Cooking for Geeks: Real Science, Great Hacks, and Good Food

by Jeff Potter

  I actually just finished reading The Craftsman, by a sociologist, Richard Sennett, who wrote a whole chapter on how-to manuals in the form of recipe writing. I think recipe writing is ultimately flawed. Compare your recipe with "how to set up a computer" or "how to build a shelf" or whatever: you have to tailor the instruction to the experience, to the emotional state, to the personality of the person who is going to be reading and following your recipe.

  Recipes are important, but they’re also just guidelines or can serve as inspiration. I think it’s a natural evolution for a cook—whether it’s a professional cook obviously or a home cook—that with confidence, the recipe means less and less, that it can be used as simple inspiration. I still pull books off the shelf all the time, but rarely do I actually write it down. I’ll try to wrap my head around what somebody was trying to do, but that really can only come with confidence and experience.

  What are your favorite books that you go to?

  I would have to say that the Internet is probably my "go to" source right now. It almost feels like I’m being lazy, but I think the Internet has changed everything. It has certainly changed professional cooking—the evolution of it and the speed at which things have progressed. Granted, there is a lot of static you have to sift through to find something of use, increasingly so. But in terms of instant access and comparing and asking different things, I’ve almost come to favor just an Internet search.

  What would you tell somebody who is just learning to bake to keep in mind?

  First and foremost: cleanliness and organization are key, and they’re always going to save you. Pay attention, especially with baking, which is firmly dictated by the chemical and physical realms that you can’t always undo. Also, have that sense of fun and that sense of play and learn from mistakes rather than stressing out about them. It sounds kind of mystical, but I do have this belief that happy people make better-tasting food. I also tell young people: just absorb as much information as you can. It doesn’t feel like it’s sinking in or you’re comprehending it all. Cleanliness, organization, a sense of fun, a sense of play, and always reminding yourself that there is more to learn.

  There are certain ways of doing things that ultimately find their way into the dish, whether they’re perceivable or not. Sometimes it’s about things like cleanliness and organization. When you’re eating a dish in a dining room, you’re not going to know whether the cook who made it has a dirty apron, but I like to think that that does work its way into it.

  Can you give me an example of how you go about thinking about a recipe and putting a dish together?

  I have two. They both go toward understanding your ingredients and composition.

  We used to make brown butter ice cream, but to give it enough brown butter flavor, we would have to add a ton of fat to the ice cream, which makes the ice cream really texturally challenging. Then I learned about the reaction and the composition of different kinds of dairy products. It’s actually just the milk solids in the butter that give us the flavor, but the butter by weight is only 2% solids. We stepped back and looked at heavy cream, which we produce butter from. That heavy cream has three times the milk solids that give us the flavor of butter. So if we take heavy cream and reduce it down to the point where we’re left with milk solids and clarified butter, we actually produce more extractable and arguably better-tasting brown butter solids than we could from butter. Then we separate it from the fat and add that to the ice cream.

  We also do a lot with caramelized white chocolate. Sometimes I describe it as "roasted chocolate." It sounds kind of counterintuitive, that you’d never want to scorch your chocolate. But if you do it in a controlled way you get an almost dolce de leche–like flavor. Dolce de leche is usually made by cooking condensed milk; usually, people just boil the can for three or four hours. This gives you more complex flavors, because the proteins and the sugars in the milk and the added sugar are cooking together. If you look at the composition of white chocolate, it’s about 40% sugar and 23% milk solids. I researched the composition of condensed milk; the proportion of milk solids and the proportion of sugar are nearly identical. This was a huge connection for me to make personally in terms of substituting ingredients. From there, we’ve gone on to do all kinds of stuff with caramelized chocolate.

  Caramelized White Chocolate

  Inspired by Valrhona’s L’Ecole du Grand Chocolat

  The extent to which the white chocolate is "roasted" will determine the color and flavor of the finished cream. Also, depending on the final application, the amount of gelatin needed will vary. Add more gelatin for a freestanding component, less for a cream that will be put into a shell or glass. Like many similar preparations, the blending phase is vital for achieving the ideal texture.

  Caramelize 1 cup (170g) of white chocolate by placing the white chocolate in a sauté pan and heating it over medium-low heat, keeping a watchful eye on it. Stir occasionally, taking care to prevent any bits from turning darker than medium brown. Remove from heat. Add 1.5 teaspoons (10g) of glucose (or corn syrup).

  In a separate pan, bring ½ cup (125g) whole milk to a boil. Stir in 2 to 3 sheets of bloomed gelatin (i.e., presoaked in cold water; you can use 2 teaspoons of powdered gelatin, although sheet gelatin is of higher quality). Remove from heat and slowly incorporate into the white chocolate mixture.

  Add ¾ cup (175g) of heavy cream (36% fat) to the white chocolate mixture. Emulsify for a few minutes with an immersion blender. Transfer to a container and chill, allowing to crystallize, or dispense into desired forms.

