around your kitchen.

Related: Cooking, freezing, recooking, and refreezing chicken


Are Chives and Green Onions the same thing?

They're not the same thing, as they're a different plant, but they're part of the same family. You might be able to substitute the tops of green onions (scallion, spring onion) in place of chives in small quanities.

Chives tend to be smaller and more tender, typically used raw, and only the green portion is used.  Green onions often use both the whites and the green part, has a more pronounced flavor, and is used both cooked and raw.

So, if you're going to substitute chives for green onion -- use the greens only, and reduce the amount.

If you're going to go the other way, you'll want to look to see what parts are being used.  If it's the whites of the green onion you need, use regular white onion, if it's the greens, then you can try chives, but add them as late as you can in the cooking process, and if it was to be used raw, you might need to increase the amount.


How to conserve eatables in humid and moist environment?

There is nothing you can do about the food and keep it the same. So you will have to change the environment. The easiest way would be to get a fridge capable of supporting temperatures in the 15 to 20 Celsius range and use it as a pantry. It will be cool, dark and dry, so the ideal pantry environment. If you have the space, you can choose to keep it in your normal fridge or freezer instead.

The one category for which making conserves will work is fruit and vegetables. So instead of storing apricots, you can cook apricot jam. This has the downsides of 1) the end product being very different from the original, and 2) not being applicable to typical pantry items like your rusk. So you still need to find suitable storage space for those. There is no way to simply stop them being affected by the environment.


Is it possible to make yoghurt at home with dairy-free milks (soy, coconut, etc)?

Yes, you can.  You just have to use a culture that can be used on vegetable milks.  The method is basically the same as with regular yogurt.


What physically/chemically happens to a vegetable when it is cooked?

The main difference is the degradation of cell walls. The human digestive system does indeed struggle to break down the cellulose in cell walls, meaning that we are far more efficient in getting nutrients from vegetables when they are cooked.

That doesn't mean however that cooked veggies are always more nutritious than raw ones. There is actually quite a bit of debate on that and some people even eat raw foods exclusively.

Your question is actually very similar to this earlier question on this site. You might find some useful insights there.


The fruit is probably not fermenting. That alcohol level will kill most bacteria and mold, and while it wouldn't be entirely out of reach of acetic acid bacteria, the floating is much more likely to simply be caused by the segments absorbing ethanol and becoming more buoyant.

I would expect the liquid to taste fine, though I think you could get better and more convenient results by just adding some fresh mandarin juice to vodka. When liquor is infused with citrus fruits, one generally uses the peel (or at least the zest) as well or instead, because the ethanol is effective at absorbing the aroma compounds in them. Limoncello, for instance, is made from lemon zest, and Campari is made from whole chinotto.

In fact, if I saw a kilo of mandarin segments soaking in 500 mL of vodka, I'd assume that the primary purpose was to infuse the segments for eating. (I've seen this preparation called "tipsy oranges".) Of course, you can also drink the liquid. :)


What is leftover in the pulp after making oat milk and how can you use it?

Yes, most of the fat, starch and flavour of the oats ends up in the milk, so what you have left is mostly fibre. Dough or batter made from it won't gelatinize much if at all, so will not hold together when cooked like regular oat flour.
Sometimes I add the residue to baked goods (along with wheat flour) in small quantities. It seems to work OK in cakes and soda bread (where a soft texture is desirable), but I need more oil than usual to get a good taste.
I also make quick raw snack balls out of it. I grind 1 part of it with 1-2 parts nuts and/or seeds (usually almonds, walnuts, sunflower seeds) and then I either add dried fruits and/or sugar and sweet flavourings like vanilla, cinnamon, nutmeg, cardamom or dry ginger, OR I add salt, chilli powder and herbs for savoury snacks.
I have also successfully tried mixing it with oats (using about 1 part residue to 3 parts oats) for making oatmeal/porridge or flapjack. I add some desiccated coconut to these dishes to compensate for the lower fat content and blandness of the oat residue.
To be honest, I feel it's not much use as anything but a bulking agent since most of the nutrients and tastiness have been extracted.


You don't need to defrost it, you can add cold roux directly to a boiling liquid.  To avoid lumps from the roux, most cooks suggest you either add cold roux to a hot sauce, or cold liquid to hot roux.

If you heat the roux gradually with the liquid you may get lumps, and don't get a good impression of how much thickening is going on until it heats fully.


How does adding one ingredient to a dish prevent another from burning?

There is only one way that adding an ingredient prevents another one from burning: it brings down the temperature.
Usually this is because the added ingredient has a lot of moisture in it.  Boiling off water, whether that water is in liquid or inside an ingredient like onions, requires a lot of heat energy, and while the water is being boiled off, the temperature of the cooking vessel drops towards 100C.
That's the case with the ginger in that recipe; ginger has water in it, and that water has to steam off, and will lower the oil temperature.  However, since the ginger doesn't have much mass, it won't lower it very much or for very long ... which is why the chef adds the sliced potatoes less than 30 seconds later.  The potatoes also have a lot of water, and they have a lot more mass.
Sometimes the ingredient will also lower the temperature because it is cold, and is being added to a cooking vessel with the heat turned off.  A common example of this is adding cold butter to finish a sauce.
Now, sometimes online chefs will tell you "add X to prevent Y from burning" wholly inaccurately.  If the added ingredient doesn't follow one or both of the criteria above, they're talking nonsense.


How hot is the bottom of a pot of boiling water?

At a full boil, the water and steam will all be 100C, even close to the bottom, so you'll be totally fine if the bag's just in the water. (With a big bag obstructing the flow, it may be a bit less than 100C at the surface, but I don't think that's a concern for you.)

If a significant area of the bag touches the bottom, all bets are pretty much off. At that point, there's no water there to hold the temperature down. Food burns when it sticks to the bottom of pots, even with boiling liquid around elsewhere, so I wouldn't be surprised if it can reach 400F.

So I'd do like Wayfaring Stranger suggested in comments: just keep the bag off the bottom. You basically want a canning rack, but all that really matters is that it's something that's mostly open space, so water can flow around (i.e. not a plate) but solid enough to hold things up.

Some makeshift canning rack substitutes would work too:

a bunch of jar rings (for canning racks, people usually tie them together, but for a one-off you might be able to do without)
something made out of crumpled/rolled up aluminum foil
any kind of oven rack that fits in your pot
a bunch of rocks or anything else heat-safe that sinks in water


Chocolate and cocoa powder are two different things

For drinks go with cocoa powder (Dutch process). Emulsifying the fat in chocolate is pointless and not particularly tasty. Chocolate is about 40% to 60% fat, cocoa powder is 10% to 20% fat

For the chocolate milk taste you generally want the milk fat favours, not the cocoa fat

If your cocoa powder is not bright enough, adding a little coffee will help, as will a little more roasting of the cocoa powder, but be careful, it burns quickly. I think many commercial chocolate milks use a little salt (Sodium or Ammonium) as a brightener**

In some countries you can buy "extra" or "premium dutch process" cocoa powder, it is very dark in colour, and has a lot more of that dark chocolate style flavour

**  The "that tastes nice and different" reaction


Liquid Nitrogen Ice cream Melting too fast!

I used to use a cream and condensed milk recipe to make LN ice cream. It sounds like you're not using enough LN - while you should end up with something scoopable it takes quite a bit of beating to get there.

We tended to work as a team, with one (often me) beating as someone else slowly poured in the LN. This minimised solid lumps (which then needed to be beaten back in). Getting it slightly too hard and then allowing it to soften to the desired texture seems to work well.

In this case I'm the one holding the bowl, while one person stirs and another pours.

You're also probably making it harder for yourself using milk, as the high water content means you'll form much more solid ice.


Sous Vide time for 1.5 lb 1 inch thick bone-in chuck roast at 140F

It takes very roughly 81 minutes for your meat to reach the 140F cooking temperature assuming you have just the meat and no marinade in the bag, and no part of the meat is frozen. The rest is all steady state cooking time. Based on my own experience, I am inclined to say that if there is any difference in texture and flavour between 12 hours and 24 hours, it is subtle to the extent that it may be noticeable in a side-by-side comparison.


how to ensure carrot pieces stay longer in the refrigerator?

Sounds like fermentation to me. Without some preservative (salt or acid like vinegar, for example), you're going to pick up some bacteria out of the air and they'll eventually have their way with your food. You can't expect cooked vegetables to last but so long in the refrigerator, especially unpreserved food that you're dipping back into regularly.

