What are You Baking the Week of August 20, 2017?

[Mike Nolan]

I thought about suggesting Bakewell Cream, but I looked at the ingredients and it has sodium pyrophosphate.

[Italiancook]

Thanks, BakerAunt, and Mike. I checked out the website, BakerAunt. Helpful info. Thanks for taking the time to find it.

[BakerAunt]

We should post this information in the Baking: Other Limitations section, since it is for people who for whatever reasons need to tailor their diets.

[BakerAunt]

Friday afternoon, I baked a version of the Vienna Bread that Antilope posted on the now defunct KAF site. I play around with it by adding whole grains and substituting in some honey and buttermilk. I'm not sure what I did today, but the dough was dry, and that was before I was to mix in the rest of the flour and the salt. I ended up adding more buttermilk and holding back some of the flour. I've tried baking this recipe in various pans. It's great for one of those 3-section baguette pans, which is the pan for which he developed his version. I've also baked it in an 8-inch round pan as a boule, and in a 10x5-inch pan. This time I baked it in the Kaiser 12x4-inch pan, so I have a long loaf. I'm hoping it will work for BLTs, as I was able to score some nitrate-free bacon when we went on a grocery run to the larger town north of us, and the farmers' market has lately had some wonderful tomatoes.

• This reply was modified 6 years, 8 months ago by BakerAunt.

[BakerAunt]

It's Saturday afternoon, and I'm about to bake Peanut Butter Chip Oatmeal Cookies. The recipe is from The Los Angeles Times food section, specifically the S.O.S column, which requested it from The Harris Ranch in Coalinga, CA for one of its readers. I adapted it by adding a bit of powdered milk and a half cup of old-fashioned oats. I've also sneaked in 1/4 cup of white whole wheat flour this time. I have a bag of Reese's Peanut Butter Chips in the baking stash I managed to move here from Texas. For a time, Nestle's made a peanut butter-chocolate swirl chip that I liked to use in these cookies, but I'm not sure they make it anymore.

[Italiancook]

I baked Parker House Rolls for the first time. While I was in the throes of making them, I thought I'd never make them again. Now that I've tasted the finished product, there will be a second time. The dough was light and fluffy. The rolls are soft and way too buttery good. I made them for the freezer to give with a roast beef dinner to three people homebound in a couple of weeks, so I will be able to resist the temptation to make a meal out of them.

I don't believe I've folded them right. Some of them look like they should, based on some of the photos on Google Images. The recipe said to fold them in half, which I mostly did. Seems to me a celebrity chef on TV said to fold them 3/4. Have any of you made Parker House Rolls? How did you do the fold?

I had problems rolling out the dough. It rested for 15 minutes after punching it down, but when I rolled it, the dough kept springing back. In frustration, I quit rolling and pressed the dough into proper thinness with my hands. I know that spring-back means something, but I don't know what. Anyone know?

These are pretty and delicious, but I don't see how anyone could make them fresh to serve with a special dinner. They're labor-intensive, take up a lot of counter space, and would take away time from entrée prep, even if I made the entrée the day before. I'm more apt to make 90-minute rolls for a special dinner. But Parker House Rolls are much more stunning.

The recipe said to use a 2-3/4 inch cutter, which I did. If you made these before, do you recall what size cutter you used? The finished product seems large for a roll, but maybe I let them rise too long after cut.

[BevM]

Italiancook, those Parkerhouse rolls sound delicious and I'm sure those receiving them will appreciate them.
Yesterday I baked plain old Sugar Cookies from a recipe I found in Better Homes and Garden magazine April, 1967. Originally it was a recipe for Chinese Almond Cookies and I adapted for the family by changing the flavoring from almond to vanilla. It is a good basic recipe. The original recipe requires rolling the dough in balls and pressing an almond into the center, but since I discovered cookie scoops I scoop and press with a glass coated with butter and sugar. They are my favorites.

