33
votes
Accepted
Cocoa vs cacao pâte vs 100% dark chocolate
First, let's get the English terms straight. What Pierre Hermé meant is chocolate liquor, and the translator should have researched the term, instead of simply using a French word where an unambguous ...
- 137k
29
votes
What bread dough is quick to prepare and requires no kneading or much skill?
Buy a bread machine.
Bread machine bread meets all of your requirements, including not learning any new skills. And it's still much better than supermarket bread in most places. I'm a former ...
- 61.4k
18
votes
Why would a 4 layer cake fall over?
I’ve had this happen because I :
Did not use dowels
Put too much pudding in between the layers
Had put the cake on a non-level table
The cake started ejecting the upper layer (there were only two) ...
- 80.1k
15
votes
After putting something in my oven, the temperature drops and is super slow to increase back up despite keeping the door shut
This is all very normal, nothing special about it. Some of your assumptions happen to be untrue, and others don't apply to modern ovens.
First, temperature fluctuation is the normal way an oven ...
- 137k
14
votes
Make custard firmer
Saffitz's recipe is unusual in having a large number of eggs in the filling but no starch. Most lemon bar recipes have some starch in the filling to help it set, usually flour, from 1/4 to 1 cup.
So ...
- 61.4k
14
votes
How can I alter this brownie recipe to make it chewier and more moist?
350 for 30 minutes seems like a likely source of at least part of the problem to me. If you like a chewy brownie, those happen by not baking them to death (where you get cakey, dry things they call ...
- 16k
12
votes
Accepted
Protecting gingerbread house windows from humidity
Coconut oil?
Give them a smear. You might need to take them out and bake off the moisture they have absorbed, then let them cool. Coconut oil will be solid at winter room temperature. It will serve ...
- 6,626
12
votes
Accepted
Dominique Ansel book - ambiguity in the recipe
I would assume a typo - change one(!) letter and the logic fits again:
Bring to a boil over high heat.
Cool until the mixture reaches 113º to 122ºF (45º to 50ºC), about 10 minutes. Stir in the ...
- 58.7k
12
votes
Accepted
Challah Loaf Tearing
That's definitely good, I'd happily have a piece of your Challah.
It looks to me like you under-proofed your dough after you braided it, what you are seeing is a lot of oven spring in action. Next ...
- 75.4k
12
votes
Butternut squash: bake, then cube?
If you bake first it will be difficult to get cubes, unless you under cook significantly. Cubing first also provides more surface area for browning...thus more flavor. If it says baked cubes, there ...
- 73.8k
11
votes
Make custard firmer
The first place to troubleshoot is the doneness of the custard.
"Time in the oven" is a very bad way to judge when to stop baking. It can be wildly off. The only certain way is to measure ...
- 137k
11
votes
Accepted
If a runny cake batter forms a dense layer at the bottom, is it due to insufficient whisking or is it a property of the runny batter?
I suspect what's happened here is that your oven wasn't hot enough, so your cake didn't rise and cook quickly enough and collapsed. The uncooked layer at the bottom shows it was much cooler underneath....
- 75.4k
11
votes
How can I alter this brownie recipe to make it chewier and more moist?
Two excellent answers already, but a couple of other things you can try rather than using the bran buds to add fibre to your diet
You can buy bran flour, AKA wheat bran. This will behave a bit better ...
- 14k
9
votes
Accepted
Why use a poolish and dry yeast?
The answer is: Flavour.
The purpose of yeast in bread isn't just to make it rise, it also provides a flavour to the bread. While a poolish does indeed give you lots of great yeasts for rising, the ...
- 14k
9
votes
What bread dough is quick to prepare and requires no kneading or much skill?
There are multiple categories of bread that would likely meet your requirements:
There is a category called ‘quick breads’ that use baking soda or carbonated beverages for lift, so you don’t need to ...
- 80.1k
9
votes
Accepted
British vs. American Scones
A large part of the issue is how variable British scone recipes can be.
I looked at a good few recipes over the weekend, mainly for cheese scones, as that was what I was making, but also for plain ...
- 43.8k
9
votes
What is a reasonable culinary substitute for cucurbita maxima or other pumpkins used in pie and bread?
Sweet potato is similar to pumpkin in pies (and some feel superior), and would probably work well in quick breads and muffins as well. Spices in these types of baked goods are generally predominant ...
- 5,468
8
votes
How many cake mix boxes would I need for to make a 9 inch cake with 6 layers
According to another question we have about the size of boxed mixes, major mix brands in the USA use a roughly standard size, one box is intended to produce two layers of a 9x6 rectangular cake.
You ...
- 137k
8
votes
Accepted
How to fill a burnt basque cheesecake
ChatGPT is a computer program, that not only doesn't know how to cook, it also doesn't even know that cooking is. Why would you even ask?
The solution to this is to make the sauce on the stovetop, and ...
- 61.4k
8
votes
Accepted
Yield of construction gingerbread
You are not the first baker stumbling about the unpredictable yield issue. There’s even one baker - Stella Parks of Serious Eats fame - that addresses exactly that in her article on construction ...
- 58.7k
7
votes
What should I do to keep the color bright when I use natural pigments such as blue spirulina to make baked products？
You cannot keep it. This is just how the chemicals in spirulina work. It isn't suitable for coloring baked goods.
Spirulina coloring has been tested to be heat stable to about 45 C. Between 45 and 70, ...
- 137k
7
votes
Accepted
How do baking recipes based on protein powders work?
Without seeing a specific recipe, I strongly suspect that it hydrates the protein powder cold, then heats it up. You can do this with protein shakes as well, so long as the powder is very well ...
- 43.8k
7
votes
After putting something in my oven, the temperature drops and is super slow to increase back up despite keeping the door shut
Assuming you are measuring accurately, this is surprising. Do ensure you are measuring the oven temperature using an accurate thermometer in a suitable central location, rather than for example ...
- 11.9k
7
votes
How can I alter this brownie recipe to make it chewier and more moist?
Over baking the brownies will lead the dryness issue, although you might be able to counteract this with either oil or some sort of vegetable or fruit purée. (But those can also make it a bit more ...
- 80.1k
6
votes
Does yeast lose strength over time?
The reason why many recipes have you proof the yeast (combine the yeast and sugar and check for activity) is because yeast can go bad. This isn't a binary thing, as you suspected it weakens over time ...
- 1,018
6
votes
What bread dough is quick to prepare and requires no kneading or much skill?
Check out soda bread recipes. These are typically very quick to prepare, using baking soda (bicarbonate of soda) or baking powder and an acidic liquid component, such as buttermilk or plain yogurt, ...
- 14k
6
votes
British vs. American Scones
I think you’ve hit upon the main issue: British scones are not the same American scones. (And British biscuits aren’t American biscuits, either)
There are two items vaguely similar to a British ...
- 80.1k
6
votes
How can I alter this brownie recipe to make it chewier and more moist?
I'd approach the problem from a different direction. I'd start with a good brownie recipe and modify that by adding your All Bran. This looks more like a fairly rich chocolate cake made as a traybake ...
- 43.8k
5
votes
How to convert fluid double strength espresso to instant coffee crystals?
That recipe only calls for 1 teaspoon of liquid espresso; there is no way that the espresso is the liquid that is making it hard to work with. The liquid in the recipe is coming from the eggs.
That ...
- 61.4k
5
votes
Accepted
Help Trying to Achieve a Specific Baguette Scoring Pattern
This is not a matter of scoring, but a matter of crust management. The difference between your two pictures is that the dough in the first (desirable) batch has managed to spread more before the crust ...
- 137k
Only top scored, non community-wiki answers of a minimum length are eligible