Erin Answers Your Biggest Baking (and Non-Baking!) Questions | Bite Size

[Music] hi i'm erin jean mcdowell and welcome to this episode of bake it up a notch bite size these are short form episodes where we dive deeper into the baking subjects you want to know about and this episode is all about your questions we searched all the youtube comments for your questions pulled out some of our favorites and we're bringing you the answers today if you like this episode and past episodes of bake it up a notch be sure to like and subscribe so you can be made aware of new episodes as they become available let's get baking [Music] when it comes to crumb crust there are a couple of different things that are really important and i think because crumb crusts are so easy we don't always think of some of these as being really careful to watch out for so the first is you want to make sure that you're adding enough binder to your crumb crust so typically that binder is melted butter sometimes there's also a little bit of sugar added to it which can also kind of help to bind the mixture so i'm going to go ahead and add some melted butter i almost always when i'm doing this have a little bit extra on hand and the reason that i do is because of this test that we're going to do in order for a crumb crust to really hold together after baking it needs enough of the binder that it will hold together before baking and then in the oven it will kind of continue to firm up so let me just add a little more butter here and then what we're going to do is this squeeze test now we just want to make sure that when we squeeze it between our fingers that it holds together and that's going to be a good sign that it's sufficiently bound and is going to hold together even once we slice it so that isn't quite what we're looking for i need to get a little more butter what we're trying to do is get it to pass this kind of clump test now the other thing that is important to remember is that you can really get creative with crumb crust but every ingredient that you might use is going to behave a little bit differently a chocolate sandwich cookie with filling is going to behave differently than a graham cracker and both of those are going to behave differently than like a dry cereal so just remember that when you're getting creative and when you're messing around this kind of squeeze test is really the way to know whether or not that crumb crust has been successfully bound so like that that's exactly what we want to see when we clump it together in our hands it stays together in kind of one firm mass so once it passes the squeeze test where it's going to hold that should mean it has enough binder to get you to the point of being able to hold together better in the oven so the first thing i have to advise is make sure you're using enough binder let me wash my hands and i'll show you the second so by nature crumb crusts are very crumbly that that's right there in the name almost crumb crust so it's never going to hold together in the same way that a pastry crust is but the main thing to remember is what's going to hold it together is the filling itself so you've got it properly bound as best you can but it's still a crumbly mixture that's one of the reasons it's such an easy crust so here i have a key lime pie and this key lime pie has a beautiful silky smooth custard and when i cut into it everywhere that that custard is touching the crumb crust the crumb crust is going to stay together everywhere where it's not touching um like up here at the edge it might still be a little bit crumbly even though i bound it properly even though it's been baked properly so i just want to reassure you that some trouble with a crumb crust isn't necessarily a bad thing it's just one of the natures of it having you know being a slightly easier crust if it's sticking to the pan that could mean that you're not using enough of the binder which will help to make it a little bit more uniform but it could also mean that it's your pie plate itself um i specifically find people have trouble with things sticking on glass pie plates the most it just sort of depends but um but yeah a glass pie plate things can really get kind of caramelized to the base and get stuck really easily but right here where i was cutting look this whole piece just fell off and was crumbly and this is bound properly and one of the reasons is because you can see i kind of under filled this here i didn't put the custard all the way up to the top of the rim as it would normally be and this is something that i feel like can happen with people when they have deep dish pie plates they make a regular pie recipe they put it into a deep dish pie pan and then because the filling doesn't come all the way up to the top edge there's nothing to bind that crust but all the pieces where it's bound it holds together really really nice so just remember crumb crusts are sort of one of those perfectly imperfect things but make sure you're using enough binder and make sure that you're using enough filling that it's going to help hold it together even after you bake and slice it [Music] there are several different kinds of yeast and depending on which one your recipe calls for it needs to be handled a little bit differently instant yeast can be added directly to ingredients like flour without needing any kind of treatment in advance it's why you often see it in recipes that are claiming to be especially easy or faster active dry yeast on the other hand which some of my bread recipes call for it needs to be activated before you can actually use it in a recipe that means it needs to be dissolved in some water before moving on and proceeding with the recipe so all you need to do when you're doing that is sprinkle the yeast over the water as it's called for in the recipe [Music] once you've added it to your warm water or other liquid you're just going to stir it up and let it sit for about five minutes this is typically the portion of the recipe that tells you to wait until your yeast looks visibly bubbly if for some reason your yeast doesn't bubble or look active and happy in that little bit of time then you're going to want to go ahead and discard it and maybe get some new yeast for the second part of that question where you're