Search Results for '("C'

[Mike Nolan]

I made over 60 small molded chocolates today, the plan is to put them in an Advent calendar for our granddaughter.

I also made 40 chocolate batons for making chocolate croissants (Jimmy Griffin calls them chocolatines). They're similar in size to the larger ones that Callabaut sells, about 4 inches long.

[BakerAunt]

The time change is welcomed here in north-central Indiana!

On Sunday morning, I used my last Spy Gold apple to bake an Apple Spiced Muffin recipe that I adapted from Beatrice Ojakangas' Light and Easy Baking. The baking book was designed to use less fat, but there still was plenty, so I set to work. I replaced 4 Tbs. of melted, unsalted butter with 4 Tbs. canola oil. I replaced half the AP flour with barley flour. I used buttermilk rather than plain nonfat yogurt. I reduced the brown sugar from ½ to 1/3 cup. I decided to forgo the topping (1/4 cup brown sugar and that much flour, with 2 Tbs. melted butter) and instead used the Penzey's Cinnamon Sugar to sprinkle lightly on top before baking. I baked the recipe as twelve muffins, using sprayed fall muffin papers. The result is a not particularly sweet but tasty muffin that I will bake again.

[Mike Nolan]

I'm making some molded chocolates today, and will also make a number of chocolate batons for making chocolate croissants (chocolatines).

[chocomouse]

BakerAunt, it is a packet of Botanical Interests seeds, Winter Delicata "Honey Boat". Yellow, with dark green stripes. The stripes were not as dark as shown in photos. I have a couple more that we think are Delicata - I'm anxious to cook some just to find out what they are! I freeze butternut and buttercup, mashed or diced for roasting, but have not frozen spaghetti, not sure how the strands would be after freezing. Mushy? or do they maintain some body? I planted 4 hills of winter squash: delicata, spaghetti, buttercup, and butternut. By the time they are ready to harvest, the vines are so intertwined (one had grown up inside a tomato cage, a huge butternut) I cannot tell which hill the squash came from.

[chocomouse]

I made meatloaf, baked potato, and squash for dinner. I planned to bake a Delicata squash, which I grew for the first time this summer. I've never tasted one either. My husband cut it in half and scooped out the seeds and I put the halves upside down in a 9 x 12 pan lightly spritzed with oil. However, after it was baked, it was clearly a spaghetti squash! We ate it with dinner, with a little butter, it was good. But I've still not tasted Delicata squash! I'm wondering what the remaining squashes stored in our garage might be! I am sure (?) at least 6 of the yellow ones are spaghetti, and I'm hoping any remaining yellow with stripes are Delicata.

[Mike Nolan]

Her original blog posts during the year she was cooking from the book are still up the last time I looked, they've been reorganized a little. Warning, the blog posts have a lot of F-bombs. (I think she cleaned it up a lot for the book.)

[BakerAunt]

Joan--I've been experimenting with oil recipes for the past four years, in part to reduce my cholesterol. I am still eating a low-saturated fat diet, even though I have started taking a statin. Another benefit of oil recipes is not having to wait for the butter to soften. A third benefit is that oil (even avocado oil) it is less expensive than the amount of butter required.

The oatmeal raisin cookies without oil recipe at Jenny Can Cook is great. Just be sure to use quick oats and to flatten them slightly before baking.

I have posted some of my "oil instead of butter" recipes here at Nebraska kitchen. I have not posted the Maple Cookies without Butter recipe yet, but if people are interested, I will. The recipe Navlys mentions is the Maple Shortbread recipe, which I posted back when cholesterol was not a concern for me--and I still miss their deliciousness. I can only bake them if I have other people around who can eat most of them. The recipe without oil will never have the light, crumbly texture of shortbread, but it makes a cookie that lets me use my cookie stamps and highlights the maple flavor.

For cookies, I have been using avocado oil, which gives a richer taste. I also use half avocado oil and half canola oil in my pie crusts.

[Mike Nolan]

My older son's house has in-floor hot water heating in the basement, and he recently replaced his water heater/boiler with a tankless system, which is more efficient, but more expensive too. (I don't know if it is gas or electric, though.)

We seem to get 8-10 years out of a gas water heater here. Getting the right type of anode seems to have helped our last longer, but it was a 3 ring circus finding out that the anode was the wrong type based on changes in the city water supply.

