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[Mike Nolan]

It's only 75 grams of butter for the entire recipe, which makes 48 pieces, so its about 1.6 grams of butter per piece, so 3 of them is less than 1 pat of butter. You also might be able to cut the butter back, or substitute another oil.

I think these crackers could be rolled out a bit thinner, they were about 1/2 inch thick after baking. They might not have enough structure to stay together if too thin, though.

We were talking about what else we could do with these crackers. My wife suggested topping them with cheese and putting them in the microwave. I think a little cheese and sausage would go well, and I think it'd stand up to some of the stronger cheeses. Not sure how they'd be as a soup cracker, it'd probably have to be the right kind of soup. Might be interesting in a lentil or split pea soup.

I haven't tried making anything with the new plant butters, they're supposed to work just like butter in baking.

My cholesterol numbers are decent I think my last HDL was around 98, my wife's latest HDL (the good cholesterol) was like 126, her doctor said, "I run 5 miles a day and I can't get mine that high!" Our diet uses a lot of butter and other dairy and red meats. I think it's genetic.

[Mike Nolan]

Report on Buttery Crispbread (Ginsberg pps 193-195):

These are 100% rye crackers, and fairly easy to make, though the recipe makes a lot of them, so I only did a half-recipe, which was one 12x18 sheet of dough. The coarse rye meal that I have might almost be a little too coarse for these, pieces of the meal get stuck in my teeth, as do some of the sesame seeds and caraway that I used.

I wound up with 24 crackers about 1/2 inch thick.

They're pretty good, and versatile. I've had several plain, one with some butter, one with peanut butter and one with pimento cheese on it, and all of the toppings worked well.

Because the rye meal is so coarse, it's hard to tell how the dough is developing. I was a little worried it was under-developed, it seemed pretty gummy for a while, but after it bulk proofed it rolled out easily, so it must have been sufficiently developed by then. (There's not a lot of gluten in rye flour.)

I used a carpenter's straightedge to trim the edges straight, you take the excess dough and roll it back in. I also used the straightedge to cut the dough into rectangles before baking them. This is a handy tool that we used a lot in chocolate school, so I picked up a 12" and a 24" one for home. They're reinforced so they're not likely to bend or warp. I've used them to cut anything that needs to have nice clean lines, including cinnamon roll dough. (These days I cut the dough into strips before rolling it up, a trick I learned a few months back.) Next time I make laminated dough, I'll use it to cut them into strips for schnecken and triangles for croissants.

Next time I make this recipe (or other crackers), I might use a little aluminum foil to tent the edges, they were threatening to get overdone before the center was fully done. After I broke them into squares, I put them back in the cooling oven to dry out a bit more overnight. Today they're pretty dry, and the recipe says they should keep well--if they last that long.

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[BakerAunt]

As I was browsing the Bob's Red Mill site (still sold out of a lot of items), I looked at a blog entry and noted a recipe for Chickpea Crackers:

https://www.bobsredmill.com/recipes/how-to-make/gluten-free-chickpea-flour-crackers

These use the Italian cookie iron, so you would get nice, crisp thin crackers without the strain of rolling them out.

I don't have a pizzella iron, but I do have an electronic Krumkake iron, which I've never used because once I had time, I had to cut butter-laden treats out of my life. I bet that it would work with these. I can't try it right now, as I don't have chickpea flour, but I thought some of the people coming to this site might be interested.

• This topic was modified 6 years, 1 month ago by BakerAunt.

[aaronatthedoublef]

Your bagel look great Choco! I am inspired by you and Mike.

I made Stella Park's 100% whole wheat bread yesterday with white whole wheat. At some point when things become more sane I'll try some red too.

It is a nice, fluffy loaf and is as high as the store bought loaves I buy. Good taste but I think I prefer honey to brown sugar that Ms. Park uses. But I will need to try it a few more times before I start changing things.

I allowed the flour and water to sit for the 2.5 hours before mixing in the second addition of wet and dry ingredients. It was a VERY slack dough - almost batter like - after I mixed it in the food processor. It overflowed the bowl and made a mess. Not sure if I can fix this or if I need to reduce the ingredients. The recipe calls for a 14 cup food processor and for some reason 10 is what sticks in my head for ours. It was much wetter than the KAF loaf which felt so dry I needed in some extra water.