asking about the dough being more soft and more manageable a good recipe should give you a little bit of instruction as to how the dough should feel and look and all of those things a lot of recipes will have a very soft dough one example of that is ciabatta dough it's a very highly hydrated yeasted dough and therefore it can be a little bit more difficult to work with but it also won't get its signature interior texture and that crisp outer crust without that high hydration so you kind of need to trust the recipe rather than adding more flour typically if recipes want you to achieve a certain texture of the dough they might even say plus more flour as needed advising you to add an additional tablespoon at a time until the dough comes together typically my recipes and a lot of other ones you're going to see out there are formulated for the exact amount you need to add so just move forward measure carefully and trust the recipe [Music] the first piece of advice i have is since i recommend parchment paper make sure you're using a really high quality parchment paper some stuff that you get at the grocery store can be really easy to rip and tear and it just can't hold up to the weight of pie weights i've also heard of people accidentally using wax paper which of course is not oven safe and is going to likely stick to the bottom of your baked good and could also peel apart layers if you consistently have trouble with parchment paper switch instead to heavy duty foil several other people i know use this and recommend this it's a little bit easier to kind of create handles for yourself and and that's really important the other thing that's important is to remember to have enough excess at the top if you only have parchment around the lower base portion you're not going to have anything to grip it to especially when it's this full of pie weights but if you've got plenty of excess you can just grab the excess at the corners lift it up and transfer it to a heat safe bowl nearby to let those pie weights cool before you put them back into storage i love this question because of course so many people want to eat their slice of pie or their whole pie warm and fresh but i'm always advising people to let the pie cool completely before you slice into it so to get that sweet spot of warming it up after it's already cooled if you've got a whole pie which is what i'm going to deal with first you're going to cover the entire pie still in the pie plate with some tin foil the idea here is that we're protecting the crust from browning further while it's in the oven then we're going to place it into a cold oven and set the oven to 375 degrees as the oven preheats it's going to slowly warm that pie it's going to bring the pie along with it then we'll leave the whole pie in for another 8 to 10 minutes after it comes to temperature until it's kind of the level of warmth that you'd like you can always check it with a thermometer whatever you want the great thing about this is it also lightly re-crisps the crust so we're gonna get any if anything has gone a little soggy overnight we can get a little bit more crispness in there now this is also a great technique to use with a single slice of pie so i'm going to slice this pie never gets old [Music] this is a delicious rhubarb pie oh yeah we're gonna drop our slice right into some foil we're gonna wrap the whole slice up in foil make a nice little packet again we're going to make sure that it doesn't over brown but it is going to benefit from a little bit of crisping same thing into the oven into a cold oven set it to 375 and for just a single slice or a few slices if you're heating them at the same time you're just going to want to go four to six minutes after you hear the buzzer of the preheat ding and you're going to have a nice delicious warm slice of pie [Music] i'm so glad you asked this question because i do have a bit of a fervent dislike of margarine and one of the reasons is because i love butter so deeply and it's delicious but the other reason is because margarine isn't really a butter substitute even though that is of course how it's sold in the stores margarine is made of a hydrogenated oil that's basically aerated and set in a way that it is either spreadable or can cut and be solid like butter is but because it's oil it has a completely different melting point a completely different way of handling than butter does so in the oven it's typically going to become kind of oily greasy it often won't stay kind of emulsified in the baked good also i'm sorry now i'm rambling because i dislike margarine so much like and another thing and another thing but one of the things that's important to remember is also like the water content just the whole structure of margarine and the way that it is made so that it can resemble butter makes it so different than butter it's going to be firmer at different temperatures it's going to melt at different temperatures it's just going to behave very very differently almost when you're adding it to a recipe you have to think could i use oil in this recipe so one example of that is it might be okay to substitute margarine in a muffin recipe because a lot of times muffin recipes even use oil and the mixing method allows for that but one time where it might not be okay is making say croissants where we really need that butter to be solid and spreadable and we need it to stay locked inside that dough at specific temperatures trying to switch for margarine will work in some cases but in most cases it's going to taste less good and it's going to behave really really differently most crimps that i showed in our crimping episode of bake it up a notch bite size can be done perfectly on a double-crusted pie the only kinds of techniques that can't be done as well on a double-crusted pie are ones where the edges need kind of a certain appearance one example would be the checkerboard edge that's typically only done on a single crest pie so that the edges of the crust can lay on the open faced filling another example would be folding the edges of the crust over like a galette that would be very difficult to do on a double crust pie because you would have extra dough from the top as well but in general finger crips utensil crimps they can all work as well on a