All Hail the Bench Scraper

By Katie Barreira

If you’re a cooking newbie, chances are you don’t own a bench scraper. Perhaps you’ve never even heard of such a thing, and unless you’re a closet baker, why would you have?

The simple, but highly utilitarian tool was conceived by and for pastry chefs, who use the thin metal blade to cleanly portion bread dough, gently lift the edges of a sticking pie crust and scrape up the pesky scraps from their kneading surface. For these functions alone, I would highly recommend the $8 investment to any budding baker.

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Garlic: Our Frustrating Old Friend

By Craig Deppe

As ubiquitous as onions in savory foods, garlic is much loved for its flavor but perhaps not as much for its ease of preparation. This pungent relative of the lily comes wrapped in messy “parchment” that has to be removed from the head only to reveal another layer tightly clinging to each clove. Once this inner layer is pried from the prize there still remains the task of preparing it so that it lends its wonderful qualities most effectively.

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