[Mike Nolan]

I spent quite a few months trying to get Parker House rolls that didn't pop open when they were baked.

Tried several different recipes and quite a few different ways to shape/fold them. Some recipes were so buttery that they were slippery on the outside before baking. But they all popped open. They were tasty, but I wanted to solve the popping open problem.

Then King Arthur had a blog post on them: Parker House Rolls

The recipe wasn't my favorite (in general I don't like rolls made with mashed potatoes, potato flour or potato starch) but the instructions they gave pretty much solved the problem and that method works with the recipes I prefer the taste of, too.

No matter what recipe you prefer, they're incredibly rich and buttery, so I save them for special occasions. I have my suspicion that restaurants have a trick to doing them.

[Mike Nolan]

I made the chocolate mushroom cookie dough today, my wife is going to roll them out and bake them either later today or tomorrow. (Probably just circles, not the mushroom shape.)

[Italiancook]

Mike, none of my Parker House Rolls opened up. They all stayed closed. I think the secret is the butter application.

The recipe I used came from the WSJ article you posted a while ago. It's probably behind a paywall now. It's an adaptation from Omni Parker House, Boston. I checked out the KAF blog you posted. Mine don't look like theirs. Mine are prettier, more ovalish instead of rectangular. I think the reason mine didn't pop open is that after I cut the circles, both sides were dipped in butter, placed on parchment-lined tray, then folded. Most, I folded over completely, as recipe said, but some I did only 3/4, because a TV chef had done that. I think the ones I folded over 3/4 look prettier -- or at least more interesting.

[Mike Nolan]

I think it was Tyler Florence who had a recipe that was pretty high on butter to start with, and then they were dipped or brushed with more butter after shaping. (His website is coming up as having malware on it in Firefox, which is getting pretty fussy about that sort of thing.)

A number of recipes say that overproofing the dough is what causes them to pop open.

[Italiancook]

If overproofing is what leads to the pop open, I was probably saved from that by a discussion I read recently somewhere on the KAF site. I learned to test the dough when I think it's risen the required amount, instead of waiting until the time suggested in the recipe. As I recall, for the Parker House Rolls, the first rise was until doubled in bulk, about 1-1/2 hours. With the KAF discussion in mind, I tested the dough at one hour. It tested proofed, so I went on with the next step in the recipe. In the wintertime, that might be a different story.

I just checked "The Wise Encyclopedia of Cookery." It says to brush one side of the dough rounds with butter before folding. Then brush the tops with butter. Instead of dipping both sides in butter. I may try that next time, because dipping them became quite messy.

[Mike Nolan]

I tried the 'dipping' method once, couldn't even get them to stay folded through the final proof at that point. But they were sure buttery!

One of the things we did in pastry school was to put a lid on a tray of puff pastry shapes that we were baking, with a stack of tart shells on all 4 corners to set the height. This limited how far it puffed up and gave it a uniform height. We used two perforated sheet pans on the top to ensure it had enough weight. We then assembled the six pieces (a bottom, a top and 4 sides) to make a box that we filled with fruit and pastry cream.

I've been tempted to try something like that with Parker House rolls for the final proof.

[Italiancook]

Here's a link to, I believe, the Parker House roll recipe from Omni Parker House. It's almost identical to the one in the WSJ. I didn't put the rolls in a roasting pan. WSJ piece said to put them on sheet pans. You'll see these look rectangular, not ovalish. So maybe the original ones were rectangles. But I like ovals better, even if it's not authentic.

https://www.omnihotels.com/blog/zagat-iconic-parkers-restaurant-parker-house-rolls/

[Mike Nolan]

The KAF piece also had a photo of rolls from the Parker House Omni hotel in Boston, they were rectangular, too. But maybe they weren't rectangular when the recipe was first developed?

I've stayed at that hotel once, but didn't eat in the restaurant. (That was before I got seriously into baking, I've kicked myself a few times for not taking advantage of that opportunity, it's not like I didn't know the hotel's gastronomic history.)

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