Summer Baking: Learning the Basics with BU Gastronomy {Class #1}

This summer I'm enrolled in the Culinary Lab: Baking course as part of my graduate program - the Master of Liberal Arts in Gastronomy at Boston University. For the next 6 weeks I'll be spending 2 nights a week in the professional kitchen learning all about baking. The course requires students to keep a journal of the experience and I've decided to record my adventures here on the blog. I hope you enjoy! You'll get the calorie-free version of my decadent baking experience. 

*********************************************************************************

Back to the kitchen! No I haven’t been eating only takeout  –  it’s back to the professional kitchen at Boston University to continue learning. Following up on my fantastic experience two years ago in the culinary lab for cooking, this summer I am enrolled in the culinary lab for baking. For the next 6 weeks I will be immersed in the sweeter side of the kitchen. This course focuses on pastry basics – all the building blocks for a world full of delicious goodies. My classmates and I will work on recipes that span the globe – from Paris to Texas to Turkey.

Even as an adult, the first day of school jitters are still there. Will I forget my chef coat? Did I buy the right size offset spatula? The agenda for the first night included crepes and a delicious filling to turn them into Gateau de Crepes a la Normande. I’ll admit, the prospect of crepes had me a little scared. I always imagined that you needed a special pan and special talent. Thankfully, my fears were allayed as we moved through the process (and a foolproof recipe from Jacques Pepin).

We started with a rapid-fire lecture on the building blocks needed for baking. Did you ever stop to think about all the ingredients? Good old all-purpose flour and white granulated sugar are just the tip of the ingredient iceberg. There are multiple classes of wheat that get transformed into flours and a seemingly endless amount of alternative flours (think chickpea, oat, nuts, and more). Sweeteners come in many varieties too. Even what you might think of as sugar can come from either sugar cane or sugar beets. Next was a whirlwind tour of the options for fats and leavening agents.

With our heads filled with all this new information we donned our chef coats and hats and headed to the kitchen to transform these simple building blocks into something impressive and delectable.

As you can see in the photo of the recipe, there isn't much to a crepe batter! The secret lies in how you mix the batter and how you handle the pan. We learned that when you are making a batter it is important to mix only until combined. When mixing a batter with flour and liquid the more you mix, the more gluten is developed. That means that more mixing equals more gluten. The trick to keeping these crepes light and tender lies in the method. By mixing in only half of the milk at first, you can work out the lumps with less mixing. After the batter is smoothed out the remaining milk and melted butter are added in to reach the desired consistency. This would also be a good trick for mixing up your pancake batter at home to keep them light and fluffy.

The secret to turning this perfect batter into a perfect crepe lies in the wrist. The thickness of the crepe depends on the speed with which you swirl the batter into the pan. The faster the batter is spread the thinner the crepe will be. My first crepe came out a little pale, uneven, and ripped from a flipping mishap. However as I continued on I started to get the hang of it!

The great thing about crepes is that they are a perfect vehicle for just about any pairing you dream up. Nutella and jam? Yes! Peanut butter and marshmallow sauce? Definitely! Turkey and brie? Tasty! We went the fancy route - a layered crepe cake! Inside our layers of mostly-successful crepes we spread apples cooked with Calvados, cream, and almond flour. To top off this already decadent stack we poured on melted butter, sprinkled sliced almonds, and sprinkled granulated sugar for a little crunch.

The ingredients for this are pretty ordinary - and not too expensive. We learned that some bakeries charge $50 or more for a cake like this! Sadly I don't see this as a viable income source for me, but at least now I can wow my friends and family with a fun dessert!

Stay tuned for new posts after each of the classes. Next up - cookie night!

