If you stop and think for two seconds it so basic. Of course when baking bread, or making a muffin there has to be a ratio of ingredients...a certain amount of flour to liquid....
But I never stopped and thought about it any further, extrapolated out that Ratios don't change in baking, therefore if you learn the ratios for each situation, you will NEVER need a recipe, and your possibilites are endless!!!
The ratio becomes your blueprint, and then you are then the architect that builds the final product into what you want it to be by tweaking this or that, adding this or that ingredient, this or that spice, etc.... Brillant!!!
Why did I never think of this? I was reading Shauna (my fav gluten free blogger), from GlutenFreeGirl.com a few days ago and her blog discussed Michael Ruhlman's book Ratio,
and my jaw hit the floor. This book is on my wish list. I want it BADLY! But the concept is stuck in my head, and I get it.
I GET IT.
This makes fundamental sense.
I have always HATED recipes, I just have really never used them for anything other than ideas. Now, I LOVE COOKBOOKS. LOVE THEM. But I rarely end up making many of the recipes more than one time, if any times exactly as written. Unless they are BAKING recipes, then I have always felt TRAPPED, because of the exactness required....
ENTER RATIOS....
Just memorize the ratios for BREAD, Muffins, Pancakes, Cakes, Biscuits, etc... and from there you can just play!
and even better, these ratios work Gluten Free!!!!
Enter the SCALE....
Not all Flours have the same weight... For real???
Before going gluten free I never gave this any thought.
But with gluten free baking, we use such a variety of flours, and starches...and they all have different densities, different weights.. If you measure them out by the cup, well you are just never going to get the results you want, and trying to adapt recipes to get the exact taste you want becomes a nightmare....
Enter the SCALE as I said,as I learned from SHAUNA, if you weigh every thing then you can just change things out as you please in any mix to come up with your own mix that pleases you taste or you allergy allowences. Simple. Done. Plus no more measuring in those stupd cups, leveling off with a knife, making a huge mess, wasting PRECIOUS EXPENSIVE FLOURS!!!, I could go on.....
You get the picture!!!!
Scales and Ratios ROCK!
Ratio Examples:
Pancakes are
4parts Flour: 4 parts Liquid: 2 parts Egg: 1 part Fat
so you can make as small a batch or as big as you want using the above ratio. Lets start small.
Say you want to use 1 oz of butter (fat.)
So you need 2 eggs (lg egg - 1 oz)
8 oz liquid- lets say buttermilk
8oz Flour mix of your choice
or if you did it in grams and you were going to start with 50g butter for this recipe then---
50 g butter
100 g eggs
400 g buttermilk
400 g flour
then on top of this you would add in your extra ingredients to make it your own--
you would need a baking soda-- 1/2tsp prob good for the above recipes
you would want some spices??? maybe some cinn/allspice/ grated orange zest, maybe a tsp cinn, 1/2 tsp allspice, 1 tsp orange zest, could even use a little orange juice in place of some of your liquid???
this is where you have endless possibilities....
ISN'T THIS GREAT???
No comments:
Post a Comment