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[navlys]

I am thinking of making Biscochitos for our wine gathering. I saw a recipe in our paper and thought they sounded interesting. I couldn't read the reviews because I don't subscribe to the Sacramento Bee. Anyway I compared several recipes but none had only 1/2 tsp baking powder for 3 cups of sugar. (paper recipe). Am thinking less baking powder, more crispy?

[BakerAunt]

Monday's dinner was leftover turkey, roasted honey-nut squash (the last from our garden), and microwaved frozen green beans from our garden.

I also made yogurt.

[BakerAunt]

Although I still have some containers of pumpkin in the freezer from last year, I decided on Sunday that I needed to start processing the pumpkins I bought in October at the farmers' market. Today, I roasted, pureed, and packed into containers a large peanut pumpkin.

I could spend the time on the pumpkin because we have Thanksgiving leftovers (except for dressing). I even had time to put my feet up and finish a book while roasting the two halves of the pumpkin consecutively. (It was too large to fit in a single roasting pan.

[Mike Nolan]

I made about a quart of Thousand Island dressing on Thursday, we finished it last night. (I did send some of it home with a friend, who really loves Thousand Island dressing, but can't eat most of it because it often has olives or olive oil, which she is allergic to.)

The Salanova hydroponic crisp curly pelletized lettuce seed I got from Johnny's has been great, I've already gotten a second picking from the first three I picked last week and I should be able to pick more tomorrow. It looks like a frisee but it is sweet like a romaine.

I got a big container of vegetable beef soup out of the freezer for dinner tonight.

[BakerAunt]

The rest of our pumpkin pie was finished at lunch today.

We had two small boneless pork chops left over from dinner earlier in the week, so for Saturday's dinner I made a small stir-fry with the pork and the soba noodles, deglazing liquid, carrots, celery, green onion, red bell pepper (ripened off the vine on the porch), and broccoli from the farmers' market

[chocomouse]

Yesterday I made two 7" cheesecakes. One regular cheesecake recipe (32 oz cream cheese, 4 eggs, etc) fits perfectly into them. I made one with a filling that was flavored with raspberry liqueur, a chocolate graham cracker crust, a layer of filling, a layer of individually frozen raspberries, a drizzle of chocolate ganache, another layer of filling, and topped with ganache. The other one I flavored with lemon and lime juice. One of these will go into the freezer for a future treat.

[Mike Nolan]

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone. Busy day in the kitchen here, with dinner planned for 5:30, but I've got my schedule posted and there are plenty of rest breaks in it, so I don't totally wear out. Right now we're watching the Macy's parade.

I've got the chocolate pie filled and cooling, I'll make meringue once it is a bit cooler. (I'd prefer a Swiss or Italian meringue, but my wife prefers French meringue, even though it has a tendency to weep.)

I tried something a bit different when I was blind baking the pie. I cut a 12" circle of parchment, then made slits around a third of the way in all around so that when I put it in the pie pan the slits folded over each other, which avoids having parchment wrinkles. Seemed to work fairly well. I also chilled the dough after putting it in the pan, that's supposed to reduce shrinkage some.

I read an interesting article online about various ways to blind bake a pie, their preferred way was to use aluminum foil then fill it with granulated sugar and cook it at a lower temperature for an hour. It is supposed to reduce shrinkage and also results in making a batch of toasted sugar. I didn't do that because I don't have a lot of recipes that use toasted sugar, though some might benefit from it even if they don't call for it. (I'd also have to find a place to store it!)

[aaronatthedoublef]

Thanks BA. I may try avocado oil instead of canola or vegetable. Canola has really fallen out of favor here. I still use it as my alternative to olive oil though.

I also have used some coconut oil but it has a definite coconut smell/taste. It's good if you're making something coconut flavored like buttercream but not sure I would want to use it in something more neutral like pie crust (unless I was making a coconut cream or maybe a key lime pie). I am going to use it next time I fry doughnuts I think.

My crusts are blind blaked. I reduced them temp from 375 to 350 and only baked them for 15 minutes. Violet and I will make the pies today - pumpkin and pecan - so the flavor should be set by tomorrow for dinner. Tomorrow we'll make the hazelnut chocolate tarte.

[BakerAunt]

Aaron--I started by using canola oil. When I tried using all olive oil, the dough was not as easy to handle, although that was back when I used AP rather than pastry flour, so maybe I will try it again. I have used half olive oil with the canola for quiche or savory tarts. One reason I have incorporated avocado oil in my pie crust is that it, like olive oil, has 2 g saturated fat as opposed to 1 g in canola oil. I found that a bit more oil made for a better crust, with a bit of flakiness. The recipe uses 1 part buttermilk to 2 parts oil.

