I Pulled up My Sleeve to Reveal a Fresh Oven Burn. I Brought in My Fluted Tart Pan and a Measuring Tape
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Marion: I pulled up my sleeve to reveal a fresh oven burn. I brought in my fluted tart pan and a measuring tape. My mission: to sleuth tips and tricks of the trade from Anna Olson. She’s been teaching Canada to bake since 2002. When one of her recipes failed for me, I had to get to the bottom of it. I’m Marion Kane, Food Sleuth®, and welcome to “Sittin’ in the Kitchen®”. Anna Olson is a pastry chef and a Food Network Canada star. We met at the Toronto office of Penguin Random House, publisher of her latest book Bake with Anna Olson. I picked the baking maven’s brain. We shared war wounds and discussed why recipes aren’t always an exact science. I’m with Anna Olson, ace baker, and author of several cookbooks. Her latest is called Bake with Anna Olson, and I have it in front of me. I have the oven burns to prove that I’ve used it. Look at that. Anna: Oh, you do! Look at that! That’s a bad burn. What happened? There’s a story behind that. Marion: I think it’s a sign of a good cook. Anna: Yeah, I’ve got the oven marks. It’s when you’re in a hurry. It just happens inadvertently. Use Vitamin E or aloe, break off a little and rub it on and it helps reduce the scarring. Marion: That’s the first baking tip from Anna Olson. Anna: (laughs) A very important baking tip. It doesn’t even have to do with butter. Marion: Anna, you were born in Atlanta, Georgia, of Slovakian heritage. Anna: I have butter and sour cream in my veins genetically. Marion: Good thing to have. Anna: I take my inspiration for baking from my grandmother. If you wanted to visit with Grandma, that meant you were in the kitchen. With that comes just being told, “Here now, crack these eggs, now trim these beans, now whip these whites, now let’s pull this strudel dough, let’s grind poppy seeds”. As I grew up it became more and more elaborate. What I took away from it wasn’t about the eating. It was about the time spent making and the gesture of giving. Marion: The eating was pretty good - of strudel and those kinds of European pastries. My mother makes European pastries. Her speciality is Linzertorte. Anna: Mmmm … Marion: You’ve brought me to a topic dear to my heart. My mother is a scientist, a biologist, and she’s an incredible baker. I’m the other kind of cook – touchy-feely, throw things in and see how it looks and see how it feels. Do you think baking is a science- focused type of cooking? Anna: I don’t want to make it sound unapproachable by calling it science. I’d say a little more alchemy. There IS science, but you have to have the creativity and the passion of the baker to create the magic. Anyone who’s made a loaf of bread from scratch while tired or not paying attention knows that the bread doesn’t come out great. Marion: That must have been why. Anna: And the burns on the arm, too. I have people say, “Well, I’m not a baker. I can’t bake”. The first time I played golf, I was awful. The second time I played golf, I was slightly less awful. I’m still pretty bad at it but, like anything, it takes repetition and practice because you learn from each experience. Marion: There are mostly women in the pastry chef department in a restaurant. It’s been called the pink ghetto. How do you feel about that? Do you think it’s true? Anna: I think it seems to be true in North America. It’s not true when you travel to Europe. As a pastry chef, if you’ve got that retail world, that means you’re likely closed in the evenings. If you’ve got a family to take care of and the responsibility’s falling on you, it’s a little more forgiving when it comes to hours on the retail side of things. Conversely, it’s also a night shift depending on where you work or you’re doing a standard restaurant shift which can be a long day. Marion: Now I’ve got you here, a baking pro, what are your key tips for technique in baking? Anna: It’s always the little things. Baking with unsalted butter, as opposed to salted, is very, very important. That way you’re in control of the salt. Brand for brand, you don’t know how much salt is in your butter and, recipe for recipe, the amount of butter you need varies. But salt retains water or liquid, and you actually get more butter in your unsalted butter than in salted. Marion: I didn’t know that. Anna: Yes. That’s why, typically, salted butter is cheaper because there’s that 1% less butter in there. You’re essentially adding a little extra water to your cookies, your shortbreads. Things may crumble. They’re just not going to taste as fulfilling. That’s a simple one. Working with ingredients at the right temperature. Marion: Excellent. Eggs should be at room temperature, correct? Anna: Your butter is your guide. If you’re ever dealing with butter and it’s called for at room temperature, your eggs should be at room temperature. Because ingredients of a like temperature incorporate better together. Conversely, if your butter is called for cold, say a scone recipe, then your egg and your milk should be cold at the same time. Marion: Brilliant. I’ve learned two things. Tools of the trade – how do you feel about pans and mixers and wooden spoons? Do you need certain tools to be a good baker? Anna: You know what? I am not that fussy when it comes to pans. Having been a professional baker for so long, you work with cheap tools. Aluminum cake pans, baking trays, you get used to working with the thin metal and how it conducts heat. I find them just fine to work with. You tend to get favourite tools. I love a good “spoonula” - a curved silicone spatula that I can scrape every bit of batter out of the bowl or go right to a pot of custard and get it pulling from the bottom nicely. An offset spatula - if you’re really getting into baking, it’s a great little gift to get. It’s inexpensive. That becomes an extension of your hand whether it’s lifting cookies off a tray, sliding a cake onto a cake stand or spreading frosting or a filling onto cake or cookies. It’s a very important tool for an expert or a novice baker. I sometimes think we forget about an oven thermometer, one for inside your oven. Just because you set your oven to 350F and it may beep, it doesn’t mean it’s actually at 350F or perhaps oscillating up and down up to 375F, down to 325F and it’s calling the average 350F. That can wreak havoc on your cakes. It’s raising up the baking powder before it’s set and then you’ll find things come out of the oven sunken or peaking or doming. I learned about this when my mom - a basic coffee cake that she used to make year over year, week over week - she got a new oven and all of a sudden, it wasn’t turning out for her. It wasn’t until we put a thermometer inside the oven and we realized her temp was way off. You could just call someone and get it calibrated if it’s really off but you learn how to work with the oven you have. Marion: That’s a key thing I wanted to talk to you about because I made four things out of your new book. Two of them needed baking longer than it said. I tested my oven with an oven thermometer and it seems to be calibrated correctly. I don’t know why that is. Do you use a convection oven in your testing or a professional oven? Anna: That’s a very good question. I have a deck oven. It’s a gas-fired commercial deck oven but it’s not a convection oven at all. I also give my recipes - when I’m done testing them - to a recipe tester. Actually, I have a few but my key recipe tester has an electric oven, so we always compare notes. I have learned that her goods take a few minutes longer than mine do, just by nature of the oven. We go back and forth and I find there’s always a variation. There’s always a range. We’re standing here, it’s a rainy day, that can add two minutes to our bake time for no other reason than the fact that it’s more humid out today. A particularly humid day in summer can impact the way things bake. There are so many variables. Marion: I found that the crust for the lemon tart, which was delicious by the way, took longer. The sticky toffee puddings cooked in a water bath, which I think is brilliant, needed a bit longer. I’ve got one of my baking tins here. I used to be a teacher and it’s “Show and Tell” time. It’s a fluted pan, supposedly 9”, with a removable bottom, that I used for the lemon tart.