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[0:52] Hello and welcome to Cooking Issues. This is Dave Arnold, your host of cooking issues coming to live in the back of Report of Pizzeria on the Heritage Radio Network, every

[1:00] Tuesday from roughly 12 to roughly 1245. Joined, as usual, in the studio with Nastasia, the Hammer, Lopez, Jack and Joe in the engineering room, and today, we have a special guest,

[1:10] Piper from Booker and Dax Research Lab downtown. Hey, Pipes, how you doing? Good? Yeah, it's called a microphone. You gotta talk into it. So I have another person I can brutalize on here, right? It's good business, no? It's good. Anyway, calling all your questions to 718-497-2128. That 718-497-2128. All right, so let's get to some of the email questions that we have already. Uh, we, oh, no, again, with the not getting the right thing on my iPad. Okay. This is from Paul K. Hi all. Thanks for your work on the great show, and thanks for answering all my past questions. My latest question is about baking. In general, I'm happy with the results of my once per month attempt at baking bread. However, I'm always a little disappointed by the small or perhaps non-existent oven spring that I get. I haven't had any real life training. My only knowledge is from books, but my impression from those books is that

[1:59] oven spring is to be expected and should be noticeable. Although my bread does rise nicely before putting it in the oven, i.e. I guess when he's proofing. As I say, I'm always a little disappointed with the amount it springs during those 1st few minutes of baking. Perhaps I simply shouldn't expect to see anything dramatic. Any help would be most appreciated all the best, Paul. Okay. All right, here's a, the problem, 1st of all, I'm by no means a bread expert. There are people who all they do all day, all night is think about bread. And so, you know, you always hesitate when there's people like that out there to make any kind of statement at all. But that said, I feel confident that I don't know enough information right now to

[2:40] answer your question. So what we need for a real troubleshooting of your bread recipe. First of all, what style of bread are you making? What are you looking to get? Like, do you want a dense crumb structure, a very open crumb structure? What kind of crust? Crumb structure is a gross word, huh? Yeah. Nastasia just made her crumb structure face, which is very similar to vegan face. Like, slight difference. Only I can tell. Uh, but the, so there's that, right? And then in general, I need to know kind of what hydration level you're using. So, like, what kind of, uh, you know, what's, what's the oliflower, 1st of all, what your, how much water you're adding to the flour, and then how you're raising it and forming it, uh, and proofing

[3:23] it and whatnot. In general. Oven spring is generated. First of all, most of the stuff that I, that I read on the, on the, on the inner line, what do you call it? internet, on the internet about oven spring, a lot of it is kind of BS. Specifically, I don't think that some people say this because you're increasing the

[3:43] rate of yeast reaction at the last minute as the bread is baking, and that's what's doing it. I think that's almost, almost probably certainly not the case because the oven spring happens very, very quickly and probably not enough time for you to start reacting and all of a sudden producing CO2 and overdrive.

[3:57] I think what's going on, uh, is you need a high initial heat, uh, high initial burst of heat in the oven to rapidly expand the gases in the cell of the dough

[4:08] structure and then set the dough structure before the dough structure breaks. And so what you're looking at to get a good oven spring is, one, there has to be a good gluten network in there that's going to allow it to hold the gas as it expands.

[4:21] Uh, it's going to have to be uh, kind of formed properly, and it's going to have to have enough air bubbles in it already that can expand, right? So it's formation of the, of the, you know, right number of, and, you know,

[4:33] amount, size of air bubbles, getting them kind of big enough, but keeping the structure of the dough intact so that it can raise up

[4:40] and uh, and spring, getting up very high heat, both from the bottom and from

[4:44] the uh, top. So with a baking stone at the bottom with a very initial high preheat, and then with steam injection or some form of steam to get a rapid, uh, rapid heat transfer into the loaf on

[4:55] the on the end. Forget, I'm not even talking about the actual development of what the crust is like, which is another thing that steam can do, but I'm just

[5:01] saying rapid heat into the dough. A 3rd thing is a proper slashing pattern in the

[5:07] dough will allow heat to get in and allow it to expand more, like physically allow it to expand more. So there's the slashing patterns that you make on it. There's a proper formation of the dough, proper proofing of it, like, and making sure that the dough has the proper structure to get it to work properly.

