gary.turner's blog

Everyone, shut down your ovens.  Save the world.

[url=http://www.breitbart.com/london/2017/03/02/delingpole-bread-causes-global-warming-shock/]Bread Causes Global Warming Shock[/url]

You just have to shake your head in wonder sometimes.

Enjoy

I downsized from a 1500sq ft house with a 60s style kitchen best used for 60s style TV dinners. You know, no counter space. I am now in a small apartment with even less counter space and I'm still searching for storage space.

There was a recent post (which I cannot seem to find) that discussed a cover that went over the baking stone and had a hole for injecting steam. The steam generator appeared to be a Bissell home steam cleaner.

[quote]Ever wonder why supermarkets have bakeries close to the store entrance? Not only does the fragrance of just-baked bread signal freshness and comfort, but store managers know that when you smell bread you get hungry. Some supermarkets don’t even bother with actual bakeries. Rather, they pump the scent of (artificial) fresh-baked-bread through the ceiling vents.[/quote]

I found the article interesting from a branding perspective, but the final paragraph was the killer app.

Lately I've been trying to codify the variables of mixing and kneading dough in my DLX. Since it seems to act as a spiral mixer would, I used that as my base. Spiral mixers run at   about 100RPM in first speed, and 200RPM in second; that's the hook rotational speed. Bowl speed is more on the order of 15RPM. Commercial spiral mixers that I've checked use separate motors for each.

I was browsing through Fannie Farmer's  The Boston School of Cooking Cookbook, 1918, and ran across a recipe for Boston brown bread. It is a steam cooked bread from a batter. A search through the Fresh Loaf found several posts on this bread, mostly from Maggie Glezer's book, made with a fairly stiff dough.

Farmer's recipe calls for 1 cup each of rye meal, corn meal and Graham flour,  ¾ cup molasses, 1 tsp salt, ¾ tbsp soda and 1¾ cup milk or water (or 2 cups sour milk).

Since the liquids in nearly every dough need to be tempered, I went looking for some straight forward, repeatable method to get the temperature I wanted. My answer was to use the microwave. The next step was to figure out how to get the right time for any mass of water or milk, and for any temperature change.

We can see that the time required (Sec) is proportional to the mass of the water (M) and to the change in temperature (ΔT), multiplied by some constant (C). 

M × ΔT = C × Sec

Rearranging to solve for the time; Sec = M × ΔT / C

For turkey day this year the family get-together will be smaller than usual, 18 rather than the more usual 25 to 30. Maybe that's not a bad thing, though. I volunteered to bring the bread and a dessert.