Good evening, friends and neighbors! Sorry about the long silence- things have been in a state of upheaval for the last month, but seem to be settling down now. Miss me?

‘Course ya did. Because we’re going to talk about pointy things.

A good knife is one of the Swiss Army… well… knives of the kitchen. In the picture above, you might notice that the only actual “knives” I keep on me are paring knives, a serrated knife, and a chef’s knife. All the rest of my sharps have particular uses, but with those three kinds of knives- with some good knife skills- you could be just fine in a bakeshop without most of the others. 
Kitchen stores will be happy to sell your four-figure matching sets of 15 different kinds of knives with 18 different uses. Better to save your money and just get a few good ones.

Let’s go in order:

The Serrated Slicer
Meet an honest-to-God workhorse for your knife roll. I use this bad boy for BIG jobs- if I need to slice bread, or a whole cake, the teeth on this fella make short work of it. This is also invaluable when I need to reduce a giant slab of chocolate to shaves, or chunked chocolate to sand for smoothest-possible ganache.

The one I use is a stainless steel blade from Sani-Safe, a good commerical brand. Whatever it is you have, as long as it’s a strong blade with good sharp teeth, you’re in business.

The Chef’s Knife
Here it is- the main attraction. The ultimate multi-tasker. Chefs treat their knives like prized heirlooms, and God help you if you handle them without permission. I remember first picking this knife up- it was like a meeting with destiny.
What do I use this knife for?

• Cutting sheets of pastry.
• Chopping
• Smashing
• Pitting fruit
• De-ribbing peppers
• Mincing lobster
• Slicing fruit
• Segmenting citrus.

You get the idea.
As much as you will be using this knife, this is NOT one you want to cheap out on. Look for high-carbon steel (good and strong), full tang construction that balances well and feels good in your hand. 
This is your Old Faithful. Your sidearm. Get a good one, take care of it, and you will be giving it to you great-grandchildren one day.

The Sharpening Steel
Not a knife, per se, but necessary and worthy of a place in your knife roll. Most knife sets come with one, or you can get them separately- a long, thin spike of steel with fine ridges. Despite what you have seen in cartoons and on TV, this is NOT for sharpening your knives exactly. Sharpening should be done on a stone or a strop, if not by you then by a professional. Some knives have a warranty where you can send them back to the manufacturer for sharpening.
What running your blade along the steel does is ALIGN the edge. Look under a microscope at the edge of any blade- even a razor blade,- and you’ll see that there are ultra-fine grooves that act like a serrated blade’s teeth. Through use, these grooves can be warped or bent, slightly dulling your blade.
Using a steel properly (such as in this video) re-aligns the edge, along your knife to be as sharp as possible. 

Paring Knives
These little guys are ideal for small jobs- scraping a vanilla bean, seeding a pepper, etc. They are also most likely the knives you will lose track of the easiest. Paring knives, in general, are cheap and you can get a decent one for very little cash. They come in various sizes, shapes, weights, colors- some specialized for different jobs, and others more versatile. Don’t sweat these too much.

Special Tools
There are some jobs in the bake shop that can’t be done by your actual knives. Others CAN be done, but these will just make it easier. We’ll just breeze through these real quick, top to bottom:

• Rotary Cutter (a.k.a. pizza wheel)– Ideal for cutting through sheets of dough for making lattice work, or petit fours. You can get them straight, or in a crinkly-shape especially for pastry- whichever you like. Generally pretty cheap.
• Pocket Scissors- Because sometimes you need to cut something and only have one hand free. Just make sure they are sharp, easy to clean, and fit in your box.
• Razor Blades- For cutting vents in pies or trimming crust, even your sharpest knife can drag and tear the dough. For the cleanest cut possible, use razor blades. Don’t saw at the dough with them- just push them in and along for a perfectly clean slice. Absurdly cheap- get them in the grooming section of your drug store or supermarket.
•  Microplane Zester– For zesting or fine grating, you need one of these guys. Other companies make similar graters, but in my opinion Microplane are the sharpest and best. Just keep them clean! Should run you no more than $15.
• Box Cutter- Whether it’s slicing open packaging or removing your piping tip from a disposable bag, the heavy-duty razor of a boxcutter is incredibly useful. Find one you like at the hardware or home improvement store near you.
• Sharpening Stone– The one I have is a portable one of steel with two grains to it, coarse and fine. This is for quicky sharpening jobs. You can get one of these, or actual sharpening stones and honing oil if you have the space and desire. If you don’t feel comfortable working on your knives, take them to a professional sharpener.