[5:25] But very difficult to figure out exactly which one of those problems you have. Most likely your oven's not tricked out enough for it. I mean, I don't know. I don't know what kind of what kind of oven that you're using. There's an interesting book that I haven't read before, but that gets very high recommendations, and I want to read it called Bread Science, the chemistry and craft of

[5:45] breadmaking, which came out fairly recently. And there's a bunch of chunks on the, you know, on the internet that you can read of that on their, on their website. And then I would look at, um, you know, a fresh loaf in those other kind of like large kind of uh, conglomeration of uh, bloggers who get together and talk about this stuff. I mean, if you're just baking occasionally, sometimes it can be difficult to wade through all the information that they

[6:08] provide, and of course, a lot of it's red herrings, because everyone, you know, like all of us are just experimenting all the time. But anyway, I hope that helps. Doesn't seem like made any sense at all. No, yeah. All right. Hello and good morning. Team cooking issues. I like that. Team cooking issues, not cooking issues, team, team cooking issues. App appreciate that. Okay. Can you describe the pros and cons of open and closed baths for low temperature cooking? A friend is tempted to purchase a sous vide supreme rather than polycience immersion circulator for home use, because the salesperson suggested that an open bath will cause the temperature to fluctuate and cause a loss of control.

[6:40] The guy was a schmuck. Thank you, Matthew in Chicago. Well, I don't know the man that you're discussing personally. I didn't see him, but based on the one statement we have of his, which is that an

[6:52] open bath circulator is going to have large temperature fluctuations. Yes, he is a schmuck. So if the rest of his thinking is in line with the thinking he gave you right there, then yes, a schmuck call is in order. The main difference between a sous vide supreme and a real immersion circulator isn't necessarily, whether it's covered or not, because it's very easy to cover a, you know, a bath when

[7:16] you when you use an immersion circulator. The main difference is in the circulation itself. Now, to go back for a 2nd in case, I don't know, in case, like someone strapped you down to a chair and this, your torture is to listen to this radio show and you haven't listened to it before, what we're talking about

[7:31] or pieces of equipment that allow you to do low temperature cooking, cooking at very precise temperatures that are very close to the actual temperature you want to cook to.

[7:39] All right? So that's low temperature cooking. And the main piece of equipment that most of us use to do that is the immersion circulator. And what that does is it keeps water at a very, very, or anything, really, any

[7:49] liquid at a very accurate temperature and allows you to do all these new effects that you have for low temperature cooking. Now, there's you notice the word immersion circulator. So there's circulation of water and the circulation is what allows you to get very even temperatures over the entire bath, you know, within like a couple tenths of a degree.

[8:06] Now, if you don't cover that circulating bath, what's going to happen is you will get evaporation off of the surface of

[8:14] the bath, right? And so you'll be losing a lot of heat. And if you didn't have adequate circulation, you will get a temperature stratification in the bath, right? I mean, no, no doubt. Obviously, you'll get temperature stratification. But, um, adequate circulation is going to prevent any real stratification of temperature, uh, once you get any reasonable death below the bottom of

[8:36] the below the surface of the water. Now, if you have an unstirred bath, right? The situation is horrible. What happens if you do not cover an unstirred bath, you will get constant evaporation off of the surface, and you will get, in essence, over time, a temperature gradient established as water evaporates off of the top of the bath, and by

[8:59] evaporating, cools it, because it's evaporative cooling. And so you'll get a, you'll get a temperature gradient set up that probably is fairly static over a long cook once it settles out, I would

[9:08] guess. Assuming the humidity of your room remains constant. Now, aside from the fact, what I just said that you

[9:16] must at all times cover a non-circulating bath, and that you don't need to necessarily cover a circulating bath to get an accurate

[9:26] temperature. It is always good practice to cover a circulating bath, always good practice because, uh, you lose so much energy through the top of the, um, to the top of the bath, uh, you know, as things evaporate,

[9:40] that A, uh, sometimes in larger bath situations, your circulator might not have enough power to get it up to the temperature that you want because they only typically have between 750 and a 1000 watts of heating

[9:49] power. Uh, two, you are going to take a lot longer to come up to temperature than you otherwise would.

[9:55] And three, you're going to be evaporating off stuff like a mother. And so even over relatively short cooking times, you're going to lose

[10:04] water, over long cooking times, like overnight, you could potentially boil or not boil, but evaporate all the water out of your bath and your product can be ruined.

[10:11] And fourth, in a circulated bath, if you've done a bad job and not put a rack or some sort of weight on top of your

[10:19] food such that it's like definitively sunk under the surface of the liquid, you know, if you cover it, even if a little bit pokes up, you'll still get a fairly close temperature, as long as the thing's totally sealed and covered up to what you want,

[10:31] it's just not as effective a heat transfer mechanism. So, always a good idea to cover a bath, the only exception being if you have a reheat bath at a relatively low temperature during service and you're going in and out of it all the time. But under other circumstances, I always, always recommend covering the bath. Yeah? Yeah. Yeah. How you doing, Nastasia? Good. Yeah? Anything good happening? We got some good news on the Booker and Dax front. Tristan Willie. Uh, you know, the opening, uh, you know, the guy who opened it with us, you know, uh, manager of Booker, one best bartender in the country, according to

