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Food Friday 11/5/21: Thanksgiving Baking With Chef Gail Sokol

Chef Gail Sokol
Courtesy Gail Sokol
Chef Gail Sokol

Regular Food Friday guest Chef Gail Sokol is back with great ideas for your Thanksgiving baking - everything from breads to the desserts! Call at 2pm and share a recipe or ask a question. 800-348-2551. WAMC's Ray Graf hosts.

Chef-Educator Gail Sokol has been teaching children and adults about baking for over 20 years, beginning as an instructor at SUNY Schenectady in the Culinary Department and later at The Sage Colleges in the Nutrition Department. Chef Gail is the author of a professional textbook, “About Professional Baking,” and a cookbook “Baking With Success.”

Chef Gail has her own podcast -- “Baking Radio” -- she also has a series of YouTube baking videos where she teaches globally on all topics baking.

Sky High Popovers

Makes 8-9 large popovers
2 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon salt
6 large eggs
2 cups milk
6 tablespoons olive oil

  1. In a large mixing bowl, whisk flour and salt together until well blended.
  2. In another mixing bowl, whisk together eggs, milk and olive oil.
  3. Add liquid ingredients to flour and salt mixture. Mix only until blended.
  4. Cover the bowl and allow to rest overnight in the refrigerator.
  5. The next day, preheat the oven to 375°F. Spray a popover pan with nonstick cooking spray.
  6. Lightly whisk the batter. Fill each popover cup  4/5ths full.
  7. Bake in the center of the oven for 55 minutes. The popovers should be very dark and should have grown quite high. Do not open the oven until 55 minutes has passed or the popovers could collapse.  Remove the popovers from the pan.  Re-spray the popover pan and continue to bake off the remaining batter filling each cup as above.
  8. Serve at once.

Tips for success

  • Allowing the batter to rest overnight allows the strands of protein in the flour to relax thereby allowing the batter to rise fast before setting the popovers’ structure. Once the gluten within the batter and the egg proteins coagulate the popovers’ structure forms and sets.
  • Popovers are steam leavened.  The water within the milk, eggs, and butter turns to steam in the hot oven creating a powerful leavener helping the popovers to grow quite tall.
  • If you do not have a popover pan you can use a standard muffin pan, filling every other cup to allow the popovers to expand.

Popovers are typically hollow inside. This is because the popovers grow so fast and tall that the egg proteins within the batter break apart and form a hollow space inside.

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