The original oil crust recipe came from the King Arthur 200th Anniversary Cookbook. I've adapted it over the years, by reducing the salt by 25% and adding some Bob's Red Mill milk powder. The pastry flours were my idea as well. The original recipe is designed to be pressed into the pie pan without rolling it out. However, with the two pastry flours, I find that I can roll it out and transfer it to the pie dish.

What I found took so long with how I made butter crusts is that once it was rolled out and put in the pan, it needed to be refrigerated, then I would put it in the freezer before blind baking. (I was following Cooks'' Illustrated directions.) The oil crust is put into the pie plate immediately after being mixed, rests for an hour, and then is ready to be blind baked.

I have my old recipe posted, but I should post my updated one. I will do so once I have tried some variation in the savory pie crust.

As for avocado oil, I also like it when I need to brown roasts or in bread recipes where I do not want the olive oil flavor. In whole grain breads, like the Grandma A's Bread, I can use olive oil and the whole grains cover the flavor. In the pumpkin braid I baked last week, I used avocado oil.

[BakerAunt]

What I remember about butter crusts is how time intensive they are. The oil crusts I now make (having given up eating most butter), are easier, and we like the taste and texture. I keep refining my recipe and now use a combination of pastry flour and whole wheat pastry flour, as well as half canola and half avocado oil.

[Mike Nolan]

Keep in mind that when you refrigerate the crust, the flour finishes hydrating and that draws some of the water from the butter, which also reverts to its 'cold' state. Shocking the butter by hitting it several times gets it back to a plastic state.

This is one of those areas where an engineering education is helpful in the kitchen. Civil engineers study how solids can turn into flowing plastics after a seismic event. That's how a seemingly solid clay hillside can all of a sudden collapse looking like it is a liquid. Snow avalanches can result from the same type of shift from a solid to a plastic state. (They often use loud noises to encourage unstable snow masses to collapse before they would trigger major avalances.)

Kenji Lopez-Alt has an interesting take on pie crust, he turns the butter and about 3/4 of the flour into a paste in a blender, then adds in the rest of the flour before adding the water.

I've tried it, I prefer having small visible pieces of butter in the crust, but it does produce a consistently flaky crust, similar to the 'mealy' crust recipe that SFBI had us use for a bottom crust most of the time, with the 'flaky' recipe for the top crust, it has a bit more butter in it. I don't know if many production bakers tend to keep two types of pie crust on hand, though, one for a bottom crust and the other for a top crust. I generally make just the mealy crust recipe.

I will say his method appears to require a little less water, which helps prevent excessive gluten formation.

I do, however, follow his suggestion and hold back about a quarter of the flour until after the butter has been cut in. I think that also helps limit gluten formation.

[BakerAunt]

I had some turnip greens that needed using, so I made a quick pasta dish for my lunch on Monday and tomorrow. I sauteed onion, chopped carrot, and chopped celery in olive oil. Near the end, I added the cut turnip greens with a bit more olive oil. After they had cooked for a couple of minutes, I added 1 ½ cups turkey broth leftover from the meal I cooked on Saturday, a heaping tablespoon of tomato paste, ¼ tsp. dried oregano, and ½ cup autumn-shaped pasta (leaves and pumpkins). I cooked at a low boil for 7 minutes, then added ¼ tsp. dried basil, some shakes of garlic powder, and freshly grated black pepper. I had half of it with Parmesan shredded on top.

[Mike Nolan]

Yes, hitting the pie dough with the rolling pin several times helps to plasticize the butter, which makes it roll out easier. Butter is a fascinating thing, it has five different states: hard, semi-soft (plasticized), soft, liquid and congealed (ghee). Each of them has different properties when cooking and baking. (The butterfat in cream has several states of its own.)

Most fats have several states that often depend upon temperature.

Cocoa butter has six states that can co-exist, though they melt at different temperatures; beta-5 is the one you need when tempering it.

[BakerAunt]

Today, I'm preparing to bake my blueberry streusel pie. (It uses an oil crust, so I cannot answer Aaron's question, but I bet that Mike can.) I would not usually bake a blueberry pie before Thanksgiving, but my younger stepson (aka as one of my three Bonus Kids) and his wife are coming tonight for three days to spend Thanksgiving with us. They could not come this summer, so he missed out on blueberry pie so far this year, and I need to remedy that situation, as he is usually on a strict blueberry pie diet when he comes.

I will be baking a pumpkin pie on Wednesday for Thanksgiving dinner.

[Mike Nolan]

We had BLT's plus some salad using the first pickings from my latest Aerogarden crop, some black seeded Simpson, some rouge d'hiver and some Salanova (a sweet curly lettuce developed for hydroponics), I haven't picked the buttercrunch yet, I'm saving that for Thanksgiving.