[11:07] Eater, even asking. Wow, you guys would click on the, uh, click on the, on the capiton there, right? So that was good news, right? It's good business. Love myself and Tristan, a little too tall for my taste, but other than that, good man, right? Yeah, yeah. Uh, okay. Uh, we have a question in from uh, Matt Mincer on brines. Hello cooking issues, folks. I've got a question or 3 about brines. When I barbecue pork or chicken, I make a brine with a heavy dose of my dry rub in it. The theory being that the water is being drawn into the meat and will carry some of that flavor from the spice with it. But I was listening to one of your podcasts where Harold McGee said that the flavor molecules from spices are probably too large to penetrate the cells of the

[11:49] meat. The question I have is, am I wasting my time and my spices by adding them to the brine. Has anybody studied which flavor molecules will penetrate the meat if any. And finally, how much brining is too much? It seems at some point the osmosis would reach equilibrium and anything more would give diminishing returns. I'm sure it depends on the cut of meat, but is there any rule of thumb, thanks, Matt. And a PS I wrote in a few weeks ago about using mason jars in my centrifuge, and for the record, they work about 75% of the time. The other 25, not so much. I'm assuming what that means is like awful things happened, right? And when you assume, Piper, that what he means is awful things have happened. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. that's my guess Put your headphones on. So, yeah, this is Piper's 1st time on the radio. He, you know, he's not so much with the with the radio thing. He's from Vermont. don't have radios there yet. Right? Is that true, Piper? Very true. Yeah. So here's the deal. I think you're pretty much right and Harold's pretty much right. And that most brines don't really penetrate the meat to a very large distance. And so you're probably wasting a good bit of your spices. However, like brining something, uh, hold on a sec, we're getting some sort of feedback action. You getting the gear in that jack, some sort of feedback action? Piper's phone. It's Piper's phone. Nice. Uh, Vermont. So the, uh, the, the, the thing is, is that, um, I think you could probably get pretty much the same uh, reaction by doing your brine and then rubbing your spices on after it comes out of the

[13:15] brine. I mean, that's what I would do. Salt, obviously, gets carried into the meat, because it's an extremely small molecule. Uh, you know, I don't really know what the penetration effects of something like sugar is. Nitrates penetrate in, obviously, otherwise curing wouldn't work, but larger molecules tend, I think, not to make it into into the meat. I think that's accurate fact. Acids tend to do certain work, but they tend not to penetrate far, which is why you get kind of a different texture on the surface of a

[13:46] meat or any place where there's a cleft in the meat where things can get into it. You can get effect from acids and intermuscular connections and stuff, but you're not going to get an effect from

[13:55] something like that in the dead center of a piece of meat in any reasonable

[13:59] amount of time. I think you're right. I think that, you know, there is a diminishing uh, diminishing return time, but that diminishing return time is going to depend uh, almost primarily on the thickness of the piece of meat you use and the brine strength

[14:13] that you use. So there's no real, no real rule of thumb on brining the same way that would be on, let's say, kind of curing where everything's been written down by, you know, the USDA and the various curing authorities

[14:25] on it. I mean, Piper, you know any rule of thumb? Now, you disagree with anything I've said? No, yeah, nice, nice. I need some, you know, you need to, like, you do disagree with me. Are you going to be like Nastasia or you don't disagree with me on error? and then later you're going to tell me I'm a douche? No he'll tell me. He'll tell you that I'm a douche. And then you'll tell me and I'll yell at you. Is that how this is going to work? chain of command. No, jeez. Oh, geez. All right, listen. Hey Jack, let's go to our 1st commercial break and come back with more cooking issues.

[15:04] You're listening to Kill Me in the Summertime by Dead Stars on the HeritageRadioNetwork.org. I know I Like is what they say, sunny races game. Everything I'm moving for, but I need you in the summertime. You're going just before the fall. still crush me in the wintertime so at once

[16:10] Bringation Being underground. Trying to understand. Things like this again. Nothing that I was looking for. The International Culinary Center is a proud sponsor of the

[16:40] HeritageRadio Network.org, the ICC with locations in New York and California, provide cutting edge education to future chefs,

[16:49] restorateurs, and wine professionals. We're proud to claim Dan Barber, Bobby Flay, and David Chang among our honored alumni. This is Dorothy Can Hamilton from Chef Story. Check out our ICC website at internationalculinarycenter.com. Did you guys steal that music from, like, the Hayden Planetariums, like, universe movie that they play right when you show up? It sounds like it, maybe like Wizard of Oz on Loop or something too. I'm not sure Yes, it's crazy. I think that's what it is, though. like, you know, you go and they're like, there are 1000000000s of stars. and it's like, really? Can you play me a little bit of that weedly didly music? I want some of that, some of that like universe. You know what I'm saying? Like the spinning stars and stuff? Maybe we can like fade that in with fish is fish is vodka. Don't mess don't mess with the fish's fish song. All right, don't be messing with this song. The, you know, the, oh, by the way, we haven't talked about that, right? You want to talk about the song that got sent in, the fishes, fish is vodka? Yes, it's, you know, because we couldn't play vicious, vicious vodka. We have a sound alike song, and so does the title. And it was composed by someone on

