The pastry and marble counter myth
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Date: 2024-09-26
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Comments and reviews: 20
aliciashepherd1805
This will blow your mind, this will get even crazier because That's not marble.
In the majority of construction these days a substitute called engineered marble is used instead because it much cheaper. Think of it as a concrete using resin that we invented in the 1950's that's superior to concrete, only that it was actually invented thousands of years ago and is actually called geo-polymer. Quite commonly when looking at roman marble you will actually find that it is warmer to the touch than actual marble is, and this is also because its artificial and utilises organic based bonding compounds.
Interestingly because it creates a clay like substance before its dry it can easily be moulded into any shape like clay, however unfortunately in the ignorance of modern society, instead of manufacturing each top to the requirement, they are instead made in bulk and then cut with diamond cutting blades which has unfortunately resulted in silica dust being made airborne and as a result has caused mass silicosis medical conditions, of which are proving fatal leading to it being a banned substance in countries like Australia. There are a rather extensive amount of current legal proceedings in relation to silicosis cases.
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This will blow your mind, this will get even crazier because That's not marble.
In the majority of construction these days a substitute called engineered marble is used instead because it much cheaper. Think of it as a concrete using resin that we invented in the 1950's that's superior to concrete, only that it was actually invented thousands of years ago and is actually called geo-polymer. Quite commonly when looking at roman marble you will actually find that it is warmer to the touch than actual marble is, and this is also because its artificial and utilises organic based bonding compounds.
Interestingly because it creates a clay like substance before its dry it can easily be moulded into any shape like clay, however unfortunately in the ignorance of modern society, instead of manufacturing each top to the requirement, they are instead made in bulk and then cut with diamond cutting blades which has unfortunately resulted in silica dust being made airborne and as a result has caused mass silicosis medical conditions, of which are proving fatal leading to it being a banned substance in countries like Australia. There are a rather extensive amount of current legal proceedings in relation to silicosis cases.
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XYpsilonLP
I think a big factor in people missunderstanding this kind of things is a counterintuitive idea of heat and cold is that there is no warmth energy and cold energy but warmth is the presence of energy and cold is the lack of energy.
As warmth is just a representation of energy which the atoms have conductivity is the key here.
If you have a very conductive material and pour lets say hot chocolate on the surface the energy from the chocolate is dispersed at an higher rate then less conductive or isolating material like wood.
Therefore choclate can harden faster.
But the opposite is true as well. If you put something cold on a heat conductive material it transfers the energy faster to the cold opject - like ice - and is faster to funnel warmth from the surounding to the dough.
So often enough its just about differences then objects being hot or cold per se.
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I think a big factor in people missunderstanding this kind of things is a counterintuitive idea of heat and cold is that there is no warmth energy and cold energy but warmth is the presence of energy and cold is the lack of energy.
As warmth is just a representation of energy which the atoms have conductivity is the key here.
If you have a very conductive material and pour lets say hot chocolate on the surface the energy from the chocolate is dispersed at an higher rate then less conductive or isolating material like wood.
Therefore choclate can harden faster.
But the opposite is true as well. If you put something cold on a heat conductive material it transfers the energy faster to the cold opject - like ice - and is faster to funnel warmth from the surounding to the dough.
So often enough its just about differences then objects being hot or cold per se.
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Flavourpirate
You're wrong in many ways and obviously lack real world experience. Let's point out a few. It's the relationship between room temp and melting point of butter (many bakeries use specific butter with a higher melting point so it can withstand the temperature in the proofer better btw) so as long as room temp is lower than melting point it's a plus. Often pastry sections are not heated if not actively chilled.
Short crust is also a bad example. Yeasted doughs enriched and laminated will demonstrate much clearer why marble helps and it's not a myth, explitiv! Anyways get off your pseudo scientific horse it's a craft with longer tradition than printing presses exist and while the reasoning may have been mangled over time marble is simply better to work with regardless. Suspiciously dumb pastry chef's they must be to put marble slabs in the freezer I'm going to call bs.
