I haven't done a lot of work with proofing baskets, in large part because I like free form loaves where most of the slices are the same size, but I've found inverting the loaf (so what was the bottom in the basket becomes the top in the oven) a bit challenging, too. If it doesn't rise much above the rim of the basket, you could cover it with a peel or that large offset spatula and flip it over
I think it is a motion that would require some practice. But baking has a lot of those.
A starter that is left in the fridge will develop into one that is dominated by cold-liking bacteria, which changes the type of acidity you get to one that is a sharper 'bite'. If you like that kind of sourdough, it works. (I can never remember if it is acetic-acid bacteria or lactic-acid bacteria that like the cold.)
If you bake bread more than about 3 times a week, you can adjust your feeding schedule so that you feed first, then pull out what you need to bake with a few hours later. (That's what commercial bakers do, they don't throw away good flour!)
My rye starter went bad a few months ago and I haven't built a new one yet, but I'm holding off on much new recipe testing until after my cataract surgery, the first of which is later this month. I've been building preferments for some of the breads I bake, letting it sit anywhere from an hour or two to overnight. Overnight is long enough to start to develop some sourdough tang.
I saw something that said netflix was starting a cooking competition show that involved leftovers (just what we need, another non-reality cooking competition show!), I didn't see anything about the food network doing it. But the food network is almost never about cooking anymore!
BakerAunt, you can add any leftover beer to your compost pile - it's good nutrients for the garden. Although I would not suggest serving it to your Aerogarden (when you get one!)
BA, convenience stores (around here) often sell single cans of beer, although they are often the larger size.
The cord is probably about six feet long, we have it plugged in to an extension cord, because the closest outlet is blocked by a desk. (It would have reached that one.)
I'm thinking I may eventually put a small UPS (uninterruptible power supply) in that room, my son tells me that the clock and possibly some other data can get reset if there's a power outage. (It may forget things like when the garden was set up and when it was last fed, and I don't know if there's an easy way to reset those.)
It does NOT need to be near a window, we just put it there because that was the most convenient place for it. We also set it on a coffee table so that we don't have to get down on our hands and knees to work on it. My wife can work on trimming it while sitting down.
My son has his (he now has at least 2 of them) on a counter in his basement laundry room, but he telecommutes and his desk is just around the corner, so he's down there for several hours most days.
If you get the farm system (24 pods) and have a wireless network, you can monitor your gardens from a cell phone, I think some of the smaller ones can do that as well.
I think we'll eventually be getting salads nearly every day from ours, we do have some tomato kits that my son ordered (I probably wouldn't have ordered them and I'm not sure when we'll use them), but I'm more interested in salad greens and herbs. My son has been growing tomatoes, bok choi and poblano peppers.
I think with 2 or 3 farm gardens you could pretty much grow your own leafy vegetables year round. You'd still need to buy root vegetables, though.
On Saturday morning, I baked “Deep Dark Brownies,” a recipe that I got from King Arthur some years ago. Although they baked it in a 9x9 pan, I found the center baked better if I used a 10x10 ceramic square dish that I bought from KAF. (They certainly missed out on THAT promotion idea!) The recipe is oil based, so that works with how I bake these days, but I wanted to see if I could improve the health value. I started by omitting 1 cup of chocolate chips. (Sigh.) In addition, this time I reduced the granulated sugar from 1 ½ cup to 1 ¼ cup but left alone the ½ cup powdered sugar. As I use the double Dutch cocoa and 1 Tbs. espresso powder, I thought reducing the sugar would give more of the intensity of dark chocolate, and it did. I also added 1 Tbs. Bob’s Red Mill milk powder, 1 Tbs. flax meal, and substituted half barley flour for that much AP flour for nutrition. I replaced ¼ of the ½ cup of oil with buttermilk. I decided to omit the nuts. I decorated the top with some chocolate sprinkles and some small snowflake-shaped candies. I baked for 30 minutes on the third rack up in my oven. By baking in the morning, I was able to let the brownies rest for seven hours before we cut them for dessert tonight. My husband went back for seconds, so my healthy modifications did not deter his enjoyment, nor mine
I have ordered several things from walmart.com, including a 24 pound tub of wheat berries, sometimes they're better priced than Amazon, sometimes they're not. I see several sellers of barley flour on Amazon as well. I haven't tried ordering from them since the walmart plus plan (or whatever it is called) started, I don't know if that affects anything, like shipping costs.
Natural Grocers appears to have barley flour at a pretty good price, but there isn't one in Indiana.
I recently ordered some items from Bob's Red Mill. One item I intended to order was barley flour, but their online catalog said it had been discontinued. I checked for fine grind cornmeal, and it also has been discontinued. I emailed the company, and here is part of the response:
"The sustained spike in customer demand for our wholesome products during this challenging time has prompted the Mill to reflect on our product assortment. As a result, it was decided unfortunately to discontinue the Barley Flour and the Fine Grind Cornmeal."
"In order to improve production efficiencies for our core items, and to make room for some exciting new products that we will be introducing soon, a number of low-selling items are being discontinued. There were multiple factors involved in making this decision, including packaging restrictions, production and labor, sales and sourcing issues."
Now I'm wondering what other products they may be on the road to discontinuing. Other products have been cut over the past few years: non-bleached cake flour; ivory flour (white whole wheat that I preferred over King Arthur's), dried cherries, etc. While I can probably figure out a workaround for the cornmeal, even if it means grinding their medium cornmeal finer--or stocking up next time we can visit Spring Mill--I'm not sure where to find barley flour. I looked at some places that sell malted barley flour, but I do not think that is the same.