[17:55] Twitter. Jack, do you remember the name of the person? Jack doesn't remember. guys are bad people. Yeah, we no credit. But next time. You guys are horrible people. Yes, yes. we'll get to. We'll do another commercial break, come back with a full thank you. Anyway, uh, so we got one in from at Clefts. Cooking issues, any ideas on time and temperature for cooking cod sperm sacks, low temp. You got to love a question like that. Cod sperm sacks at low temp. Any way to prevent coagulation of dairy. 2nd question, any way to prevent coagulation of dairy in a high acid system. So here's the thing. cod sperm, I would never say cod sperm, when you're actually going to serve it to someone, I mean, the term that we would use in food circles would be

[18:36] milk, like Uncle Milty, Milt, cod Milt. I have not myself cooked cod milk. I've seen it many times. I think I've had it. You've had the cod milk, right, sauce? Did you enjoy the cod milk? Yeah? You had it, you had it, Japanese style? That, yeah. And then with you at, what's that place in San Francisco? Where? your friend. Which friend? He does a lot of Chris Costantino? We had milk there? All right. So I guess, yeah. Anyway, it's got like a texture similar to like a brains or something like that. But I have no idea how to cook it, how to cook it low temp. I mean it's got such a delicate structure that I would worry about vacuuming it. I would guess that it coagulates somewhere in the range of where an egg white would coagulate, so you'd probably want to cook it

[19:22] at like, I don't know, 62, something like that, Celsius, but I don't know, because you're supposed to steam it or fry it or something like that. It's supposed to be a delicate kind of puffy puffy texture. What do you think, pipes? I think that's a good, what do you do? you ever cook the cod milk? No. I actually wasn't listening. No, it's like, it's like, what the hell? Well, well, Piper, it's because Piper's not trying to buy shoes on Zappos, like somebody else we know who shall remain. He's not on Facebook. He just clicked. He's not on Facebook, Nostal. He's looking up oil preliminariation for me. Anyway. So no, I do not have a good time or temperature on it, but I would assume

[20:00] it would be somewhere in that range like 62. I've never cooked. I've never really done even low temp on my favorite kind of, you know, fish. fish, gonad part, which is row. I've never done any really low temperature cooking on that, although I should because I love Shadrow. one of my favorite things to cook. You don't like the shadow, dude. Why do you not like the shadow? Something about, isn't it, they're like really grainy? Well, if you well, if you overcook it, it's grainy, yeah. I had it when it was really grainy. Who cooked it for? In a restaurant? No. I'm not gonna call. No? no? All right. anyway. But the 2nd one, it just so happens at Cliffs, that we have

[20:37] here Piper, who his family is involved with CP Kelko, right? We have the man to tell you how to prevent the coagulation of high acid dairy systems. Piper with some pectin. Give me some pepin stabilization knowledge. Drop it on me. Let's see. Protein protection, through what? Pectin. Oh, my God, Piper. Killing me. All right, look. The question was, Piper, Snap back. The question was, uh, how to do high acid dairy systems without coagulation. And the answer, I gave it to you, just describe which pectins is you like pectin to preserve high acid dairy systems. Pectin and... CMC. That's carboxy methyl cellulose for all you who don't know what the hell CMC is. I think it's a brand of truck. So he's using car boxing, right? Is that true? Right? Karbosky muscle cellulose. who makes that stuff? Actually, CP Coco makes it. Yeah. All right. Can you buy that from modernist pantry? I think you can. From a Piper puts CMC in every freaking thing. Like, 1st of all, he's his body doesn't do so well with the gluten. So he, he, you know, He's it for film forming and gluten-free bread. And also viscosity without having to deal with yield point, like Xanthe. Yeah, you point for those of you that have no idea what the hell we're talking about. You'll point. So if you take xanthan gum, it acts a little bit like a fluid gel, you sit it on a surface, you tilt it and it acts like a gel until you put a certain amount of shear on it, at which point it automatically thins and turns to a liquid.