Developing Flavor: Influences and Implications

Eating - it's complicated! Eat what you want? Watch what you eat? Processed or unprocessed? Organic or conventional? The decisions can be overwhelming. And that's just for deciding for yourself. For parents, there is the added responsibility for making food choices for your little (and progressively bigger) ones. For my class this semester, Experiencing Food Through the Senses, we read a fascinating book entitled Neurogastronomy by Gordon Shepherd. For one of my writing assignments, I wrote a piece taking one of the ideas presented in the book and questioning how it might affect children's flavor preferences. Below is the piece I wrote for the assignment. I'd love to hear your thoughts and questions. I highly recommend this book - really fascinating to think about how you perceive flavor.

Chapter 27 of Gordon Shepherd’s book Neurogastromony discuss why flavor matters and what implication it has for affecting nutrition and food policy. Shepherd discusses the “six ages of flavor”. From infancy through adolescence the brain flavor system is a developing work in progress (Shepherd, 2012). As a parent, I wonder how I influence my son’s brain flavor system and ultimately his flavor experience. How will his hard-wired preferences combined with my actions impact him as he grows up and develops?
How do the mother’s preferences play a role in these developing flavor images? In the initial stage, Flavor in the Womb, Shepherd discusses existing research on the topic. The infant shows a preference for flavors of mother’s food eaten during pregnancy, describing that “learning of these preferences in utero and their emotional expression are therefore incorporated into this hard-wired system” (2012). Moving through in infancy, the flavor preferences of the mother continue to affect flavor preference in the infant. Through diet, breastfeeding mothers transfer flavor influences through milk.

At the next age stage, introducing solid foods, the infant’s brain flavor system continues developing. There are varying schools of thought on starting babies on solid foods. I cannot reflect on how other cultures address this, just what I have researched in the United States as a new parent. The amount of information is overwhelming. Sources of information range from family and friends, the American Pediatric Association, your baby’s pediatrician, and books too numerous to count authored by doctors, moms, and nutrition experts. There is the “traditional” method of introducing fruit and vegetable purees and mashes starting at six months. There is also a newer method called baby-lead weaning, where purees are skipped all together and soft solid foods are introduced from the beginning. Some sources suggest solids at four months while others advocate other to wait until at least six months. There are varying opinions on what foods to introduce and what to avoid. If, as discussed in the chapter, there is a short learning period in which infants “can be trained to different flavors” of up to six months, how does the traditional recommendation to start solids at six months impact future flavor images, perceptions, and preferences?

In addition to the timing for introducing foods, how do the types of foods offered in these different approaches impact the development of flavor images? Does a baby who starts with whole squash pieces develop a different flavor image than the baby who starts with squash puree? Does the difference in texture impact the resulting flavor image? Within these various methods there is the variable of how the food is prepared or packaged. Similar to adult foods, many baby foods are packed in convenience packaging. They are single-serve, shelf-stable, portable containers. From personal experience, I have found that the flavor from a homemade mashed carrot and prepackaged 100% carrot puree are very different. The prepackaged carrot puree was much more intense. If an infant is given only these prepared foods, how will this influence their flavor preferences later in childhood and adulthood?

Does this intensity of flavor in prepared baby foods impact infant’s flavor preferences moving into childhood? Shepherd discusses research showing that children do prefer intense flavors. Shepherd states, “this makes them especially vulnerable to the main culprits we have identified as leading to overeating – sweet foods, salt, and fat – through sensations that overwhelm the brain’s control systems” (2012). He suggests that more research needed to understand why children’s brain flavor system is so vulnerable. It is interesting to think of this preference for intense flavor in childhood, in the context of plasticity of the brain with relation to food preferences. Once the preferences are developed, it is hard to reverse them. If children become sensitized to a high sugar diet, this has implications for their health as they grow up into adulthood. Sweet is the most marketed flavor toward children, with marketers using bright colors, characters, games to attract children. In addition to marketing, there are cultural meanings associated with sweets – especially with holiday foods. In daily life, should sweets be treated as a special reward, giving them special status? Or should they be incorporated in moderation as part of the regular routine. How does this impact your child’s desire for the food – and the preference and association they develop with it?

