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Alex Rast
 
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Default Yorkshire Pudding

at Sun, 25 Dec 2005 22:19:50 GMT in >,
(Steve Y) wrote :

>St Delia says 3oz flour, 3 fl oz milk, 2 fl oz water, 2 eggs, salt and
>pepper. Whisk the lot together, put in hot fat and 15 mins later Robert
>is your mother's brother !
>
>I think the key secret is hot fat and cold mixture. We tend to have
>better results using smaller pans lthough aesthetically I prefer the
>larger ones.
>
>Seiving flour and making hours in advance doesn't change much
>
>Steve


What I've found is that there's no "secret" really - in the sense that one
thing makes all the difference. Rather it's a question of method and
recipe. It's important that the ratios of flour, eggs, and milk be right.
Too much milk relative to other things tends to lead to hockey-puck
rubberiness. Meanwhile, too much flour means bready dryness, while too many
eggs achieves a cakey softness. These are generalisations.

Hot fat means good, immediate external crisping - you're basically frying
the outside of the pudding. Lots of fat is generally better than little fat
because it promotes good flavour and strong crisping without overdrying or
sticking to the pan. For good rise, you definitely want a high temperature,
for without it the steam doesn't get produced fast enough and everything
just sort of cooks in place.

Pastry flour (low-protein) works better than bread or all-purpose flour
which become denser and tougher.

The biggest mistake seems to be adding more milk in order to get a fluid
batter at the beginning of the process. If your batter isn't creamy-fluid
to begin with usually that's an indication that you had too much flour,
possibly a problem with your recipe. If your batter is thick and almost
pasty, it's going to be somewhat difficult to recover, because what you
will really need to do is add more milk *and* eggs proportionately. Of
course the problem here is that eggs come in discrete units. So you'll need
to scale up the whole recipe to the next number of eggs, now adding
somewhat less flour than what the scaled-up amount would have called for.


So, here's what works for me:

2 cups pastry flour
2 large eggs
~ 1 1/2 cups milk
pinch of salt
2 tbsp fat (ideally, beef drippings. If you don't have enough drippings for
this, goose fat will work OK)

Mix flour and salt. Beat in eggs and milk until you get a smooth, creamy
consistency. In 2, ideally heavy steel pie dishes, put a tablespoon of fat
each. Heat in a 425F oven until smoking hot. Immediately pour the batter in
and bake for about 40-45 minutes. Serve immediately.

--
Alex Rast

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