[22:15] That's called a yield point. So same with a yield point acts like that as opposed to something that is merely thick, but will flow under all circumstances. So, too easy real world examples, uh, that don't involve

[22:26] hydrocoloids that you can think of are like maple syrup, no matter how cold it is, it just

[22:32] flows, but slowly. It doesn't have a yield point. Whereas ketchup, right? Ketchup does not flow until stuff until shear is applied to it and has a yield and it breaks. So that's that's what a yield point. So Piper's looking to strengthen something in a system without having a yield point. He's using CMC and pectin, but you use a specific pectin, don't you? There are a couple different types of pect that you can use. I like, let's see. Beta Pectin, which is from Beats. What's the beta? the beta refer to for those that are out there in the in the pectin land? I don't even know that. You know what? Like, Piper worked at CP Kilco's, like, like, what were you, research? in the research labs? like busting stuff out? Yeah. And so Piper will put Pectin in just about any damn thing and CMC in just about any damn thing. So give them just give them a recipe. Since you're not going to tell them, just give them a freaking recipe. It's complicated. Alright. High concentration solution of beta pectin,

[23:38] like maybe 5% is mixed with, you know,

[23:44] the solution that you want to acidify. And then it's continually mix for like an hour or so and then you slowly add your acid. Um, it depends. I mean, there's so many specifics. So you're saying it's incredibly difficult. It's incredible, without an accurate pH meter, I mean, you're gonna, you're gonna just try and pour

[24:03] juice and like lemon juice into it. What's he trying to make? Well, I'm assuming he wants to do like, you know, Calpico water or something like that, or like some sort of like acidified dairy beverage. I'm assuming that's where he's trying to do I would say make one high concentration solution of beta pectant or an HM pectant, and then add it in increments of like one% total weight with the with the dairy, and then slowly acidify, and you'll see that the flaculation point is going to

[24:38] decrease PH. From PHS. All right. So, Clef, there you have it. I wouldn't, that's not so much a recipe you can take to the bank, but Piper will work on. get it out to you. By the way, I was looking up while Piper was talking, I was looking up Aaron's last name who made the song. His last name is Robertson. So Aaron Robertson. Thank you for the fish's fish, uh, is vodka song. Whoa, now. Abrupt end on the clap, guys. Jesus. Killing me. Okay, now, another interesting thing was brought up a couple weeks ago. I didn't answer was an oil preliminarization technique that's made in Japan. Another thing from Japan called Katamero Tempuru, which I guess tempuru means like kind of like tempura, right? Tempura, tempudu? I don't know how to speak Japanese. Anyway, Kaganat tempura is a powder that you, and I saw the video of it on the, on the internet. Amazing, what they want to do is, is you ever have like a liquid fat and you want to dispose of it and throw it in your trash, you can't because it's a

[25:37] liquid. So what you do is you add this powder to it, and it instantly polymerizes, turns to a solid, which you then scrape out of the

[25:45] pan, and you can throw in your regular waste trash. Now, um, that's crazy. I don't know how the hell it works. It says it's some sort of algel thing, some sort of algel seaweed, uh, like nonsense, but I was, like, nowhere was they able to find what's actually in it. What is actually doing it? And it's clearly some sort of, I mean, it's probably clearly,

[26:06] not clearly, I guess, some sort of polymerization where the oil is being linked. I doubt they're like instantly hydrogenating it because I don't know of any way to do that because it's not a system where they're adding

[26:17] heat. They're literally just adding a powder to the oil and it's turning to a solid, which is nutty. I don't know how the hell it works. Someone out there, please, if you know what this reaction is, and what's causing it. Because remember, there's ways to do it in like that I found that are very, very non-food grade. But the question is how do you do it in a food grade way, such that you're not doing something crazy to your pen? Like, are they somehow some sort of instance uponification reaction where they're turning into a soap? I have no idea. Someone please tell me. The only way I know how to solidify a fat like that, hardcore solidify it is to add large amounts, like upwards of 10% by weight of mono and diglycerides, when that, like, so you could take a liquid fat, add 10% mono and diglycerides to it, uh, and, you know, heat it a little bit, and then

[26:59] when it cools, it will thicken and turn to a, you know, a solid, and you can scrape it out. Um, and that's, that's the only way that, you know, that I've done it, uh, you know, in the kitchen before, but I don't, I don't really, I don't know. Anyway, so we're looking that up. Uh, and we'll take a 2nd break. We'll come right back with cooking issues.

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[28:36] And we're back. Okay, back on the bread. I was thinking about this for a second. I read an interesting couple of interesting articles. They don't actually relate to the question about oven spring, but I thought they were kind of interesting. One is that these nut jobs are trying to figure out a way to determine how their bread is going to react to

[29:04] baking, and instead of doing the obvious thing for us, which would be to bake it. They put it in a vacuum chamber. And these guys, by putting in a vacuum chamber, they expand all the air cells that

[29:16] are, the air bubbles that are already in the dough. And they claim that at any point in the bread making process after the initial kind of mixing and the air incorporation has happened, that they can get good correlations to the final bake

[29:30] volume just by putting the sucker in a vacuum and seeing how high it can, it can raise up. There's another interesting picture on vacuum mixing in the in the bread science book that I told you about that's available in the truck that's online, where she reproduces a picture of a bread that was mixed under a vacuum.

