(no subject)
Nov. 24th, 2005 02:45 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
which_chickSo I had another go-round with the squash pie recipe.
I'm pretty pleased with myself for actually doing the current planned trial WITHOUT ANY WAYWARD MODIFICATIONS. Yay. As those of you who have read multiple Well, the directions said to do *blah* but I thought that was boring so I ... entries here are no doubt aware, that's quite a victory for me. Since basic experimental design suggests that the person playing Mr. Science should only change ONE THING at a time so that the effect (if any) of each change is bloody obvious, me being able to complete the planned trial is really an accomplishment. Just... doing what the plan says to do is so... boring. The only thing keeping me on track with the game plan is the sure and certain knowledge that if I'm not methodical about it, modifying the acceptable-but-not-great recipe so that it invariably and predictably produces the ideal squash pie will take even longer than it is currently taking. Too, while the methodical research thing sucks, fucking around with intractable, poorly-documented processes that do not produce uniform results (that'd be the current recipe) sucks more.
When the original recipe comes out, it's very, very good. However, it doesn't come out all the time and when it doesn't, it fails in a variety of disappointing ways. It's like... I think it's too close to the intersection of several possible behaviors and minor, unobserved differences in procedure and ingredients tip it one way or another. I'd rather have a more stable, repeatable recipe. Right now I'm working on maintaining a successful flavor and texture while shifting the pie behavior further toward a stable, homogeneous solid. The two most distracting failures are (a) failure to set up in the middle even though it's been cooked at an appropriate time/temperature and (b) seperating out into layers of filling type. Neither of these is good. I want solid and I want homogeneous and I want it to come out that way EVERY TIME.
Also, recent forays into the pie world have given me a much better feel for the new, no-transfats-included green Crisco. I don't think it's *exactly the same* as the old, blue Crisco even though it says on the can that it works JUST LIKE the blue Crisco. (I'm paraphrasing. The can actually says Same Great Shortening Quality & Performance You've Come to Expect from Crisco. Also, what's with capitalizing all the words?) I've made pie crust with it three times now and either I've been off my game for three attempts straight (not fucking likely) or the green Crisco makes a more fragile, more brittle, less elastic crust that is more prone to tearing and shattering in the assembling-the-pie stages. (This does not mean that I made failed pies. I do not make failed pies. I make less-successful pies that are still quite edible. For crust issues, all that happens is that they look sloppier.) The green Crisco tastes okay and all but it's just not as user-friendly in pie dough as the blue Crisco is. I've tried hitting the pie dough with more ice water to make it stickier and more elastic but that hasn't helped a whole lot. The green Crisco just isn't as cohesive and elastic as the blue Crisco. *sigh* I don't quite know what I want to do about this yet. I'm thinking about it.
Man, I just got the damn pie crust thing under control and they went and decided that there was no safe level of transfats. Damn it. Now I've got to figure out how to work with green Crisco or risk dying of impotence, balding, gout, hairy palms, cardiovascular disease, high blood pressure, genital warts, Tourette's Syndrome, or whatever the fuck transfats are supposed to do to you. All I can say is that if I get the hang of the green Crisco, they damn well better not fucking change it again. This changing-of-the-shortening is not a good.
Anyway, the squash pie is sort of a custardy thing. It's disturbingly liquid when you put it in the oven -- you could drink it without a problem. It's got pureed squash in it. The pureed squash, heavier than the milk and egg yolks, tends to settle to the bottom. The liquid batter also has whipped egg whites in it. The egg whites, lighter than the milk and egg yolks, tend to float on top of the batter. I do not want a squash pie that has strata in it. I want a squash pie that is uniform throughout.
