Food Saver

When you usually think of food savers your thoughts might take you to your at home vacuum sealer. My thoughts take me to the pastry kitchen. Yes I do have an at home food saver. I usually use it for marinating and sealing products to be frozen. (extending the shelf life) Lately my fellow workers and I have been using the plastic food saver containers to aerate ice creams chocolate and even gels. Basically the process that we go through is this (for aerated ice cream): spin or pacotize your ice cream base as normal, pipe you spun ice cream into your food saver container, place the lid on and twist the cap to the open setting, place your food saver container into an industrial cryovac machine and start taking the air out, the ice cream will begin to boil and thus create air pockets, when the cycle has completed take you food saver with you aerated ice cream out of the cryovac machine and twist the cap to the closed setting thus trapping the air and preventing your ice cream from collapsing, reserve the container in a freezer until needed. I have also used these containers to aerate chocolate to form aerated chocolate deco and other interesting textures. What I would like to experiment on next is an aerated pate des fruits using this technique. Below are some pics of my at home food saver, the container used for making the aerated products, and the lid which shows the open/close valve.

Smoked Bread

We just started implementing a new bread at Corton. It is a lean dough mini baguette. What makes this bread unique and interesting is the fact that we smoke the flour and use a smoked beer in the recipe. We smoke the flour in hotel pans with hay. The bread flour itself imparts a great deal of smokiness from this process. We also use a smoked beer for some of the liquid in the recipe. By using both the smoked flour and the smoked beer the finished product has a very pleasant aroma and taste of smoke. Now all we need is some nice smoked butter and smoked salt to accompany it and then we will have smoke overload for one aspect of our bread service. Well done Blake thanks for coming in today. The pics are: the label from the smoked beer (dont ask me to pronounce it), and the baguettes proofing after preshaping and shaping.

so good..

If you havent already figured it out so good magazine might possibly be the best magazine out there for pastry. I have always been a big fan since the first issue. This particular magazine comes out twice a year, and is a highly anticipated item for me. I have not purchased the most recent issue yet but I can assure you it will be bought very soon. There are a few individuals who I must congratulate for there appearances in my favorite magazine; Alex Stupak, Robert Truitt, Grant Achatz and Francisco Migoya. Well done gentleman you all set the example.

Natural Chocolate Deco

I first saw this technique demonstrated by Jordan Kahn. I believe he used white chocolate and matcha. (dont quote me on that) Basically all I did was take some tempered dark chocolate and piped random swirls onto sifted coconut powder. I then sifted more coconut powder on top of the piped designs. I let the chocolate crystallize and then carefully removed the deco from the coconut powder. I think this technique is a pretty cool way to make natural looking vines, twigs, shapes, etc. Not to mention the chocolate and coconut powder go really well together and taste great. Enjoy!

Perfect Chocolate

What a sharp looking chocolate.

24k Deco

So I first saw this technique on the pages of one of my favorite books, Siete. Paco Torreblanca, the father of pastry in my mind had his hand in on developing this method. I think the broken shards of gold chocolate are visually appealing. They also give texture, with the snap of your properly tempered chocolate.

I first lay out small sheets of acetate on top of a flat service, in this case a cutting board. I then place the gold leaves down on the pre cut acetate.

Next, I spoon a small amount of tempered dark chocolate on top of the gold leaf.

I then lay another sheet of acetate on top of the tempered chocolate and gold leaf. I use a pallet knife to spread the chocolate evenly over the gold.

I then lay another cutting board on top of the deco. I weigh the top cutting board down until the chocolate has fully crystallized.

A finished gold shard

Hermetic Jars

I have always been a firm believer of organization inside and outside of the kitchen. Just a few of my personal belongings.