[29:48] It had the craziest pore structure. It was considered a bad pore structure, but I thought very interesting. Like now, I'm spending all morning thinking about, uh, like, you know, various, uh, you know, ways to put vacuums on bread. But the other really interesting thing is, uh, is an article I read about the temperatures at which the, uh, temperatures at which the bread, and this relates back to oven spring, is setting. And so the point is, is that the protein structure in a good bread, uh, in a good well-made dough. The protein structure is going to hold the gas bubble integrity up to a point of about 60 degrees Celsius, where a crappy bread dough is going to hold its structure up to a point of about 50 degrees Celsius.

[30:32] And so, and the key difference there is that that's right around the temperature that the star gelatinization is taking place. So the protein is really only there to hold the structure of the

[30:42] bread while you're waiting for the starch to gelatinize and set. And that's why, you know, and I think we've discussed about it a couple times in the past. You know, when you're working on a gluten-free bread, like a lot of the problem is just getting it to react properly to the initial

[31:01] bakeout. So it's the initial bakeout of it. It's hard because you're getting the proteins. They have to hold there until the interior of the bread gets up to, you know, 50 or 60. And that's, you know, that's why when we're doing experiments, we'll experiment with, you know, things that have weird kind of pre-gelling characteristics like, like you'll add something to hold structure like a Xanthan or like a CMC, and then you'll add something to

[31:24] actually gel in that mid-range temperature where those other things are going to start to fail, like a

[31:30] methocellulose or some other sort of heat gelling property. Because the idea is, is that it's not that the protein is important. I don't think it's important, but it's not, you know, majorly important to the final texture of the bread. I think the major, the major impact from the final temperature on the bread is going to be the starches and how they gelatinize. However, the major impact to the formation of that final structure is going to be how the protein

[31:55] works. And so that's the really dig, diggity, dig that you get when you're trying to formulate a bread without protein, without without gluten proteins. When you say that's... Yeah. Now Piper's learned to do the noastasia and just say, just say yes. Okay. Joshua wrote in last week. didn't get to get to it on beer. I hope this is still the correct email and it is, even though we didn't answer it last week. Obviously, Nastasia got the email. A few questions. I'm an all grain brewer because I didn't answer this last week. Did I, Stas? I'm an all grain brewer and I have access to grains, hops, good brewing equipment, word, et cetera,

[32:31] which, like, for some reason, I don't know. I call it ward, but I was told that brewers call it ward. Okay. No, you don't care. You don't do a crap. Okay. Are there some interesting things I can do with these base ingredients beyond beer or the equipment used for

[32:44] it beyond low temperature cooking? Um, That's interesting. I love, uh, I've been trying to use mashing techniques and, um, use the, the, the amylace that, so, when you're, when you're doing mashing, when you're doing an all grain

[33:00] mash, What you're using barley, typically malted barley, when you're malting the barley, you're just allowing a little bit of the grain to

[33:09] grow. You're allowing it to germinate a little bit, and then you're stopping that, well, the enzymes are in there that will convert the starch in the barley, eventually convert the starch into sugar so that the growing embryo can use them, you kill

[33:23] that such that the enzymes haven't been destroyed, but that the embryo isn't using all of that stuff. It isn't wasting any of the stars because you want to convert all that starch using the enzymes to sugar. So, uh, I've been, uh, not with much success, but trying to experiment using, um, using the enzymes in that to add other starches to do cooking related uh, things.

[33:45] So, uh, to break down, um, potatoes, for instance, or break down even further sweet potatoes using a mixture of uh, amylases

[33:54] from from, from grains. But I haven't had any sort of luck. You know, that I haven't had any sort of luck that makes me want to think that that's what I want to do for the next, you know,

[34:03] you know, 10 years. I mean, much more luck with, um, not with grain-based, uh, ferments doing interesting thing, but, uh, Harold McGee has been turning me on to some really interesting, uh, rice-based fermentations, not Japanese, not coji-based, but, you know, other

[34:18] weird, uh, symbiotic, uh, like mixtures of bacteria and uh, fungal and uh, yeast

[34:24] elements. And I forget the name of it is, but he's had these weird little, they're called yeast balls that are from China that McGee kind of turned me

[34:30] onto that make this amazing fermented rice gruel that tastes unlike anything ever. So I've had more luck using that in culinary in culinary applications, but I haven't really had done much with beer. Now, malt is delicious, and malt, I think, especially even

[34:45] the even the dried stuff that you can buy, or the extract, is an underused

[34:49] ingredient, from a culinary standpoint, is delicious, you know, malted mashed

[34:54] potatoes. You know, not malt, like, you know, baker's malt or like malt, like you make milkshakes with, but like large amounts of, you know, brewers, malt, but

[35:02] malt powder, you know, DME, dry malt extract, which you don't use because you're all grain.

