I started my chosen recipe today, "Everyday 100% Whole Wheat Sandwich Bread," from Peter Reinhart's Artisan Breads Every Day (pp. 83-85). He says it is a simplified version of a recipe in his Whole Grains Book.
I was surprised that the recipe called for mixing the dry ingredients and putting them into the mixing bowl first, but the ingredients combined easily, and the bowl did not have dough stuck all over it. The vegetable oil (I used canola) is whisked into the egg. I chose the honey option, and I have active rather than instant yeast, so I proofed the yeast in the water to which I added the honey before adding the buttermilk. (The recipe says milk of any kind.) I followed the stand mixer directions and was amazed at how well the dough came together. With my Cuisinart 7-qt mixer, I used the second speed for the low, and the third speed for the medium low. I used speed 5 for the last 20 seconds. The recipe requires three stretch-folds. I did them on a small Silpat mat, dusted with about 1 Tbs. of whole wheat flour, covering the dough with a large, inverted metal bowl between folds. I put it into a 4-qt. lightly oiled dough bucket and stuck it in the refrigerator. I plan to bake it tomorrow. When I last checked, the dough had more than doubled and was at the top.
Today, Friday, is Valentine's Day. I baked a Blueberry Coffee Cake with streusel topping in a red heart-shaped pan that I bought some years ago from King Arthur. I used a doubled recipe from Recipes from the Old Mill (p. 143) that we like. I used three cups of blueberries that we picked in the summer of 2023 that had gotten lost amid the 2024 berries in the freezer. I followed the recipe, other than cutting the salt a bit and adding 2 Tbs. each o milk powder and flax meal. I also used buttermilk. For the topping, I replaced 4 Tbs. melted butter with 1 Tbs plus 3 Tbs. avocado oil, and I used ½ cup pecan meal in place of the 2/3 cup nuts. This pecan meal is of a finer consistency than what King Arthur used to sell, so next time, I would cut it to ¼ cup. My husband was very pleased with this edible valentine.
My other baking project was making the dough for my February 2025 challenge recipe. See the details there!
We had roast beef with (instant) mashed potatoes and gravy.
I don't remember if I tested that recipe back when I was helping to test the recipes for that book. I spent a LOT of time on the baguettes and laminated doughs. I know I tried the pain a l'ancienne several times but never got it to come out like it should. We ate a LOT of baguettes during the testing for that book!
I'm almost out of wheat berries, but I do have some white wheat berries I could grind up and use in that recipe. (I'll be ordering more wheat berries later this spring, probably from Azure Standard.)
I don't think I'll be doing any hands-on baking until next month, though.
I just ran across this article that explains why meat chickens have not been affected much by the bird flu. In a nutshell, their short lifespan makes them less vulnerable to the flu because they are not around for long. I hope this link works.
Broiler Chickens Bird Flu
I mentioned before, I watch a youtube channel from an animal farmer, it's a small family farm, he just raises chickens, eggs, pigs, a small breed of cattle and turkeys for Thanksgiving and sells direct to consumers in a large farmers market. He pasture raises the animals as much as possible (not during winter). He has mobile chicken coops that he moves about the pasture, I think every week or two. The chickens spend the night in the coop but when he opens the door in the morning they rush out of there as fast as possible. They'll stay outside until sunset and then go back in the coop. I think the large commercial egg operations may provide outdoor access to their hens but they might have to explore a bit to find the access door, so most of them just stay put.
I've chosen Peter Reinhart's Artisan Bread Every Day as my cookbook. The recipe is "Everyday 100% Whole Wheat Sandwich Bread" (83--85). I will follow it without making any changes, but I will use the honey rather than the sugar option.
We have discussed dusting off one of the cookbooks on our shelves and trying a new recipe out of it. On this thread, post what cookbook you will use and which recipe (with page numbers) you plan to try, then when you bake or cook it, then report back on the results. The idea is to make your chosen recipe (we don't have to all do the same one) before the end of the challenge month.
Does that sound good to everyone?
We should pick a book and a date and challenge ourselves to bake one, just one! recipe from it! I pick Five-Grain Bread on page 281 in Jeffrey Hamelman's "Bread". I will not make any major changes or substitutions (perhaps add a bit of water or flour if the dough doesn't feel right, or maybe reduce salt, for example of minor change). If anyone wants to join me- great! Or, you pick from a different book. Let's report back to the group next week Friday, Feb 21 - if that works for everyone interested.
