[Sca-cooks] Mooneschadowe Guardian German Feast

[Philip & Susan Troy]

Stefan li Rous wrote:

> What's a "Hobart"?

As has been said, a brand of commercial mixer. Generally large and powerful.

> A convection oven bakes faster than a commercial oven? Why? What's the
> differance between the two? I assume this is due to a type differance
> and not just a size differance.

Actually, size may be part of it; a standard Vulcan-type oven usually
has two racks, while a good convection oven frequently has at least
three. However, the main thing is the convection; regular ovens (at
least gas or electric ones) usually have a hot spot, near the heating
element or the hot air vent, depending on type, with the rest of the
oven being _comparatively_ cool. This means you generally have to keep
switching the pans around to get even browning, etc., and overall the
baking process is slower. In a convection oven there's a fairly powerful
fan, meaning there are no real hot spots, and also allowing you to crowd
the oven a bit, as the hot air gets evenly distributed even if you _do_
crowd the oven.

Unfortunately, it's been _known_ to happen that a piece of foil used to
protect some puff pastry can then blow around the oven and get caught in
the fan blades, causing untold havoc until some clear-thinking, heroic
type fixes the thing in a simple, straightforward manner...

> How does a "dough knife" vary from other knives?

I can't really answer this one, unless we're talking about a bench
scraper; it looks like a steel spatula/pancake turner without a handle,
or rather the handle (wood, steel or plastic) is on the upper edge of
the steel rectangle. It's used to divide dough, clean excess flour
and/or dough scraps off pastry boards, to lift up half a pound of
chopped onion at a time, that sort of thing. Generally it relies only on
being thin steel for its sharpness; it has no sharpened edge to speak of.
Adamantius
--
Phil & Susan Troy

troy at asan.com

"It was so blatant that Roger threw at him.  Clemens gets away with
things that get other people thrown out of games.  As long as they
let him get away with it, it's going  to continue." -- Joe Torre, 9/98