[35:07] Um, is an awesome uh, addition, uh, flavoring addition to to many things that I use. Two. I have a fair bit of beer. What are some interesting things I can do to play with beer for sweet or savory applications? I've been thinking about phones with methocell F50 and I've used it in cheese preparations with sodium citrate. Um, but Methocell F 50 beer applications are kind of one of the classic applications uh, of Methocell F 50. I mean, I think one of the in fact, the 1st application I saw, Methocell F 50 is a hydrocolloid derived from cellulose, that has very good whipping properties, and it's used mainly by chefs to make very dense, like kind of shaving, creamy, consistency foams because it makes a very fine celled foam as opposed to something almost akin to an egg white, as opposed to kind of the light, airy foams that are produced by things like, um,

[35:55] uh, by things like Lesset then. You know, Versa Whip is another filming agent, but I tend to think that Methacell

[36:02] F 50 makes kind of a finer kind of more egg whitey foam than Versa Whip usually does, although Versa Whip is also good for certain applications.

[36:09] Anyway, uh, methal cell F 50 also does something versus whip can't do, which is if you make a, uh, if you make a, like a, like a whipped egg white texture thing with methyl cell at 50, a foam, you can pipe it uh, onto a trape, throw it a dehydrator at 135 Fahrenheit for a couple of hours, then turn it down to hold it, and it'll make a crunchy,

[36:28] like a crunchy meringue, uh, crispy thing with no protein in it. amazing. Now, the 1st application I saw of it, what methasola 50 was, in fact, beer. It was Sam Mason, uh, who, I don't know when his ice cream company's starting up again. you know? anyone know? anyone, anyone? It's going to be delicious. I'm sure. Anyway, was he was doing back at WD 50 when he was a pastry chef at

[36:48] WD 50, was making Guinness foam with Methosel F50. And as I remember, I tasted it and my feelings was it was delicious. Obviously, cooking with beer is good. I've been using it a lot in cocktail preparations. Of course that's nothing new. So I guess I don't have anything really new. I like this cheese application with sodium citrate. So I'm assuming you're making like processed cheese with beer. I mean, we'd have to add some sort of, you'd have to add some sort of like casing, extra casing to it. You buy. I did some work with a product called rennet casing, rennet casing is casing that's been produced from the process, like

[37:26] you actually rented it, and then you break it down, powder it, and you can reuse that to make cheese analogs.

[37:31] And so I've done some initial experiments with rent casing, but I'm sure that as long as you get the pH right with the with the

[37:38] beer, that you can make a pretty interesting kind of beer cheese.

[37:42] In other words, I would be most interested in something not that had the flavor of cheese, but had the meltability of cheese, but tasted like beer. And I think that would be eminently possible with beer, rennet casing and the right emulsifying salt. So I wouldn't just use citrate. You use a... Dave, you have a call. And let's keep it to one question. It's not a personal. Wait, you're telling me it's not a personal fence on the lady who's buying shoes on the internet? All right, call her. on the air. You're not buying shoes and collar. You have one. Call her your collar. on the air. Hi, uh, Dave and Nastasia and friends. This is Brian in San Francisco. Excuse me, I have a cold. Um, but uh, 2 questions. First is, um, Lesson. Uh, what's, I, I found my national food store, the soy lesson, which looks kind of, like, bee pollen. It's the, what kind of crumbles. And then, but I've seen some recipes that want liquids. So what's the difference? And I guess the 1st they call soy lust, that's the thing. Yeah, almost all the lesser thing that you buy in, uh, in, is from

[38:46] soy, and it's not that that's the only lesser thing it's out there. It's just a byproduct of manufacturing all the other soy products. They have soy less of them. I've never used liquid lesson. you ever use liquid piper? Did you like it? I mean, it's like, I hate the granules. Well, the granules are the granules are obviously the worst. The powder is pretty good. You can buy a powdered one, and the problem with the granules is, 1st of all, I think they tend to accentuate the off-flavor that you can get from less thin, if you use it too much, and

[39:15] also they're hard to get. What? What do you say? You still there? They're hard to get into the, uh, they're hard to get into solutions sometimes, the granules, and the, the, whereas the powder is like, you know, easier, but the liquid, I mean, assuming if you can buy the liquid, if you can tolerate having extra, extra, you know, liquid, I'm sure it's not,

[39:35] sure it's oil based, right? But if you could have it, you know, because less than would rather be in oil than in water. Whenever you're talking about an emulsifier, you have to look at what's called the hydrophobic, lip, the hydrophilic lipophilic

[39:48] balance, where you're looking at, is it an oil loving emulsifier? Is it a water loving emulsifier? And the big mistake most people make with less than is, although it's kind of somewhere near the middle, it's not extreme on either side, less than is an

[40:00] oil loving emulsifier. So if it's coming as a liquid, it's almost certainly coming in an oil-based liquid. Now, um, I, if I've never used liquid lesson then, but I would guess it's a lot easier to use because the, the, the pain in the butt about less than

[40:15] it's, uh, in the liquid property, right? When you agree? Yes. I don't know. I think we lost the color because we have some sort of like weird feedback loop going on here. But back to cheese for one second. The book that you guys want to get. And I think I've mentioned it on the show here before, is processed cheese and analogs by Adnan Tamimi.