double crust pie as they do on a single [Music] it's definitely possible to flavor the butters you're using to make pastries like pie dough croissants etc however adding additional ingredients to your butter block can increase additional moisture increasing the moisture content and also things like fiber if you're using something that has like a little bit of fibrous content in it all of those things could affect the texture of the butter block or of the compound butter if you're using that to make a pie dough i talk a little bit more about using flavored butters to make pie dough inside my book the book on pie but what i would advise is just starting with things that are a little bit drier in consistency or things that have a lot of flavor punch without having to use many of them garlic would be a great example you want to make sure that you incorporate it fully but that you're not adding too much moisture in my book for example i make a saffron compound butter which that doesn't add any additional moisture to the dough but it adds a lot of color and flavor but i also make a scallion compound butter the fibrousness and the moisture inside the scallions make that dough a little bit more difficult to work with so you can get creative with adding flavors just remember to think about how it's also going to impact the recipe [Music] traditionally croissants are made with a higher fat butter like european butters which do have closer to 82 american butters have closer to 80 percent however in the interest of getting everyone baking i always like to test my recipes with different kinds of ingredients i tested all of the puff pastry recipes with american butter as well as with european butter the european butter definitely has a little bit of a richer flavor and can be in some ways a little bit easier to work with but the american butter works great and you know i use so much butter that i often tend to go with whatever's on sale [Music] freezing your butter and grating it is a definitely a method that works and this is one of those things i'm a huge believer that there is not just one right way to do things it's one of the reasons why here on bake it up a notch i often try to show you a few different ways including the one that i use the most this technique really works because the butter is very very cold and it still stays cold when it hits the flower because you're able to manipulate it quickly by dragging it over the box grater the reason that i don't like this as much is because it puts the butter in relatively small pieces this it's still going to work you're going to be able to laminate it beautifully and it's going to be much quicker to come together but the real key to a beautiful puff pastry is some pretty larger shingle pieces of butter that are folded throughout i'm still going to stick with my cubing method but if you want to give the other method a try i guarantee it definitely works [Music] i like looking all over for different kinds of clothes and different things that are going to feel fun in the kitchen but that are also easy to wear a few episodes ago i had this amazing cheese dress which is from an australian clothing designer ivy knew the croissant button sweater comes from a website called our stories i also do a lot of shopping at places that offer more inclusive sizing like bowden and modcloth i really like looking all over but i especially love bright colors and if it's got a food print you know i'm going after it [Music] i'm so glad you asked this question because there's definitely some things to be aware of when you're working with a ceramic pie plate especially because i also recommend the use of things like a pizza stone or a baking steel the main thing you don't want to do is take your ceramic pie plate from the freezer to the oven that's really sudden change of temperature can be kind of intense for ceramic that said i've never had a ceramic pie plate break going straight from the fridge but i do usually place it on a parchment lined baking sheet i do this also so it will catch any drips in the oven but it also can be helpful to sort of provide an extra layer of insulation for that ceramic pan itself if you are using a pizza stone or baking steel and you're baking in ceramic start your pie on a rack above the baking sealer pizza stone leave it in for 10 or 15 minutes then move it down to the baking steel or pizza stone by then it will have come to temperature and you're not going to risk cracking the pan typically this isn't as much of a concern with metal pie plates but it can also be an issue for glass most glass pie plates are tempered to handle going from the fridge to the oven but be careful and enlist those same pieces of advice of using the sheet tray especially if you're using the baking steel or pizza stone [Music] typically i leave cakes at room temperature until i'm ready to build but you can definitely refrigerate or freeze them for longer storage refrigerating a cake overnight for many recipes will give it a really delicious kind of fudgy texture a lot of bakers actually kind of swear by it as one of their steps that they always will do when you're freezing a cake you definitely want to thaw it before you start the layering process it'll be easier to cut the cake and it'll just be easier to work with all around you're definitely going to want to soak your cake layers after it has been cut and you're building and assembling the cake so if it's been frozen it's not going to absorb that syrup and that moisture in the same way so definitely be using a thawed cake and as you layer apply the syrup [Music] i thought you said steve martin and i was like hold on let me get the banjo this piece of black silicone is marketed and sold in grocery stores and online as a jar opener the idea is that you can put it with your hand like this over a stubborn jar and the grippiness will help you open the jar better i use these to put on a cake turntable when i'm decorating it allows the cardboard cake circle or the cake itself to have something kind of grippy to stick to so it doesn't go sliding on the cake stand [Music] personally i don't use cake strips but cake strips are wonderful and definitely are very helpful in the process of making more even cakes cake strips are available at baking