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You're wrong in many ways and obviously lack real world experience. Let's point out a few. It's the relationship between room temp and melting point of butter (many bakeries use specific butter with a higher melting point so it can withstand the temperature in the proofer better btw) so as long as room temp is lower than melting point it's a plus. Often pastry sections are not heated if not actively chilled.
Short crust is also a bad example. Yeasted doughs enriched and laminated will demonstrate much clearer why marble helps and it's not a myth, explitiv! Anyways get off your pseudo scientific horse it's a craft with longer tradition than printing presses exist and while the reasoning may have been mangled over time marble is simply better to work with regardless. Suspiciously dumb pastry chef's they must be to put marble slabs in the freezer I'm going to call bs.
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braydenchou190
Bro. I’m no professional. In fact I’m hardly an amateur, but I think you still got it WRONG. The killer of the butter layer is BODY HEAT. You can leave good quality butter out all day and it’ll still be a block of butter. Hold it in your hand and you have a different story.
-Letting an ice cube melt on a platter removes the body heat component which is the whole point. (Plus you should have used shaved ice for a more equal comparison to a rolled out flattened dough)
-Especially in a chilled room, we can allow the pastry to get to room temp. We just don’t want our body heat to get it past that point.
Basically: We want to insulate our hands from touching the dough so we use a wooden rolling pin. We want to make sure the dough is at or below room temp so we use a conductive surface like marble.
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Bro. I’m no professional. In fact I’m hardly an amateur, but I think you still got it WRONG. The killer of the butter layer is BODY HEAT. You can leave good quality butter out all day and it’ll still be a block of butter. Hold it in your hand and you have a different story.
-Letting an ice cube melt on a platter removes the body heat component which is the whole point. (Plus you should have used shaved ice for a more equal comparison to a rolled out flattened dough)
-Especially in a chilled room, we can allow the pastry to get to room temp. We just don’t want our body heat to get it past that point.
Basically: We want to insulate our hands from touching the dough so we use a wooden rolling pin. We want to make sure the dough is at or below room temp so we use a conductive surface like marble.
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Rooey129
Uh density is not the cause of the marble feeling colder and melting the ice cube faster. Thermal resistance is, the higher the thermal resistance, the larger the time delta to move energy. This is really important in cooking as thermal resistance is why we do slow cooking at lower temps for longer times, otherwise 2000C baking would just cook internally but obviously the thermal resistance of the food prevents the energy from passing the surface.
The math is C/W and Watts is important because watts is joules per time delta, meaning that we're measuring power and not energy which again is energy over time.
Also why the marble feels colder, it has a lower thermal resistance so it absorbs the energy in your hand much faster making your hand cold and therefore making it feel colder to the touch.
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Uh density is not the cause of the marble feeling colder and melting the ice cube faster. Thermal resistance is, the higher the thermal resistance, the larger the time delta to move energy. This is really important in cooking as thermal resistance is why we do slow cooking at lower temps for longer times, otherwise 2000C baking would just cook internally but obviously the thermal resistance of the food prevents the energy from passing the surface.
The math is C/W and Watts is important because watts is joules per time delta, meaning that we're measuring power and not energy which again is energy over time.
Also why the marble feels colder, it has a lower thermal resistance so it absorbs the energy in your hand much faster making your hand cold and therefore making it feel colder to the touch.
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satibel
for getting rid of leftovers galettes: use 10g of oil for 500g of flour, 300g of water (250-350g might be needed) and 8g of salt, dough hook on the stand mixer or pasta setting on the bread machine, 5-15 minutes depending on how much protein/gluten there is in your dough (regular cheap flour goes for the 15 minutes, high protein flour goes for less)
you can use up to about 90g of oil, though it will make the dough more brittle
you can go to 350g of water, add some of it halfway to a cup, teaspoon of sugar, and your yeast, pre mix the flour and salt, let the yeast rise for like 10-15 minutes, then mix and you have pizza dough.
use 60g of oil and add a potato (either mashed or blended depending on preference) and you have a very spongy sandwich bread, cut the oil and you have french bread.
