Krafty Kitchen Chemist

12/02/2025

🚨GREAT NEWS🚨

I will be adding small batch vanilla and cinnamon extracts to my line of products. I recently learned I can obtain a non-beverage alcohol license in PA to sell food extracts. What I don't know yet is if I'll be able to ship out of state. I am pretty sure that will be a "no" since each state controls their liquor licenses and who can obtain and sell anything containing alcohol, even for non-beverage use. The license I can obtain from the liquor board is separate from the Limited Food Establishment one I need to make my dry goods.

While I primarily sell dry goods, I am now widening my focus to helping people make restaurant and bakery quality food at home. As general consumers, we are limited to ingredients that can easily be purchased in the store. But to get that gourmet bakery or restaurant flavor, we lack access to the ⭐secret ingredients⭐ that make something good, GREAT. I'm going to close that gap just a little bit, starting with a limited line of extracts.

I started my first vanilla batches in November so they will be ready in 12-18 months. I started both a traditional Madagascar and a Ugandan vanilla extract. I just placed my order for raw cinnamon and will get that started next week.

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10/30/2025

How many of you don't particularly like (or downright dislike) the sourness of sourdough but like the idea of increased digestibility, better mineral absorption, and less bloating?

I have been eyeball deep in scientific research for several months, trying to figure out a non-sour alternative with the same benefits.

By George, I think she's got it!

The reason people gravitate towards the health benefits of eating sourdough (vs yeast bread) is what the acid-loving microbes do to the flour:
✔️They make grain more digestible.
✔️They help your body absorb more minerals out of the grain.
✔️They reduce or eliminate uncomfortable bloating many people experience with grain-based foods.

I found a way to achieve the exact same benefits without making the dough sour.

Unfortunately, it's not something most people would be willing to do at home, although it is not impossible. It's a relatively forgotten fermented product.

If you missed a previous post, I mentioned I would be milling my own flour when I reopen. It just so happens I will be creating this byproduct when I prepare some grains to be milled! I didn't even know it was a thing. I was looking up ways I could use this byproduct instead of throwing it out. Deep in the bowels of the internet, a discovery was made.

Now I have to figure out how I can make a product that I can legally sell since in it's raw form, it requires refrigeration. Without a commercial license, I can't sell anything that must be temperature controlled. Ah, it also "just so happens" I have a possible solution to that problem...my freeze dryer.

Oh, the possibilities if I can figure this out!!!

10/21/2025

Spoke with the man who will be my PA Limited Food Establishment Inspector. I now have the construction requirements to convert our attached 2 car garage into my business kitchen.

We still don't know if Alex will be relocated for his job as the USDA/NRCS agency plan has still not been shared by the WH administration. I can't just sit around and wait for something that may or may not happen. I want to get back to work! I have so many incredible ideas for the rebranding and new products to launch.

We'll work on renovations that add value to the home first, just in case. Hopefully the plan is released by the time we need to do specific renovations for my business.

Cautiously optimistic...

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08/20/2025

I am going to start restoring a 1950’s steel kitchen in preparation for rebranding under a new name and theme. My slogan will be, “Bringing back made from scratch.”

For the last year, I have been collecting kitchen cabinets sold under the Kelvinator and Beauty Queen brands. Both had identical lower cabinets and handles made by Toledo Desk & Fixture Corp. The upper cabinets paired with Kelvinator kitchens were made by Morton and were called Pantryettes.

I have purchased a working Kelvinator refrigerator and a dead one. The dead one will be part of a mobile vendor display while the working one will serve me as a working fridge in my future dedicated business kitchen. I also have a working Kelvinator stove in AMAZING condition!

Below are some of the pieces I will be restoring and hope to start sometime in the next few weeks. I have more pieces but they are buried in a pile deep in the garage at this moment. I’ll just have to reveal them as I go.

In addition to the main kitchen, I have also collected items that would have been found in a 1950’s kitchen. This won’t be a Goodwill style kitchen with a piece from this company or that. Oh no!!! I painstakingly reassembled manufacturer collections: Ovenex Starburst bakeware, Club Cookware, Fiesta dishes, Hostess brand gadgets, and Lincoln Beautyware canisters and storage containers.

I spent time researching each item before purchase to make sure it existed in the 1950’s. There may be a few items that were first manufactured in the 1940’s but would have been found in a 1950’s kitchen all the same. To say I learned a lot is an understatement!

I have a few things that I will be taking some artistic license with. The kitchen color will be time appropriate but not a Kelvinator color. I found a 1950’s Zenith tube radio that doesn’t work but I have GRAND plans for it! I also found empty bottles, cans, boxes, and bags of ingredients used in the 1950’s. Many of those I found by haunting a large antique mall in Wythville, VA.

Last weekend I obtained some help from my brother and SIL to figure out the physics/engineering aspects of mounting my kitchen on casters.

