Randio posted a comment that asked about salted butter. When he's been to the grocery, they seem to be out. My answer was that you probably just needed to add it, to taste. I have since then done a little research on the web regarding butter making.
I actually have made butter in a churn before, but we aren't talking about the homesteading, milk the Jersey cow, skim the cream off the milk type of butter making. All you need is some cream and a food processor or mixer. You simply beat the cream until it separates out, and leaves behind buttermilk. I was interested in how much salt to add to make salted butter. I looked at six different recipes. The answer seems to be "a pinch," in other words, not very much salt. Therefore, I feel that when you are making cookies it simply doesn't matter if you use salted or unsalted butter if you are already using salt in the recipe.
After reading the butter making recipes, I am all stoked and ready to make my own butter the next time that I bake some bread. The cream here is incredible! If you check the media crema, they vary from 25 to 30% fat! Well, after writing that sentence, I realized that butter making may have to wait until after the next cholesterol test. Sigh.
Which brings us to Boing's question about baking. She wanted to know about baking times. Since we are effectively at sea level, there is no change in baking times or boiling times to worry about, unless you come from a high altitude and your recipes have been adjusted for that. One thing that is different here is the flour. I haven't found any high gluten flour here. I had an opportunity to ask the baking instructor at the cooking school in Merida, and she told me that harina fuerte, which is high gluten, or bread flour, is not available here. I assume that if you were serious about wanting some extra gluten, you could wash the starch out of some regular flour and use that, but I haven't tried that.
I bake bread here, but I don't have the meticulous nature of a true baker. I have some observations though. I think the dough has a tendency to rise too fast here, so when I bake bread, I do it in the morning before it gets over 80 degrees Fahrenheit . If you are serious bread baker and devoted to slow rise, you already know much more about this than I ever will, so I won't go into methods of retarding rise. Another thing I haven't found is pastry or cake flour, but for the type of baking I do, that doesn't matter. If your favorite recipe isn't the same with all purpose flour, you can substitute a quarter cup of corn starch for some of the all purpose flour and get an even softer flour.