There are many unanswered questions and unknowns. As the field of neurogastromony advances and expands the understanding of the brain flavor system, it will be important to use the findings to impact policy and thinking around children’s nutrition and eating habits. Understanding the underlying systems will help to design health and nutrition guidelines and systems to support the development of healthy children. 

Bibliography Shepherd, G. M. (2011). Neurogastronomy: how the brain creates flavor and why it matters. Columbia University Press.

Food and the Senses

This semester for my Masters in Liberal Arts, Gastronomy program at Boston University I am enrolled in a class entitled Food and the Senses. The course is an interdisciplinary look at the senses. We're looking at the senses physically - how do the senses work (like taste and smell receptors) as well as how do we perceive sensory experiences. We're also looking at food and the senses in a cultural context. How does sensory experiences translate from an individual experience to social phenomena?

We started with a science heavy look at just how the senses work. We had a biologist talk to us about how taste receptors on the tongue and olfactory receptors in the nose take in information and pass it up into the brain. We had a neurobiologist explain where this sensory information goes in the brain and how it gets processed. There are still a lot of unknowns in this area. Having not taken a real science course since high school, it was fascinating to relearn details of the brain and how amazingly it interprets all of the information inputs it is constantly receiving.

Now we're moving into each sense individually. The class readings and discussion look at both historical and contemporary research on the senses, as well as different cultural meanings and contexts. Each week we also have a lab experience to continue to understand the sensory experience with food. Our first lab had us smelling five different pieces of scented cloth and ranking them by the intensity of the smell. Our second lab had us start by closing our eyes and holding our noses. We then tasted three pairs of food items without knowing what we were trying. Each pair was two items similar in texture and flavor. The challenge was to first see what our experience was like having only touch and mouthfeel to inform the experience. Then the items were revealed to us and we tasted a second time (still no sight or smell). We were asked how did our experience change after we knew what each item was?

These are some of the questions we are considering - and  thought I would share my first written assignment to give you a 'taste' of a few questions I've been thinking about after the first few weeks of class. I'd love to hear your thoughts! The reference for the article is at the end, if you would like to look it up to read.

The article “Flavor and the Brain” by Dana Small defines flavor as “a perception that includes gustatory, oral-somatosensory, and retronasal olfactory signals that arise from the mouth as foods and beverages are consumed (Small, 2012).” Small discusses that “although the sights, sounds and smells of foods that occur just before, or in the absence of eating, can impact flavor perception, it is argued that these sensory signals exert their influence by creating expectations based upon prior associations  (Small, 2012).” The discussion touches on “top-down” influences including attention, expectations and beliefs and how they impact neural and perceptual responses (Small, 2012). For example, being told about the intensity of a flavor can impact the resulting response in the brain. In the context of her article, Small also talks about how vision influences flavor, similarly to how verbal labels and cues might create expectations about the sensory experience. These top-down mechanisms bias “the neural code towards expected experiences (Small 2012).”

After reading the article I began to think about how flavor is influenced by expectation, specifically in the context of dining out at restaurants. What information influences and shapes the diner’s expectations and how does this impact the diner’s perception of flavor? Is it influenced by expectations created before the dining experience as well as during the experience?

When information is readily available, how does this change the dining experience? If the diner is armed with a photographs and descriptions prior to eating will the flavor he experiences be different than if he had just ordered off the menu with no prior knowledge? There are numerous ways to get information before dining out. Information on restaurants is available on websites, on television, in magazines, in guidebooks, and in newspapers. Information ranges from a basic review of offerings all the way to photographs and reviews of individual dishes. How does this impact the diner’s sensory experience? Websites like Tasted Menu and smart phone apps like Nosh let users post reviews and photographs of individual menu items at restaurants. Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram let users post real-time accounts of their dining experience.How does this information and visual representation shape the diner’s expectations? An interesting experiment would be to have a diner read about a dish and view photos ahead of time and ask them to describe the flavor, then compare it with the description from a diner with no prior knowledge of the dish.

