Soleil 100 Days

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Do you know the Muffin Man?

No really. Cause I'd really like to ask him a couple of questions about his so called Muffin Method.

Bakeshop started tonight with Chef Miar going over the finer points of "The Muffin Method" which is basically the method used to make quick breads.

What is a Quick bread? A quick bread is a bread that is made without the traditional leavening method of fermentation that is found with Yeast Breads. Ever wonder what baking soda and baking powder are doing for your recipe? Well they are chemical leaveners and pretty much the basis of all quick breads.

There are four rules to good quick breads according to chef and they are as follows:

1. Dry ingredients go in one bowl
2. Wet ingredients go in another bowl.
3. Add the wet to the dry a bit at a time, incorporating and keeping an eye out for batter consistency. When you drag your spoon through the center you should be able to see the bottom of your bowl for a couple of seconds before the batter comes back on itself similar to when you cook a sauce until 'nappe'.
   
4. DO NOT OVER MIX! This is vital.  Also, avoid mixing the batter quickly or with a lot of aggression. This will tighten up the gluten resulting in tough dry muffins that double as hockey pucks.  Stirring too aggressively can also cause tunneling, which is when pockets of air are trapped in your muffins resulting in holes.

And speaking of tender, when possible use milk instead of water when making muffins. The fat in milk will help keep the gluten in its place and keep your batter tender. Using the right flour will also help tame the gluten. Try to stay away are bread flours or other high gluten flours when making quick breads and instead try to use cake or pastry flour.  

Tonight we made blueberry, cornbread with cheese, and zucchini/carrot/bran muffins, all of which turned out. A couple of tips from chef, instead of using a scoop to fill the muffin papers try piping the batter in with a pastry bag and a large tip (or no tip at all). This will give your muffins a professional appearance and help keep a consistency in size. Try not to overfill the cups (bigger isn't always better!) and you'll have less of a headache cleaning up as they'll stay put in the papers and not spill over unto your pan.

In the next few days I'll hopefully be able to post the recipes as well as some pictures, unfortunately they are currently all in grams in ounces which are hard to measure unless you have a scale.

Happy Ba(c)in!

Bork! Bork! Bork!

Speaking Culinary Canadian in Alabama is a little bit like being the Swedish Chef. For instance, the other day I was getting groceries  and it occured to me that I was out of Nutella. A venture into the aisle of jellies, jams and peanut butter did not reveal this staple of a chocoholics pantry to me and so I wandered until I found a stockperson and asked where it might be.

They had no clue what Nutella was.  In fact the conversation went a bit like this:

"Excuse me but I was wondering if you knew where I could find the Nutella."

"The what? "

"Nutella. It's a spread that you put on toast made of chocolate and hazelnuts."

At which point I was given an incredulous  look, to which I had my first "OMG I'm not in DC anymore I'm in Ala-fricken-bama" moment. That's right, it took a lack of Nutella to give me a reality check. In my mind I quickly ran down the ways I might be able to procur Nutella while in school down here; order it online, have friends ship me a monthly supply, give up my morning nutella and banana on toast totally. But then, I walked in a nutella-less haze through the aisles something that would never have happened in DC happened. The same stockwoman came up to me with a jar of Nutella in her hand.


"Thank goodness I found you" she said, " I asked one of the other girls...it was over in the ice cream toppings aisle." 


I love Alabama. :)