Learn the science behind:
With just four simple ingredients, flour, water, yeast and salt, you can make bread. And not just a bread. There are literally countless ways in which to bring these four ingredients together to make a slightly different bread every time.…
Most cakes nowadays become airy thanks to the use of frothy eggs, or more commonly, by adding baking soda or baking powder. However, just like we can leaven bread with yeast, we can do the same for cakes! Though nowadays…
You boil pasta, noodles, and gnocchi. You bake cake, cookies, and bread. Bagels, on the other hand? You bake AND boil them. As a matter of fact, doing both is crucial for getting that chewy, characteristic bagel texture. And there’s…
He pokes his finger in the bread, has a close look and says, without yet having taken a bite, ‘this is cleary underbaked’. He the takes another bread, looks at the air holes in them and concludes it hasn’t been…
Long before instant yeast was on the market, bread bakers had to maintain and keep their own living yeasts to proof their breads. Since yeast are living micro organisms quite some care has to go into these cultures to make…
Started a sourdough starter for your bread, managed to maintain it for a couple of months, but simply don’t have the time to maintain it the upcoming weeks or months? Maybe you’re going on a trip, or you’re simply in…
Ever had to scald milk for a recipe? This is when you have to bring the milk to the boil, and as soon as it boils you have to let it cool down again. Sounds useless at first sight doesn’t…
Blub, blub, blub, blub. That’s what our huge (25l) vessel of ‘beer-to-be’ sounds like when it’s becoming beer. It’s the gas escaping from the ‘brewing bucket’ through a ‘water lock’. It’s a good thing the gas escapes, else the bucket…
Food Science is at the heart of this blog, however, in most cases we’ll be applying food science, assuming you’ve got a basic understanding of the food science concepts. Realizing that not everyone knows these basics, we’ve got a series…
Brewing beer at home or in little breweries has become a lot more popular over the past few years. And long before that became a rage, monastries all over Europe has their own (small) breweries, some of which still brew…
Whenever visiting France there is one thing I really really look forward to: visiting a boulangerie, a bakery. The French baguettes are just so good, always fresh (since storing them for even one day will make them go stale) and…
Science is everywhere when you’re in the kitchen. Just think of your bread dough bubbling away and expanding while proofing. Or a beer in the works. You might not even recognize the science, so common the processes are. The processes described…