I can't say I care for the idea of matcha tea flavored cookies, but the artisanship in this video (and several others) is amazing to watch:
ice box cookies
My Pumpernickel Rye Bread looks very nice. It is 4 1/2 inches tall, which is what I like in a wider sandwich bread. I am looking forward to slicing it for ham sandwiches tomorrow on Christmas Eve.
I have felt we are cookie deprived. When does a gal of Swedish and German descent only have a single kind of cookie in the house at Christmas? Sacrilege! I looked at the biscotti recipe that Joan posted, then went online to find a printable version. However, I stumbled across another one at MyRecipes that did not use oil and decided to bake it.
https://www.myrecipes.com/recipe/cranberry-pistachio-biscotti
I made only a few changes: I used half white whole wheat flour, added 2 Tbs. Bob's Red Mill milk powder, added 1/4 tsp. orange oil, and did not use salt, since the pistachios I had were salted. I mixed the dough with a dough whisk, added the cranberries (I microwaved these with 2 Tbs. water to rehydrate) and chopped pistachios, then switched at the end to a bowl scraper to bring the dough together. I divided it in half and put each half on a baking sheet lined with parchment. I used a piece of saran around my hands to shape the sticky dough into two logs. I did not use the egg wash, but I did sprinkle the tops of the logs with a sanding sugar that is a mix of red, green, and white. The logs are now cooling before I slice them for the second bake.
Added note: The biscotti are tasty. I would cut back the orange oil to 1/8 tsp. next time. Of course, I had a warm one. Perhaps the orange will be less intense after they cool
I don't have one of the KA/Chicago Metallic rye hearth pans, but this looks pretty close:
hearth pan.
The dimensions are 2 1/2 x 6 1/2 x 12. Unfortunately, you have to buy six at time from Webstaurant.
I wonder how well a business that sells pans (even used ones) that nobody makes any more would do?
I've got two large lidded glass pans that I broke the lid to one of, they're French glass. I'd dearly love to get a replacement lid.
I made a farro salad with chopped kale, scallions, pecans, craisins (that I soaked first), chopped apple and crumbled blue cheese with a maple syrup/apple cider vinaigrette - my best version yet.
Sounds interesting but too much work for dogs in a blanket. For a wine event I made crescent roll pigs in a blanket (smoked sausage) with rosemary springs around the rolls and a cranberry mustard sauce in the middle. I found the idea on the internet. Not a sophisticated crowd and they went quickly.
The Chicago Tribune has an article (available to subscribers only) on a Chicago restaurant that is doing deep dish pizza bagels, a take on the classic Chicago deep dish pizza. They call the shape a 'bagel dough cup', boiled and baked then filled with sauce and baked a second time. Sounds interesting to try.
They also make what they call daisy dogs, sort of a spin on pigs in a blanket. They cut a Vienna Beef hot dog (sigh!) into six pieces and wrap them in bagel dough. I don't know if they boil them before baking them (probably), but they sprinkle them with poppy seeds before baking them.
And they use what they call 'Chicago Sauce' on the daisy dogs, which is a sauce made by a Chicago company that has all 7 of the classic ingredients on a Chicago hot dog: Mustard, day-glow green relish, pickles, onions, tomato wedges, celery salt, and sport peppers. I need to get some of that!
Change of plans, we're doing prime rib (sous vide) for Christmas dinner.
Tonight we had French onion soup and salad from the Aerogarden.
Skeptic--almost any place beats Williams-Sonoma these days. They no longer have free shipping unless one is a member of their $90 a year club. (I do not order THAT much from them.) I loved the restaurant store in Lubbock and had to be stern with myself.
Yes, you deserve quality bakeware while stuck away from home, and the good part is that you can take it home with you--the souvenirs that keep on giving!