I'm curious why you feel the need to cook a week's worth of carrot in one go. As I'm sure you know, blanching doesn't take all that long. Surely you could just cook one or two days' worth at a time, and know that while you'll have to cook your carrot more often, you will also have a lot less risk of having to throw any spoiled carrot out.

That's the solution I'd recommend.


When heated, sugar will caramelize and turn into caramel. No other ingredients are required.

According to Harold McGee in On Food and Cooking published by Scribner, 2004, p. 688:

  Caramel is first of all the brown, sweet, aromatic syrup produced in caramelization, which may be used as a coloring and/or flavoring ingredient in many preparations. But cooks use the same word to mean the combination of caramelized sugar and various milk products, ideally cream, which are mixed while the sugar is still hot so that the milk solids are browned and generate color and aroma as well.


What pros and cons two-sided grill has if compare to pan?

The double-sided grills are pretty much a one-trick pony. Add food in the middle, close, wait, remove food again. Admittedly you can subject various foods to the treatment, but in the end, you get similar results, hot food with sear marks.

As soon as you want something slightly different, you are outside the thingy’s capacity. Just a few things you can do with a pan, but not with a panini / contact grill:

Stir-fry (meat or veggies quickly tossed around to flash-cook)
Deglazing (to use the searing residue in sauces)
Braising (adding liquid to finish cooking your dish in wet heat)
Frying/scrambling an egg (maybe possible if you can lay the grill flat and it has flat plates)
Cooking foods with different thicknesses and cooking times.
...

You probably get the idea. Now, I am not saying that a grill like the one in your question is useless. But remember that it’s the way more specialized tool in comparison to something as basic and versatile as a regular pan. If you are going to serve steak or grilled sandwiches on a very regular basis and if you don’t mind the cleanup (one word: grooves...), it may be an interesting investment. But I would guess that most cooks will rather reach for their trusty pan.


Is it too dangerous to smoke a stuffed turkey?

I've had delicious hot smoked/grilled turkey, which was brined first (not stuffed).  However, stuffing always becomes a problem with turkey.  Whether you smoke, or cook in the oven, you are going to over cook the white meat by the time the center of your stuffing is at a safe temperature.  You can certainly make it safe by using the appropriate temperature, time, and measuring with a thermometer. ...and, brining can help retain moisture.  Having to wait for the center of the stuffing to reach a safe temperature means that the question will be, how overcooked can you stand your turkey meat?


Which method of cooking does the age of the egg matter least?

Actually, hard boiling is one of the recommended uses for older eggs, since older eggs are much easier to peel.

I'd highly recommend against using old eggs if you were going to whip the whites, for example, or any other heavy "structural" application. Quiche would probably be fine.


If you really want to color oil, then oil-based food coloring would probably be the most straightforward thing. You should be able to get enough colors to mix to get the brown you want.

That said, I'm not sure how oil is ever going to be a chocolate look-alike. It might be the same color, but even melted chocolate is way thicker than oil; they aren't really going to look the same even if you get the color right.


Is it possible to make a beverage that evaporates on contact with the consumer's tongue?

In the Star Trek world you have plenty of beings with body temperatures higher or lower than humans, so if you had a being with a body temp of 79C then ethanol would work out perfectly! However, with humans the liquid which would fit the bill of vaporizing just below body temperature would be Pentane, which not only smells bad but is also toxic. The science behind it is wrong anyway, you'd want a liquid with a much lower vaporization point than body temperature so it would boil off quickly. If you pick a liquid that boils just below body temperature it would take some time to vaporize and you wouldn't have the same effect.
All is not completely lost, you can still have some cool effects with liquids that are safe for consumption. What you have to remember is that the closer a liquid gets to its boiling point the more it evaporates, and any volatiles in it will tend to remain suspended in the vapor and be detectable by the nose. This is the effect you get when you sniff brandy or cognac that has been brought up to body temperature. You can savor it by holding it on the tongue for a few seconds and letting the vapors fill your nasal cavity. So all you need is some strong (at least 80 proof) and flavored (or more accurately scented) alcohol, and the right glasses. Brandy snifters would work best as they are designed to capture the vapors so they can be inhaled. You could then heat the liquid to just above human body temperature and then serve.
Keep the quantities served down unless you want some very drunk guests!


By toaster I am assuming you mean the type that has slots that you pop the bread into from the top.  Normally they also have a removable tray at the bottom, which you say you have taken out and cleaned.  Shaking does normally work, but this can also lead to breakage...  so maybe not quite so vigorously would be a good idea.  I don't understand why you have butter inside your toaster, but that is irrelevant now - so how to clean it.  I would suggest opening some windows, and getting the toaster as close to an open window as possible, and putting it on repeatedly until it stops smoking, you are basically just burning off what is left in the machine.  Just as a side note, every time you use your toaster, after it has cooled down, turn it upside down and give it a little shake, and try not to put anything other than bread in it.  If you want to make toasted sandwiches or anything with butter/cheese, get a toasted sandwich maker.


I need help to plan a Menu: 10 people, dinner with lovely friends at home

If I have to cook for a big group, 9 times out of 10, I go for scampi.
But if you use scampi as the second course, I'm not sure what to serve it with.
(I make it as an entree). Rice or bread, I'd say. I've never tried it with baked potatoes, but maybe it could work; or other options of course.

But I don't know if two times fish (in a broad meaning) works for you.

You can also make your meat in advance (stewing, ragout (of chicken, in vol-au-vent), meatballs) so you just need to warm it.

Edit: Oops, I just saw that this is an old question...


Sure. Michael Ruhlman has a post about it, and I think there was an episode of Good Eats that described the process pretty well, too. I'm not sure what you can get at the butcher in India, but you'll want to find the belly of the pig.

What you do is rub the meat with a cure, which is a mix of salt, sugar, seasoning, and "pink salt" (a curing salt that is part regular salt and part sodium nitrite). Leave it in your fridge in a ziploc bag for a week or covered on a tray, flipping it over daily so that it cures evenly, then rinse it off. At that point you can roast it in a low oven, smoke it, or hang it to dry.


This is actually the Turkish method for making coffee, or a variant of it. Coffee grounds, cold water and sugar are brought just to a boil several times before being poured into small cups. For this method one typically uses the finest possible grind of coffee.

The sand is used to control heat. The pots (called cezve) on top of the sand keep warm, and when you want them to boil you push them down through the sand to make direct contact with the hot plate underneath.


Putting raisins (etc) in bread, but avoiding the outside?

Rolling it up with the stuff inside is not only a reasonable way to do this, it's a really common kind of bread. Try searching for "raisin swirl bread" - usually this means cinnamon-raisin swirl bread, with cinnamon sugar along with the raisins, but you don't have to do that part.

You do take air out while shaping it, but that's normal when you're making bread. You let it rise again after shaping.


Probably the easiest way to do it is to just gently pour the blackberries into a basket strainer, then lower the strainer into a bowl of water. Then you can just lift the strainer out and the berries will come with it, no fishing required.


How do you tell whether a lobster is cooked?

roughly 9-11 minutes for pound should be ok


While you can do whatever you want to recipes you're following, you should be aware that onions are the backbone of the flavor of many dishes. If the recipe calls for more than a quarter onion or so per serving, and particularly if they are to be browned rather than cooked until translucent, the dish will probably be blander than intended if you leave the onions out.

The good news is, there's a lot of things that are similar to onions, notably scallions, leeks and shallots (thanks Benjamin Hodgson). If you are more okay with any of these things, go ahead and substitute (in the case of scallions and shallots, the amount should be roughly halved).


You don't brew cocoa like coffee, with filtering. You drink the cocoa powder together with the liquid.
Making breed cocoa is super easy, just take a small pot, mix gradually the cocoa powder with cold water, them let it cook up like Turkish coffee. Then drink without any sieving or filtering. You can add sugar if you like.
If it is still watery, add more cocoa powder next time.


They look a lot like fava beans (also commonly known as broad beans).

This link has some images to compare to.


Does wrapping banana stems actually prolong their life?

Revised answer (old answer removed due to accidentally swerving off-topic and to some extent containing incorrect information)

Even though ethylene biosynthesis happens throughout the banana most-likely none of it occurs in the stem itself as it contains a small percentage of the metabolically active tissue. There aren't as many studies that focus on the stem of the banana specifically as I imagine it's not a very attractive topic, but the current-day findings that we have highly support the assumption of insignificant ethylene gas production (or none at all) in the banana stem and it's why wrapping it will pose virtually no difference in the further ripening of a banana.