I let the first rise go for 2.5 hours and the dough had firmed up some but it was still pretty wet. I shaped it and put it into a loaf pan and let it rise for almost three hour. The long rises are because our kitchen is cold (Ms. Parks time are base on a 70 degree kitchen and ours started at 66 and rose to 68) and also I was playing with my kids and lost track of time. I think the second rise went a little too long. I had the oven heated a bit above 350 then turned it down when the loaf went in. I let it bake for 25 minutes then tented it for another 15. I should have tented it sooner as the top is a little well done. I had a little oven spring too so that helped.

Now we have to see if my kids eat it. I ordered some bread from whole foods and they substituted cinnamon raisin bread without checking. My oldest has been eating turkey sandwiches on raisin bread after I told him it would be like a Thanksgiving dinner sandwich. He will eat anything! Of course he also ran 14 miles in 45 degree rain yesterday so he's hungry.

Thanks for the pointer to the recipe and for convincing me to use the food processor. I'll try this a couple more times before/if I start making changes.

[Mike Nolan]

Your bagels look great, a bit more baking soda in the water might have given them a little shinier surface, the alkali bath changes the surface starches a bit. (I'm almost out of baking soda, if we buy a new large bag of it I plan to bake some of it into sodium carbonate, which gives a much higher pH, though still well below that of lye.)

I'm making the Buttery Crispbread from the Ginsberg book today, but they're supposed to air dry for 24 hours before you eat them, if I can last that long before sampling them.

[chocomouse]

Today I made bagels, using KAF "Bagels" recipe, but subbing 2 cups of whole wheat for 2 cups of the AP. I used barley malt syrup in the dough. I made 12 bagels, 75 grams each, which is smaller than typical. Len, each finished bagel weighed about 65 grams.

I shaped each one into a smooth ball and let them rest about 10 minutes. Then I poked a hole in the center of each and carefully stretched each one into the bagel shape. I let them rest for 20 minutes.

To make the boiling water bath, I added 1 teaspoon of barley malt syrup and 1 teaspoon of baking soda (not called for in the recipe but I see that many recipes do call for it; not sure I can tell the difference) to the water in my old electric skillet. That is really not deep enough for the job, but I do not have another wide, shallow (4 inches deep is recommended) pan.

I boiled the bagels, 4 at a time, for about 1 minute, then flipped for another 30 seconds or so. They went into a 425* oven for 25 minutes. Next time I think I will try 20 minutes. The outside is crisp and chewy and the interior is a little chewy but soft. I use AP flour instead of a stronger (bread, or high gluten) flour because we do not like them real chewy.

The texture is what we like. The flavor is excellent; we also love whole wheat. The shaping is much better than the first batch I made a couple of months ago.

• This reply was modified 6 years, 1 month ago by chocomouse.
• This reply was modified 6 years, 1 month ago by chocomouse.

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[Mike Nolan]

I posted a note on the Washington Post story about the right way to measure flour, because bread machines work better if the dough is nice and soft. You can deal with stiffer doughs easier manually. As we all learned the hard way, it is really easy to measure out too much flour.

Traffic (ie, page views) is up on the site over the last week or so, but not subscribers. We have picked up a few BBGA members as subscribers, though.

[BakerAunt]

Skeptic--If we all lived closer to each other, there would be some stupendous potlucks!

I put the fennel seed on the pizza in order to give the ground turkey a "sausage" taste. My husband insists that our joint pizzas have meat, and since we gave up salami (sigh), ground turkey it is. I just happened to see the cherry tomatoes when we did a grocery run on Tuesday. They weren't the best (were not sweet, as I like), but they worked amazingly well left whole on top of the pizza, although I had to bake the pizza for nearly 20 rather than the usual 15 minutes, so that they would start to burst. I'm trying to convince my husband that we need at least one cherry tomato plant in our garden.

[BakerAunt]

I don't know if there are any new bread bakers looking at Nebraska Kitchen, but if so, please ask any questions that you may have. We love helping people become comfortable with bread baking. You don't need a bread machine or mixer: bread can be kneaded effectively by hand. All of us started out kneading by hand, and some still do. We also have people who use bread machines (usually just for kneading) and mixers. We would be delighted to share our experience and help you advance your skills.

