food production

RAISING AGENT / LEAVENING AGENT Leavening or raising means to increase the surface area of any dough or batter by creating gas bubbles inside the dough or batter. This also makes a product light in weight. The expansion of gas bubbles during baking increase the volume of the product and gives a desirable porous structure. Raising agents that are used in kitchen can classified into following categories: Biological (yeast) Chemical (baking powder, baking soda, baking ammonia) Mechanical (beating, whisking, creaming, sieving) Lamination Combination of all BIOLOGICAL RAISING AGENT 1) Yeast can of two types : Fresh or compressed yeast Dry yeast The scientific name of yeast is Saccharomyces Cerevisiac. Yeast is unicellular microscopic fungi. The structure of yeast consist : Cell wall Protoplasm Vacoale 2) Food : Simple sugar like dextrose or fructose. 3) Suitable climate : 80 to 85 degree F, at least 70% humidity can give the best resul...

CULINARY TERMS 1.       Beignets-    pieces of food dipped into a pancakes batter and deep fried. fritters 2.       Capon- castrated poultry noted for its tenderness and delicate flavor. 3.       Farce- stuffing , forcemeat 4.       Fleuron -   puff paste, baked in crescent shape used for stuffing 5.       Lardons- strips of salt pork used for larding and as a garnish. Also, julienne of bacon. 6.       Lox- smoked salmon. 7.       Papilote- cooked in parchment paper (or foil) to seal flavours. 8.       Parboil- to boil until partially cooked. 9.       Piquant- spicy, highly seasoned. 10.   Prosciutto dry cured, spiced ham. 11.   Quiche- A pastry shell sprinkled with bits of fried bacon and grated cheese, filled with ...

Cheese According to legend, cheese was first made accidentally by a traveling shepherd, who carried milk in a pouch made from the stomach of a sheep. The combination of heat of the sun with the enzyme rennin present in the lining of the stomach curdled/separated milk into curd (a soft mass or junket) and whey. Curds are coagulated proteins (casein) known as cheese. This soft mass containing protein and fat was then drained to remove the excess liquid or whey and dried in the sun to form a harder mass which could be eaten fresh or salted and stored for later use when the food supplies were less plentiful. Cheese may be defined as “the fresh or matured product made by coagulating any or a combination of any of the following substances, namely milk, cream, skimmed milk, partly skimmed milk, concentrated milk, reconstituted dried milk and butter milk, and then partially draining the whey, resulting from any such coagulation”. (This definition won’t be suitable for Whey cheese.) Ch...

BUTTER Butter Butter is the fat of cream that is separated – more or less – completely from the other milk constituents by agitation or churning. The mechanical rupture of the protein film around the fat globules allows the fat globules to clump together. Butter formation is an example of breaking of an oil-in-water emulsion by agitation. The resulting emulsion that forms in butter itself is a water-in-oil emulsion, with about 18% water being dispersed in 80% fat and a small amount of protein acting as an emulsifier. BUTTER Butter is made from either Sweet cream or sour cream. Butter from sour cream has a more pronounced flavour. The cream may be allowed to sour naturally or may be acidified by the addition of pure culture of lactic acid bacteria to sweet cream, which produces a butter of better flavour and keeping quality. Sweet cream does not mean ‘sweetened’ cream, but simply means ‘not sour’. It consists of more than 80% butterfat and small amounts of protein, vitamin A an...