Search Results for '("C'

[BakerAunt]

Cwcdesign--I bake the KABC (it still sounds like a TV station!) Whole Wheat Sourdough Crackers and add cheese powder. I replaced all of the butter with canola oil. As I always make a double recipe, that means 1/3 cup oil for 1/2 cup butter. I added the cheese powder, some milk powder, some flax meal, The variable is the thickness of the starter. The oil crackers were easier to roll out than the butter ones (no waiting for the dough to soften up). They make a nice crispy cracker.

I find that the crackers work best with a neutral oil. I use canola in the dough, but I brush the crackers with grapeseed oil, since I felt that canola brushed on top left an after taste.

As shortening has no water, you might want either to hold back a bit of the flour or else use a little more of the starter to compensate.

I'm currently baking my crackers using the convection feature on my oven, and baking them slightly above the center. I bake for 6 minutes at 375F convection, then turn the sheet around for another six minutes. You will need to figure out what works best in your oven.

[BakerAunt]

Ah, yes, Cwcdesign! New kitchen countertops need to be christened with flour!

On Sunday, I reached into the treasure trove of blueberries that we had picked and baked an 8x8-inch blueberry streusel coffee cake, rifting off the recipe in Recipes from the Old Mill (p. 143), a favorite baking book I have mentioned previously. My changes were to half the salt, add 2 tsp. flax meal, and use buttermilk in the cake. For the streusel, I replaced 1 of the 2 Tbs. of butter with 1 ¼ tsp. grapeseed oil, which meant that I melted the butter instead of cutting it in. I also used ¼ cup quick oats rather than nuts in the topping. I baked it in a glass 8x8-inch square dish, so I reduced the temperature by 25F and baked it on the third shelf up. It needed about three additional minutes. We had some for dessert, and it is delicious.

[BakerAunt]

Advancing the stuck thread. Sigh.

While I'm at it--Aaron, for putting batter into pans for baked doughnuts, I've had success (depending on the thickness of the batter) with the so-called pancake pen.

[BakerAunt]

I have been craving English Muffins, specifically the Easy Buckwheat Oat English Muffins (recipe here at Nebraska Kitchen), on which to use the jam left over from canning. On Saturday, I made them, but I am out of practice, and so these will not win any prizes on appearance. I hope that the taste will at least be good.

I used the bread machine this time, and I think it works better than the stand mixer for this recipe. I replaced the milk with buttermilk, except for ¼ cup which I replaced with water to proof the yeast. I added 2 Tbs. of flax meal, and I replaced the 2 Tbs. sugar with honey. These are changes I have made before. I replaced 3 Tbs. butter with 2 1/2 Tbs. canola oil. I added an additional tablespoon of bread flour as it was mixing.

This dough is always hard to handle, as it is very slack, and it is hard to form it into circles, and even harder to move those circles onto the griddle pans on the stove top. What I may do next time is use my new Zeroll 10 scoop and just plop balls of it down, let it rest the 20 minutes, then move those to the griddle and slightly flatten. I used a Stuab 11-inch crepe pan and a cast iron 10-inch skillets. The Staub pan works much better. The lowest flame on the burners seems to work best. Even with two pans, I still need to do the muffins in two batches, with three on each pan.

I got them too large and too flat. We will have some for breakfast tomorrow, but most of these I will freeze, since my experience is that buckwheat breads get moldy quickly, especially when the weather is warmer.

[BakerAunt]

I saw that Bakers Authority (yes, another offer) has "pan liners":

Disposable Pan Liners 16.3X24.3

Would these be the same as parchment paper? I'd like to find some large liners for my large baking sheets, and I think these would be less expensive than buying the Reynolds parchment in rolls.

[cwcdesign]

I love this cartoon!

So yesterday we sent my Mom to the hospital. My friend the caregiver went to fix her meds on Thursday and she wasn't feeling well and hadn't taken her meds in a few days. After work I went over and obviously they wouldn't let me in to see her. They did a wellness check and she was OK and we decided to wait till yesterday to make a decision. They called the paramedics yesterday and after we talked, they decided it was best to take her (they prefer not to if they don't have to) When I was speaking with the nurse at 6 last night, her COVID test came back positive. We do have a DNR and they have the information on her chart. They will do a second test, probably not today, to confirm. She did have a restful night last night.

County wide the cases are still going up, but at a much slower rate.

[aaronatthedoublef]

BA - it's interesting. The more I bake the more it seems that many things are not best fresh out of the oven. I have two cookie recipes that should site for at least a day (one is best at three days old). My brownies need at least 24 hours to mature. Rye bread needs 12-24 hours out of the oven. And I am always amazed at the baking competitions where people make pastry cream that has great flavor in an hour. I've never found a pastry cream that didn't need at least four or five hours of solid chilling and was definitely better the next day.

This week I made what has become known as BA's crackers and a loaf of sourdough bread. I have a second batch of BA crackers in the fridge and another loaf of bread rising in the pan before it bakes. It seems I am the only one eating the whole wheat bread now but I think I'll keep making it. The desiccant seems to prevent mold so I am saving them from my medicine bottles.

Last weekend I made yeast doughnuts but apparently I'd misunderstood and Violet wanted chocolate baked doughnuts (much easier). I promised those last weekend so I made those this morning. It makes enough that I made a dozen and then put the rest of the batter in the freezer so I'll have at least another dozen. I used disposable piping bags because I'd always wanted to try one. They're so easy and nice but it feels very wasteful (yet liberating) to just toss it in the trash with no cleaning. Not sure I'll buy more when these are gone.