Information on food is also presented through both food advertising and food television programming. There are numerous television programs that feature restaurant dishes, like Diners, Drive-ins and Dives. What impact does watching this type of program have on a viewer’s future dining experience? The viewer is watching participants in the show prepare the dish, eat, and describe their experience. The viewer is getting a visual (and sort-of auditory) play-by-play of the sensory experience of the host – smells, texture, and flavor – but without actually experiencing them. An interesting area for research would be how watching this type of programming causes responses in the brain while they are watching. Also, if the viewer dines at the restaurant featured in the show, how does this prior information impact their experience?

Areas for future study could look at the impact that this prior information has on shaping expectations and the resulting brain response and perception of flavor. From a marketing perspective, restaurants and food companies could understand how this type of information either positively or negatively impacts the diner’s experience.

 
Bibliography
Small, D. M. (2012). Flavor is in the brain. Physiology & Behavior. doi:doi:10.1016/j.physbeh.2012.04.011

Back to School: Thinking about Food

Winter break is over and I've headed back to school for another semester. After taking a year of MBA classes, I decided to follow my passion for food (some might say obsession) and take classes in the Master of Liberal Arts (MLA) in Gastronomy program at Boston University. The Gastronomy program is not culinary school – it’s a program about the study of food – food business, marketing, culture, history, tourism, and more. My classmates came from many different backgrounds: food enthusiasts, career switchers, professionally trained chefs, and other food industry veterans.

Last semester I took an introductory course, Understanding Food: Theory and Methodology. Each week we explored ‘food’ through a different liberal arts discipline. These ranged from philosophy to art history to archaeology to sociology. With a little dose of theory thrown in the curriculum helped me to understand the different lenses through which you can study the broad subject of food. Going from thinking about accounting problems to contemplating the globalization of corn was quite a switch! While it was challenging, it was a thought-provoking and enjoyable semester. How can you be unhappy when your assignments include a cookbook analysis, observing farmers markets and writing a research paper about a topic of your choosing related to food?

Charles Square Farmers Market

I spent a lot of hours working on my final paper. It wasn’t perfect, but it was a great start for not having done a research paper in at least 10 years! I combined what I was already doing regularly, visiting farmers markets and interviewing vendors, with some academic research for a paper discussing female food entrepreneurs and the Boston farmers market scene. I typically visit a farmers market 1-2 times per week in the summer and biweekly in the winter. Through my observations I was intrigued that most of the non-farm food vendors were female owned and managed. I started thinking about why this was the case? Was it something about the Boston market scene? Something about the women? The nature of the food business? There were a lot of angles to consider. I reached out to a number of these women who graciously agreed to answer questions about how they got into business and their experience at Boston area farmers markets and in the food industry. I won’t bore you with all 30 pages of my paper and exhibits, but I will work on an edited version to share on the blog.

Chatting with Atlas Farm on the last day of the Copley Square Market

This semester I am enrolled in another class, Anthropology of Food. I am fascinated by how people think about food, how it defines cultures, and its role in society. Do you ever think about how much food likes/dislikes can tell you about someone? And how people readily share this information? You wouldn’t normally tell a casual acquaintance about health issues or personal secrets, but you’ll readily share your food preferences (which can reveal a lot about you, I think!). The class will look more broadly at what food can tell us about human culture and society. From food centered life history to globalization to social structures, the class will look at how anthropologists approach these topics along with the necessary methodological tools.

Some of the assignments include conducting an interview and writing an essay on a food centered life history, observing a food related environment and analyzing the experience, and researching, preparing, and presenting a dish based on one of the course themes for our final class.

It is going to be a lot of work, but it will be engaging, challenging, and I think enjoyable! My blog posting frequency will likely decrease with the increase in homework, but I will do my best to keep to a regular schedule. I’ll try to sprinkle in learnings from my class along with regular recipes and features.

Thanks for your continued support and readership. I’m looking forward to a great 2011!

P.S. Don't forget to enter for a chance to win Chobani Greek Yogurt! Winners will be announced on Healthy Snack Wednesday! Enter here.