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Thursday, February 24, 2000 By Suzanne Martinson, Food Editor, Post-Gazette
MINNEAPOLIS -- No cook is perfect. At least not every time.
To check out the 50th anniversary Bake-Off recipes, see www.bakeoff.com.
In the Pillsbury kitchens, product specialists test recipes so thoroughly that even when the cook falters, the family won't have to go out on a hunger strike.
"We try to anticipate what could go wrong and then we test under all these conditions," says Sally Peters, director of the Consumer Food and Publications Center.
They call it "tolerance testing," and the 19 kitchens on the 28th floor of the Pillsbury Center are filled with mistakes waiting to happen. Peters points out two microwaves, labeled low watt and high watt, good performer and poor performer for evenness of heating.
She knows there are both kinds out there. She also knows that while most kitchens have a 9-by-13-inch loaf pan, not everybody buys a Bundt. "If the recipe calls for a Bundt pan, we will provide an alternative" pan that could be used for the recipe, she says.
Recipe developers know what consumers have in their cupboards because test kitchens cooperate in funding what they call pantry surveys to find out what equipment is in America's kitchens.
Pillsbury tests recipes both with gas ranges and electric. Because some consumers have ovens with accurate temperatures and other don't, they test their dishes with a 50-degree variation hotter or colder than the recipe specifies.
They know, for instance, that some kitchens don't even have measuring spoons and some cooks don't realize that liquid ingredients are measured in glass liquid measuring cups, and dry ingredients like flour or sugar should be leveled off, so they need measuring cups designed for that.
"A half cup of butter is not a problem, because that's a stick," Peters says. "But measuring 1/4 cup can range from 3 tablespoons to 6 tablespoons." (One-fourth cup equals 4 tablespoons.)
Brown sugar, "that's tricky, people don't necessarily know to pack it in."
And flour, oh well. There are the "scoopers" and the "dippers."
"In baking, they have to measure accurately," she says. "Our preferred flour method is to lightly spoon into a measuring cup and level off. That is what our tolerance testing is based on. The scoopers will get a lot more, the sifters get a lot less. We test with all three levels. Spooning and leveling is our preferred method, but a lot of people will scoop anyway. Sifting has gone by the by. People don't even know sifters."
Pillsbury wants recipes that can survive a measuring faux pas, and this is never more important than when they are doing the tolerance testing for the Pillsbury Bake-Off, whose winning recipes will be announced at 11 a.m. Tuesday in San Francisco.
"We lose recipes in the tolerance testing," says Bake-Off manager Lola Whalen. With thousands of recipes entered, the ones that lack tolerance never make it to the contest floor.
Into cooks' hands
Cookbooks are also a big part of the work in the Pillsbury kitchens, which has 31 employees, plus free-lance home economists as needed, especially at Bake-Off time. Over a year, the Pillsbury kitchen will produce 12 paperback cookbooks in the "Classics" line, which is interspersed with an additional four aimed at young families called "Come and Eat." There are 100,000 subscribers and between 300,000 and 400,000 people buy them at newsstands or in the supermarket checkout line.
Asked if she had a favorite food magazine, Peters smiles. "I kind of like ours, but I guess they're really recipe books."
In addition, Pillsbury typically produces two hardcover cookbooks a year. The ring-bound "Pillsbury Complete Cookbook" is coming out in May.
As any homemaker knows, the work is never done.
Even a staple like flour has a way of changing from season to season, so the kitchen is constantly testing the Pillsbury products, both old and new. The nutritional analyses also must be constantly updated. And the company has just added a new unit -- Martha White Flour, a light Southern flour made from soft wheat -- and compiled a cookbook, "Martha White Southern Traditions: 100 Years of Recipes for the Martha White Kitchen."
That means there is always something to eat in the Pillsbury kitchens.
On this snow-slicked morning in Minneapolis, a lovely, homey smell greets you in the warmth of the kitchen. It's relatively quiet today, as they work on muffins, pie crust, soup and kids' recipes, but during the Bake-Off recipe selection, there were four taste panels a day.
It can't be easy to narrow the "tens of thousands" of recipes and come up with the final 100. Take apple recipes, for example. A crowd-pleaser, yes, but "you see a recipe that calls for three pounds of apples, and you know you can't peel that many apples and make something in 15 minutes," Whalen says.
In this quick-and-easy contest, an Easy Weeknight Meals recipe must be made in less than 15 minutes of prep time (not counting cooking or baking), or in fewer than 30 minutes total. The Fast and Fabulous Desserts and Treats also may take no more than 15 minutes.
