Ratio: The Simple Codes Behind the Craft of Everyday Cooking

   [I]t's important to remember, as my first culinar

   [I]t's important to remember, as my first culinary instructor notes, "how well ratios work is directly proportionate to the ratio of common sense applied to them." [...]
   With the advent of the Internet, we have access to an ocean of recipe but relatively less information on food and cooking. Understanding ratios and technique is, of the home cook, a step toward becoming more independent in the kitchen. [...] Technique will ultimately determine the quality of the end result. Ratios are the points from which infinite variations begin.
   This book is about the culinary fundamentals, without which, as Escoffier said, nothing of importance can be accomplished. Nothing. But because it's about the fundamentals, it's also about all the things you can do with those fundamentals, about variation and improvisation. While it's filled with recipes, I like to think of it as an anti-recipe book, a book that teaches you and frees you from the need to follow.
-Michael Ruhlman, Ratio: The Simple Codes Behind the Craft of Everyday Cooking, What is a Ratio and Why is it Important, p.xiii, xv; Using This Book, p. xix

   Active dry yeast is yeast that's been dried and given an inactive coating; this yeast must be dissolved in water before being mixed with the flour. Most companies recommend doing this in water that's about 110°F. But this seems to be for insurance rather than a strict requirement. I add mine to cold water and it's always worked fine. -Bread Dough, p.6

   [B]aking the bread in a Dutch oven! What a simple and ingenious idea! That , to me, should amount to a small revolution in home bread baking. It eliminates the need for a baking stone and all the shenanigans of getting steam into a home oven. In the confined area of the Dutch oven, the moisture released by the bread has the same effect as professional deck ovens with steam injection. I'm sure it would work in a large pot with a lid, but enameled cast iron holds heat very well, so the Dutch oven is the preferred vessel.
   [...] [T]he dough can be proofed outside the pot or int he pot. If you want to proof the dough outside the pot, I recommend preheating the Dutch oven. But I prefer proofing the boule in the Dutch oven (to avoid having the bread stick, be sure to oil the bottom of the pan first, something you do not need to do if baking in a preheated Dutch oven). I prefer this method because you don't disturb the structure you've created in the final rise and it results in bread with a light, airy crumb.
   Preheat your oven to 450°F. When the dough has risen, add a coating of olive oil and some coarse salt, score it with an X, cover the pan and pop it in the oven. Bake it for ½ hour, then remove the lid and continue baking until done (and internal temperature of 200°F to 210°F), and other 15 to 30 minutes. - Bread Dough, p.14

   I believe it's a cook's moral obligation to add more butter given the chance. [...] Sauces can sense fear and will use it to their mischievous advantage. I have broken many sauces and am still a happy, productive member of society and an advocate of the emulsified butter sauces. If you make them, you can and will break them. When this happens, all you have to do is fix it. First, admit defeat, accept that this will tack on 5 or 10 minutes of cooking (infinitely worth it), and request a best-of-three rematch. I have never lost a best-of-three. Ever.
   Simply get another yolk and a couple of teaspoons of water, warm them a little, and start adding your broken sauce the way you added the butter. You'll have your sauce back in no time. And it's even more satisfying to have been brazenly challenged by your sauce and to have been undaunted.
   [...] In [my mother's] determination to get as much butter as possible into her [Sauce Béarnaise], she raised sauce making to the level of a sporting event. -Hollandaise, p.185,187,188,190

   [A]lways start your bones in cold water. In most cases, stocks should not boil, they shouldn't even simmer - 180°F is optimal -Stocks, p.92

   [I]f there's one preparation that separates a great home cook's food from a good home cook's food, it's stock. [...] [I]t's not just that everything tastes better when you use fresh stock as opposed to factory-made broths, it's hard to make anything that's not delicious when you have good stock on hand. [...] Using canned broths to make soup is almost like serving really good food with bad-tasting silverware. [...] Stock isn't hard to make, it's just an additional step or cooking process. -Stocks, p.90, 101, 103

   Both types [of sponge and angelfood cakes] are very easy to prepare and should be part of your reprtoire rather than your relying on the dry, chemically flavored boxed mixes. - Pound Cake and Sponge Cake, p.59

   Chocolate sauce, also known as ganache, is made with equal parts chocolate and cream and is so easy, it almost doesn't count as a technique. Simply pour hot cream over an equal weight of chocolate. Let the chocolate melt for a few minutes, then whisk the cream until all the chocolate is incorporated. The mixture looks at first like a badly broken sauce, but the chocolate easily blends with the cream into a gorgeous, glossy, voluptuous sauce. [...] This is perhaps the simplest dessert sauce imaginable, so much so that it's a wonder that bottled chocolate sauce even exists. -Chocolate Sauce and Caramel Sauce, p.219, 221

   One of my favorite ratios is 3-2-1 Pie Dough. I like it because I'm not a pastry cook, but for this pastry procedure, I don't have to open a book - I know the recipe, 3-2-1: 3 parts flour, 2 parts fat, 1 part water [...] CIA instructor Bob del Grosso loves the 1-2-3 cookie dough because, he says, swith no seasoning, 1 part sugar, 2 parts fat, followed by 3 parts flour will produce a basic short cookie. "It won't be art," he says, "but it will be good." Add vanilla or chocolate, lemon and poppyseeds, choose a very flavorful butter - that's the art. -Introduction: The Truth of Cooking, p.xxiv

   A roux is cooked when it begins to smell like a lightly cooked piecrust and is still pale, but it can be taken further, growing darker and more nutty in aroma. Two issues to be aware of regarding the color of roux are that if the roux cooks too much or too quickly, it can burn and become bitter, and that the more it's cooked, the less thickening power it will have. A roux cooked until it's nutty and brown has about half the thickening power of a pale roux. -Roux, p.113

   Beurre manié, or kneaded butter, is butter into which an equal volume of flour has been rubbed and kneaded, becoming an easy, effective way to thicken small amounts of sauces while also enriching them. Slurries, pure starch and water, may be quicker and more widely used , but they don't enrich or add flavor - butter does. [...] Slurries are excellent for last-minute thickening, especially of sauces. The thickening will break down after repeated or extended cooking so it's best to lié your sauce just before serving. -Beurre manié and Slurry, p.121

   Commercial sausages that are both delicious and lean typically have some kind of chemical shenanigans going on in them to compensate for the lack of fat. Stick to natural foods, and you can eat fat and salt in comfortable proportions. That is not to say that you can't use healthy techniques in your own sausages to reduce fat somewhat without compromising succulence. Vegetables and fruits can add moisture and flavor to sausages - roasted red peppers, onions, mushrooms, tomatoes, and apples make great additions to a sausage. [...] But in the end, it's a fact we must embrace: the excellence in a sausage begins with the proper ratio of meat to fat. - The Noble Sausage, p.132

   My impulse to write books originates in the urge to find out what I don't know. [...] The most important thing I've learned in exploring ratios is the interconnectedness of all our preparations. [...] Understanding a pasta dough helps you to understand a bread dough and a cookie dough and a pie dough better by recognizing what the variation, whether egg, water, or fat, do to the flour.
    The second most important thing I've learned is how much cooking technique matters. I make better pie dough than my photographer wife, even though we use the same ratio, becuase I've made more of them and so my fingers know how to knead the dough, just so much, just until it comes together, to achieve a flaky piecrust. "You didn't always make great pie doughs, just remember that," Donna said, miffed - Epilogue, p.227,228