Links to relevant studies: (1) (2) (3)


Fiddling with the temperature won't help you. Reducing the baking time can help, if you are currently overbaking them, but if you are not overbaking, it will just make them underbaked. So, the question is, are you baking them right, or overbaking currently?
If you are not overbaking now, you should change the ratios, not the baking time. If you want it moist-sticky, you should increase the sugar (and maybe underbake just a tiny bit). If you want it just softer, but without getting much stickier, you should increase the fat. To reduce springiness, you should drop the strong flour and use normal flour (8-9% gluten).


Are these grocery store oyster mushrooms OK to eat?

They're likely mycelium rather than other moulds, its not uncommon for certain varieties of stored mushrooms to start producing mycelia (the root system of mushrooms generally). According to this link, mould on mushrooms is more likely to be green,black or brown

http://www.gourmetmushroomsinc.com/fresh-restaurants-faq.htm


Absolutely. That is probably exactly the best use for them if they are still perfectly edible (as they would be if kept frozen), but past their prime. The trick is to choose what vegetables to put together. For instance, if I had a bunch of asparagus I would make a stock specifically for cream of asparagus soup. If I had frozen onions I'd add those to that stock, but I wouldn't throw in carrots, peas or bell peppers. I could freeze that stock for as long as it takes for beautiful, fresh, in-season and inexpensive asparagus to come my way. Then I'd have the key ingredients to make fabulous soup.

Some veggies would add great flavor to chicken stock, others would be best in other applications. Can you be more specific about what vegetables you have?


kneading vs. stretch and fold with pizza

It is just a matter of your sample. "Kneading" and "stretch and fold" are not really the same thing - the actual relationship is that stretch and fold is a subtype of kneading. In some cases (mostly very high hydration), it is more comfortable than other subtypes, in others, any subtype will do. So, if a recipe directs the baker to just "knead", the baker will use their preferred technique, which might be stretch and fold. On the other hand, if a recipe author very much likes stretch and fold, they may write it into the recipe even if there is no technical need to prefer it over another technique. The baker may follow it, or decide to deviate.

So in the end, what gets written into the recipe is mostly a personal preference of the recipe author. And what gets done during baking is influenced by both the recipe and the baker. So the word choice is a bit random, and there is no reason to have one more commonly used in bread than in pizza or the other way round. If you noticed such clustering (and just "noticing" is actually not enough due to confirmation bias) then it is likely you got an unbalanced sample, which is a very common thing to happen.


What is the source of smoky flavor for barbecued foods?

Harold McGee's "On Food and Cooking" has an interesting explanation on the chemistry of smoke (pg 448 on my edition). This is a summary of what it says:

The three main component of wood are:

Cellulose

Hemicellulose

Lignin

(Source: Wikimedia)

Cellulose and hemicellulose make up the "scaffold" of plant cells and ligning binds cells together.

These three compounds release specific compounds when they burn. Cellulose and hemicellulose release sweet/fruity compounds such as furans, lactones, acetaldehyde, acetic acid and diacetyl. These are similar to what you get during caramelization: indeed those hexagonal rings you see in the first two structures are common to many sugars.

Lignin, on the other hand, releases other smoky/spicy flavours, due to the presence of aromatic rings (those hexagons with a circle inside in its formula): guaiacol, vanillin, isoeugenol, phenol, syringol.

The specific amount of each compound that is released depends on the specific type of wood and the burning temperature; it obviously affects taste.

  Maximum flavor production takes place at relatively low, smoldering temperatures, between 570 and 750°F/ 300-400 °C; at higher temperatures, the flavor molecules are themselves broken down into simpler harsh or flavorless molecules.


What happens to boiled pasta if you use too little water?

See:

What is the correct water to pasta ratio?
How much water to put in my pasta pot?

Short answer:  if you stir once or twice at the beginning to prevent sticking, and all of the pasta is submerged, you can very successfully make pasta in a reasonably small quantity of water.

Here is a direct link to the Serious Eats article both of the answers above cite.


Can you assemble lasagna one day, and then bake it about 24 hrs later?

Yes, and I find it taste better.  When I make lasagna I will not fully cook the pasta.  Instead, I keep a pot of boiling water and I dip the pasta into it to soften while I'm assembling the dish; the pasta is in the water for less than one minute.  The pasta seems to absorb more of the sauce, keeping the flavor but making a dish that does not fall apart as easily.


Do oat flakes (Spar S-budget) contain gluten?

This is a situation similar to what consumers with food allergies face - the critical substance is not in the food items per se, but cross-contamination may be a problem.

Oats are gluten-free1, but during processing and packaging, residue of e.g. wheat may get mixed in with the oat. While this is probably minimal and not a problem for consumers who avoid gluten as a dietary choice, the effects on someone with a medical condition may be different - but this is difficult to quantify generally. Some brands offer oatmeal that is certified gluten-free, with the higher effort reflected in the price.

The only reliable answer for your question can be obtained by asking the manufacturer and whether the possibility of contamination is a problem for you and your body should be clarified with your healthcare provider. We don’t offer medical advice, for many reasons. For everyone who just wants to avoid gluten for non-medical reasons, they should have no problem with this product.


You could certainly get a cookbook of side dishes and learn some new favourites, but what might be more useful is a book that teaches you about flavour combinations and menu planning.  I would suggest Culinary Artistry as one such book.  It's not about specific recipes (you can find those elsewhere or make them up), but rather it addresses the kind of skill you're looking to learn.

One technique is to consider the origin of the main dish and choose side dishes from the same region.  Seasonality or market-based shopping is another approach to expanding your repertoire.


Problems with rapid melting ice cream. Making it without a machine

Most the time when ice cream is melting faster than it should, the problem is over-churning it. Like you said since that is eliminated due to the fact you don't have an ice cream machine.

I would suggest a method I use: keep an old coffee tin laying around (one of the metal ones). Wash it out and dry. Then stick it in the freezer for 10-15 minutes or until it's cooled. Then make your batter directly in the can, then back to the freezer for a few hours. The coffee can helps insulate the batter and keep it cold even when it is out of the freezer.

Then use the same food processor method as before. Scoop the ice cream mixture back into the coffee can and let it set in the freezer over night. The next day you will have perfectly scoopable ice cream that doesn't melt too fast.


Which materials used for plates absorb microwaves?

In my experience, vitreous ceramic (Luminarc) heats up a lot in a microwave, usually ending up hotter than the food. But I cannot tell you if it has some advantage over heating the food in any other material.

Also, if you really want to eat crispy roasted food, the microwave is probably the least suited heating method for that. I have never used the suggested "crusty plate" but I wouldn't expect much of it.


How do I easily get thin slices of guava paste?

Guava paste is easy to use when making it fresh, but canned with pectin it can be a pain.

You probably need to go warmer or colder to get it to do what you want.

If you go warmer you could try a couple of tablespoons on a small plate in the microwave. I usually put a coffee cup of water next to it to slow down the heating process. Try 20 seconds at a time until you could use a knife to smear it. If it has too much pectin or is dried out this might not work.

If you go colder you could try cooling it down in the freezer 5-10 minutes at a time. Use a wire cheese slicer (or a piece of unflavored dental floss) and try shaving off smaller slices off your block. Use a fork to lay the cold thin sliced guava paste on your bars and repeat.

You can also look for a different recipe that lets you use thicker slices of guava paste - there are several good muffin recipes where the molten guava in the center is most excellent.


You got close, it looks like you had good gluten and structure, I think there's a maybe more than one thing you can do to prevent this:

This looks underproofed: You have bigger air holes on the top of the bread than the bottom, especially apparent on the bottom right of the bottom picture. A bit longer in the basket would have let the dough open up a bit more. It's possible you over rather than underproofed it, but my money's on under
A large air bubble may have existed in the dough, before shaping it knocking it back a bit would be good
You need to slash the top just before baking. Bakers use a special knife for this but you can use a carpet knife or a box cutter instead. A quick slash or two a couple of centimeters (about half an inch) deep will let the loaf open up, and large air bubbles on the top can't form because the air can escape. I do a cross cut in the center of the loaf, 1/3 to 1/2 of the diameter of the bread

One thing also, if you don't have steam in the oven the crust will form too quickly and you won't get oven spring, resulting in a tight loaf. Put a pan of boiling water in a few minutes before you put your loaf in to bake, then take it out after 20 minutes if it hasn't all boiled out. This has nothing to do with the big hole, it's just a tip.


