Baking Through "On Baking"

Old Wwworld Cafe is all about doing things by hand, and that includes making the baked goods for the cafe when it's opened. There's no time better than the present to brush up on our baking skills, so we here at Old Wwworld Cafe are going to bake our way through the book "On Baking".

We started at the beginning, and made some of the simplest of baked goods: simple syrup, beaten egg whites, and ricotta cheese. Now, the syrup and egg whites were no trouble, and we even took the syrup up a notch and flavored it. This was a first for me, so I was weary as to how the flavor would turn out. It really shocked me with just how tasty it was. Well, I'm sure you're asking, "What flavor did you make?"













Coffee of course! And it was quite delicious! Adding it to an already tasty cup of coffee or a homemade frappe is the perfect touch.

Now beaten egg whites are another item I am familiar with making, but it took me quite a while before I could get stiff peaks.

Still those were fairly simple and not too new to us, but the ricotta cheese was definitely something different.













Overall, everything turned out pretty well (though the ricotta was a little on the lime flavored side... we're still working on perfecting it) and we're excited to start the next phase, biscuits! So stayed tuned and follow us on our journey through "On Baking"!

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New Coffee in, Dominican Gold!

I am very, very excited about the new coffee we have just received here today, and for many reasons. First off it marks the first time we have traded directly with a farm, second off it is our first "island coffee", and third off IT IS OUTSTANDING!

For those of you who LOVE Jamaican or Hawaiian coffees, this is a must try as it is in the same category. I cannot rave about it enough, so go get some already!


I will leave you today with a few parting images (the videos I took are a tad dark until I edit them) with our monthly sample roasting. Each month we all pitch blend ideas or rework an old coffee and take it for a spin on the sample roaster. Our sample roaster needs some work done to it though, but we have plans for that so we wont have to turn it by hand for much longer!




Oh and to the fine people at Dominican Gold, your espresso makers will be in route here in the next 2 weeks along with some lovely syrups, I cannot wait to here about you pulling shots on them and making drinks!

New design, and still editing

Updated the blog to look a little nicer, and I am still editing away at videos. The plan is to have the website have a video showing you how to brew using a variety of different methods. Most of the videos are shot, I am just not very efficient at using video editing software :(.

In the meantime, you can checkout some pics of the new machine if you are following us on Facebook, and be sure to check back frequently as we will be updating a great deal in the upcoming months!


theoldworldcafe

Samples and Roasting

As always its late, or early depending on how you look at it, and here I sit roasting. I love having orders to fill out but man this heat is killing me! Thankfully the early hours aren't as hot, I don't think I could survive being if it was triple digit heat and sunny outside right now!

I wanted to make sure everyone got word of the samples being handed out in June so if you wanted to taste our coffee, that would be the last opportunity to do so for free for a looonggg time. Also, to those who try to contact be via this blog, I seem unable to contact you in the same manner, so I will work on trying to figure that out!

Quest for the best espresso Pt. 3

With the parts on hand that I needed to create the first phase of the espresso machine, I started assembly. This started with an overhaul by removing the old replaceable parts on the boiler such as the boiler gasket and the head groups shower screen assembly. This allowed me to clean all old oils and mineral buildup from the the previous owner, and also was necessary to when dismantling the boiler from the group head.

So with the boiler apart I started to mount the RTD by drilling, yes drilling, into the side of the boiler. This was the best way to have an accurate reading of the internal water temperature. This was followed by threading the driller hole for a pressure threaded screw. I prepped the screw I was using by drilling a 1/16 in hole down the center of the screw and inserting the RTD through the hole along with a high temperature and pressure rated epoxy. The bottom of the screw was filled in with a high temperature food grade silicone to keep the water from contacting the epoxy.

Once the epoxy was set and the "RTD Screw" was mounted and the boiler was cleaned it was ready to be assembled again. This was when the real fun of the project began. One phrase: The wiring. The wiring scheme seemed easy enough but it was where the trouble of getting this unit back into operation began. Next weeks blog will be on the difficulties of wiring the up the basic function of the Silvia espresso machine.

The Old Wwworld Cafe
~Dan

Quest for the best espresso Pt. 2

Once everything was disassembled, I had a good idea how all the parts worked together. Next was the fun part. I got to design all the extras that I wanted to to have in addition to the normal function of an espresso machine. The only thing that limited the imagination was physics and the budget, so I decided to design a three phase system to separate the major jobs of an espresso machine. I designed a specially heated reservoir to feed a finely controlled hot water boiler for the espresso shot and a secondary boiler for isolated steam production so that both functions can be run without interfering or adding wait time to heat or cool the system. Implementing these designs would be the tricky part.

With David Schomer's ideal espresso machine in mind, I started by adding the first of three PIDs to the Rancilio, which is a common enough mod. RTD rather then a thermocouple This provides the +/- 1 degree control and instant water temperature read out that I needed for this project. I also knew I wanted to be able to see the pressure within the Boiler to be able to adjust the overpressure valve to allow the pressure to be constant throughout the entire shot. A short time and a few bucks later, and two pressure gauges solved that.
Stay tuned for next week as I continue to unveil each step taken to making this machine reach its full potential!
~Daniel