[40:36] And that's going to have all the recipes you need. You can look at a good bunch of it on Google books and see what's going on. Finally, on the way out, we have a question. Well, okay, one more thing on cheese. Can sodium hexametaphosphate be used as a replacement for sodium citrates and recipes as well as for sequestering calcium? If yes, is there a standard scaling amount for the amount used? I'm thinking specifically about modernist mac and cheese recipe. Sodium hexametaposphate is not a single thing. It's a group of polyphosphate salts, and it's a monster at sequestrian calcium. It's not a straight replacement for sodium citrate because they have kind of different functions in a mac and cheese. They function, they function differently. Usually when you're making a cheese-based thing. You need to add not just one emulsifying salt, but 2 or

[41:24] three. And the function you need depends a lot on the pH of your system. So certain of the salts are more basic than others. And so you need to add them to get your pH in the right level. And also they tend to have different textures, depending on which one you use. And unfortunately, it's not a straightforward thing. It's kind of a little bit of a dark art. And so it requires a lot of experimentation. A lot of it is still just people like testing recipes and keeping logbooks of what they do. But sodium hexometaposphate and sodium citrate together, you should be able to get a lot of things under your

[41:57] belt, having those 2 ingredients on hand when you're doing cheeses. Finally, can I explain my home seltzer system? Yes, here's what you do to make the, if you have the money and the time and, uh, and, but now, but you don't want to spend money or time later. What you do is you get an under the counter ice machine. And then you drill a hole in the side of the undercounter ice machine. This is what I kind of have at home. What I have at home is a slightly more ghetto version of this. But you take an ice machine, you drill holes in it, right? You buy a cold plate, go to Mark Powers. They're in Goodersville, Alabama, cheapest, get a cold plate, 2 circuits. One circuit of a cold plate is not enough to get your cells are cold enough for

[42:34] what you want to do here, right? So what a cold plate is, is it's a big stainless steel coil that's embedded in an aluminum block and you keep that underneath ice, right? Now, one chain of a cold chain, not going to drop the temperature enough. So what you do is you put the in. Oh, oh, I forgot. You have to buy a carbonator. A carbonator is a giant tank that holds water at room temperature with a pump. The same kind of pump. It's a rotary vein pump made by Procon, usually. And it's the same pump they use an espresso machine, and that's hooked up to your water supply. So you get, you put your water supply straight out of your sink in through a filter. You put that goes through a filter. Once it goes through the filter, it gets hooked onto the pump on your carbonator, right? You then get a £20 CO2 tank. You want to run it about 95, 96, 98 PSI, someone in

[43:16] there, into the tank. Now, your water mains don't have enough pressure to inject water into a system that has that high

[43:22] of that high of a pressure. So the pro con pump, overcomes that pressure and shoots the water, sprays it into the tank, that spring makes such a fine surface area that the water is instantly carbonated.

[43:35] Now, you need to have it at 98 to 90 to 100 PSI because you're doing it at room temperatures. That's under extreme pressure. It comes out of that, goes through 2 circuits of your cold plate, right? Two circuits of it, and it's underneath your ice machine. So now you have constant ice supply and you have constant cold seltzer. When it comes out, the next biggest mistake people make is they use a crappy picnic

[43:57] tap, like you would use for beer, they're worthless, useless. You need to get what's called a Becker squeeze valve. You can also get Becker, B-E-E-C-K, B-E-C-K-E-R. Becker makes the best cellser valves. No question, because it has a giant compensator in the back of it that allows you to make the transition from the high-pressure

[44:15] region, where the seltzer is, to the low-pressure atmospheric region, and they're just, they're, they're free. freaking awesome. That's the system. So that's the system I have at 54 Eldridge. At home, the problem was I couldn't fit an undercounter ice machine in where I wanted to put it because it would have required too much ventilation problem.

[44:33] I couldn't do it. Plus with all the tubes coming down from my espresso machine because my espresso and my seltzer rig are together right where all my filtered water crap is.

[44:40] So I have to go through the awful, well, it's not awful. I built an insulated box like out of wood and spray foam and blue and blue foam with a condensation pump, right? You need a condensation pump with a condensation pump. And so now my freezer, which is across the aisle in my kitchen, I pull the ice out of it every day from the ice maker, dump it into my insulated box into the cold plate, and then that's how I get my cold

[45:04] seltzer. And so that's my cold seltzer rig at home. It's awesome. The one with the automatic ice machine is even better. Now that I have a 7 year old that I can boss around. He actually does the ice. So it's just like having a manual ice, you know, a regular ice machine for me. But that's how I recommend doing it. It's the balls. I never run out of cell, sir. Cooking issues.

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