The version of lasagna that I grew up making was a collection of layers of various things. These layers were (at minimum) - sauce; pasta noodles; a mixture of white, soft cheese and other things; and other cheeses, usually mozzarella. This means that there are actually two cheese layers - one shredded, the other creamy. Here's a recipe I've grabbed from Food Network as an example.

One of the steps involves combining the ricotta (some people use cottage cheese instead) with other ingredients including the raw eggs:

  In a small bowl, combine the ricotta, 1/2 the Parmigiano-Reggiano, the eggs, and the basil. Mix to combine well and season with salt.

This mixture is then layered, alternating with the noodles, meat, vegetables, and sauce. The other half of the Parmigiano is sprinkled on top with mozzarella for the cheesy topping and a bite of saltiness. I'm reformatting the quote below to show the different layers more obviously.

  In the bottom of a 9 by 13-inch deep-dish baking dish:

  add a couple ladlefuls of sauce and spread out in an even layer.
  Arrange a layer of the lasagna noodles to completely cover the sauce.
  Spread 1/3 of the ricotta mixture over the pasta.
  Place a layer of pasta going in the other direction as the first layer (this will give a little more stability).
  Spread a light layer of sauce on the pasta and sprinkle 1/3 of the sausage over the sauce,
  [Spread a light layer of sauce on the sausage and sprinkle] 1/3 of the mushrooms and zucchini.
  Sprinkle a layer of mozzarella and some of the remaining Parmigiano-Reggiano over the veggies.

  Repeat these layers until all the ingredients have been used up or the pan is full. Be sure that there is a layer of pasta on top covered with sauce and sprinkled with mozzarella and Parmigiano. Cover with foil.

So, to answer your question, yes, the egg is mixed in, raw, with the cheeses to make the cheese layer... but if you're not using a ricotta or cottage cheese and are just using shredded cheese, you probably shouldn't do this.


How can I improve the baking of frozen cod and rice with carrots,?

You're not going to get any browning on the vegetables.  By cooking everything together, you're steaming everything, preventing anything from browning.

If the carrots were on the top layer, you could put it under the broiler (top heat)for a minute or two, after everything's cooked through ... but for that, I would put the rice on the bottom, the carrots above them, then the cod.  Cook to your normal doneness, remove the cod and broil until you get some brown on the top.

You might still get away with it if the rice and carrots are mixed together -- there's a special name for the layer of crunchy rice that you get when cooking paella which adds flavor and a contrasting texture.

As for flavorings -- garlic and onion would have been my go-to in this sort of thing ... but I'd also add bell peppers, possibly roasted in advance.  For spices, I'd serve it with za'atar blend -- the citrusy quality of the sumac helps to brighten up dishes.

If you don't have za'atar (most people don't), you could squeeze over a bit of lemon juice, or sprinkle some vinegar over it (but something that tastes good on its own -- apple, wine, etc ... not white).  Tomatoes can also help -- but if it's out of season or you only have grocery store tomatoes available, go with canned tomatoes.  (canned diced are the easiest for this sort of thing)

Another option is to finish the dish with some fresh herbs -- flat leaf parsley, basil, oregano, thyme or culantro might go well with those flavors.

As for recipes -- I'd look at paella recipes -- although it's often cooked with only bottom heat (on a grill or other burner), if you have a suitable shallow pan, you can start it on the stovetop (to brown the carrots a bit before adding liquid), finish assembling, then put it in the oven to finish.


How to choose a vinegar substitute if I only keep balsamic and rice vinegar?

Within the range of acidity, most vinegars will be reasonably able to substitute for each other, in terms of the foods' chemistry.  That means substituting vinegars with similar levels of acid (given as percentages) for each other, or calculating the equivalent amount if the percentages differ. They will differ in terms of the the flavors they give to the dish, but the difference is unlikely to be severe unless the dish is leaning heavily on those flavors, as in, it is a primary flavoring ingredient.

First, there's white vinegar or distilled vinegar - that contains the acidic component of vinegar (acetic acid), but is very neutral in flavor.  It can be substituted for any other vinegar for the dish's chemistry... although the percentage of acid is higher, I think, so less will be needed for the same effect.  Substituting for this vinegar might be trickier, if the recipe depends on the neutral flavor not competing with other flavors in the dish.  Probably white wine or rice vinegar would be closest.

(white) Rice vinegar is described as mild, clean, delicately flavored.  It will probably substitute fairly well for white vinegar or white wine vinegar - although it has less acid, and more will be needed for the same effect.  The red and black varieties are very different, and I'm not quite sure how they would substitute - perhaps red would be close to apple cider vinegar, while black - no clue, possibly balsamic if its the same as "chinese black" vinegar.

There are a number of, hm, alcoholic named vinegars.  Red wine vinegar and white wine vinegar, sherry vinegar, champagne vinegar, and so on.  These are generally equivalent to each other - well, they taste different from each other, but a similar range of tastes, I think.  They are a little less acidic, and add some fruit flavors to the mix, a little more dry rather than sweet.  The alcohol they're made of determines what other flavors get added - not just the broad types (red, white, sherry), but also the quality of wine initially used.  Lighter colored (like white) should tend to be milder flavored and more acidic, I think, and darker (like red) should be sweeter and more strongly flavored as a general trend.

Malt vinegar is nutty and toasty, mild and a bit sweet.  probably the best substitute would be apple cider vinegar, which is also a little bit sweeter with a fruity taste.  By sweeter I mean a little bit sweeter than the wine vinegars, but much less so than balsamic.  I would guess red wine vinegar is in roughly the same category of fairly strongly flavored, and a bit sweeter.

Balsamic vinegar has a very distinct taste - it is much sweeter than other vinegars, enough that it is usually substituted with the equivalent amount of other vinegar and a third as much sweetener.  It is really not able to substitute for other vinegars unless that extra sweetness can be dealt with somehow.  I recently saw a comment that chinese black vinegar might be a reasonable substitute for balsamic, though I have no experience in this.

So, your (white) rice vinegar will probably substitute for white or white wine vinegar just fine, and not need a lot of adjustment - if any at all.  The recipes will come out a little different, but not necessarily badly.  Your balsamic won't substitute at all, sorry - it's too strongly flavored.  You might pick up one of the apple cider/malt/red wine/red rice (and/or black rice?) group of vinegar to stand for something flavored but less sweet, if you have a lot of recipes needing that kind of vinegar - or just use your rice vinegar, and plan to make up the loss of flavor in other ways.


How to prevent curdling in a local vegan coffee creamer- aka- Post Apocalypse hippy coffee creamer?

Was the coffee highly acidic or possibly salty? Coagulating agents that I know of consist of apple cider vinegar (which I personally use in my tofu making), magnesium chloride and calcium sulfate. Indeed, according to Wikipedia the common coagulants are salts, acids and enzymes.

Not being a coffee drinker I can't say this has ever happened to me. My boyfriend drinks coffee and I don't think he has ever experienced this, so it might be specific to each coffee. I have had soymilk coagulate in a cocktail I had once, but never when I make soy white Russians, so it must have had to do with the other ingredients in that drink, which have been lost to my memory.

Off topic, but what restaurant were you at?


You can make a buttermilk substitute. You'll need milk and lemon juice (using a ratio of 1 Tablespoon of acid per cup of milk)

Place a Tablespoon lemon juice in a liquid
measuring cup.
Add enough milk to bring the liquid up to the one-cup
line.
Let stand for five minutes.


It depends on how long the recipe calls for, and how much reduction is required. Most Indian recipes I make don't require much reduction, they are relatively thick to begin with. Lids don't seal perfectly, you will lose moisture even with the lid on. If you have a long, slow cook it may reduce enough for some recipes.


Is the typical value (as consumed) refer to the product after cooking or before cooking?

Nutrition tables give the value for the product alone, as is, unless explicitly stated otherwise. Cereal sometimes describes a serving as Xg cereal plus Yg milk of a certain fat content, for example. But there should always be the “pure” values for 100g, as most food labeling laws require.

The product description confirms this by explicitly stating “as sold”:

  A 1/4 pack (as sold) provides... Calories 110 5.5%, Sugar trace trace, Fat 1.5g 2.1%, Saturates 0.1g 0.5%, Salt trace trace of your guideline daily

If you check the table carefully, you’ll notice that for a 1/4 pack (slightly over 100g) the value for fat is 1.5g. This fits what the eggs in egg noodles would contribute, but is significantly less than what per the cooking instructions should be added for stir-frying.

If you want or need to calculate your calorie intake, weigh the product before your chosen preparation method and use basic maths to calculate the calories or other nutritional values. Any additions (like the aforementioned oil) need to be calculated separately.


