Who doesn't want crispy food?
An industry dedicated to making foods crispy
81–90 of 107 posts
Re: An industry dedicated to making foods crispy
#82Food science is really interesting; I've kind of gotten into it as a hobby lately (having a background in chemical engineering and an obsessive interest in cooking). Last night I was making some melted cheese for nachos and used sodium citrate to emulsify the cheese sauce and sodium hexametaphosphate to sequester the calcium (weird aside: the non-numeric chemical formula for sodium citrate is NaCHO). It's fascinating…
I would happily contribute to the Patreon of anyone writing up their experiments in practical food science at home...
Check out Food Lab by Kenji Lopez Alt: https://www.seriouseats.com/the-food-lab
My favorite article is one where he reverse engineers a McDonald fry. His reverse-sear steak is also good.
Re: An industry dedicated to making foods crispy
#83Earlier quoted context omitted.
What makes you think they have only those five ingredients? I’d bet on more gluten, malt, potato starch, a couple exotic salts, and more.
There is nothing wrong with most additives. Even so-called 'artisanal' bakers add 'bread improvers', which contain things like 'ascorbic acid' (ooohh scary! except that its common name is... vitamin C), enzymes or some fast sugars that are entirely converted to alcohol and CO2 by the yeast (i.e. they're just used as yeast feed, no extra sweetness to the final product). My mother used to work with a woman who later op…
If you won’t, I’ll jump in. There’s evidence that it would be a positive choice to drop nitrates from ones diet entirely, but any cured meat product that claims to be nitrate free is either unrecognizable as what the label says or preying on consumer ignorance. Generally it is the second option, and celery salt is the smoking gun. Here’s an article on the subject: https://www.mcgill.ca/oss/article/food/celery-juice-viable-a...
Im comfortable saying any deli meat or bacon marketed “no added nitrates” is either over priced or subpar quality and , in most cases, being hawked by charlatans who thrive on their customers being low information.
Re: An industry dedicated to making foods crispy
#84Earlier quoted context omitted.
I didn't saw yet a single industrial baguette that was better than what my local baker does. Industrial one may be crispy but have nothing like a good one.
You can take any random supermarket bread and say it happens to not be as good as your standard, but the process that makes it mass market, making the dough and freezing it in the factory, and baking it in a store, I don't believe has to meaningfully compromise the quality. I don't know how it would be better , but I don't think it has to be worse.
The manufacturing process makes them worse. On a mass scale, every cent counts and the first thing to take a hit is the quality of the flour and the density of the dough. Then it's machine mixed, frozen, and baked in the very same condition at all time in electric ovens and that makes for a pretty forgettable taste and texture.
The end result is nowhere near what a competent baker can do, working manually and especially when using for instance a wood fire oven
Re: An industry dedicated to making foods crispy
#85Earlier quoted context omitted.
To be fair the best French baguettes are crunchy and soft at the same time and have only water, flour, salt, sugar? and yeast, so nothing much to be afraid of there.
And they require an immense amount of skill to make, which means you can only find really good bread in communities where a baker artisan can run a sustainable business. In the age of home grocery delivery, it's an uphill battle. The number of bakers in France has steadily gone down over the past half century or so. It's been going up a bit recently due to the new phenomenon of upper class white collar workers who qu…
German factory-made bread is quite palatable.
Even quite on par with what gets sold as artisanal bread in a lot of places. (Though the factory bread is not as good as the real good artisanal stuff, of course.)
So, you can get pretty good quality food from an industrial process, if there's a big market willing to pay for it. It's not even expensive.
Of course, if your consumers don't care or only care for the 'wrong' things, you get: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chorleywood_bread_process
Re: An industry dedicated to making foods crispy
#86Earlier quoted context omitted.
You can take any random supermarket bread and say it happens to not be as good as your standard, but the process that makes it mass market, making the dough and freezing it in the factory, and baking it in a store, I don't believe has to meaningfully compromise the quality. I don't know how it would be better , but I don't think it has to be worse.
The manufacturing process makes them worse. On a mass scale, every cent counts and the first thing to take a hit is the quality of the flour and the density of the dough. Then it's machine mixed, frozen, and baked in the very same condition at all time in electric ovens and that makes for a pretty forgettable taste and texture. The end result is nowhere near what a competent baker can do, working manually and especia…
> On a mass scale, every cent counts and the first thing to take a hit is the quality of the flour and the density of the dough.
Yes, but a better product can be sold for more. That's why they are making something resembling baguettes in the first place, and not just the cheapest loaf possible.
(Not saying that in practice the factory baguettes are better than what your favourite baker does. Far from it.)
Re: An industry dedicated to making foods crispy
#87Earlier quoted context omitted.
"some American sogginess" The equation of American bread with Wonder Bread is really tired and offensive. Maybe you should spin some tale about how American flour is so, so, different that making bread with flour, salt, yeast and water is so different than in Europe and it comes out completely inedible to those of refined palate.
Eh, I don't think using "American bread" as an expression for bad bread is all that horrible, just like "being on Italian time" (or Brazilian or whatever) or for people who are habitually late or "going Dutch" for splitting a bill is all that bad - even when I do know Italians and Brazilians who are always on time, and Dutch people who will pay for their table. Then again, it's 2020, so I guess I should change colloq…
In defense of America, our San Francisco Sourdough is only soggy when used to sop up the chowder.
Re: An industry dedicated to making foods crispy
#88Earlier quoted context omitted.
How does socialized healthcare change food manuf incentives? I do also wonder about where it makes sense to draw the line when it comes to nutrition policy. We all share finite healthcare resources, especially as it becomes more socialized. I think at the very least it becomes even more obviously predatory for you to make money off peddling addictive junk food to the masses. I would start there when thinking of helpf…
It doesn't change much in fact. That's why several prominent socialized healthcare nations are extremely obese just like the US. That includes: Britain, Ireland, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Greece, Israel. All have adult obesity levels around or over 25%. Australia, Canada, New Zealand, Britain are among the most obese nations on the planet - despite having world-class socialized healthcare systems. When it comes…
France, too, seems to have hit a cultural inflection point. Obesity rates are quickly climbing. Maybe it's bias, but over the past several years I've also noticed several stories about how McDonalds is becoming more popular in France, as well as the flight of the middle-class out of traditional towns into suburban homes, shopping in suburban malls.
Re: An industry dedicated to making foods crispy
#89Whenever I visit the US I always have this feeling that most food is mushy. It’s almost made to be easy to swallow with lowest effort.
Where are you from, for comparison? The stereotypical cuisine from most nations I can think of is "mushy", from Indian curry dishes to noodle dishes to breads/pastas to beans/legumes to basically anything that's carb heavy. Off the top of my head, the only "non-mushy" cuisine I can think of might be a meat heavy one and maybe an uncooked vegetable one. The former definitely describing my upbringing in Texas. Felt lik…
Your're right, I'm comparing to French or Italian cuisine. Even more thoroughly cooked German or Swiss still retains more texture.
Re: An industry dedicated to making foods crispy
#90NPR's Planet Money podcast did an episode last Oct related to this [0]. It was pretty cool to hear how the rise in food delivery services (drive-throughs before that) created an entire industry for engineered cooking oil that helped keep fries crispier, longer. They also have an expert project how we'll likely have delivery vehicles in the future with deep fryers built in. [0] https://www.npr.org/2019/10/23/772775254…
They also talked about a delivery method that may keep fries fresh and crispy for 40 minutes (or it may have been in 99% Invisible or some other podcast). Never heard about it again.