supply stores or craft stores and they're a piece of fabric that wraps around the cake pan which is going to help insulate the cake pan and allow the cake to rise more evenly the person asking this question definitely saw our layer cake episode where i talk about leveling cakes when you use cake strips you often don't need to level the cake so it can be very good from that waste perspective if you're interested in that part of the reason that i don't do it is because i find it really challenging to develop cake recipes that will rise very flat it's just really fun for me but the other reason is because i want to develop recipes that everybody can use even if they don't have those strips at home also one of the reasons i don't do it is because i like having cake scraps i sort of feel like it's my reward for baking the cake i can munch on it a little bit while i'm decorating the cake even and it's just a lot of fun i even make little cake parfaits for my husband using the cake scraps by crumbling cake and layering with whipped cream or whatever frosting i have left over so for me scraps are always still a good thing typically i freeze puff pastry by wrapping a block of the dough then thawing it when i'm ready to use it by thawing it in the fridge overnight you can roll out the dough and kind of freeze it in that way but i've found that for a variety of reasons that it can be a little bit more temperamental it can be kind of sticky as it starts to thaw even if you made it perfectly so what i advise is when you make a big batch of the puff pastry cut off a quarter of it or whatever amount you want to freeze cut it into smaller sections that are going to be ready to be rolled out wrap them in a couple layers of plastic wrap or even one layer of plastic wrap and a layer of aluminum foil freeze them until you're ready to use it thaw overnight in the fridge and then just proceed with the recipe as directed overproof dough is still totally edible and a lot of times it's not going to make the item even look that aesthetically unpleasing you can check out our different episodes on yeast for some more examples of this but one of the main things that will happen to underproof or overproof dough is that it may collapse in the oven the yeast has sort of reached its maximum level of activity so it has nowhere else to go and before the structure can set in the baked good it will collapse so oftentimes you'll end up with kind of a flatter pastry or a flatter loaf of bread but it's still definitely edible and usable if you're really not sure what to do with it crumble it really fine let them kind of dry out and make some especially yummy breadcrumbs [Music] this is not a worm tattoo in fact it is a vanilla bean um this is one of several tattoos that i have i have this vanilla bean is the only food related one in fact and i like to have it on my arm because i'm working with vanilla all the time it's one of my favorite ingredients and i really love the vanilla bean i also have two stars right here on my collarbone i have the last line of my favorite poem down my spine and i have my home state of kansas on the back of my neck this house is always seeing a ton of food and so don't worry we've got lots of places to send it here at bake it up a notch i'm also developing new recipes to go with every single episode so if we have five or six new recipes i'm boxing them up to send back to the studio with our cameramen so that they can give them to the photographers and they can photograph them so we have beautiful pictures on the website to accompany the recipe then we kind of divvy up the leftovers between our shoot crew and we have a few other places that we take it i have something that i call the buttery bat signal which is basically just a group text where i notify all the people that live in my neighborhood that i have boxes of things we write people's names on the boxes as they take dibs and once i run out of boxes it's a first come first serve basis and we distribute a lot of pastries that way we also regularly drop things off at a local community fridge and before the pandemic i regularly went to a local nursing home to drop off fake goods and get some taste testing notes from the residents i've taken the bandana right off my head to answer this question because my method of folding it is super super easy the reason that i wear bandanas like this i've been wearing them in the kitchen for a long time just to help keep my hair out of my face so the first thing you do is you lay it out just as a square and then you're going to fold it over in half to make a triangle shape once you've got it in that triangle shape you're going to take the point of it and fold it back towards the flat end at this point you can wrap the bandana around your head just like this or what i do is fold just a little bit of it up to encase that point i flatten it really well makes it easier to wrap around my head then i put that flat portion that's folded around the back of my head around my ears and then you just tie it up here at the top sometimes people ask if i have trouble with them staying on my head and the answer is yes so i secure them by my ears and in the back with a few bobby pins i feel so much better now my natural state [Music] thank you so much for joining me for this episode of bake it up a notch bite size remember keep asking those great questions in the comments because i love getting them and i love bringing you the answers even more and while you're there be sure to like and subscribe so you can be made aware of each new episode as it becomes available thanks for joining me and as always happy baking [Music] i hate margin and done [Music] you

Channel: Food52

Views: 79,709

Keywords: Food52, food, cooking, recipe, chef, foodie, cook, home cooking videos, erin jeanne mcdowell, erin mcdowell, bake it up a notch, bite size, erin mcdowell pie crust, baking question and answers, baking faq, baking pies must know, how to make pastry, how to make good pie crust, flaky croissants, how to assemble layer cakes, how to fix overproof dough, cake you freeze cakes, how to use butter in pastry, what are different types of butter, butter vs margarine, double crust pies

Id: zQ0MB4jlXMM

Length: 26min 17sec (1577 seconds)

Published: Fri Jun 25 2021