Wednesday, September 10, 2014

this shit is

B-A-N-A-N-A-S
This is what I was referring to when I mentioned our 'baked goods board.'
My most productive Saturday to date was when I got up early to wander the farmer's market for cucumbers (three huge suckers for $1!) and potatoes before making some chocolate chip banana bread with my overripe bananas.
Currently reading Cooking for Geeks (this is me using my free time wisely), which provides an interesting perspective of food from a computer geek's point of view.  Cute reminder of the differences of geeks and nerds and such.  I also understand none of his coding references.  Porter talks about the different approaches different kinds of people take when preparing food, most notably, how closely, or not, one adheres to a recipe.  I feel like it seems obvious that a 'geek' or 'nerd' or 'scientifically inclined person' would follow a recipe like a technical procedure, but I never thought of recipes as analogous to procedures until after my dad got me my first gig in research.  He was commenting on the way I was trying to make tapioca pearls and said something about how the way I worked in the kitchen is a good indication of how I would work in a lab.  I guess it's actually his own fault that I eventually found food science.  Sorry, Dad, you're the reason why I don't want to do exactly what you do.  We can stop arguing about it now.
Anywaysssss, Jeff Porter and what is my current bible.  He did this thing where he collected many different recipes for pancakes and analyzed the proportions of ingredients, determining an average of sorts, and then developing a new recipe.  I thought this was a more organized way of doing what I usually do (i.e. look up two or three and kinda pick and tweak what sounds good).  I spent some time in a random med school-related building (which had a balcony study area that reminded me a lot of CIEMAS) and while the people around me were talking about medical things, I was trying to verbalize what I like in a good piece of banana bread whilst looking up eight recipes for comparison.  I must admit that I'm a little bit bias toward pretty pictures.  And there are certain sources I trust more than others aka I always take Alton Brown's wisdom into account.  So I was a little bit lax about my calculations, leaving out some ingredients in the total weight and rounding and such.
This is what I came up with:
based on 260g self rising flour (because it's what I have)
171.8g sugar
416g bananas
93.6g eggs
93.6g butter
Well, I didn't like it because it came out to be very similar to the Cook's Illustrated version, except with more sugar... and you know how I feel about too much sugar.
So in the end, my work kind of went to waste when I basically followed the Cook's Illustrated version (with 1/4c soy milk instead of the called for yogurt), cutting the sugar by a third, and the above result is what happened.  Not bad, I think.  What you can't see is that the bottom was slightly burnt because I'm still messing with my new oven.
By the afternoon, I finished half of a half, and Kasia added a free-from-the-market Almond Joy loaf.  I loved the coconut, but we all agreed it was too dry.  Maybe I'll make my own version.
As a side note, the last time I tried to utilize some past-their-prime bananas was when I thought I could finally master at-home frying with banana beignets.   Nope.  Once again, I have the problem of a too-dark outer crust and too-runny batter on the inside.  (Oh, yeah, the first time was when I tried to make chocolate donut holes).  You know what my problem is?  I'm hesitant to use up a bunch of oil, and I don't have a thermometer.  And I probably need a dutch oven.  No more at-home frying for me.

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