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for getting rid of leftovers galettes: use 10g of oil for 500g of flour, 300g of water (250-350g might be needed) and 8g of salt, dough hook on the stand mixer or pasta setting on the bread machine, 5-15 minutes depending on how much protein/gluten there is in your dough (regular cheap flour goes for the 15 minutes, high protein flour goes for less)
you can use up to about 90g of oil, though it will make the dough more brittle
you can go to 350g of water, add some of it halfway to a cup, teaspoon of sugar, and your yeast, pre mix the flour and salt, let the yeast rise for like 10-15 minutes, then mix and you have pizza dough.
use 60g of oil and add a potato (either mashed or blended depending on preference) and you have a very spongy sandwich bread, cut the oil and you have french bread.
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todo9633
Old timey kitchen wisdom is a pain.
I know people that to this day refuse to put food in the fridge before it cools down because it's something their grandma told them. No matter how much I show them health organization advisories and try to get them thinking about why exactly they think it'd be less safe to cool down food faster rather than leave it out at slightly above room temperature(the worst for bacterial development) they just refuse to listen because they've held this belief for decades.
Same people use paper towels instead of sponges to wash dishes because they think it'll capture bacteria, despite us having a dishwasher.
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Old timey kitchen wisdom is a pain.
I know people that to this day refuse to put food in the fridge before it cools down because it's something their grandma told them. No matter how much I show them health organization advisories and try to get them thinking about why exactly they think it'd be less safe to cool down food faster rather than leave it out at slightly above room temperature(the worst for bacterial development) they just refuse to listen because they've held this belief for decades.
Same people use paper towels instead of sponges to wash dishes because they think it'll capture bacteria, despite us having a dishwasher.
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axiezimmah
At 3: 00 I immediately knew what the issue was. Not having seen the rest of the video yet, I'll make a risky comment:
People think marble/stone surfaces are cool because they feel cold to the touch, which makes them assume it's good for keeping the butter from melting.
However, the laws of physics state that when something at room temperature is cold to the touch it's not actually cold, it's a good conductor of heat, and a good conductor of heat will actually transfer heat quicker which means the butter will melt quicker, not slower. Because it's not actually cold, it just transfers heat (or cold) faster.
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At 3: 00 I immediately knew what the issue was. Not having seen the rest of the video yet, I'll make a risky comment:
People think marble/stone surfaces are cool because they feel cold to the touch, which makes them assume it's good for keeping the butter from melting.
However, the laws of physics state that when something at room temperature is cold to the touch it's not actually cold, it's a good conductor of heat, and a good conductor of heat will actually transfer heat quicker which means the butter will melt quicker, not slower. Because it's not actually cold, it just transfers heat (or cold) faster.
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RafaelusOptimus
You talk a lot about thermal mass, which is good. But what matters on how fast two (similarly dense objects) is their specific heat capacity Marble might have a higher one than wood, so it needs to suck much more energy from the environment to heat up a degree.
Adding that probably has a higher heat transfer coefficient (how fast it sucks that heat, it means that the marble will heat up faster than the wood, as well as sucking the heat out of the ice faster than the wood.
You cannot make ice cream on wood because it'll suck the heat away from the liquid so slowly that it wouldn't freeze
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You talk a lot about thermal mass, which is good. But what matters on how fast two (similarly dense objects) is their specific heat capacity Marble might have a higher one than wood, so it needs to suck much more energy from the environment to heat up a degree.
Adding that probably has a higher heat transfer coefficient (how fast it sucks that heat, it means that the marble will heat up faster than the wood, as well as sucking the heat out of the ice faster than the wood.
You cannot make ice cream on wood because it'll suck the heat away from the liquid so slowly that it wouldn't freeze
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ZeroPlayerGame
Re marble vs wood tests - you could imagine the whole system as a whole as a heat pipe from the environment to the ice cube. Relative to ice, even thrown in the freezer they'd start at the same temperature as an ice cube, left at room temp tere's some heat left in the pipe; but in the long run, the size of the pipe matters the most, and it's a lot larger for marble.
For butter, the results could be different - since butter melts at like 30 C, and the dough doesn't come out of the freezer, the amount of leftover heat in that pipe could matter a lot more.
