Cookaholics Bulletin Board

I had an AHA! moment with the cheese sauce over the weekend. After taking careful consideration of all the replies (thanks!), I went over the list carefully. One additional thing I hadn't considered was the type of flour. I recently switched to a white-wheat all purpose flour and it's noticeably coarser than regular AP flour. This hasn't been a problem in breads or cookies, but I wondered if it contributed to the graininess in the bechamel. On Saturday, I made the Croque Monsieur Mac-n-cheese from Saveur magazine (I would include a link but I can't get their website to come up right now). I used cake flour instead of the white wheat AP flour, and voila! a gritless, creamy sauce.

I am also making changes based on everyone's suggestions (type of cheese, etc.), and it looks like I have much more creaminess in my future.

Darcie,

"I didn't have potatoes, so I substituted rice ..."

I don't think my substitution was QUITE that bad...

Darcie,

Oh, I dunno. Remember the person on TOBB who couldn't get CI's Alfredo recipe to work, and we found out (through Q&A) that they were using non-dairy creamer?

I mean, you'd think you'd have mentioned the use of WWWF before we got this far ...

Or the guy who wrote to Chris that he "didn't care for his chicken recipe," and then admited he has substituted shrimp.

One, this happened to me with Pillsbury AP, too, only to a lesser extent. I think the cake flour was the fix (perhaps I could buy some Wondra).

Second, I must shamefully admit that I did not realize I purchased WWWF until very recently. I bought the flour at Costco, looked to make sure it was unbleached, but did not closely read the label until I noticed the texture seemed coarse. So I didn't even know it was WWWF until just a few days ago.

Hi,

WTF's WWWF? WWAPF?

Tim

White Whole Wheat Flour
White (or Whole) Wheat All Purpose Flour

Tim,

There's a guide to abbreviations in general information.

I suspect Tim knew but couldn't resist the lovely string of abbreviations.