  Beurre Noisette Ice Cream

  Create a batch of browned milk solids by reducing a quart of heavy cream in a saucepan over low heat, stirring occasionally. After a while—possibly as long as an hour—the heavy cream will separate into clarified butter and the milk solids. Save the clarified butter for some other purpose.

  In a clean saucepan, measure out, whisk together to rehydrate the dry milk, and bring to a boil:

  1 quart (1000g) skim milk

  50g browned milk solids

  ½ cup (60g) nonfat dry milk

  ¾ cup (150g) granulated sugar

  60g glucose powder

  40g trimoline (inverted sugar syrup)

  In a separate bowl, measure out and whisk together:

  ¼ cup (50g) granulated sugar

  8g ice cream stabilizer

  200g egg yolks (yolks of about 3 large eggs)

  Temper the hot milk into the yolk mixture by pouring a quarter of the hot liquid into the yolk mixture and whisking to combine. Add another quarter and whisk to combine. Pour the yolk mixture back into the saucepan, mix thoroughly, and return to low heat and cook, stirring, until slightly thickened (184°F / 84°C).

  Remove from heat and whisk in:

  ⅔ cup (150g) heavy cream

  Chill the ice cream base in an ice-water bath, and then transfer to your fridge and allow to mature for at least 12 hours. Transfer the base to an ice cream maker and follow the manufacturer’s instructions.

  RECIPES USED BY PERMISSION OF MICHAEL LAISKONIS

  Chapter 5. Air: Baking’s Key Variable

  IF TIME AND TEMPERATURE ARE THE KEY VARIABLES IN COOKING, AIR IS THE KEY VARIABLE IN BAKING. While few of us would list air as an ingredient, it’s critical to many foods. Most baked goods rely on air for their texture, flavor, and appearance. Baking powder and baking soda generate carbon dioxide, giving rise to cakes and quick breads. Air bubbles trapped in whisked egg whites lift soufflés, lighten meringues, and elevate angel food cakes. And yeast provides texture and adds complex flavors to bread and beer alike.

  Unlike cooking, in which the chemical reactions are almost always in balance from the start—a chef rarely needs to tinker with ratios to get a protein to set—baking requires a well-balanced ratio of ingredients from the get-go to trigger the chemical reactions that create and trap air. Achieving this balance is often about precise measurements at the beginning, and unlike most meat and potato dishes, it’s virtually im
possible to adjust the composition of baked goods as they cook. And as a further challenge, the error tolerances involved in baking are generally much tighter than those in cooking.

  If you’re the meticulous type—methodical, enjoy precision, prefer a tidy environment—or the type of person who likes to express affection through giving food, you’ll probably enjoy baking more than cooking. On the other hand, if you have a wing-it-as-you-go, adapting-on-the-fly style, cooking is more likely to be your thing. But even if baking isn’t your thing, the engineering behind it can be fascinating, and plenty of applications in the "winging it" category can benefit from understanding the techniques discussed here.

  In this chapter, we’ll start with a brief discussion of gluten and then cover the three primary methods of generating air in both savory and sweet applications. We’ll also discuss the ingredients associated with each of the three primary methods, giving examples and notes for how to work with them and why they work:

  Biological

  Yeast

  Chemical

  Baking powder and baking soda

  Mechanical

  Egg whites, egg yolks, sugar, whipped cream, and steam

  Gluten

  Light, fluffy foods need two things: air and something to trap that air. This might seem obvious, but without some way of holding on to air while cooking, baked goods would be flat. This is where gluten comes in.

  Gluten is created when two proteins, glutenin and gliadin, come into contact and form what chemists call crosslinks: bonds between two molecules that hold them together. In the kitchen, this crosslinking is done by kneading doughs, and instead of talking about crosslinks, bakers speak of developing the gluten: the two proteins bind and then the resulting gluten molecules begin to stick together to form an elastic, stretchy membrane. The same stretchy, elastic property is also responsible for helping trap air bubbles in bread doughs: the gluten forms a 3D mesh that traps air generated by organisms such as yeast and chemicals like baking powder.

  Regardless of the rising mechanism, understanding how to control gluten formation will vastly improve your baked goods. Do you want air bubbles to be trapped in the food, or do you want them to escape as the food is cooked? Breads and cakes rely heavily on air for texture, while cookies need less.

  The easiest way to control the amount of gluten developed is to use ingredients that have more (or less) of the glutenin and gliadin proteins. Wheat, of course, is the most common source of gluten; rye and barley also have these proteins in small quantities. For practical purposes, though, wheat flour is the primary source of gluten.

  Note

  While rye has both glutenin and gliadin, it also contains substances that interfere with their ability to form gluten.

  Gluten levels of various grains and common flours.

  Note

  Gluten levels will vary by both manufacturer and region. Since growing climate impacts gluten levels—colder weather yields higher-gluten wheat—flour in, say, France, won’t be identical to that grown in the U.S. Try working with a couple of different brands.

