Bob's Red Mill, a specialty flour company, reports it sells more than 70 kinds of flours. King Arthur Flour, another favorite with bakers, sells 56. That's a lot of flour to sift through.
While we have no problem buying a cookie from our favorite bakery, choosing the right flour for every baking project can be a daunting task. So we turned to a few culinary experts in hopes of demystifying flour's many varieties.
Last spring I attended a 12-course vegan dinner created from food waste. Jay Astafa, a Natural Gourmet Institute trained chef, served watermelon sushi and carrot-top pesto. But dessert was where I saw true plant-based innovation.
Read MorePalmaz Vineyards is 610 acres of prime Napa Valley real estate nestled beside Mount George, a southern hillside that offers two key advantages: vertical space to dig, and gravity, which allows grape juice to flow. In a wine country known for having perfect this, and ideal that, this gravity-flow winery has found a way to be different.
Read MoreIN A TRADITIONAL wine fermentation tank, if the yeasts start acting weird, it might be days before anyone smells or tastes the damage. But at Palmaz Vineyards in Napa, California, staff can detect risk factors before they develop into wine-spoiling problems.
Read MoreWe all know that for New Yorkers, the takeout industry is king. Even in winter, stalwart deliverymen are out there braving the elements on their bicycles. But here’s something you might not know: According to GrubHub Inc., the biggest food-delivery platform on the market, New York City customers are 98 percent more likely than the rest of the country to search for the category “grocery items.”
Read MoreIt all started accidentally. Frieda Caplan, new mother and UCLA political science graduate, was looking for a job with flexible hours. Through her relatives she found an opening at Giumarra Brothers Fruit Company’s stall in the Seventh Street wholesale produce terminal in downtown Los Angeles.
Read MoreEmma Bengtsson has purple streaks running through her blonde hair, dances a Latin-based style called bachata and oversees a kitchen staff of almost twenty. As the executive chef of Aquavit, a two-Michelin-starred restaurant (stars she retained in the 2016 announcement this week), not only does she have time to dance, but she also runs to the farmers' market at least three times a week. Even on Wednesdays, which are her "small" days. The trick? Other than not sleeping much, she plans her menu with enough flexibility to accommodate last-minute tweaks.
Read MoreLior Lev Sercarz's father, grandfather and great-grandfather were diamond dealers, but sparkly rocks weren't young Lior's thing. Instead, he dug his hands into the fragrant world of spices. Raised in Israel, the classically trained chef first found culinary inspiration while working at a trout-smoking factory. At the end of a long day, he'd grill fish for the crew and grab whatever he had on hand—garlic powder, chiles, paprika—to enhance the meal. He's come a long way since that muddy pond, but he still recalls those early days of grabbing fistfuls of rosemary and lavender in Galilee.
Read MoreWhen people talk about Clinton Street Baking Company, they’re usually talking about two things: pancakes and waiting in line. Visitors and locals come for the restaurant’s blueberry pancakes, and for good reason: they’re crispy-edged and fluffy, made with teensy-tiny wild Maine blueberries. Other options include bananas and walnuts, and chocolate chunks. The restaurant goes through 250 pounds of those blueberries per week, or 13,000 pounds per year, plus 416 gallons of New York maple syrup. During pancake month, in February, they sell almost 2,000 orders a week.
Read MoreBrooklyn's food scene is unstoppable. First Smorgasburg, a hit food festival in the area's trendiest neighborhoods, and now New York’s first museum devoted to food.
The Museum of Food and Drink, or MOFAD, will open the doors to its first exhibit on Tuesday. Mashable got a sneak peek at Flavor: Making It and Faking it.
New apps and services, from Resy to Cover, are changing the experience of dining out. Hospitality is a $5 trillion industry. No surprise there: We all eat, sleep, and travel. For that reason, technology companies have long coveted a piece of each one of those businesses. Uber and its peers are rethinking transportation. Airbnb and HotelTonight are rethinking hotels.
Read MoreI’m in a pristine kitchen, the kind where the stainless steel workstations are wrapped in linen to reduce noise. It’s clinically calm. Surrounded by men and women in white, I listen intently as their boss—a pink-cheeked ex-soccer player who looks like a linebacker—discusses their latest assignment: to create compelling dishes without the use of their go-to fat of choice. Butter.
Read MoreCoffee or arugula without a hint of bitterness — it may sound improbable, but sugar has found a new rival in mushrooms.
With several patents issued, MycoTechnology, a Denver startup, is using proprietary strains of mushrooms to remove the bitterness from foods and improve the flavor of all manner of products, from coffee to tea to chocolate.
It might have been any over-the-top Manhattan dinner party: a penthouse setting where several dozen carefully chosen, accomplished guests enjoyed artisanal cocktails, a four-course tasting menu prepared by up-and-coming chefs and a live dance performance. But this was no ordinary over-the-top party. It was an open house — albeit a very exclusive one.
Read MoreLike the drummer in a band, Corey Waldron—an ex-barista from Fort Wayne, Indiana—was tired of hiding behind a hulking metal instrument. So, he set out to create a new type of espresso machine, one that is hidden from view. Modbar, short for modular brewing systems, is a set of three individual chrome "taps" (think of a bar with beer taps) that sprout up from a counter and dispense espresso, steamed milk and pour-over coffee. What’s new is that the once manual barista job now pairs with slick electronic components under the counter that can be endlessly programmed to control details like pressure, temperature, cleaning and more.
Read MoreInspired by the popular, pricey and controversial coffee known as kopi luwak—coffee beans plucked from animal dung—Camille Delebecque has co-launched a company focused on enhancing the flavor of coffee beans using natural fermentation techniques in the lab. Last Wednesday, Afineur launched a Kickstarter campaign to raise funds to produce "cultured coffee," and hit its target goal in just six hours.
Read MoreThe tomato-based ketchup you know and love is a wholly American invention. But before it was made from tomatoes, which are native to the Americas, ketchup-like sauces made from offbeat ingredients like walnuts, oysters and pickled fish brine were common across Asia.
Read MoreTimothy Burke describes his trick for making spring rolls with rice paper, which is notoriously difficult. With a bit of translation from his mom, the shy eight year old said, You dip them in a wide plate of hot water, and turn them, then take them out of the water and place them on another plate before they get soft. Then you add the vegetables and roll it up fast. Easy.
Read MoreLike kale, kombucha has hit maximum mainstream. Funky-hued bottles of the probiotic fermented tea line shelves at Whole Foods, and even fine dining restaurants are getting into the game of making custom blends.
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