[Mike Nolan]

I'm tempted to try making both Portugese rolls (not the sweet ones) and the Pao Frances recipe I posted last week and see if they're as similar as they seem. But that's a lot of bread!

[Mike Nolan]

I can't answer your question because I don't know the total amount of dough. If the preferment makes up 50% of the total dough that's a somewhat higher net hydration than if it makes up 25%.

If you want to use a biga or poolish with a formula that doesn't already have one, just subtract those ingredients (flour, water, yeast, etc.) from the total. There's no firm rule on how much of the total flour needs to be in the preferment, I've seen recipes as low as 5% and ones as high as 50%.

For example, suppose you have a poolish that is 75% hydrated. You want to add 150 grams of the poolish to your recipe.

The formula for the poolish is:

Flour: 100%
Water: 75%

Total: 175%

So, your scaling factor is 150/175 or 0.857

So you've got 85.7 grams of flour and 64.3 grams of water in the poolish. Subtract those from the rest of formula.

Yeah, I'm ignoring the yeast here, but you could add it and change the total. It'll change the amount of flour and water by just a few grams. (If there's 3% yeast in the poolish the flour becomes 84.3 grams and the water becomes 63.2 grams.)

If you're dealing with a sourdough starter, the yeast percentage is essentially an unknown. Most multi-stage Guild recipes seem to just ignore the amount of yeast in the starter.

I've got an outline for a post dealing with altering the stages of multi-stage formulas separately (to vary the amount of water in the preferment, for example, or to use an existing starter with a known hydration level.)

The challenge is to come up with examples that don't make the math seem more complicated. I also try to make my examples ones that someone could actually bake.

Spreadsheets or similar tools specifically designed for bakers are really helpful and most bakeries use them. (One of the more popular ones just went out of business, though.)

[BakerAunt]

Happy Halloween, everyone!

I made soup for dinner on Monday, which is perfect for a rainy day. I used about 8 cups of the broth I made on Saturday, and 3 cups of potato water I had frozen this summer. I used olive oil, ground turkey, sliced celery, carrots, and mushrooms, some chopped garlic, 1 Tbs. rehydrated onion, 1 cup of brown lentils, half a cup of red lentils, and Halloween shaped pasta (pumpkins, bats, and spiders, oh my!). I seasoned with some rosemary, thyme, sage, and sweet curry.

[Mike Nolan]

If you research 'how to get a shiny top on brownies', you'll find at least two general recommendations. One has to do with thoroughly mixing the sugar and the melted butter, the other has to do with mixing the sugar and the egg (white), the theory there being that the shiny surface is essentially a thin layer of meringue.

There are other theories, as well, such as King Arthur's recommendation to use chocolate chips.

Yet another theory I've seen over the years says to let the batter sit in the pan for a few minutes before popping it into the oven, I guess this one has to do with allowing oils to rise to the surface.

[navlys]

I thought the brownies I made last week with Bensdorp cocoa powder were delicious. Come to find out some people (including my husband) like a shiny crispy top on their brownies. So back to the drawing board I went. I found a recipe that uses chocolate and cocoa powder. The technique was a little different from my first recipe. It appears I found nirvana or so says my husband! The recipe is on Tutti Dolci's blog. They are called "the ultimate crinkle brownies".

[BakerAunt]

I began the week by baking Pumpkin Oat Muffins for Sunday breakfast, a recipe that I adapted from a 2010 special issue, Taste of Home Fall Baking (p. 122). It has been a favorite. I use half whole wheat flour, add 3 Tbs. milk powder, make my own blend of cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger, and allspice rather than use pumpkin pie spice, halved the salt, reduced the brown sugar to 1/3 cup, and replaced the ¾ cup canned pumpkin with 1 cup homemade puree. I also changed how they are mixed, by combining the oats with the pumpkin and milk and allowing it to rest for about 10 minutes. I deleted the topping and sprinkled with a bit of Penzey's cinnamon sugar. I baked the dozen muffins in Halloween muffin papers.

More baking projects are planned for the day.

[Mike Nolan]

I find if you make a compound butter with the sugar (brown or white) and cinnamon, it is easier to spread on evenly and won't fall out as you roll the dough up and bake it.

I saw a post on my iPhone the other day that started out extolling the dental floss method for cutting cinnamon rolls but then suggested cutting the dough up into strips after spreading on the filling, then rolling each one up separately. I've done that a few times, it works well.