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Re marble vs wood tests - you could imagine the whole system as a whole as a heat pipe from the environment to the ice cube. Relative to ice, even thrown in the freezer they'd start at the same temperature as an ice cube, left at room temp tere's some heat left in the pipe; but in the long run, the size of the pipe matters the most, and it's a lot larger for marble.
For butter, the results could be different - since butter melts at like 30 C, and the dough doesn't come out of the freezer, the amount of leftover heat in that pipe could matter a lot more.
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Runelaron
Entropy is what is trying to be explained here. In simple terms, Entropy is the amount of energy able to be absorbed so that work (change of state) can be done. In other words, it takes a lot more energy to melt marble then burn wood, because there is a large gap capacity, the marble can change temperature faster (a whole other subject on larger temperature difference between two objects)
As he said before, the marble is more dense, quicker absorption of energy. The same happens if you where to try and heat them up, marble would absorb more and heat faster.
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Entropy is what is trying to be explained here. In simple terms, Entropy is the amount of energy able to be absorbed so that work (change of state) can be done. In other words, it takes a lot more energy to melt marble then burn wood, because there is a large gap capacity, the marble can change temperature faster (a whole other subject on larger temperature difference between two objects)
As he said before, the marble is more dense, quicker absorption of energy. The same happens if you where to try and heat them up, marble would absorb more and heat faster.
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euclidmegara4120
I think the funniest part of the video (actually the only part where I literally loled) is when you took a break from the sciencie cutting board stuff to advertise Gruns with their adaptogens which is some homeopathy pseudoscience garbage! If you want me to take your science content seriously, perhaps don't advertise products based on magic and lies! Who knows, perhaps some of their health claims are accurate, but with all the made-up stuff they claim, I'm not going to believe anything they say about their product!
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I think the funniest part of the video (actually the only part where I literally loled) is when you took a break from the sciencie cutting board stuff to advertise Gruns with their adaptogens which is some homeopathy pseudoscience garbage! If you want me to take your science content seriously, perhaps don't advertise products based on magic and lies! Who knows, perhaps some of their health claims are accurate, but with all the made-up stuff they claim, I'm not going to believe anything they say about their product!
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Veltrosstho
A little thermodynamic science for ya.
There is no such thing as cold or hot, your perception is relative.
When you touch two items that are the same temperature, and one FEELS colder, it's not because it is colder, it's because it's stealing your heat at a higher rate than the other item, which, coincidentally, means it guves off its heat faster when touching cold items.
The ice cube experiment is a great example of this concept. Marble feels colder because it transfers heat(aka energy) faster than wood.
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A little thermodynamic science for ya.
There is no such thing as cold or hot, your perception is relative.
When you touch two items that are the same temperature, and one FEELS colder, it's not because it is colder, it's because it's stealing your heat at a higher rate than the other item, which, coincidentally, means it guves off its heat faster when touching cold items.
The ice cube experiment is a great example of this concept. Marble feels colder because it transfers heat(aka energy) faster than wood.
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Tang-qi6zw
I think you’re missing a lot of variables. Like what is the heat transfer during the period of time you’re working on the dough on each surface Like marble is smoother and separates from the dough easier, so you’ll work faster on it, probably during the time the frozen marble slab is transferring its cold into the dough (physically, the dough is transferring its heat into the slab, but you get the point. A long time doesn’t matter if you’re working like 5 minutes on marble and 10 on wood, or whatever.
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I think you’re missing a lot of variables. Like what is the heat transfer during the period of time you’re working on the dough on each surface Like marble is smoother and separates from the dough easier, so you’ll work faster on it, probably during the time the frozen marble slab is transferring its cold into the dough (physically, the dough is transferring its heat into the slab, but you get the point. A long time doesn’t matter if you’re working like 5 minutes on marble and 10 on wood, or whatever.
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mackxzs
Truth is wood is actually better at holding heat within itself. Physically speaking, it takes more heat energy (measured in calories) to heat 1 kg of wood than it takes to heat 1 kg of marble. They may be at the same temperature, but that's just a measure of how much their atoms are moving. The energy they contain (calories) is vastly different. Which means that the wood takes longer both to heat up and to cool down, because it needs a lot of energy to heat up, and it needs to lose a lot of energy to cool down.