At the same time, Pillsbury may receive 12 fabulous recipes using apples, but in a 100-dish contest, that's too many apples upsetting the cart.
Says Pillsbury spokeswoman Marlene Johnson: "We're trying to balance a category."
Surely instant mashed potatoes can't compete against apples -- or chocolate. Whalen looks offended. "We do have some recipes with instant mashed potatoes," she says.
Picking the qualifiers
It's a complicated path to winning a million.
As the Bake-Off's Oct. 18 deadline approaches, an independent judging agency picks up the recipes (Pillsbury won't say exactly how many) at the post office and online and goes through them, checking that they contain qualifying ingredients and are complete with directions and pan sizes, temperatures and quantities. If the paper isn't white or light colored, the entry is disqualified, because it must be photocopied in order to remove the entrant's name.
Some recipes -- Robert Redford Cake, for instance -- mysteriously make the rounds of kitchens nationwide, seemingly almost simultaneously. Nothing "new" there. And each contest year, Cheese and Wiener Crescents, which is printed on the label, and Chocolate Praline Layer Cake, a previous Bake-Off winner, may turn up. "People send their favorite recipes, instead of original recipes," says Jann Atkins, contest assistant manager.
The recipes are separated into categories, and six home economists trained by Pillsbury and working in their own homes narrow the number to several thousand. The names are removed from the entries and will not be revealed until the final 100 recipes are selected.
"The most creative ones, the ones that stand out as being new ideas, are sent to us," says Peters. "They can't talk to us during this 8-week process. They can't say, 'I've got a great one coming through from my mother-in-law.' " The anonymous entries are then sent to Pillsbury and further narrowed to 800 to 1,000 by Bake-Off home economists.
Contestants may enter as many recipes as they wish, but only one can be a finalist, so the judging agency does tell Pillsbury which recipes were submitted by the same person. Pillsbury picks the most promising one, and if that doesn't work out in the kitchen or isn't original, they move down the contestant's list.
The recipes are then prepared and tasted in the Pillsbury kitchen. For about seven weeks, four times a day, 10 to 12 people -- not marketing people, but home economists -- evaluate the 1,000 recipes: Does it taste good? Does it look good? Is it easy to prepare?
"Some things don't even make it out of the kitchen," Peters says. "We may think this tastes good, but it's so unattractive, I don't think my family would put a fork to it. Because this is a million bucks, we want the best of the best."
The recipe preparation is timed, although a recipe may be given a second chance if it's close. "We take only about a third of the recipes -- we're tough on them."
Originality counts
The final 250 to 300 recipes go to tolerance testing, where they are baked in different ovens at varying temperatures and times, cooked with slight variations of ingredients. Spicy ingredients may be given a range in quantity. In other words, the recipes are made as close to foolproof as possible.
At the same time, over these eight weeks, four or five people are in the Pillsbury library searching to make sure each recipe is original. They go through Pillsbury's own data bank of 24,000 recipes, search the recipe name and ingredients on the Internet, check a data bank with 100,000 recipes from 10 newspapers and 20 magazines.
And then there's the Pillsbury library of more than 5,000 cookbooks. "If it's a chocolate dessert, we probably wouldn't look among the skillet suppers or in the 'Taste of Romania,' " Peters says with a smile.
They're thorough, though. "They're little detectives -- they'd love to find this recipe" in the search, Peters says. "But we may love it and hope it's an original."
Also, each contestant must swear that the recipe is original or significantly changed from its source. In the past, previously published recipes have been disqualified at this late stage, though not this year when all were adjudged "original."
The final selection is a matter of give and take among the tasters. Someone who works with a particular Pillsbury product may fight for a recipe, and balancing the categories and flavors is also important.
The Pillsbury kitchen employees don't know who'll be in San Francisco until only the 100 recipes remain. "We get pretty excited when we get the list -- we know some of these people" from previous contests, says Peters. "We've tested each recipe at least five or six times -- every single one of them -- but we don't know what's going to win."
Peters is not worried that contestants will run out of ideas for the Bake-Offs of the future. New products are developed and kitchen creativity thrives.
"There are 88 keys on a piano, and nobody thinks there is no more music left to be composed. When it comes to food, the combinations are incredible. One of the wonders is the unending creativity of people who love to cook."
PG Food will publish the winning recipes on Thursday, March 2, 2000.
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