Cooking pot with regulable water boiling temperature

I don't think that device exists, its hard to say something like that.

But I can tell you for sure that this kind of device wouldn't be very efficient or useful, let's assume you are using water for cooking, if you want to boil it and cook your food at higher temperatures you would use higher pressure, for lower temperature, lower pressure, but there is no need to control it with precision since the boiling temperature shows little variation with the pressure (at 2 atm you boil water around 120ºC, at 0,5 atm it is around 80ºC), so you basically have a pot that can be ajusted for high pressure or low pressure cooking, but without precision.

A second factor to consider is the packing, to go higher than 2 atm (where a normal pressured pot gets) you would have to get a more expensive packing system to prevent your pot from exploding, so now we have a regular pressured pot with the option for low pressure.

The low pressure system wold be quite complicated to develop, since when you boil the water it turns into vapor and will raise the pressure of your pot, so you need something that will keep put vapor out of your system, something like a pump would have to be constantly working fot that to happen, that's not very practical.

And at last, I can understand why you would want to cook with higher pressure, I do it quite often myself, but I can't see a good reason to do it with low pressure, there are many cooking techniques that use vacuum, sous-vide for exemple, but I have never seen one that uses it in a sealed pot like you are proposing. You could say you want to cook in low temperatures which is completely fine, but you can do it in a less complicated way, like using an electrical heater and thermostat.

So it may exis, but as i said it would be unpractical


Why are eggs not stored in the fridge better in baking?

This isn't at all exclusive to eggs, searing off a really cold (fresh, not frozen) steak will get you a tough steak. Unless the recipe depends on the behavior of a protein as refrigerated, proteins are better to work with at room temperature.

Think of the egg yolk and white sort of like ice cream; the warmer it becomes, the more distinctly the viscosity changes. Beating cold egg whites to stiff peaks is one heck of a workout :) Cold yolks are also very likely to result in 'broken' emulsions.

In your specific case, cold eggs simply won't incorporate into the mix in a manner that's consistent with what the recipe previously produced. The difference would depend on the recipe, but in most cases, not subtle. Things would be denser than ideal, or just simply not hold together very well. It really depends on what you're doing.


Will a dishwasher sterilize bottles for canning?

Absolutely not. You need to boil them if you're even THINKING about canning. Chances are you'd be fine, nice acidic relish to keep the bacteria down...But do you want to take the chance?

Even if you have one of those dishwashers with a nuclear "sterilize baby bottles" cycle, don't trust it. For canning, you need them as close to medically sterile as is possible.


Yes, roast the almonds. Be careful not to burn them. You can roast them in a dry skillet, tossing them frequently until aromatic and slightly darkened, or in the oven for maybe 25 minutes at 200°F (95°C).


What's the difference between "baby lamb" and "lamb"?

According to Britannica:

  The meat of sheep 6 to 10 weeks old is usually sold as baby lamb, and
  spring lamb is from sheep of five to six months.


How do different techniques impact sourdough bread?

Lots of questions here.  Let me try to address them:

To knead or not to knead? I've heard people claim that kneading impacts flavour, then others claim it's the only way to get the highest rise.

It's true that kneading a lot can introduce a lot of oxygen into the dough, and that can have a small negative impact on flavor, which will mostly be noticeable in lean doughs (those with only flour, water, and salt, without enriching ingredients or flavorful additives).  This effect is relatively minor in the grand scheme of things, though.  It's more of a concern with intense mixing by machine rather than relatively slower and gentler kneading by hand.

The alternative to kneading is doing periodic stretch-and-fold cycles during the first proof.  In that case, you need to measure the length of your proof by time (and temperature), rather than when the dough "doubles."  But you need to do something to make gluten connections to maximize loaf height.  (So-called "no-knead" breads generally work by using very long fermentation, which will also increase gluten connections.  But if you're only fermenting for a few hours, you'll need to knead and/or do stretch-and-folds.)

Similarly, what impact does punching down the bread after the first prove have?

For most recipes, there's no reason to deliberately de-gas the dough.  The goal in shaping is fourfold: (1) stretching and folding the dough to make more gluten connections and increase structure (as mentioned above) which will increase loaf height, (2) stretching the outer "skin" of the dough to increase surface tension and support loaf height rather than spreading, (3) redistribute the yeast within the dough to provide them with new food sources, (4) in the process of moving the yeast around, move them away from high concentrations of their own waste gases (which tend to slow growth).

Only the last point is a rationale for actual de-gassing, and it's a relatively minor concern.  The main emphasis in shaping should usually be on the first two, and some de-gassing will naturally happen in that process.  Tight shaping to maximize loaf height will already result in de-gassing, but there's no reason to deliberately "punch down" the dough more than necessary in most breads.

The main reason to deliberately "punch down" the dough is to get rid of large bubbles that would create irregular "holes" in the final loaf.  If you're making a sandwich loaf or something where you want to avoid big holes in the final bread, there may be a reason to deliberately "punch down."  But in more rustic breads, baguettes, etc. which often tend to have more irregular holes, this isn't a concern.

I currently do a short autolysis, long first prove, short second prove - how will it impact my end product if I change these up?

What would you "change up"?  This is fairly typical.  Longer autolysis has diminishing returns, but it can be done.  You want the first proof to be longer to develop flavor and allow yeast growth.  (Longer first proof usually means more flavor.)  And the second proof is mainly to expand the shaped loaf to develop gases that will lift the dough during baking.  There's no reason to extend the second proof longer, and doing so would likely result in overproofing and collapse in the oven.

Some places have suggested that the long rise should result in the dough tripling in size. When I tried that, the finished loaf was more flat than normal: over-proved?

Sort of.  Particularly with sourdough, the yeast may not have sufficient strength to do too many long proofs.  Proofing too long with sourdough can also lead to more build-up of acid, which will eventually break down the gluten structure more (and is more likely to lead to a smaller rise or collapse in the final loaf).

If I went to 60% hydration, or 80%, what impact would it have on the finished loaf, and what would I need to adapt in the recipe?

It's hard to predict without knowing your exact recipe, flour type, etc.  Too low hydration will prevent elasticity in the dough and thereby result in a smaller rise.  (Think bagel-like interior texture.)  Too high hydration makes the dough harder to work with, though it also tends to help with a more irregular hole structure (which some find desirable) and a less "stiff" interior.  These are just general tendencies: changing hydration has lots of effects, and the specific recipe/technique will highlight or undermine some of those effects.

When using my banneton, should I place the bread onto the linen, or the wicker directly?

You can do either.  With a medium hydration dough, it mostly depends on whether you want to wicker patterns to be seen strongly in the final dough to make a "pattern" on the top.  With wetter doughs, I find it harder to put it on cloth without excessive amounts of flour, and the wicker can sometimes stop sticking by having less dough contact (and also allowing more moisture to escape from the dough surface).

How would adding sugar impact my loaf?

Sweetness, obviously.  Faster browning.  Can potentially soften the crumb a bit.

Are the any other techniques for adapting sourdough loaves?

Lots.

My reason for asking, is that I want to start experimenting with shaping (hence different hydrations), and with different textures (i.e. soft vs chewy internal loaf).

More vigorous shaping is generally helpful in increasing dough height, as mentioned above.  Gentle shaping is most useful with high-hydration doughs where you want an irregular hole structure in the final loaf.

Regarding texture: the easiest thing to do to create a softer interior (like traditional "sandwich bread") is to enrich the dough by adding butter/oil, eggs, milk instead of water, sugar, etc.  Higher hydration can also help a bit, as well as using a lower gluten flour (though this can decrease loaf height).  Do the opposite if you want something more chewy.


You may need to practice sprinkling salt --

Get a large piece of paper or plastic, that's preferably not white.
Sprinkle some salt on it.  Try from different heights.  You might also try different types of salt (I find coarser salts easier to control)
Roll up the paper (or plastic), so you can pour the salt back into a small dish to try again.

Once you're comfortable with sprinkling salt :

Measure out the salt.
Pour the salt into your off hand.
Use your good hand to take pinches of the salt & sprinkle it on the food.

If you're really wedded to a shaker -- you might consider a grinder and coarser salt.  If you know how many grinds it takes to get a teaspoon, you could roughly estimate how much salt is going in by counting grinds.


"Suet" is beef fat, especially from around the cow's kidneys. By definition, a chicken cannot contain suet, unless it's recently eaten some beef.