While there is a lot of knowledge and skill here, we also admit our "oops" moments. You will find information here on how to save your dough when you forget the yeast, let the dough rise too long, realize you haven't added enough flour. And we bake more than bread here, so you can branch out. (See Mike's blog post on bagels!)

[skeptic7]

I did my three bean, gabanzo, Great Northern white, navy bean, soup yesterday. It was a take on a vegetable and fennel bean soup, with celeric instead of the fennel. There was a disproportionate amount of celeric in there. I had bought a really big celeric root, and while I only use half of it, it still was more celeric than onions and carrots and celery combined. The soup was also far too boring in color with the white beans, and white celeric predominating over tomatoes and carrots and parsley. It was solved from total blandness by a little harissa ( Mediterranean hot pepper sauce ) and a sharp Vermont cheddar cheese sandwich. The good news is that celeric is a perfectly acceptable soup vegetable keeping its shape nicely.
I'm going to be eating this soup for ages. Luckily the jar of Harissa sauce is nearly full.

[chocomouse]

Chicken on the grill, green salad, and a new recipe from SmittenKitchen: rice, zucchini (shredded, from the freezer), lots of onion and garlic, and parmesan. It was adapted from a Julia Child recipe, and it still needs some work, in my opinion. Also, the directions were not clear.

[BakerAunt]

It's nice to know that one grocery store chain (in San Antonio) was thinking ahead when government people were not:

https://www.texasmonthly.com/food/heb-prepared-coronavirus-pandemic/?utm_source=nl&utm_brand=ba&utm_mailing=BA_ROTD_032720_Beggs&utm_campaign=aud-dev&utm_medium=email&bxid=5c93032824c17c329bff212e&cndid=44882808&esrc=newsletteroverlay&utm_term=BA_Recipe_Of_The_Day

[chocomouse]

I agree, Len, that people don't measure flour correctly. However, I think the real problem is that bread machine users think they can "set it and forget it". I always use a bread machine to mix and knead my dough, as I have arthritis and can no longer knead; I use the "dough only" setting, and have never baked in a bread machine (and I'm on my third abm). I check my dough frequently when it is mixing and kneading. I no longer even weigh my flour, nor do I measure very accurately, and much of the time I'm not even using a recipe (exceptions to those comments are when I am trying a new recipe). I almost always have to add more flour or water to get the dough to the correct "tackiness". It would probably take a new bread baker a few tries to figure out what a proper dough looks, feels, and acts like to get a nice loaf. Maybe now, in this time of social distancing at home, Grandmas and Moms can bake with their youngsters and pass on some of their skills.

[BakerAunt]

I baked a new recipe on Thursday evening, Blood Orange Yogurt Loaf:

Blood Orange Yogurt Cake.

I made a few changes in that I used 1/3 barley flour. I also used nonfat Greek yogurt, which is what I have on hand. I replaced the ½ cup melted coconut oil with canola oil. I changed the mixing directions in that I mixed in the oil after the vanilla. I’m not sure why some of the cake recipes I’ve seen tell bakers to mix the oil in after the flour is added to the dry ingredients. I find that it incorporates better if added earlier. I baked it in a Nordic Ware loaf pan that has swirls, using the Grease to coat the pan. I baked it on the third rack from the bottom for 45 minutes (tested at 40 minutes).

On Thursday evening, I also mixed the levain for the KAF “Honey Spelt Sourdough.” I use ¼ cup of my sourdough starter, however, rather than 1 Tbs. I also weighed a cup of spelt flour, and it weighs 4.6 oz., not 3.5 oz. (This recipe only works if I do volume measurements; the KAF weights are off.) I’ll bake the bread tomorrow. I chose the recipe after realizing I have spelt on hand.

[RiversideLen]

BakerAunt wrote:

I predict that in a few years, there will be LOTS of used bread machines around.:)

I think sooner than that, BakerAunt. Most of the people I have known who bought bread machines in the past used them once or none. One of the problems, I think, is that many people are unaware how to measure flour correctly so they often use more flour than needed which results in a dense gnarly loaf (I too did that so many years ago) and then they give up. Though, I don't doubt some people will stick with it and become very good bread bakers.