So how'd it go this time? It was as per the current iteration of the recipe. 1 cup squash, 1 cup milk, two eggs seperated, one egg plain, half cup sugar, 3 Tbsp flour, 1 Tbsp corn starch, 1/4 teasp cinnamon, 1/8 teasp. nutmeg. 425 at ten minutes, 350 at 35 minutes. Cooled for a solid hour so's to be well below the protein-coagulating temperature before I cut into it. (It continues to cook after you take it out of the oven. Cutting it early is bad.) Center: uniform mostly. I think I overwhipped the damn egg whites again OR didn't blend them into the other batter well enough because some of them rose to the top...not as bad as some efforts, but not as good as they should be. It needs five more minutes cook time. It's not runny enough to slop out of the middle of the pie (I've had ones that have done that. I ate them anyway.) but it is custard-y looking and you can see where there's an 1/8" layer in the very middle that did not get as done as it should have. More cooking time is going to brown the crust more than I'm willing to tolerate.
Items for further research:
Don't put the fucking pie tin in the fridge after you have the crust formed. Maybe overcoming the chilled ceramic is taking a bit of heat away from the pie middle.
Try omitting the third egg and go back to adjusting the milk instead.
Start timing the mixing-in-of-egg-whites?
*sigh* Drawing board? Again?
I'm pretty pleased with myself for actually doing the current planned trial WITHOUT ANY WAYWARD MODIFICATIONS. Yay. As those of you who have read multiple Well, the directions said to do *blah* but I thought that was boring so I ... entries here are no doubt aware, that's quite a victory for me. Since basic experimental design suggests that the person playing Mr. Science should only change ONE THING at a time so that the effect (if any) of each change is bloody obvious, me being able to complete the planned trial is really an accomplishment. Just... doing what the plan says to do is so... boring. The only thing keeping me on track with the game plan is the sure and certain knowledge that if I'm not methodical about it, modifying the acceptable-but-not-great recipe so that it invariably and predictably produces the ideal squash pie will take even longer than it is currently taking. Too, while the methodical research thing sucks, fucking around with intractable, poorly-documented processes that do not produce uniform results (that'd be the current recipe) sucks more.
When the original recipe comes out, it's very, very good. However, it doesn't come out all the time and when it doesn't, it fails in a variety of disappointing ways. It's like... I think it's too close to the intersection of several possible behaviors and minor, unobserved differences in procedure and ingredients tip it one way or another. I'd rather have a more stable, repeatable recipe. Right now I'm working on maintaining a successful flavor and texture while shifting the pie behavior further toward a stable, homogeneous solid. The two most distracting failures are (a) failure to set up in the middle even though it's been cooked at an appropriate time/temperature and (b) seperating out into layers of filling type. Neither of these is good. I want solid and I want homogeneous and I want it to come out that way EVERY TIME.
Also, recent forays into the pie world have given me a much better feel for the new, no-transfats-included green Crisco. I don't think it's *exactly the same* as the old, blue Crisco even though it says on the can that it works JUST LIKE the blue Crisco. (I'm paraphrasing. The can actually says Same Great Shortening Quality & Performance You've Come to Expect from Crisco. Also, what's with capitalizing all the words?) I've made pie crust with it three times now and either I've been off my game for three attempts straight (not fucking likely) or the green Crisco makes a more fragile, more brittle, less elastic crust that is more prone to tearing and shattering in the assembling-the-pie stages. (This does not mean that I made failed pies. I do not make failed pies. I make less-successful pies that are still quite edible. For crust issues, all that happens is that they look sloppier.) The green Crisco tastes okay and all but it's just not as user-friendly in pie dough as the blue Crisco is. I've tried hitting the pie dough with more ice water to make it stickier and more elastic but that hasn't helped a whole lot. The green Crisco just isn't as cohesive and elastic as the blue Crisco. *sigh* I don't quite know what I want to do about this yet. I'm thinking about it.
Man, I just got the damn pie crust thing under control and they went and decided that there was no safe level of transfats. Damn it. Now I've got to figure out how to work with green Crisco or risk dying of impotence, balding, gout, hairy palms, cardiovascular disease, high blood pressure, genital warts, Tourette's Syndrome, or whatever the fuck transfats are supposed to do to you. All I can say is that if I get the hang of the green Crisco, they damn well better not fucking change it again. This changing-of-the-shortening is not a good.