The bits you've circled are fat deposits, though, like suet. In a butchered chicken, it's easiest to find similar fatty deposits on the thighs, back, and tail. The breast and wings have comparatively little.


The easiest way to tell if you've over stirred muffins, quick breads or cakes is the texture when it's baked.

Correct, and it's all even.  Over stirred, and you'll have a series of larger bubbles in the cake, called 'tunneling', where it looks like worms have burrowed their way through your cake or muffin.

Stirring develops gluten, which is essential to trap in bubbles for most yeast breads, and to give it a little bit of chew -- but not something that you want in a typical quick bread. (muffins, cake, etc.)


Peanut-Butter Treat - Using Less Sugar and Less Butter

Well, from the look of things, reducing the butter and sugar will just result in a smaller recipe--that's almost all there is!

You might be able to substitute some kind of starch for some of the sugar. I wouldn't use flour, since you won't be cooking these and it would leave them tasting strongly of raw flour. I don't know what starch would work, but that's my best guess. Apart from that, I would think you could cut back on the butter a little (but not too much, or they'll become crumbly).

For my money, though, I think if you're worrying about sugar and fat, or calories in general, you need to find something else to make. These are nothing but sugar and fat (seeing as PB is mostly fat).


Magnus Nordlander's answer was good.  I would add one more thing:

You can also get a lot of extra toughness if you over knead a dough.  If you are using an established recipe that works for other people, I would cut back on the mixing and kneading and see what kind of results you get.  If you don't knead enough, you won't get the airy texture of the crumb because the gluten won't be developed enough.

If you bake a lot, make changes to your kneading time and take notes about how it affects your final result.


No special way.

You can eat them right from the can; they should be already peeled and without the big seed.

You can add them up to a salsa, or a fruit salad; or even cooked dishes (curries).


You can make very crunchy crumbs using a dehydrator (probably also a very low < 200 degree F oven). I frequently crumble leftover cornbread, then dehydrate, to produce super crunchy cornbread crumbs.  I am sure it would work with any bread.  Using this technique with cake also works nicely to produce a crunchy topping for sweet applications.  BTW 200C (the temp the OP provided) is way too hot. You will brown (then burn) the crumbs rather than dehydrate. Use Less than 200 F or in Celcius, less than 93C


You can stage pan pizzas (chicago style, or pizza hut style) for up to four hours as long as you keep them covered.  You can stage a stretched dough for up to an hour and a half between two pieces of wax paper.  However, you need to take the time into consideration when proofing your dough so that you don't get blown dough as that will not be delicious.  You should not sauce the crusts or top them as pre-saucing will change how your dough cooks in the oven.

If the dough forms a harder crust/ dries out, you should consider tossing it as it will not result in good pizza after cooking.


Can a semisweet chocolate be substituted with a belgian chocolate?

The two labels are referring to entirely different aspects of the chocolate, and are completely unrelated.

Semi-sweet refers to the approximate amount of cacoa solids versus sugar in the chocolate.

Belgian refers to the location of the processing plant where the cocao beans were processed into chocolate.

The label for your chocolate should indicate a percentage of cocao solids, or a label like "semi-sweet" or "bitter-sweet" although these terms are not very tightly or uniformly regulated around the world.

Most brownie recipes are going to be very tolerant of the particular chocolate used, so the substitution should work well, especially if your Belgian chocolate happens to be in the approximately semi-sweet range.


The purple is just the anthocyanins in the garlic reacting to conditions. It's perfectly safe. Some types of garlic actually turn purple before they are picked if they are fertilized close to maturity; I do this now by choice, because I've decided I like the purple. The purple will occur more frequently and to a greater degree if the garlic is cooked with or peeled cloves are stored in contact with something acidic.


Of course you can freeze the cheesecake with fresh strawberries, but the problems lie when you try to defrost said cheesecake if you need to bake it, or even if you plan to eat it at a temperature other than frozen. Like Chris' comment above, when defrosting strawberries, then tend to exude a lot of juice, and in pastry making, you usually don't desire random wet patches. If you're planning to bake it, perhaps skip the fresh strawberries and put them in later as a topping. OR, you could always, mix in strawberries in another form, that has less problems with water content— pre-macerated, in a jam, or something like that.


Based on your edit, my best guess is that this particular rice has a really high amount of surface starch, which gelatinized when you first tried to cook it (liquid from the mushrooms might have been enough to get this result).  That would have created a moisture-resistant layer around the grains that inhibited moisture from soaking in further.  Your soak would have washed that away and allowed the rice to properly absorb the broth.

That's definitely weird - probably a byproduct of how this particular brand gets processed.  A further experiment worth trying would be to briefly rinse off the grains in a colander for your next batch.  That would also get rid of surface starch without quite the same effect as a soak.  If they work after even a brief rinse, I'd consider that pretty good evidence for this theory.

Another thing you could try might be sauteeing the rice in a completely separate pan from the mushrooms, so that they're exposed only to oil and the surface starch gets toasted instead of gelatinized.  Maybe not quite as desirable from a flavor perspective, and of course you'd have to clean another pan, but it's worth testing if you really want to figure out the root of the problem.


How to make corn nuts from fresh corn on the cob

You fry them in a saucepan with some oil (I use either olive or sunflower).

In order they don't explode an become pop-corn, you should have kept them in water for several (6~48) hours before frying them.

If you want them softer (and bigger), put them in water at 70°C for about 20~30 minutes.

How do you know they are done? When they are golden in the saucepan where you are frying them with oil. Take them out of the pan and add some salt.


Quinoa naturally contains a bitter compound on the outside of the seed.  Usually you have to rinse the quinoa to remove the bitterness but most commercial quinoa seems to have already been rinsed.  So, I no longer rinse my quinoa.  If you have time, it's nice to heat a pan and add the quinoa and toast it a little (for a nutty flavor and fluffier texture), then add water and salt.  I typically bring the water to a boil (2 cups water to 1 cup quinoa plus 1/4 tsp salt), cover and reduce the heat to a simmer for 10-20 minutes (or until the little tails release).  Lately I've found that using a rice cooker is a no-fuss way to prepare quinoa.  I usually just do quinoa, water and sea salt but you can add spices while cooking it if you want to enhance the flavor.  I would add vegetables afterwards. Quinoa is so quick-cooking I wouldn't see the need for a pressure cooker.


I don't think it is awkward to cook for your guests.  After all, they are coming to dinner, right?

Anything you do here to prepare ahead will be a bit of a compromise.  It won't be quite the same, but it shouldn't be dried out.

In any case, if you wanted to streamline, you could cook the chicken earlier, before your guests arrive, then chill. Be sure that you don't over cook your chicken, especially if you are using breasts.  Don't go over 160 F.  Leave the pan on the stove, you will use the brown bits for the sauce later.

You can also cook the pasta to about two minutes short of the package directions.  Remove from boiling water to ice water to stop the cooking. Then drain and refrigerate. Don't discard the pasta water, you can use that later while finishing the sauce.

This approach will work best if the chicken is sliced. It will slice more nicely after it is chilled.

When your guests arrive remove your ingredients from the refrigerator so they begin to warm up.  When it is time for service, heat the pan that the chicken was cooked in until it sizzles.  Use the pasta water to de-glaze...using a bit more water than normal. Add the chicken and stir for 30 seconds. Add the pasta to the pan, with a little more pasta water, to re-heat. Add your butter and any other ingredients. If there is no liquid in the pan, add more pasta water.  You should see it bubbling.  Stir that around for one minute, but this should take no more than two to three minutes to avoid over cooking your ingredients.

If you are well organized, and don't over cook the elements in either the prep step or the re-heat step, it should work.  This assumes the chicken and pasta are mixed.  If they are not, you could reheat the chicken in a separate pan (maybe a steam set up?), or better yet, if you have the tools, this would be an excellent application for sous vide.


Oak aging can indeed produce real vanillin, whether in wines or other liquids (spirits, beer, even vinegars can all be oak-aged)  among thousands of other flavorful compounds. Somewhat surprisingly, it seems that vanillin is commonly synthesized for use in artificial vanilla extracts from lignin, a fibrous compound that serves to strengthen the cell walls in wood, or from guaiacol, an oil derived in turn from lignin.

However, this doesn't imply that you will necessarily have an allergic reaction to vanillin based on the information you've provided. Vanillin is a flavorful aromatic compound, and not a protein (which typically have much larger, more complex molecular structures). "Real" vanilla extracted from the eponymous bean gets much of its flavor and aroma from vanillin, but it contains much else besides. If you're definitely allergic to the proteins, those would be present in extract from actual vanilla beans, but not in vanillin produced from other sources such as wood, and therefore not present in oak-aged wines.