I baked a new recipe, Honey Oatmeal Rolls that KABC recently developed. I made some adjustments: 3 Tbs. avocado oil rather than 4 Tbs. butter, 1 cup plus 2 Tbs. white whole wheat flour in place of that much bread flour, buttermilk in place of 1 cup water, and 1/3 cup water rather than milk. I also cut the yeast from 2 1/2 tsp. to 2 1/4 tsp and the salt from 1 1/2 tsp. to just 1 tsp. and added 2 Tbs. special dried milk. I shaped these as 16 rolls in a 9x9 pan. (Of course, the batteries in the scale had to be replaced mid-dough division, which meant struggling with the plastic around the lithium batteries meant to keep children--and perhaps adults--from opening them.) We had the rolls with dinner tonight and agreed this recipe is a keeper. I like the white whole wheat here because it allows the oat flavor to emerge; regular whole wheat would obscure it.
I made yogurt on Monday. I was able to order yogurt jars from Lehman's that will work in my yogurt maker, so I can now do six jars again rather than the five I did last time. I had to buy a replacement set of eight, so that will help me get ahead on making another batch of yogurt a day or two ahead of when I need to do so.
Dinner on Monday was beef stew. I bought a pound of stew meat from Armor beef that sells at our local farmer's market (antibiotic and hormone free) for $6.50, only a little more than what I would have to pay at the local grocery and of higher quality. I put potatoes, carrots, and mushrooms into the stew, along with dehydrated onion and my usual seasonings. I add frozen peas near the end before thickening it with ClearJel. It is delicious.
The instructions for baking in a commercial steam injection oven almost always say to open the vents, removing the steam, after about 10 minutes of baking.
My understanding is the impact steam has on the crust, delaying it from setting, needs to give way to completing the process of baking the bread.
Peter Reinhart's instructions for adding steam in a home oven also say to take the pan out after about 10 minutes.
I'm using about a 6 inch cast iron skillet with my steam tube, what I'd really like is a much larger cast iron pan of some kind, maybe a griddle, but the bigger ones tend to have handles that get in the way. (The steam tube has to be fairly near a front corner of the bottom rack, because it falls out if you try to have the pan more centered in the oven, and you really don't want to be dumping water onto the lower heating element.)
There was a thread in the BBGA forum a year ago on where to find candied citron.
It's probably too late for this year, but next fall check with Sheridan's Fruit Co in Portland, OR, though I don't see citron in a search of their website today.
You might have to buy a KG or more of it. (One supplier had 30 pound boxes of it at about $180 plus shipping a year ago.)
If you can find whole citron fruit (try Whole Foods), cutting up the peel and candying it yourself might be another option.
Nuts.com has candied citron at a reasonable price, around $9 per pound plus shipping, but I don't know who makes it for them or how it compares to other sources.
On Sunday, I baked Pfeffernusse. I used the last 1/2 cup of citron from a supply I bought about six years ago. The citron was hard, but I revived it by putting it in a small bowl with a little water, covering with saran, and microwaving for a minute. I then let it stand. Of the cookies I associate with Christmas (the others are sugar cookies and shortbread) pfeffernusse are the least unhealthy, with just a stick of butter for the 37. They are also the cookie I most associate with Christmas and my childhood because a relative used to mail them to us. (I asked who it was when I got older and was looking for a recipe, but my mother did not recall other than it was someone on my father's side.) As usual, I ordered the King Arthur non-melting sugar, but it did not work as well this year; the sugar was not adhering to the warm cookies, and I was pressing it on with my hands. I wonder if KABC changed the formulation.
If I am to make these cookies next year, I do not know where I would find candied citron. King Arthur used to sell lovely European, small-diced citron, but they stopped carrying it years ago. When I first baked these cookies I used the citron from the grocery, but what King Arthur sold was far superior to it. Now, I do not even see it at the grocery in the fall.
post moved (inadvertently posted in wrong thread)
Just starting the planning for Christmas dinner. I need to find some oysters for Christmas Eve, too.
I've got a turkey in the freezer, but my older son is due here this afternoon and he often does the protein for Christmas dinner. If he'd rather do duck than turkey I won't defrost it. (I like goose for Christmas, but they're even more expensive than duck, if you can even find one.)
Our younger son has been swallowed up by Google. My wife plans to send him a card that has a simple quiz in it:
Check one:
[ ] Alive
[ ] Dead
