Nuances in ChefSteps recipes

Some general questions about ChefSteps ingredients.

i. When butter is listed in the recipe, is this understood to be unsalted butter? Any standout superior brands?

ii. Same for yeast. Is dry active yeast assumed, unless otherwise stated? Any superior brands?

iii. And milk? What's the general rule here? 1%? Whole milk?

I've tried to scour the ingredients section but there's no mention of that here. There's likely an obvious answer, but novice cook is a novice. It would be nice to have a one-liner on the ingredients page that indicates what the assumed version of this ingredient across all ChefSteps recipes unless otherwise stated.

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Comments

jason.r.whitworth

Generally this will be called out per recipe. See the Hawaiian Sweet Roll Recipe

It specifically calls out whole milk, salted butter and active dry yeast.

295 gWhole milk

125 gButter, salted, cubed

100 gBrown sugar

115 gEgg

7 gActive dry yeast

450 gBread flour

18 gDiastatic malt powder

8 gSalt, kosher

1.5 gOrange essential oil

0.75 gLemon essential oil

22.5 gHoney

Generally speaking with recipes or cookbooks i would assume "milk" means whole milk unless otherwise called out, "butter" means unsalted unless otherwise called out (Although in the past this may have been reversed with people only having access to salted butter so if its an older recipe it probably means salted) , and "yeast" would mean active dry yeast unless otherwise called out. That just my general experience though.

T__2156

My impression is that if it's not specifically labeled and there's no standard convention*, you could use any of the options. Results will vary a bit, but you'll get a solid product.

Most chefs insist on using unsalted butter "so you can control the seasoning yourself." That said, salted butter lasts longer in your fridge before going rancid, and is basically never overseasoned, so I have tried to convince my pastry-chef wife to stock salted instead. No luck.

Dairy is interchangeable within limits in many recipes, particularly breads. You'll get a different result with each, but you'll still be guaranteed an edible food product at the end. In the US, the range is by fat: skim, 1%, 2%, whole (3.25%), half-and-half (usually 18%), "light cream" which chefs ignore completely because the fat varies wildly from brand to brand, and heavy cream (36%). I feel comfortable subbing any of the "milks" (skim, 1, 2, whole) for each other anytime. I wouldn't substitute skim milk for heavy cream. Does this help? More fat will basically always taste, feel and work better.

Yeast is always substitutable. Your product will probably taste better if you use fresh cake yeast, which looks like a tan brick about the size of four sticks of butter, but that stuff only lasts a week or so, so most home cooks don't bother. Active Dry is generally considered the standard, and will taste maybe slightly better than Instant, if you did a side-by-side comparison. I don't know any home cooks that keep fresh yeast on hand, but I know a lot of restaurants that do (although most US restaurants outsource their bread).

Salt is substitutable by weight, but if you trade 1T of Morton's iodized table salt for 1T of kosher salt you'll know immediately by the oversaltedness.

When chefs talk seasoning foods, they are usually referring to a triad of salt, pepper and acid. Try this experiment next time you make soup at home: salt it up the way you like, then squeeze some lemon juice into it. Your experience of the saltiness decreases, and you can add more salt than would have been palatable before. (This isn't a chemical change; the acid doesn't chemically change the salt. But it changes your experience of the food.)

Eggs come in many sizes, but the US standard is large, which should average 57g per egg (with a bit of wiggle room because egg-making machines are notoriously squawky and cannot be cajoled into standardizing.

*You're not alone in wondering these things. Knowing these standard conventions is a big hurdle for new cooks. When I taught cooking, I'd often get pulled to a corner and quietly asked questions about what kind of butter, dairy, yeast to use - and even more frequently, embarrassed questions about how to crack an egg. It's not you; experienced cooks do have conventions, and they do forget that not everyone knows.