Suggestions?
Sounds delicious, Joan!
I was glad to have a fast dinner planned for Wednesday. I boiled rigatoni (Italian, from Aldi’s) in the defatted drippings from our turkey, along with a little broth. I sauteed carrot strips and thick celery slices in olive oil. Once the liquid boiled for the pasta, I put a colander over it and the rest of a package of frozen broccoli into it, then covered with a lid, so that it could steam while the pasta cooked. I cut up some of our leftover turkey, then combined everything in a big pasta bowl. I grated Parmesan cheese over it and mixed it in. It’s simple, and we can probably make another two meals from it.
I baked whole Grain Pumpkin Bread on Tuesday, using the recipe at Nebraska Kitchen that Lemon Poppy originally put on the Baking Circle. Ever since I needed to give up most butter, it has been my go-to recipe. I usually substitute in a cup of barley flour, but since Bob’s Red Mill may have discontinued it, I am rationing the barley flour, so I used whole wheat pastry flour instead. As always, I reduce the sugar to 1 ¾ cups, and I follow Lemon Poppy’s suggestion to use half buttermilk and oil. I also decided that it would be best in five rather than six 3x6-inch pans, and that worked well. The pumpkin I used was from three years ago; clearly it got lost in the freezer.
My other baking project on Tuesday was to satisfy my yearning for a cinnamon swirl bread with raisins that I can eat with breakfast, and on which my husband can snack. I have a recipe for Oatmeal-Cinnamon Raisin Bread that came from The Baking Sheet (Spring 1999), pp. 24-25. I proceeded to make a lot of changes. I used half whole wheat flour and half bread flour and added 1 Tbs. special dry milk and 1 Tbs. flax meal. I substituted in 1 cup of buttermilk. I cut the brown sugar to 3 Tbs. and used 2 ½ Tbs. olive oil in place of the butter. I used 1 ¾ tsp. yeast. Instead of oats, I used a generous ½ cup of Bob’s Red Mill Muesli, which I soaked in the buttermilk. The dough seemed slightly dry, so I added 1 tsp. water as it kneaded in the bread machine. I added 1/3 cup golden raisins. For the filling, I had some sugar and cinnamon (what I had forgotten to put into a recipe a few weeks ago), so I used it, then spritzed it before rolling up the dough into a loaf. I chose an 8x4 USA loaf pan. Both rises took 80 minutes. I moved the containers to the front room where it was warmer. The loaf was not done after 35 minutes of baking at 375F. It needed another ten minutes. I did tent with foil after the first 25 minutes, and the crust still got a bit darker than I wanted, It’s cooling now, and I will have a slice at breakfast.
This dough fit in the small 2-quart dough bucket, but Italian Cook is correct that some breads, like the wheat rye bread I baked on New Year's Eve, do better with a 4-qt.
Macarons are one of those things you either get or don't get.
I made some chocolate macarons for a dessert pot luck a few years ago (back when people were still doing pot lucks), and almost nobody even tried them. I think I took 24, I brought back 20 and I know I ate at least one at the pot luck.
This was before anybody local was selling them (at $2.00 or more each).
I keep showing my husband pictures of Mike's garden--hint, hint.
For lunch on Monday, I made Curried Butternut Squash Soup. I first roasted the squash, then pureed it with some broth. (Memo to self: use deeper pot when using stick blender.) I added 1 tsp. of Penzey’s Now Curry. I have enough for two more lunches.
I made mashed potatoes on Monday for dinner to go with leftover turkey and some peas and carrots we microwaved.
Chocomouse - that cake sounds great!
I tried the KAF potato buns again. I upped the water from 227 to 275 g. Much softer and much closer to what I was looking for. In homage to BA I left out the melted butter (okay, I was rushing and forgot it) but everyone liked the buns without it so I may leave them out.
Need to work on my shaping now. And maybe I'll try adding some seeds to them like Len. I was at Trader Joe's and saw some Everything Bagel sprinkle. Inspired by all of you who use it here I bought some. My family liked it on BA's crackers and it would probably go well on the potato buns as well.
It is hydroponics, the pumps circulate the water about 1 hour out of every 12. Our 'farm' garden has two 2-gallon tanks, each of which holds 12 pods.
There's also a seedling starter top that I believe has 85 openings, which is a lot of plants to start, I'm assuming they won't get very big before they're starting to crowd into each other, so I'm not sure if we'll buy one of those for starting some plants for the 2021 outdoor garden or not.
We did buy the 'start anything' kit to plant some butter crunch lettuce, 1 of 5 sprouted, I will probably pull the 4 that didn't sprout and try them again this week. (The butter crunch seeds were from last spring, but I was hoping for somewhat better germination rate.)
The lights come on at around 8AM and go off around 11PM, though you can adjust that up or down, as well as when the daily cycle starts.
Recently I've been topping off one or both tanks nearly every day, all that growing uses up a lot of water. It's also in a south-facing window so there's probably some evaporation due to sunlight.
Liquid plant food is added every 14 days, and they recommend draining the water in a tank and replacing it periodically, every 2-3 feedings. I haven't done that yet, I will probably need to do it to the right garden in a week or so. (I'm going to ask my wife to talk to the hydroponics expert in her department to see what his recommendation is on replacing the water.)
Here's what our gardens looked like before today's harvesting. Lots of dill and basil. I'll probably use the dill in a batch of chicken stock, not sure what I'll do with the basil, maybe a pizza.
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