Before we wrap things up, just a few words of wisdom to take with you into the kitchen-

1. KEEP YOUR BLADES SHARP. A sharp blade is easier to control and will cut into what you want it to cut. A dull blade can skip and slide, making you use more force- which can lead to slicing YOURSELF up.
2. KEEP YOUR BLADES CLEAN. Beyond sanitation reasons, keeping your knives clean improves their function so cuts are cleaner and food is less likely to stick.
3. RESPECT THE BLADES. These are your tools- they let you do your job. Treat them with respect, and don’t let others fool around or mishandle them.

By the same token, DO NOT TOUCH ANOTHER CHEFS KNIVES WITHOUT PERMISSION. Seriously, professional chefs are REALLY friggin’ territorial about their tools. In the immortal words of Anthony Bourdain: 

Next week, we move on to the next two groups of tools- Mixers and Movers, and Dough Management. As always- and despite the language in that last graphic-

Stay Classy,

     Good evening, friends and neighbors!

     Recently, I was talking to my older sister. She bakes occasionally and enjoys cooking at home for herself and her fiancée. Unfortunately, the kitchen in their apartment is extremely small, so space is at a premium. My sister is constantly on the lookout for ways to save or creatively use space, or simply pare down the amount of stuff in her kitchen. 

     “I’d bake more,” she said, “but I really don’t have room for all the stuff you would need!”

     Thus she echoes yet another fear that keeps the hungry and curious from taking up home-baking- what equipment to get? What tools? How do I find the best ones? What’s necessary, what’s not?

    I’ve been baking since I was 10, and professionally for nearly 4 years now. This still qualifies me as a bit of a rookie in the grand scheme of things, but there is one thing I have learned: you can find yourself getting a LOT of stuff.

     So for the next few entries, I’ve combed through all the cookware and equipment available and tried to boil it down to the absolute essentials- and any good culinarian can tell you exactly what that is.

The Toolbox.

    This is my toolbox. It’s a typical, medium-sized, Stanley box with a removable tray and two compartments in the the lid. This box and my knife roll (on top) hold virtually every tool I need to do my job.

     For these Tools of the Trade entries, I’ll be focusing almost entirely on the contents of the box. (Believe me, that’s enough!) There is equipment that the home baker will need that obviously can’t be carried around- large rolling pins, sheet pans, bakeware, etc. Those will be for future entries. Here, I am talking entirely about tools- what a baker should have with them in an already appropriately stocked kitchen.
    Please also be aware that what is necessary for you and your work may not be the same as what I have here. Your needs will also likely change over time. This is my third tool box- over the course of my career, my toolbox has expanded to allow more of the tools I needed. Some of my chefs in school had rolling hardware chests, and even my coworkers have toolboxes three times the size of mine. 

What you have will be defined by:
A. What you are doing now.
B. What you want to do.

So don’t go overboard.

Caveats out of the way? Good?

     To make things a little less complicated (and to keep me from having to do an entry about every single item,) the tools are lumped together in several categories:

1. Sharps and Blades (knives, cutting/shredding things)
2. Mixers and Movers (tools for mixing or transferring product)
3. Dough and Batter Management (tools for manipulating, smoothing, or handling product)
4. Measuring 
   
5. Decorating (tools for decoration and/or precision work)
6. Essentials and Oddballs (miscellaneous)

     Hopefully, at the end of this series, you’ll have an idea of the kind of tools you’ll need to do the baking you want to do. 

    Remember: mise en place. Cleanliness and order isn’t just about the kitchen, or just about food- it’s about having the right tools, for the right jobs, in the right places, in every part of your life.

    In the next entry, we’ll start with a topic near and dear to EVERY chefs (and old Boy Scouts) heart- Knives and Sharps.

Till then…

Stay Classy,

     Good evening, friends and neighbors!
I figure it’s been a while since I’ve talked a bit about kitchen science. One of the things that seems to really discourage people from baking at home is the precise nature of it- the chemistry and math involved in particular.
    So every now and again, I’m going to do an entry on the scientific and practical aspects of some part of baking. Perhaps it’ll be a process, perhaps it’ll be a product… whatever you all would like!
    Along the way, I’ll also include some tips and tricks I’ve picked up along the way to help you along with your own baking ideas- because knowledge is fun, but it’s better if you can use it to make something that’ll go in your face.

    Let’s kick things off with one of the lightest, fluffiest, most enticing elements of baking- something that conjures up soft, marshmallowy clouds floating on pies. 

Meringue.

“Oooooh…. what is it?”
    In brief, meringue is egg whites that have had sugar and air whipped into them, turning them into a light fluffy substance with a number of uses. Meringues are used in making mousse, some buttercream frostings, and some cakes. It can also be baked in dollops in a very low oven to make tasty sweets, blended with gelatin or other stabilzers to make marshmallows and divinity candy, or piped out to make macarons or dacquois layers.

