Cold proofing is a great way to develop flavor, but the down side is that it’s hard to tell if something is ready to bake. It’s also easy to overproof for the same reason. It just requires baking the same recipe multiple times using the same fridge until you get a handle on the proper amount of proofing time. Another way you could develop the flavor is by using a preferment like a bigga.
Undercooking can be avoided by taking the temp of the bread using a thermometer. It should be 200F inside, minimum.
But yes, you can def save a bread that hasn’t come out quite right! Toasting is a great way to do that.
I’m saying that I do all those things on purpose when I am baking a sandwich loaf. I always will toast the bread first unless I’m making grilled cheese.
Any other type of bread is baked the way it should be, proper rise times, etc. The exception to that is when I am playing around with very long cold ferments (5+ days), or alternative leaveners like rice, chillies, beans, whatever. They’re much more unpredictable in behavior.
When this guy* made clear ketchup, he used egg whites to separate remaining solid tomato matter out from the liquid tomato umami. Wonder if that would work for oil at all.
Both methods just use protein to trap large particles. The difference is that with gelatin, the process is reversible with heat. Magnesium silicate is just really pure talcum powder and it’s widely used in food service to clean oil.
Not Balkan specific but ‘The Cooking of the Eastern Mediterranean’ by Paula Wolfert is great. It’s older though so it isn’t Instagram worthy photos, just great recipes, and commentary about how things are done. Like baking/ cooking in large Tandoor in Georgia.
There is also ‘Croatia at Table’ by Ivanka Bilus. This does have the photos and explains about different regions, things like butter/ cream in the north, olive oil in the south etc. The recipes are fine, but no standouts to me at least.
I have Black Sea by Caroline Eden. It’s as much of a travelogue as a cookbook, so it does make for an entertaining read. You might guess that it doesn’t cover the entire Balkan region…just the parts around the Black Sea.
It’s certainly not grandmas secret, but everything I’ve made from there has at least been well received by Romanians. Then again, it’s as good of a starting point as an American BBQ cookbook if you read it with the understanding that similar ingredients might yield quite different results regionally.
This is a guess, but maybe butyric acid produced by anerobic bacteria? Butyric acid is ‘buttery and unpleasant’ vs Diacetyl which is a lot of the smell in good butter, and should be in Cheddar (and many other cheeses).
About smell being unpleasant, içm not really sure, because i’m not sure how cheese really should smell. For fresh cheeses they just smell like milk, but how should hard cheese smell when drying, after drying, etc
Also, in any case, if it’s that bacteria, and it smells weird, tastes bitter, should I discard it?
Hopefully someone with more cheesemaking experience will reply. I don’t know enough about it to say. I would not eat anymore of it without knowing more about the cause.
There are cheeses that are very strong and ‘bad tasting’ to many people, Casu Marzu and Époisses for example, but the smell and flavor is more of Ammonia, not at all what you are describing.
As a general rule, I would discard any product where an unpleseant and/or bitter aroma is not exlicitly expected. Our senses of tase and smell are very good at distinguishing “good”, that is energy dense and clean, food from " bad", that is mostly rotten or contaminated, food. I have little experience with cheese making but if any doughs or yoghurts I make start to smell or taste bitter or otherwise off, it is usually because the microfauna got out of hamd and malign bacteria started overproducing.
Tomorrow… and tomorrow… creeps the… something something… told by an idiot.
And now I want crepes…
It’s pretty simple, in a pot (or slow cooker, if you prefer,) and simmer until its done:
a ham hock
5-6 cups vegetable stock
4 carrots chopped medium
3-4 celery stalks chopped medium
small onion, chopped fine
potato chopped medium (this is kind of optional.)
marjoram to taste, if you don’t have any or you’d prefer, thyme and oregano.
ham, if you’re using a left-over ham bone from a smoked ham, there’s probably already some still on the base (especially for spiral cuts,) toss it all in, and pull/clean it off later. ( take care to trim off fat and connective tissue.) or you can add cubed ham as well.
add salt slowly while it’s cooking, the ham hock will likely release some.
For the stock, I made my own using kitchen scraps (it was mostly carrots, celery, onion, with garlic ginger and mushrooms to round it out a bit. super easy to make if you store your veggie scraps in a freezer ziplock; just it all in a giant pot of water. until flavorful. season to taste.)
it’s not a hard and fast recipe, though, especially on the vegetables. if you’re buying veggie stock, you can make up extra with water instead.
as it’s cooking, especially in a pot, stir it occasionally because the peas will settle into a sort of sludge on the bottom and then scorch. It’s more forgiving in a slow cooker, mind. If you need to thicken it a bit more, some corn starch or dairy (or both) will do the trick. or… just boil it some more. it’s forgiving. I had mine on a fast simmer for about an hour, then another half on a slow simmer.
For cakes I like using leaves brushed with chocolate.
Wash some green leaves (preferably something non toxic), dry, chill in fridge, brush with melted chocolate, chill again, peel the leaf from the chocolate.
I have actually never broken one. Peel the leaf from the chocolate, not the other way round. The darker the chocolate the more brittle it will be I think. As long as the leaves aren’t huge I don’t think you will have a problem.
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