Rose Levy Beranbaum, Master Baker, Speaks at NYU

If you:

really love baking,
have a lot of time on your hands, (or are sitting at your computer for a stretch of time)
have any questions about flour,
are interested in science,

            even if you have time to listen on your computer while doing other things, check out this amazingly informative video! Rose Levy Birnbaum is a real baker, she knows her stuff, has written and spoken extensively on the nitty gritty of baking. She knows her science and listening to her, reading her, and making her recipes, educate every level of baker.

Remember when I wrote about why sifting is important? Marc helpfully added in the comments section,

"Rose Levy Beranbaum knows about sifting -- she wrote her masters degree dissertation on the topic (specifically, whether sifting affects the quality of a yellow cake). She mentions this in the introduction to The Cake Bible."

I spoke with a number of women in their 80's recently about pie dough and the fats and flour they use and why. Home bakers can be just as good, if not so much better than professional bakers, because they have made the same thing over and over for decades, the same way or have changed because of time and geography. Home bakers just know things. They have body memory through and though.

Please listen to Rose. What she knows about flour and baking is beyond the beyond. Incredible.
And at the end of the video she makes an Angel Food Cake!

She is speaking on behalf of, and in conjunction with The Experimental Cuisine Collective.

Comments

[Carrie Fields]

Ooooo, thank you! She is one of my Absolute heros! You are an angel :)

[Melinda]

I watched RLB's lecture(thanks for the link). It was facinating getting down with the science of flour. I worked with flour for eons and don't know half of what she does. Thank goodness for scienceticians (wasn't that the word she used?) like her who don't mind baking the same frickin cake a gazillion times to find out which flour is best. Then the rest of us can glom onto her results like barnicles. My only gripe was the Wondra pitch-- it seemed a little too corporately-sponsored and dismissive of the rest of the free world's ban on bleached flour. I guess I am leery of tiny, pricy cartons of cocaine-like flour with a shelf-life of ten years.

Now I am curious to try "degrading" some flour in the oven and then baking with it and see what happens.

What is/are your flour faves, Shuna?

RLB still rocks a massive black hole of a cake, though, and you continue to entertain and inspire. I wish I could send you some happy chix eggs in tribute.

[veron]

Thanks for the link to the video. I have heard about this class and how she talked about flour. I have been a fan of RLB's books and her blog (even her pie plate).Her recipes work!

[ber]

thanks for your site. Recently I got the Bread Bible. For my first try i "made" the basic white sandwich bread. Sadly it will not be in a photo shoot soon. I do not know what I did wrong, but it was big. Instead of two loaves I got one and it is not rising very fast either. Clearly I have to try again. Thanks for your site and all your work. Best,BER