TGIF: Science stunts for Christmas parties
Richard Wiseman has posted a lovely video with Top 10 science stunts for Christmas parties:
Category experiments
Superfast scrambled eggs
Miss Silvia is full of surprises! She’s been around the house for a year, but only now did she reveal one of her hidden capabilities. Did you know that you can make scrambled eggs with the steam wand of your…
Sourdough work in progress (part II)
A sourd dough bread made from a spontaneous starter After 7 days of feeding my sour dough starter “took off” and was ready for baking. Even with a water bath set to 28 °C it took longer than expected. I…
Sourdough work in progress (part I)
Attempt to make a sourdough starter using dried apricots, using my immersion circulator for temperature control. I got some bubbling yeast activity, but the final bread dough never rose properly. Inspired by the Swedish bread blog Pain de Martin which…
TGRWT reminder and frozen rose foam
Rose foam at room temperature Just a small reminder that the deadline for the current round of TGRWT #17 is a little later than usual: May 8th. I took the picture above for last month’s TGRWT (where it was combined…
Towards the perfect soft boiled egg
Many cookbooks suggest the following for boiling eggs: 3-6 min for a soft yolk, 6-8 min for a medium soft yolk and 8-10 min for a hard yolk. If you are satisfied with this, there is no need for you…
Accelerated aging of wine
Can the natural process of aging wine in corked bottles be accelerated? I recently found an interesting article on how an electric field can be used for maturation of wine (New Scientist news coverage of the article). Applying a AC…
Sous-vide cooking joy
Having received a real kitchen gadget before the weekend, I certainly had to do some sous-vide experiments. While shopping I looked specifically for meat that was already vacuum packed in plastic bags as I do not have a food saver.…
Wonders of extraction: Espresso (part I)
I have recently come to know Miss Silvia. She’s from Italy, weighs a good 14 kg and even my wife welcomed her in our kitchen! As home brew espresso afficionados will know by know, I’ve become the proud owner of…
Wonders of extraction: Oil
Brazilian chiles in oil (very nice with Moqueca!) Oils and fats are long molecules which are mainly non-polar and hence the opposite of water which is a polar molecule. Ethanol which has both a polar and a non-polar end falls…