Comments? Suggestions? Changes? Let's try this!
We had a small flock of chickens when I was young, they had a hen house and fenced in yard that was probably about 8 x 20 feet total. As one of the younger kids (I had 4 brothers and a sister), I often got elected to go collect eggs. Most days we'd get 2-5 eggs. (I think the most chickens we ever had was 6.)
Climbing inside the cage and digging around in the hen house was messy (chickens create a lot of smelly excrement), but for the most part they tended to lay their eggs inside where there was hay rather than outside in the muck. And when you reached for their eggs, you often got pecked at.
I was not disappointed when we got rid of the chicken coop.
We knew some farmers who just let their chickens roam around the barnyard, they sometimes found eggs in the grass or under bushes but most of the time the hens went back to their roosts to lay their eggs.
I've not visited a commercial 'free range' egg farm, but from what I've been told, the hens may have access to a yard but don't use it a lot.
I like the ceramic skillets (Green Pan) that I bought at either TJ Maxx or the Home Store for eggs. They work well for other foods, too.
The Wall Street Journal has an article on Minnesota's ban on PFAs (eg, teflon) in cooking utensils.
This link should work:
https://www.wsj.com/business/forever-chemicals-fight-heats-up-in-kitchens-71555653?st=PuMrkJ&reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink
I stopped buying Teflon or 'coated' pans some years ago, we still have a few that my wife uses for eggs, I haven't gotten one of the ceramic ones to try it yet, they are PFA-free.
It's good to hear that you are feeling better, Mike, but don't overdo it, as some people boomerang back for a time after feeling better. I hope that your taste buds will recover.
We finished the pecan-crusted pork chops (warm up well in the microwave) and the pasta with spinach and Greek cheese tonight, so I will be cooking tomorrow. We have gotten some snow, perhaps going on two inches and may get more tonight and tomorrow.
I've tried a number of recipes in BBA, never found one that wasn't a good one, though there are several I've not repeated, though not because they didn't work. I like the bagel recipe in the Artisan book better, but still use the baking instructions in BBA. I've probably made the Marbled Rye bread recipe the most, with baguettes/country bread a close second. (I find both recipes work with a variety of shapes, our favorite is still the epis de bles.)
His timing may be off a little some days, but he anticipates that in the front matter, noting that minor variances in flour, moisture level/absorption and ambient temperature/humidity all have their impact on yeast activity. And Peter always says, "The dough will tell you what it needs."
A baking steel kept on the lowest level will be a bit hotter than the ambient air temperature in your oven, and has greater thermal capacity, so putting a cold raw pizza on top of it doesn't cool it down as much. The challenge is to keep the bottom from getting too done before the cheese has properly melted on top. King Arthur recommends 475 for the keto friendly pizza mix and that has been working well for me.
Commercial pizza ovens are usually set at temperatures above what home ovens can do, IMHO the baking steel comes about as close as you can get to commercial baking results. I think the Modernist Pizza books came to pretty much the same conclusion, though I haven't read them.
A couple seasons ago I tried doing some pizzas on my outdoor gas grill, which can get to temperatures of 750 or higher. I haven't tried putting my baking steel in the gas grill yet, though. King Arthur's series on pizzas on the grill recommended pre-cooking the dough, flipping it over, putting the ingredients on the now-baked side and then putting it back on the grill to finish. That was kind of a messy operation, getting a round pizza was challenging.
Jeffrey Steingarten wrote a series of articles on home pizza attempts (for the NY Times, I think) that were quite funny, he literally came close to burning his house down rigging his home oven to try to cook a pizza on the 'self-cleaning' cycle.
A braid is really just like a stromboli - but the dough is rolled out into a rectangle, then the filling put down on the middle third of it, the sides cut into 1" or so slits, and then braided over the filling. I think KAF has (or had) directions a few years ago for how to do that, with photos. You can put whatever you like into the filling. I used a basic chicken salad (with dill, onions and bell peppers), with shredded cheddar added. I also have made it with ham, cheese, and chopped dill pickles. You could put whatever you prefer for a filling and even make it vegetarian. I just use my basic pizza dough -- 3 cups of flour (1 whole wheat) and about a cup of water, a little salt. Sometimes I add herbs/spices into the dough. A good combo is Italian-style deli meats with spinach, olive salad (I think that's what most people call it, a muffaletta mix) and cheese. Now - I'm hungry, although I just ate dinner! - I think a muffaletta braid is going on our menu for next week!
