Silver Case

I have a fancy oven, but I don’t know how to bake. Or moreover, I don’t understand baking science at all.  So last night I sat down with Alton Brown’s book on baking to get up to speed.  Very well written.  I at least have a grasp of how all the parts work now. (For instance:  what’s baking powder?  cream of tartar (acid) + baking soda (base) = gas = leavening. Double-acting just means two round of gas production, from two different acids that react at different heat levels). So I worked on two recipes today. One, a recipe for wheat-thin style crackers.  The other for regular bread.  The bread dough is still rising. (It called for using a starter, which I didn’t have, so I maybe don’t have as much water as I should in the dough)   The wheat thins are cooked and largely eaten.  I used high gluten bread flour and a helping of buckwheat flour. They have a hearty taste.  The recipe includes 50g of sugar, which makes the crackers taste nicer, however, I really wish I had included some salt directly into the dough.  Salt doesn’t stick on the cracker well by itself.  The only leavening was from water in the dough steaming.  Hard things?  getting it rolled 1/16″ thick.  I tried using the pasta machine, but it could not get a grip on the butter-slippery dough.  I was stuck with using a roller pin.  I found it easier to roll directly onto some aluminum foil.   Think next time I’ll add salt to the recipe as well as some herbs de provence, and maybe a bit less sugar.  

This entry was posted on Sunday, April 13th, 2008 at 3:25 pm and is filed under Alton Brown Good Eats, Food.You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.