  Here are three important things to keep in mind when working with gluten:

  Use the appropriate type of flour

  Different types of wheat flours have different levels of gluten. Cake flour is low in gluten; bread flour is high in gluten. (All-purpose flour should really be called "general compromise" flour: it just takes the middle ground, which is fine when gluten levels aren’t so important.) If you’re baking something that would suffer from the elastic texture brought about by gluten—that should have a crumbly texture such as a chocolate cake—use cake or pastry flours, and definitely avoid bread flour.

  Fat inhibits gluten formation; water aids it

  Fats interfere with the formation of gluten. This is why cookies, which have a lot of flour but also a lot of butter, still manage to crumble. And the opposite is true for water, which helps with gluten formation. The more water there is—up to a point, we’re not talking soup here—the more likely it is that glutenin and gliadin will bind.

  Mechanical agitation and time develop gluten

  Mechanical agitation (a.k.a. kneading)—physically ramming the glutenin and gliadin proteins together—increases the chances for those crosslinks to form and thus increases the amount of gluten in the food. Time, too, develops gluten, by giving the glutenin and gliadin the opportunity to eventually crosslink as the dough subtly moves.

  Note

  Flaky, crumbly baked goods = low levels of gluten.

  Stretchy, elastic baked goods = high levels of gluten.

  Flour = Starch + Gluten

  Even though gluten is the key variable in wheat flour and baking, it’s worth stepping back and looking at what else is hanging out in flour:

  Protein: 8–13%

  Starch: 65–77%

  Fiber: 3–12%

  Water: ~12%

  Fat: ~1%

  Ash: ~1%

  The two main compounds in flour are protein (primarily glutenin and gliadin) and starch. Warmer growing climates lead to lower levels of protein and higher levels of starch. Fiber is similar to starch in that both are carbohydrates—saccharides to biochemists—but our bodies don’t have a mechanism to digest all forms of saccharides; those that we can’t digest get classified as fiber (sometimes called nonstarch polysaccharides). As for ash, this is the broad term given to trace elements and minerals such as calcium, iron, and salt.

  Gluten is the most important reason for using flour in baking. Try this simple experiment to separate out and "see" the gluten made by the proteins in flour.

  Start with about 1 cup (120g) of bread flour in a bowl and add just enough water so that you can form a ball. Drop the ball of flour into a glass of water for an hour or so, long enough for it to absorb water and allow the gluten to develop.

  After the ball has soaked, rinse the starches out by working the ball in your hands, kneading it with your fingers, under slowly running tap water. Keep working the ball until the water runs clear; only about a third of the original mass will be left. At this point, all the starch has washed away. Notice how the part of the flour that remains has a very elastic, stretchy quality to it: this is the gluten. You can drop the ball of gluten into a glass of rubbing alcohol to separate out the glutenin and gliadin proteins—the gliadin will form long, thin, sticky strands, and the glutenin will resemble something like tough rubber.

  For comparison, try doing this with cake flour. You’ll find it almost impossible to hold on to the ball under the running tap water—there’s just not enough gluten present in cake flour to provide any structure to work with while washing away the starch molecules.

  P.S. One food additive, transglutaminase, can be used to increase the gluten strength in baked goods by physically increasing the crosslinks within wheat gluten. See Yeast Waffles in Chapter 6 for more.

  When making breads, gluten impacts the texture not just with its stretchy, elastic quality, but also with its ability to trap and hold on to air. If you’re making a loaf of bread using whole wheat flour or grains low in gluten, adding some bread flour (start with 50% by weight) will result in a lighter loaf. You can also add gluten flour, which is wheat flour that has had bran and starch removed (yielding a 70%+ gluten content). Try making a loaf of whole wheat bread with 10% of the flour (by weight) replaced with gluten flour (sometimes called vital gluten flour).

  In addition to managing texture, gluten can also be used directly as an ingredient. Consider the following recipe for seitan, a high-protein vegetarian ingredient often used as a substitute for chicken or beef in vegetarian cooking. Seitan is like tofu, in that it is a formed block or roll of proteins, in this case from wheat flour instead of soya beans.

  Seitan

  Mix together in a large bowl:

  ¾ cup (175g) water

  2 tablespoons (35g) soy sauce

  1 teaspoon (5g) tomato paste

  ½ teaspoon (5g) garlic paste, or 1 clove mashed and finely diced

  Add,
and use a spoon to mix to a thick, elastic dough:

  1 cup (160g) gluten flour (wheat flour that has had bran and starch removed)

  Shape the dough into a log and place into a saucepan. Add:

  6 cups (1.5 liters) water

  ½ cup (144g) soy sauce

  Bring to a boil and then simmer for an hour. Allow to cool before using.

  Notes

  The gluten flour—also called vital wheat gluten—will take a few seconds to absorb the liquid. If you’re quick, you can form the dough into a more shapely log and roll it a few times on a cutting board. When cooking the seitan, if it comes out gluey, it wasn’t simmered long enough. If you’re going to fry the resulting seitan, this is okay, but otherwise you should return it to the simmering liquid and cook longer.

  Not sure what to do with seitan? Try thinking of it like tofu: slice off pieces and panfry in oil; or shred the seitan, fry, and toss with a quick sweet-and-sour sauce and serve with rice.