MIchael_O's blog

What I baked on the weekend. Simple White Bread. Inspired by my trip to New Orleans and eating Gendusa's PoBoy Buns. :)

 https://easierbaking.com

Me making cinnamon rolls

https://youtu.be/X5XRL-fQq64

What I ate for 6 days in Western Europe

A paper I wrote about baking was recently accepted by an artificial intelligence conference in Trondheim, Norway. I decided to make the most of my trip and visited as many countries as possible in my 6 days abroad. Below I have provided a list of the foods I sampled:

Day 1

Germany

Rosinenschnecke (Pain aux Raisin)

France

Roggenbrot mit Sauerteig, Broetchen (Sourdough Rye bread with roll)

Crocque Monsieur Grilled Cheese with cured meat) + Salad + Rose aux Provence (

Tartelette Normand (apple tart)

Tart aux chocolate (cookie/tart crust with chocolate filling)

Day 2

Yaourt + groseille (Yogurt with red currants)

Flute (This caused major confusion at the boulangerie because I'd never heard this term before because I have existed with such an Americanized image and knowledge of France)

Cookies de Chocolate Noire with chopped walnuts (Eric Keyzer, the best chocolate chip cookie I have ever tasted from a store)

Pain aux Raisin (Eric Keyzer)

Quenelle Lyonaisse (Cheap pub variety, non existent fish)

Canele (Rum soaked mini bundt cake with spices)

Crumble Fraise - (Strawberry tart with crumb topping)

Tartelette Praline (Lyonaisse)

Gateux aux chocolate 

Day 3,4,5

France

tartelette feuillete pommes + quiche with aubergine and onignon (Paul bakery)

Denmark

choco rug ("shooku roog", Rye and Cocoa bread+chocolate chips, covered with chopped walnuts)

Norway (the main fish market closes on Sunday and after 6pm, when I was free)

shishkebab middag (couscous + tomato stew) 

Salad sandwich + vegan stuff + Rose from Germany (had a real big bite)

Potato Salad + Coleslaw + sausage with tomato sauce

Shrimp Scampi + Apple cake (barely sweet, strong cinnamon and spices)

Denmark

Bernstein Cheese (aged 10 months in high humidity, talked to owner for about 15 minutes) +Softkerne Rugsbroed (70% rye, sunflower seeds, linseeds, surteig) + Peberrod Salat + Paprikaskinke (pronunciation was corrected) + Cracklins (fried pig skin)

Chocolate Chip cookie (less salt than I'm used to, sweeter than I am used to)

France

Chocolate Chip Cookie

Kouign Amann (tasted very much like a pain aux raisin)

 Day 6

Aubergine + potatoes + sausage + tomatoes (provided by my generous hostess)

Pain aux raisin (pronunciation was corrected) 

I really enjoyed the diversity of bakers and food vendors I saw. Mainly 40 and younger. In Copenhagen one store had all the employees dressed similar to Clockwork Orange. In Lyon, when I asked for a box for my purchase, instead of just getting a box, a French woman asked her co-worker "Why?...why does he need a box?" with the most uninterested face. In Norway, the bakery workers were more hipster-like, not-so-traditional (with tattoos and newly opened independent bakeries that served okologisch (organic) breads with spelt and rye). The flour from the Norwegian bakery came from Sweden. It also seemed as though their wheat variety was quite different, which led to a stiffer texture in their baked goods. I found it strange some of their baked goods weren't ready until 7:45am or 8:00am. In Lyon 6:00am, all the bakeries had already placed their breads for sale.

I also picked up a patisserie magazine and the Eric Keyzer Bread book.

The hardest challenge was learning French, Danish, Norwegian, and German. Some of the languages I just had to brush up on, but nevertheless it was intense. Some of the foreign words may be misspelled.

-cheers

I have been working on a small machine for a while. Each day it gets smarter and smarter, more powerful and more refined. Although not perfect, I think I can say with the utmost humble expression,  I think this may be the first program to prescreen baking recipes. So what!?

The idea is to have a downloadable Recipe Report Card you supply with your recipe, so people know how a recipe will actually turn out, instead of the just looking at the best of 30 staged photos.

This means:

1. You don't have to solely rely on recipe reviews, No more reading through how someone hates a recipe because they used skim milk and rice flour, because significant other has allergies. You will be shown if a recipe is too sweet, too fatty, etc.

2. You can quickly generate nutritional information

3. You can see how the fat content and other ingredients stack up to other baked goods of the same type

4.You can scale and convert units for recipes with ease

5.You can create recipes.

Regardless if you have a cheesecake, brioche, or rye bread recipe in German that uses 70% hydration starter, this program tells all. Enjoy. Try it on your favorite recipes!

https://easierbaking.com/cakey.php

I was reading how knowledge has become ubiquitous. The shear mass of information makes knowing factual information not that valuable. The reason I was thinking about this topic is because I thought I had discovered something completely new. But the problem with new ideas is that they are doubted, so after thinking I decided to use the ideas to make something. Now I have a little thing called Recipe Genius that is the only recipe calculator that actually tells you the recipe you entered.

I am not a web designer but I tried to make the site attractive over the last time I provided updates on this site.

I have more baking tools to come. Some really interesting ones :)