[BakerAunt]

On Friday afternoon, I made a batch (three 8 oz. jars) of “seedless” blackberry jam. I do run the blackberries through a contraption with a crank and a metal blade and egg-shaped wooden piece. It takes out a lot of seeds, but some still get through. I have another three cups of the blackberry puree that results, so I’m hoping for enough additional blackberries to get to four cups. The blackberries come from our terrace and from our woodlands.

[Mike Nolan]

The amount and value of information made available to US retail flour consumers is pitiful. Large-scale customers can get detailed reports on their flour, though I still see a fair number of posts on the BBGA forum from commercial bakers trying to figure out how to deal with a batch of flour.

The more I learn about flour, it seems the more I have yet to learn. Recently I've been reading a book on flour milling first published around 1905. I find it easier to read than the standard text on flour mills (Posner & Hibbs, costs about $168 on Amazon) and I suspect roller mills haven't changed a lot in the last 115 years.

I haven't bought much whole wheat flour since I got a flour mill, so I can't say much about the brands out there.

I normally keep KAF AP, KAF bread, Gold Medal unbleached and a store-brand bleached flour on hand, plus KAF pastry flour and some kind of semolina. Recently that's been BRM, because that's the only semolina available locally. I'm going to order a bigger bag of it soon, now that I've got a freezer I can store it in.

For cake flour I go with one of the bleached cake flours, like Swans Down, I have not been impressed with KAF's unbleached cake flour and I haven't tried BRM. I don't use a lot of cake flour, I probably haven't bought it in 2 years.

There was a post on the BBGA forum a while back that linked to a document about European flour grading standards on a country-by-country basis, with a lot more information than I've seen anywhere else.

Here's that link again.

European Flour Standards

[BakerAunt]

Your bread sounds tasty, Skeptic.

It is time for another blueberry dessert. I have a recipe from an old issue of Bon Appetit (back when they were doing features with recipes for whole meals) for Fresh Blueberry Tart. I decided to try it, using a ¾ recipe of my oil pie crust rather than what looks like a delicious butter shortbread crust. (sigh) The recipe specifies a 10-inch tart pan, but of course what I have are 11-inch and 9 ½ inch, so I used the smaller one. I blind baked the crust, then cooled it.

The filling, with 2 cups of the blueberries mashed, is cooked on the stove top, then mixed with the other 4 cups of fresh blueberries before being put into the tart shell and refrigerated for at least an hour. The ring came off nicely from around the tart, and I was able to slide a very large “cake mover” underneath to get it off the tart pan bottom and onto a platter. It cuts nicely and makes for a nice presentation. I like the fresh flavor of the four cups of uncooked blueberries give it; my husband says he prefers the blueberries cooked, as in a regular pie, but he still ate all of his slice.

[Mike Nolan]

They call them ‘English’ walnuts (Juglans regia) but where are they from?

[See the full post at: Daily Quiz for July 30, 2020]

[BakerAunt]

Indiana did move into some phases (gatherings of 200) more quickly than it should have done, especially given the lack of testing and contact tracing, and the inability to track what is happening in locales with many summer visitors. (Their cases are counted in their home counties, even if they have been here for months.)

I'm amazed that so many people--whatever their ages--are acting like rebellious teenagers. In some cases, people just did not have a clue that we are in this for the long run, and that a vaccine that ends it for good may not even be in the cards.

The story is behind a paywall.

[cwcdesign]

Good luck with your new phone BakerAunt! I’m going to try to muddle through with mine a little longer.

Will and I collaborated on dinner tonight - the arroz con pollo is one of his favorites, but very greasy. He decided he wanted to create a version. So he made Alton Brown’s brown rice, chopped the veges, put them in the grill pan and started to season the chicken tenders (they were still a tiny bit frozen)- then he went for his run. I took the rice out of the oven, put the pan of veges on the grill and when they were done, I grilled the tenders after seasoning them with olive oil, S&P and Penzey’s fajita seasoning. Tossed it all together with some queso Will made earliver in the day. It was really good. It had the comfort food-ness of the restaurant version, but tasted so much fresher.

[BakerAunt]

Mike--I edited my post (and unchecked the keep a reply box) and it disappeared when I tried to submit it. Is it in the spam file?

[BakerAunt]

On Monday, I used my food processor, for the first time since replacing the work bowl, to grate zucchini. Some of it went into the meat loaf I made for dinner, two cups are frozen for future baking, a little bit leftover will go into some kind of frittata, and two cups went into a rift on The Shipyard Galley’s Zucchini Muffins (recipe at KABC--sounds like a TV station!). I meant to bake a half recipe, but accidentally put in the full amount of baking powder and baking soda, so I shifted and baked 12 large “Texas”-sized muffins. I reduced the sugar to 1 cup, and I used ½ cup oil and ½ cup buttermilk. I cut the salt in half and used half whole wheat pastry flour and half KAF AP. I did not add the nuts and I deleted the vanilla. However, I did add ½ cup cinnamon chips, as I have a supply that needs to be used up, and I figure two tsp. per muffin will keep the saturated fat somewhat in check. I sprinkled with some demerara sugar before baking.

I will freeze six of these (baked without paper wrapper). I have some large cupcake liners that I want to use, so I put the other six in those. We will eat these over the next couple of days. I was glad that I was able to fit both large muffin pans onto a shelf in my oven. The ones in the old Bakers Secret pan, with the paper liners, look nicer than the six that baked in the greased with Crisco USA pan. Those peaked up, while the others have a smooth domed top.