The caveat, of course, is that I'm not a doctor, an allergy specialist, or anything remotely close. You should confirm this with them before risking discomfort or bodily harm.


How to make homemade bread machine mixes for long-term store?

You can certainly mix together all of the dry ingredients out of the above, and store them.  They should store for a few weeks in the fridge, and a few months in the freezer.

However, by dry, I'm referring to the following out of the above:

Bread flour
Nonfat dry milk
Salt
Yeast
Granola
Sun dried tomatoes, if completely dried (not packed in oil or brine)

The other ingredients all contain some moisture and would be problematic to store in advance of making the bread, for several reasons:

The wet ingredients might ferment on their own or together with the dry ingredients;
The wet ingredients might cause clumping in ways the bread maker cannot break up;
Some of them don't freeze well;
Premixing them might cause the bread machine to not be able to mix properly.

Some explanation on the last: many bread machines instruct you in a specific order of adding wet and dry ingredients.  This is because their mixing and kneading action is designed to work with that layering.  So if you premix and store ingredients, you can't me sure that your bread machine will mix them properly.  You can test this, of course, if you can afford a few failed batches.

This means that you need to create your mixes of only the dry ingredients, and add the wet ingredients the day you make bread.

More ideas and information along this line can be found in the following articles:

https://www.breadmakermachines.com/mastering-the-delayed-cycle-on-your-bread-machine/
https://www.thriftyandthriving.com/prep-a-months-worth-of-bread-machine-mixes-for-easy-bread-making-becoming-self-reliant-series/
https://www.joyfullythriving.com/homemade-bread-machine-mixes/


What is the purpose of making a preferment for yeast doughs?

In addition to allowing fermentation to begin before the addition of fermentation inhibiting other ingredients, as @J.A.I.L. said in his answer, according to Bread Secrets, after explaining the benefits to flavor of a long, slow fermentation:

  A quick, warm fermentation will allow time for the yeast to produce
  enough carbon dioxide to raise the dough, but not enough time for the
  enzymes to work or for the development of the other flavour compounds.
  If we ferment our dough for too long, however, the gluten becomes too
  weak to hold the shape of the loaf. So artisan bakers generally use a
  preferment (pre-ferment, not prefer-ment!) as part of their dough.
  This allows the bread to gain flavour from the longer fermentation,
  but still maintain a strong gluten network for a good rise.


Powder to prevent foam in egg white protein?

You're looking for a "food grade" antifoam agent. A brief look at the linked search results shows antifoam powders look to be mostly silicone based. They may or may not work for your heavy protein foam.


How long does it actually take to extract tea compounds from leaves using the boiling method?

I agree with the above comments that it really depends on the tea. The best way to find out is to boil the leaves let's say for 5 minutes in not too much water, then strain out the leaves. Now boil the leaves again for 5 minutes in fresh water. Does this second boil result in coloured tea liquor? Then this confirms that boiling it for more than 5 minutes is worth it. If so, then go for the next 5 minutes boil it for the next 5 minutes and so on, until you can confirm that you can't get any color and flavour out of the leaves.

Let me know the result!


Reconciling Food Safety Tips: Food vs Water

165F will kill many things and leave meat proteins very tasty. That is why it is the recommendation for meat.

Water doesn't burn when heated past 165F. And if heated to boiling (212F) not only will it kill more things faster but it is easier to tell when you get there. Who carries a thermometer with them when they go hiking?


What can replace milk, for vegan pancakes without eggs?

I would also add Rice Milk is a good alternative also and can be home made.


Regarding cutlery and industrial dishwashers

The dishwasher shouldn't be a concern - if anything it will be a little gentler on your cutlery.

Industrial washers work on a very short cycle (~2mins vs 2 hours).  Although "industrial" they actually clean a lot less than a domestic machine - home users expect  to put things in filthy and come out spotless and dry-ish. In a restaurant dishes are pre-cleaned.

That there's only about 20 seconds of cutlery sitting in salted water and steam(vs20-30min) makes a big difference.

Additionally, domestic powders often have abrasive agents, while this is uncommon in commercial kitchens where liquid-based systems are the norm.

The operating temperature is only about 5c higher so won't make much difference.

The main difference with restaurant grade cutlery is that it will be guaranteed to last a certain amount of time and manufacturers are careful about this because a restaurant is definitely going to look for their money back.


I know you are worried about the flavor being bland, but have you tried mixing the aged, dry cheese with one that will melt better? The flavor of a good, mature cheese goes a long way, so I don't think you will notice a loss of flavor... Find a flavorful, relatively young, melty cheese, experiment with the proportions, and give it another try.


Cooking halloumi/wet food on stainless steel without sticking

First things first, make sure you're keeping that pan on high while the haloumi is in there... you can get the pan as hot as you want, but the water in that cheese will cool it off right quick.

Though in my experience, sometimes halloumi just sticks. When I'm cooking something potentially sticky, I always have a nice-quality, even, sharp fish spatula on hand in case I need to save it. If you really put some pressure on it, scraping along the bottom of the pan like you're removing a sticker from a window with a razor blade, you should be able to save your nice sear. As long as you're applying even pressure and using a flat bottomed pan and have a nice quality fish spatula, you 'shouldn't' gouge it... though that's the reason I use heavy commercial steel cookware from companies like Winco, which I could replace pretty easily and cheaply. ;-)


slow cooker / crock pot temperature confusion (everything boils)

It sounds like you were expecting slow cooking to be like sous vide. Well, it's not. The point isn't controlled sub-boiling temperatures, it's something on the border between simmering and boiling for foods that just need a long time to cook at that approximate temperature.

Slow cooker recipes are not supposed to be very sensitive. They're expecting to be approximately boiling for most of the time, and the difference between low and high is pretty much whether the boil is marginal or a bit more substantial. In many cases, this just matters because the quantity in the pot varies, and it takes more to keep the stuff at the top hotter if it's farther from the bottom, or if it hasn't all cooked down into the liquid yet. In either case, it shouldn't be a full rolling boil; it's just boiling on the bottom, so the rest of the liquid is probably a bit below the boiling point. And yes, this is still slow cooking. It's not boiling fast enough to lose a huge amount of liquid (or worse, boil over) with the lid on.

I wouldn't really try to assign temperatures to slow cooker recipes. Like I said, they shouldn't be that sensitive. If your bean soup recipe didn't work, maybe it was a bad one. But "reliable" in the context of slow cooker recipes doesn't mean "exact times and temperatures". They're generally things that will be perfectly fine if you cook them 25% longer. Not everything in the kitchen has to be precise and formulaic; slow cookers and slow cooker recipes take advantage of that fact. And even if you do try to calibrate, you'll have trouble, since there's a temperature gradient from bottom to top. Unlike sous vide, a slow cooker is not constantly well-mixed. In equilibrium it'll be boiling at the bottom, and 10-20 degrees cooler at the top.

If you really wanted to use a sous vide controller, I imagine something like 95-98C would work for basically every slow cooker recipe, no matter whether they say high or low. Of course, mixing thoroughly enough to make your controller actually work, you may be overstirring whatever you're cooking. But the point is, things you cook in a slow cooker aren't really going to care much what the exact temperature is; it just matters that it's hot, near boiling, and not boiling so fast that it sticks on the bottom or loses a lot of liquid.

Finding reliable recipes... Well, it's like anything else. If you're looking on the internet, you have to learn to judge for yourself and look for warning signs, or stick to sites with lots of reviews. You also have to accept that sometimes you have to test for doneness and be flexible about time. This isn't really unusual; baking recipes should always have some kind of test ("until golden brown") and the actual baking times will vary. (With something like bean soup, sure, maybe the recipe was bad, maybe you didn't soak enough, maybe the beans were a little different. A stovetop recipe wouldn't have been precise either.) If all that isn't good enough for you, buy a slow cooker cookbook; tons of those have been published in recent years.


You haven't seen a lot of waxed cheese, or you've only seen a few specific ones. I can easily find (and have frequently eaten) green, black, and yellow ones, though the yellow in some cases is more of a clear wax. Other colors are possible though the range may be somewhat limited by having the cheese wax be non-toxic (generally felt to be a good idea.)

One supplier has red, clear, yellow, purple and black (no green there.) Here's the purple.

This may also be a regional thing - if all the people that buy cheese in your area expect red wax and are more likely to buy cheese waxed that color, you'll see more of it, as suppliers will learn to choose red wax when supplying that region.


