Sheilah Kaufman: Hi! I am Sheilah Kaufman, Cooking Teacher, author of 26 cookbooks,
Food Editor and Culinary Lecturer. I am here today to share some of my
favorite recipes for the Jewish High Holidays, Rosh Hashanah and Yom
Kippur with you. I want to talk to you about something I found most
people don't seem to know. My mother taught how to bake when I was
eight and as I traveled around the country teaching cooking and baking, I
found that most people don't seem to know this.
Most cooking is the kind of thing where if you want to throw something
extra in the pot or invent your own recipe, it's not too hard. But when you
come to baking, you're talking chemistry and unless you're really good at
chemistry you don't want to fiddle with the recipe for cake or cookies or
baked goods because they're based on chemical formulas.
Well, the first thing I found is that people would try and measure flour in
this. This has a lip; this is a liquid measuring cup. There is no way you're
going to get an accurate amount of flour or sugar in here. I remember one
night in class I had woman who stood for half an hour, she would put a
little bit of flour in and she would look or she would take a little bit out
and then she would stomp it down on the counter top, it's wrong. Flour
and sugar do not belong in here, only liquids belong in here.
That means, everybody should have a set of measuring cups metallic, the
best because they won't stretch out in the dish washer. But, you never ever
dip your measuring cups into your flour or sugar, and of course after you
dip you're supposed to take a knife and level them off. If you dip and your
recipe called for two cups of flour by dipping and leveling you have two-
and-a-half cups of flour. That means you have a half a cup of flour or
sugar that in the chemical formula has no place to go. Remember, you
have a chemical formula so much flour binds with so much egg, so much
sugar, so much fat, so much salt, so much leavening.
When you have a half a cup extra, it has nothing to bind with. So instead
of your cake being nice and tall, cake is going to be short. Instead of
having very fine tiny holes, your cake is going to kind of thick holes, little
holes. If you're sensitive like I am, you're always going to taste that extra
flour in the back of your throat. So what you do?
My mother used to take a fork and she kind of flushed and fluffed the
flour before she measured. But she would take a spoon or a smaller
measuring cup and just dumped the flour in and she would take her knife
and level it off. This is exactly what you should be doing too, because
we're going to baking a wonderful apple cake today and we really want the
measurements to be precise.
When we make our challah, it's hard to determine how much flour is
actually going to be needed again depending or where you live, the
humidity and altitude. So we're going to start with five cups as the recipe
suggests, and we'll be very careful about adding a sixth cup or any amount
in between, kind of feeling our way as we go.
So come on and join me in the kitchen as we learn recipes and get ready
for Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur.
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