AGRI
Intricacies of Olive Oil
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h i l e m o s t t ra d i t i o n a l b a ke ry recipes include the usage of butter, fat, lard, or sometimes vegetable, the Chefs constantly try to tweak things to discover healthier and newer options. However, such efforts may not be required for olive oil. The fact is that olive oil of different grades and quality has been part of the Mediterranean diet for a long time, and it continues to find favours with the Bakery Chefs around the world. However, baking with olive oil does not
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work out to be an economic option, as it does not come cheaper than most other available alternatives. And if you use the lower end of pomace or artificially tweaked pure olive oil that has had aroma and other impurities removed by heat and chemical treatment, you lose all the advantages of cold pressed olive oil in the bargain. I recently tasted potato chips freshly fried in extra virgin olive oil. The chips were dry, as they did not retain any oily residue, and a heavenly smell of the extra
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virgin olive oil emanated almost delicately from the chips. As for the cookies, with simple recipe that included only four ingredients in equal proportion – extra virgin olive oil, flour, sugar and water, are definitely heavenly in their texture and taste.
Style Selection For baking mildly flavoured cakes one needs to use a cold pressed olive oil that is graded extra light in tasting. There are some Protected Denomination of Origins in the North of Italy where the olive oils have the lightest possible texture with just a hint of fruitiness to it. Ciabata bread of Italy gets its flavours not just from whole or cut olives in it, but also from the olive oil used in the process of mixing the flour before baking. Few I ta l i a n co m p a n i es h ave eve n managed to extend the shelf-life of some of the oils through a different filtration process called selective filtration. Essentially, filtration is needed to avoid fermentation of suspended particles in the oil from the fruit’s pulp. Hence unfiltered oil, which is rarely available in the market,
June-July ’21