So, other than cleaning out the garage in the coming weeks (so I have space to work), I feel armed with the information I need to get started.

Stay tuned for the first of many projects…

04/30/2025

Hi, everyone.

I wish I was posting that I'll be opening soon, but sadly, that is not the case.

While the economy is not good, I was very encouraged after attending a few craft shows this spring. The attendance was great and people were buying from small businesses! I did what I could to support some while I was there, too.

Unfortunately, another move may be in our not-so-distant future. Many of you know my husband is a government employee. We are stuck in a stressful holding pattern of not knowing what is going to happen to him. Hopefully we will have some answers within the next 30 days.

I truly hope I can reopen someday. I deeply appreciate you hanging in there with me.

Please try to support your local small businesses and national family-owned companies. The tariffs, if not lifted soon, will force closures of many these businesses by the end of the year. They need us to have a chance at surviving the nightmare decimating middle America.

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06/21/2024

Tonight’s pizza experiment: Tomato, black olive, mozzarella, and feta.

This was a 72 hr direct dough, with last 6 hrs at room temp in an oiled cast iron skillet. I par-fried the crust in the skillet followed by par-baking at 550oF with the sauce. (The sauce keeps the center from ballooning.) I then topped the pizza with chunks of tomato, feta, mozzarella, and black olives and put under broiler set to high. I tossed on a bit more feta after it came out of the oven. No pizza steel or stone was used.

Direct dough means that I mixed all of the ingredients at the same time. Then it was left to ferment for several days in the refrigerator.

05/31/2024

I switched gears this week. I made a 72 hr bulk fermented dough. Unlike the dough made with poolish, this is a dough made with all of the ingredients on day one. As mentioned in my earlier post, poolish is a pre-fermentation made the day before the dough is made.

I made this dough Tuesday night and it fermented in the fridge until 1:00 pm today. It sat at room temp for 4 hours for its final rise.

I made both a thin crust and pan pizza. (I bought a retired Pizza Hut Pan Pizza pan on eBay.) The thin reminded me of a chewy NY Style pizza crust. You could taste the mild breadiness in the pan version better.

Many people swear by the 3 day fermented crust being more light and airy, with a nice crunch and chewy texture. I did not achieve the crunch I was expecting, and oddly, it may be because I didn’t use enough water in the dough. It was also the first time I incorporated olive oil into the dough.

I feel like the poolish had a bit more flavor and more yeast activity which resulted in more trapped air pockets in the outer crust. I will certainly experiment more with the 72 hr crust.

05/31/2024

For the last several weeks, I've been experimenting with a preferment called poolish. If you are familiar with sourdough starter, poolish is a dry yeast starter. Instead of growing a starter from the wild yeast on flour, you can create a starter with dry yeast that you buy at the store. Some people do not like the taste of sourdough so making poolish is a great alternative with the same benefits. (That's an interesting explanation for another day!)

There are some people who like working with a hybrid starter that contains both dry yeast and wild yeast. (People also do this in breadmaking. You can make a hybrid by creating poolish and letting it ferment for a few days. All wheat has the natural yeasts to grow sourdough. Both the dry yeast and wild yeast will feast on the flour while it ferments. The result is a milder, less tangy crust.

A basic poolish consists of water, yeast, and flour. Some will add sugar, molasses, or honey to jump start the dry yeast activity. Purist would say not to add any extra sugars as the wheat has the sugars the yeast needs. Because poolish ferments for a day, the yeast has time to break down the wheat to get to those sugars.

There are lots of YouTube Videos if you want to learn how to make poolish. This was the first video I watched -->

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05/24/2024

This weeks pizza dough experiment: Longer preferment period (54 hrs). We were gone all day so I had to leave it at room temp most of the day. I did that because you are supposed to pull your dough out 4 hrs before use. We wouldn’t have had dinner until 8:00. Unfortunately, it overproofed. The taste was fine but it was quite dense. Not crispy with a tender interior. It was a good learning experiment, though, because now I know what overproofed dough looks like. It was really warm in the house yesterday so I am certain that contributed to the problem.

I am just about out of my Wheat Montana flour so I ordered Caputo 00 pizza flour. It’s MUCH finer than bread and All Purpose flour. It’s also the most used pizza flour in pizzarias. If you like making pizza at home, you can buy it on Amazon. Looking forward to experimenting with it next week.

05/11/2024

While I work on perfecting my pizza crust, I’ve picked up some useful tips. I am going to share them to help you along your pizza making journey, too.

Crust Tip #1
Parbake your crust at the highest temp your oven can go. In my case, that’s 550oF. I parbake for 4 minutes for a thick crust. If you have a thin crust, I would decrease that time to 2-3 min. Let the crust cool for 10 minutes before topping.

05/10/2024

IT’S HERE!
My Freeze Drier!!!
She’s gonna need a name. Any suggestions?