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Truth is wood is actually better at holding heat within itself. Physically speaking, it takes more heat energy (measured in calories) to heat 1 kg of wood than it takes to heat 1 kg of marble. They may be at the same temperature, but that's just a measure of how much their atoms are moving. The energy they contain (calories) is vastly different. Which means that the wood takes longer both to heat up and to cool down, because it needs a lot of energy to heat up, and it needs to lose a lot of energy to cool down.
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nobody8717
why marble it's porous, stains, is soft, abrasive, and any acidic substance will dissolve parts of it. it's the worst stone to use in a kitchen.
get a granite, or a quartzite. manmade quartz is good too, as long as you don't set your hot pans on the surface.
and NONE of them should be used for cutting. get an end-wood block/board for that. otherwise you're killing your steel blades.
and lol at the microplastics you eat if you use a polymer cutting board.
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why marble it's porous, stains, is soft, abrasive, and any acidic substance will dissolve parts of it. it's the worst stone to use in a kitchen.
get a granite, or a quartzite. manmade quartz is good too, as long as you don't set your hot pans on the surface.
and NONE of them should be used for cutting. get an end-wood block/board for that. otherwise you're killing your steel blades.
and lol at the microplastics you eat if you use a polymer cutting board.
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MitchellPozar
You missed one point when comparing the chilled marble vs chilled wood boards. If the pastry is warmer than the chilled boards, the marble would perform better. In this case the increased heat transfer would be an advantage: the marble would actually remove some heat from the pastry while the wood would continue to mostly insulate. This is not shown in the icecube test because the icecube is at approximately the same temperature as the cutting boards.
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You missed one point when comparing the chilled marble vs chilled wood boards. If the pastry is warmer than the chilled boards, the marble would perform better. In this case the increased heat transfer would be an advantage: the marble would actually remove some heat from the pastry while the wood would continue to mostly insulate. This is not shown in the icecube test because the icecube is at approximately the same temperature as the cutting boards.
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reesescreases
Cutting boards are oiled, right Then, the porous marble absorbs the water from the ice better than the water repellant oily wood. Maybe the ice is solid longer on the wood because it has more cold water from melting closer, while it is wicked away on the marble leaving more fresh ice unprotected. It sort of looks that way in the video, with the puddle spreading more on the marble and being a little dome under the wood board ice cube.
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Cutting boards are oiled, right Then, the porous marble absorbs the water from the ice better than the water repellant oily wood. Maybe the ice is solid longer on the wood because it has more cold water from melting closer, while it is wicked away on the marble leaving more fresh ice unprotected. It sort of looks that way in the video, with the puddle spreading more on the marble and being a little dome under the wood board ice cube.
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hernandez2487
Hey Adam, love your content, been watching for many year now. Regarding this experiment I was wondering if the test was fair. It seems that the superficial tension of the marble it is working against it, spreading the cold water and exposing more surface of the ice to the hotter marble. I wonder if this would be the same if you measure temperatures before and after. of something solid like a slab of butter. Greetings from Argentina
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Hey Adam, love your content, been watching for many year now. Regarding this experiment I was wondering if the test was fair. It seems that the superficial tension of the marble it is working against it, spreading the cold water and exposing more surface of the ice to the hotter marble. I wonder if this would be the same if you measure temperatures before and after. of something solid like a slab of butter. Greetings from Argentina
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autobots9786
Hi Adam, love the content and appreciate making corrections!
Just something to be aware of when using IR temperature readers, the surface finish can affect the reading.
Glossy finishes can reflect IR, which can cause the readings to be off.
A quick hack when comparing differing surfaces is to slap a bit of masking tape on both so you can measure that as a reference!
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Hi Adam, love the content and appreciate making corrections!
Just something to be aware of when using IR temperature readers, the surface finish can affect the reading.
Glossy finishes can reflect IR, which can cause the readings to be off.
A quick hack when comparing differing surfaces is to slap a bit of masking tape on both so you can measure that as a reference!
reply
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