Anyway, the squash pie is sort of a custardy thing. It's disturbingly liquid when you put it in the oven -- you could drink it without a problem. It's got pureed squash in it. The pureed squash, heavier than the milk and egg yolks, tends to settle to the bottom. The liquid batter also has whipped egg whites in it. The egg whites, lighter than the milk and egg yolks, tend to float on top of the batter. I do not want a squash pie that has strata in it. I want a squash pie that is uniform throughout.
So how'd it go this time? It was as per the current iteration of the recipe. 1 cup squash, 1 cup milk, two eggs seperated, one egg plain, half cup sugar, 3 Tbsp flour, 1 Tbsp corn starch, 1/4 teasp cinnamon, 1/8 teasp. nutmeg. 425 at ten minutes, 350 at 35 minutes. Cooled for a solid hour so's to be well below the protein-coagulating temperature before I cut into it. (It continues to cook after you take it out of the oven. Cutting it early is bad.) Center: uniform mostly. I think I overwhipped the damn egg whites again OR didn't blend them into the other batter well enough because some of them rose to the top...not as bad as some efforts, but not as good as they should be. It needs five more minutes cook time. It's not runny enough to slop out of the middle of the pie (I've had ones that have done that. I ate them anyway.) but it is custard-y looking and you can see where there's an 1/8" layer in the very middle that did not get as done as it should have. More cooking time is going to brown the crust more than I'm willing to tolerate.
Items for further research:
Don't put the fucking pie tin in the fridge after you have the crust formed. Maybe overcoming the chilled ceramic is taking a bit of heat away from the pie middle.
Try omitting the third egg and go back to adjusting the milk instead.
Start timing the mixing-in-of-egg-whites?
*sigh* Drawing board? Again?
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2005-11-25 02:45 am (UTC)"Same Great Shortening Quality & Performance You've Come to Expect from Crisco" is a sentence fragment and therefore damned well better be a title. Titles require proper capitalization.
Chilling the pie tin should help with the undercooked center since it means the edges will take longer to cook and the center will have more time in the full heat while the edges are still warming. Unless we're postulating large-scale convection in the pie filling. Yes, I'm being serious, or at least as serious as I ever get.
no subject
Date: 2005-11-25 03:14 am (UTC)The existing instructions are to cook at 425 for 10 minutes then drop the temperature to 350 and cook for an additional 35-40 minutes or so. I think the initial high temperature is to cook the pie crust so that it doesn't get soggy while the innards are cooking. Also, and this just in, on the thinking-about-things front, the filling is generally pretty cold when it goes in the oven. Many of the things in the filling are cold (recently thawed squash puree, milk, eggs) and maybe if they were room temperature or slightly warmed before I put them in the pie shell, the filling would cook faster.
Today we learned that 35 is just a bit too short for the recipe with an additional egg but with the original configuration, 35 minutes (after the initial 10 at 425) worked okay the last time I tried it. I'm thinking maybe the less eggy construction conducts heat better.
I think maybe 40 might do it with the additional egg (which adds thickness and helps with the settling out problem), but I can only eat pie so fast and I am not wasting food, even in the name of science, so iterations take time. I will, of course, keep you posted.
no subject
Date: 2005-11-25 07:57 am (UTC)Of course, this is really not too solid evidence since the last time I cooked a pumpkin pie was two years ago (!) and the weather was cooler and not as horribly dry, but it did seem to make a difference.
(As to who the hell I am and why I'm commenting in your journal: I've had
no subject
Date: 2005-11-25 12:41 pm (UTC)Hearing your thoughts on the subject, I am really starting to think that the quite-chilly temperature of the squash pie filling might be part of the problem. I don't need *much* faster cooking, just a wee bit. Right, then. Next iteration will be with chilled crust (from fridge) and room temp (or slightly warmer) pie filling. We'll see how that goes.
And feel free to make with the commenty goodness if the spirit moves you. Don't feel obligated to read every (precious, handcrafted!) entry -- I realize that not everything I write appeals to everyone.