“How does it work?”
    Everyone knows that eggs are a great source of protein. Most of that protein exists in the white of the egg. The yolk has SOME protein, but mostly it contains the fats and cholesterol of the egg. Yolks have their own splendid uses and features, but that’s for another entry.
    When you whip egg whites, the violent tearing caused by the beater (a.k.a. “mechanical shear”) makes the proteins in the egg whites denature, or stretch out and change shape. As they do so, air gets trapped in the bubbles of the stretched whites, creating a foam. Allowed to do so for a length of time, more air will be trapped, and the foam will grow lighter and finer. If you remember blowing bubbles in your milk as a kid, you’ve seen this in action.

     Milk, however, is mostly water and also contains milk fat, so the bubbles would eventually pop. Egg whites, however, have far more protein and very little fat, so the bubbles stay and become foam.

     Sugar is always added in one form or another to meringue. The sugar has two jobs- 1. Bond with water molecules and keep them in the meringue, letting it stay moist enough to keep form, and 2. To sweeten.
Since sugar substitutes don’t behave chemically QUITE like sugar, it’s not wise to use them in trying to make meringue.

    There are a number of ways for adding the sugar to your egg whites and creating a meringue- each method creating noticeably different results, and ideal for different purposes.

French meringue is the most common one in home kitchens. As the whites are whipped, granulated sugar is slowly added into the cold whites and is allowed to dissolve in. This is also the most fragile type of meringue, and if it is not to be included in a recipe before baking, it must be served raw. By folding ultra-fine almond flour and confectioners sugar into the meringue, you get the batter for the recently-insanely-popular French Macarons

Italian meringue has its sugar added in the form of a boiling sugar syrup while the whites are whipping. This is a more difficult process, but not very. The result is a thick, shiny, smooth meringue that is sometimes used for mousse, Italian buttercream, and some cookies. Since boiling hot sugar is being added and the whites are essentially being cooked, Italian meringue can be left uncooked. This is also the favorite meringue for topping pies. This is also the meringue preferred for spreading into sheets and making thin, crispy dacquois layers.

Lastly, the Swiss meringue. To make a Swiss meringue, the whites are VERY carefully warmed over a double boiler, and the sugar is dissolved into it by whisking, and then is whipped till cool. The result is a very stable, shiny, marshmallow material that is ideal for making Swiss buttercream.

That’s about all for meringue right now- any questions? Comments? Want me to cover something in the next post? Let me know in the comments, or shoot me a message at the BHB Facebook page or Twitter! You ARE following me, aren’t you?

Stay Classy,

P.S.

Hey- what’s the point of learning about meringue if you don’t get to practice?? I’ve got the perfect recipe in mind….

French Macarons
Yield: about 64 half-dollar sized wafers, enough to make 32 sandwiches.

Ingredients
3 egg whites (large eggs)
1/4 c sugar
1 2/3 c confectioners (10x) sugar
1 c almond flour (as finely ground as possible. Seriously, run it through a food processor if you need to.)
Flavoring (preferably water/alcohol based. No flavoring oils!)

Equipment
Stand mixer with whip attachment (or a whisk and a couple strong arms)
Mixing bowl
Rubber scraper
Fine sifter
Cookie sheet
SILPAT baking sheet (you can TRY using parchment, but Silpat works best.)
Piping bag with a #8 round tip

1. Sift the confectioners sugar and almond flour together. If there are any stubborn particles, discard them or rub them through.

2. In the CLEAN mixing bowl (wiped out with a little lemon juice), and using the equally clean whip, whip the white until JUST foamy. Slowly add the 1/4 c sugar, and then whip to soft peaks.

3. Add the almond sugar mix to the meringue, and fold it in, quickly but lightly. Folding is exactly what it sounds like. Using your rubber scraper, bring whats on bottom of the bowl to the top, and keep going. You don’t want to pummel TOO much air out of your merengue- just enough to make it smooth. Here is where you would fold in your flavoring too. You’re going to fold about 30-40 times.

4. Fit your tip into your piping bag, and fill with the batter. You’ll know your batter is the right texture if you pipe a little bit out and it makes a peak that soon spreads and flattens. Lay out your Silpat on your cookie sheet, and pipe out half-dollar sized dollops.  Let these sit at room temperature for an hour. Meanwhile, preheat your oven to 285 F (140 C). 


5. Once the macarons have sat, bake them for 10 minutes or so, till they have raised slightly and lost their shine, but are NOT browned. Remove from the oven, and wait for them to cool COMPLETELY before peeling off the Silpat. Sandwich them with a bit of your favorite buttercream and enjoy! Keep them in an airtight container at room temperature for 3 days or so.



Enjoy!


-BHB