Blogs about baking from Pew Pew Laser Blog

Cook's Illustrated & Adult Learning Theory.

I received a subscription to Cook's Illustrated for my birthday last year, an excellent instructional magazine for cooks.

For each recipe, Cook's Illustrated first devotes an entire page (sometimes two) to the challenges that the author overcame in developing and testing this recipe, which I initially thought was all worthless jibber-jabber. I've since realized that the whole point of the play-by-play recipe evolution story is to tell me why certain arcane steps are necessary. By more fully engaging my brain, it's helping me not to skip a step in the process they've outlined. By involving me, I learn.

Another huge advantage of Cook's Illustrated is that the authors are always kind enough to always provide the weight equivalent for flour in baked good recipes.

Flour - Converting Volume to Weight.

When baking, I prefer to measure flour by weight rather than by volume, particularly when measuring flour. The best results come from the precise and repeatable measurement of ingredients that measuring by weight delivers. Measuring by weight is also much faster - since I don't have to fiddle around with sifting or leveling off the cup. The only difficulty was in converting the volume-based measurements called for in most recipes into a weight for my kitchen scale.

For a while, I would simply equate a quarter cup of flour to one ounce of flour. Then I came to the conclusion that my cookies were simply not as puffy as they should have been; shown in the left of this picture. They had a crispy outside, but were missing a softer inside.

I looked through The Fannie Farmer Cookbook, I'm Just Here for More Food, and several issues of Cook's Illustrated to compile the table below. After using the conversions in this table, I was rewarded with the much softer, puffier cookies; shown at the right of the above picture.

See this chart for more detail.

Snickerdoodles.

While these aren't my personal favorite cookie, they are my most requested cookie. The husband and many co-workers agree that these are the best snickerdoodles in the world. I keep the cinnamon and sugar mixture on-hand in a small jar; I re-use it for the next batch of snickerdoodles, or on buttered toast. Here's the recipe.

Ye-ouch!

I was washing dishes, when my timer went off to pull some cookies out of the oven. I slapped on my oven mitt, pulled out the cookie sheet, and got one heck of a burn on the tip of my thumb. The water from my fingers had absorbed into the cloth of the mitt, and created a lovely new path for heat to escape from the hot baking tray right into my thumb. From now on, I'm resolved to thoroughly dry my hands before putting on the oven mitts.

Thanksgiving II.

This year's Turkey day was as much of a success as last year. The in-laws made for delightful and very helpful company this year. It is always good to have a chance to show off in the kitchen.

Here, for posterity, was our menu:

• Alton Brown's (Brined and) Roasted Turkey: This is our go-to recipe every year, and is reliably delicious. Note that you want the full-sodium stock in this recipe; remember that you're brining the turkey.
• Beard / Brown Rolls: I rewrote the recipe for Parker House Rolls from Beard on Bread to be more specific, and to take advantage of modern conveniences such as instant yeast and stand mixers. These should be prepared the night before serving, and baked in the morning.
• Mushroom Gravy: The husband prepared just the "Gravy" part of this recipe. Last year he made it with vegetable stock instead of turkey stock for the vegetarians. We always forget to add the parsley and mint, so they're optional.
• Sourdough Stuffing: This is a great stuffing, and easily adapted to be vegetarian. This year we added some carrots to fill out the flavor a bit.
• Endive Salad: This salad is very pretty, but the flavors only come together when you cut everything up together. You could probably could go with hearts of Romain instead of the endives.
• Mashed potatoes: We used a simple mashed potato recipe from a book, so no recipe here.
• "The Cock and Jack Apple Pie": This is a mash-up of the husband's devising, and is widely hailed as the best apple pie in the world. He uses Caprial's Apple Pie filling from Caprial's Desserts, Alton Brown's recipe for crust, and Alton's pie construction methods: drain the apples and use a pie bird to prevent a collapsing crust.
• Green beans w/ bacon and shallots: I'm a little unsure of the ingredients, and don't have the recipe, because our guests brought this dish.
• Fresh Cranberry Relish: This will make a huge amount of relish, but we quickly use it all up. It works well inside dinner rolls or scones, for instance.

I was very pleased that I managed to make rolls this year. I did forget the salt, but I rewrote the recipe to (hopefully) avoid that next time. Also, the chicken stock that I made a couple of months ago was used as an ingredient in many of our Thanksgiving dishes, so that's another feather in my cap. The husband should be very proud of all he made. In fact, now that I think about it, it's time for some left-over apple pie.