Substituting Chicken Broth in Split Pea Soup

See no reason why not, all you will do is add more flavour. Which is never a bad thing if you ask me. Adding the ham bone will not have any adverse effects either. The recipe you are following will not have used chicken stock/broth to either make it vegetarian or for simplicity.

Personally any time I make soup or broth at home I will use chicken stock as a base even if its just an oxo cube. At work ill use vegetable stock to keep those non-meat-eaters happy.


Cracked egg leaves egg white residue. Should I worry about the other eggs?

If the egg actually exploded as in the title, then no, that egg is probably highly contaminated.  Not only is it bad, but nothing its contents have touched can be considered safe to use and should be discarded.

I assume however that you actually have an egg that was broken in handling.  In that case, only the broken egg is a loss.  Other answers and comments have addressed that, choice by location and your own personal sense of safe for you.  I hate wasting food, but eggs today are a relatively inexpensive commodity for most of us, so if you feel uneasy, error on the side of safety.

When an egg is only partially cracked, but the membrane is intact, that egg is normally safe for use for several days.  You have lost some protection, but not the immediate integrity of the egg.  One issue though is you do not know when it was cracked.  In your possession can be safe, my personal rule being about a week.  But if it already was cracked, I do not know if it happened before washing (in the US) or after.  If before, the egg is compromised.  Now, this is one spot that the EU with non-washed eggs are at a slight, very slight, disadvantage.  IMO, unwashed, a cracked egg is compromised even if the membrane is intact.  That paragraph is not exactly your question, but could be for people searching that find their way here.


Why is rice parboiled? And how does parboiling change rice?

The following excerpt answers questions 1 and 2. Additionally it reduces the cooking time for the parboiled rice.

  Also known as converted rice, parboiled rice has been pressure-steamed
  and then dried in its natural outer husk (which is later removed).
  This process hardens the starch in the grains so they remain firmer,
  less sticky, and separate when cooked. It also forces the vitamins and
  minerals from the outer layer of the grains into the endosperm, which
  is the part we eat. This makes parboiled rice a more nutritious option
  than regular (unenriched) white rice, which doesn't retain any of the
  goodness of the nutrient-rich husk.

There are several techniques you can use to prevent unprocessed cooked rice from sticking to each other:

Use medium to long grain rice.
Rinse the rice until the rinsing water is completely clear.
Use the Boil and Steam method to cook the rice. In this method boil the rice for 5-10 minutes. Then pour off the excess water and steam the rice for an additional 10 minutes. This method of cooking the rice reduces the most starch on the outside of the rice which is what causes the sticking.

Source:
The Science of Cooking Rice


You can find fresh cake yeast in grocery stores, but it's much less common than active dry yeast granulates.
1 cake of fresh yeast is approximately the same as 1 envelope/packet of active dry yeast. 1 packet usually equals about 2¼ teaspoons, or ¼ ounce, or 7 grams of active dry yeast granules.


It maybe that you had the oven set to Preheat or Broil instead of Bake. If that's not the case, you may have a problem with the controller for the oven (I have never heard of this happening in older ovens, but with newer electronic/computer controlled models I could see something like that happening.)


I bake extensively with whey protein concentrates and isolates. Well, to be clear, a combination of whey protein concentrates/isolates and other non-wheat type flours (flaxseed meal, almond flour, coconut flour, psyllium husk powder, etc.).

One thing to mention right off the bat is that whey protein and gluten do not mix. Well, let me explain. In some of my low-carb baking for yeast-raised breads/pizzas, I use vital wheat gluten (VWG) at around 40 - 50% of the total flour weight (see my answer here). Like one would expect, mixing plain VWG with water normally produces a rubbery, elastic dough that can immediately pass the windowpane test. However, if I mixed, say, 20 g of VWG with 10 g of unflavored whey protein isolate and added 30 g water, I would end up with a thick, liquid-like soup — almost a batter: absolutely no ability to hold shape or structure. (I think) the whey protein basically shreds the VWG to pieces. I am still researching why this behavior occurs, but I think it may have to do with whey protein being a super-concentrated source of glutathione (which is why you usually scald milk before adding to wheat flour recipes) and/or L-cysteine. (L-cysteine is the active ingredient in PZ-44, a commercial dough-conditioner). Now, whether this same behavior will carry over to baked goods made with wheat flour + whey protein, I don't know, but it's certainly something to watch out for. Granted, it will likely have a greater effect on baked goods that rely more heavily on gluten for their structure. Interestingly, casein (the other major milk protein), or more specifically, micellar casein, does not exhibit this same destructive behavior, cooperating well with gluten and working alongside the gluten network to provide structure.

Second, at least in my experience (which doesn't include wheat flour), whey protein concentrates/isolates seem to have an extreme drying effect on baked goods, similar to egg whites. For example, if I were to take ¼ cup (28 g) of flaxseed meal and add an egg, it would bake up to have a moist, muffin-like texture. In contrast, if I were to take an equal amount of whey protein isolate and an egg, it would bake up to an inedible brick: chalky and desert-like in its dryness. While previously I was at a loss for why this was occurring, in the process of writing this answer, I realized it's likely because as the proteins set, you're squeezing out the moisture, and without any other hygroscopic ingredients, that moisture just evaporates. This same drying behavior would likely also occur with wheat flour. So, depending on the amount of whey protein used, it may be necessary to counteract that by including hygroscopic ingredients (sugar, flaxseed meal, psyllium husk powder, etc.).

In my experience, (again, which doesn't include wheat flour), whey protein concentrates (75%) are not equivalent to whey protein isolates (90%). I just learned this the hard way. I developed numerous recipes using whey protein isolates, then trying to save a few bucks, I ordered whey protein concentrate instead of isolate. None of the recipes I developed with isolate worked using concentrate (they'll require re-formulation of other ingredients). Since the amount of protein in isolates is higher than in concentrates, isolates have a higher "drying power" and can support the addition of a greater amount of non-egg moisture. Granted, these whey proteins were making up about 50% of my total "flour" by weight. (For an example of such a recipe, see the Buttermilk Pancake (Coconut Flour + Whey Protein Isolate) in my answer here). Consequently, assuming you're using wheat flour, I don't think this difference will be as big of an issue since you'll be using a much smaller amount.

Since I use it so often for baking, I go with unflavored whey protein isolates/concentrates, as they're the most versatile. They're unsweetened and unflavored, so I can have more control over the end product. In my case, this is usually something I have to get online, as most stores I've been to will only carry flavored proteins. If you do go with a flavored protein powder, vanilla is probably the next most versatile, as vanilla is usually at home in a lot of potential recipes. Since the protein powder is usually sweetened, you may need to adjust the recipe's other sweeteners (but do keep in mind the need for hygroscopic ingredients).


Substitutions for Wheat Flour in Pie Crust

I'm going to assume that the primary question is "How can I make a flaky pie crust without wheat flour?" Note that recipe requests are off-topic on this site, but substitution questions are on-topic.

The key thing which wheat flour gives you is gluten. Quinoa is gluten-free, so it's not going to help you much. However, there are ways of making gluten-free breads, cakes, etc. The first hit which Google gives me uses cornstarch, xanthan gum, and gluten-free flours. The second uses arrowroot starch, xanthan, and gluten-free flours. Xanthan isn't the only way of substituting for gluten, but it seems promising.


Why are wire beaters becoming more common in hand mixers?

Different beaters are used to achieve distinct  effects.  We ask a lot of our electric home mixers: they have to aerate cream, knead dough, mix cakes, among many operations.  Various forces and mixing patterns are needed for these operations.  To aerate air needs to be mixed into a liquid.  A fast moving, half immersed wire forms vortices that mix the air and the liquids.  Thin blades, some parallel and others perpendicular to the beater's motion will break clumps of solids and disperse them among the mixing liquids.  Dough needs to be stretched and folded and for that a single pole into the dough following some planetary motion seems to do the job.

When compared to wire beaters, those with a central post have larger surfaces demanding a stronger motor to rotate them.  A wire beater, while not ideal to mix a cake batter, can get the job done given more time. The central post also collects material, so better designs have been developed for cake mixing.

The type of beaters sold with a mixer are more likely a function of the motor strength and the price category.


What are the differences between brown/golden sesame seeds and black ones?

Dark sesame seeds are more common in Indian cooking. I personally think that they have a more intense taste. They are also smaller, for what little difference that makes. I wouldn't rush to use them to make tahini, because the color would be surprising and I suspect that the flavor would be a bit bitter.