One summer before we lived here permanently, we had a pump problem that took the plumber the better part of a day. We had two of my husband's graduate students here doing research. I desperately wanted to order pizza, but there was only one very expensive restaurant. I ended up making something, although I don't recall what.
We have one pizza place--Bourbon Street, which is a chain in Indiana. I've not had their pizza. I have had pizza from Papa's, a local Italian restaurant (the expensive one). I've had it once, and it was good, although the occasion--watching fireworks with friends--may have colored that memory. We like my pizza, so it does not matter that we have no place from which we want to order it.
Thanks for the feedback on white whole wheat flour, Aaron. I'll try replacing the KAF AP in my crust next time I make it. The semolina and durum wheat will stay, as will the rye and sourdough.
When we moved here in the 70's, Lincoln was a city with three major pizza chains (Valentino's and Godfather's, both companies started in Nebraska, and Pizza Hut and a small handful of local shops. Now it seems like there are more pizza places than gas stations.
The local paper recently did a 'top 25 pizza places', without mentioning any of the chains and missing at least a half dozen places. Casey's (a convenience store chain) may have more outlets in Lincoln making pizza than anybody else these days, as Godfather's is down to I think just one or two locations. (But Casey's pizza is incredibly greasy, and I don't think their small countertop ovens are hot enough.) Domino's, Papa John's and Little Caesar's have numerous outlets around the city, too. Marco's has 3 places in Omaha but none in Lincoln yet. Fox's Pizza Den opened one store near us, but it didn't survive. (That same storefront also failed as a bakery and is now, I think, a pet grooming place.)
Unfortunately, nearly all of them put garlic in the sauce if not in the crust. We have found a few that we can order pizza with no sauce but double tomato chunks. And my wife can tolerate a LITTLE garlic, so we do order Vals from time to time. Making pizza for two is just too much work.
Thanks Skeptic. I bake scones and pizza too. My family does not want to order pizza from anywhere in town now (we average one pizza place per resident in my town). SO I get it. And I used to buy Whole Foods whole wheat sandwich bread and it was reasonable. My wife is now buying this sprouted stuff that is stupid expensive. I would and do pay that much from one of the local bakeries but a mass produced loaf? Doesn't seem worth it.
BA - I use white whole wheat in my pizza crust. I make about five pounds every two weeks:
2 pounds of water
1.5 pounds KAF cake or Caputo semolina flour
1 pound KAF white whole wheat
1/4 pound Bob's flax meal
1/4 pound Bob's chickpea
~ 1 TBL SAF yeast
~ 1 TBL turbinado sugar
~ 2 tsps. Morton's kosher salt
My family loves this dough and is very resistant to any changes or experiments. Not sure if the proportions are on or not and I do this by feel but it's a start.
We have several 'non-stick' mini-muffin pans; they weren't all that non-stick to begin with and I'm sure some of that coating has worn off over the years. (I've pretty much stopped buying non-stick pans, because when the coating comes off, it probably means we're eating it.)
I need to start experimenting with ways to get mini-muffins to release better, melted butter just isn't working these days. I won't use the sprays, because they leave a residue that builds up on your pans. I tried the pan grease once, it didn't work very well for some reason, maybe I should try it again. A flour/butter paste might be worth trying, too.
With mini-muffins, after they've cooled I just pop them in a zip lock bag and freeze them, my wife likes taking 5 of them in a small sandwich bag, that helps her get through the day without blood sugar spikes or crashes. I've been known to eat them straight out of the freezer, but they defrost in 3-4 minutes or a few seconds in the microwave.
I will often make six large rather than twelve small muffins, particularly if I'm planning to freeze them (less to wrap). I also prefer greasing large muffin pans to small ones. My large ones are nowhere near the size of bakery muffins.
However, I have a lot of muffin/cupcake papers, mostly for standard muffins, and wanted to begin using the supply, and my husband is more likely to snack on a small muffin than a large one. That said, bakeries sell giant muffins that resemble cupcakes and are often loaded with butter and sugar. Those are the ones that I see at the farmers market.
I don't eat much shrimp because I had a bad reaction to some creole shrimp years ago. I can usually get away with a little shrimp if is is mixed in with other sea foods, but things like shrimp cocktail or fried shrimp (both of which I used to love) are out.
It should be back, it got tagged as spam again. I don't know why this only seems to happen to you, it must be something your computer is doing.
I like Akismet (the anti-spam tool nearly all WordPress sites use), but it isn't very informative about what it calls spam.
I've been making Hamelman's semolina bread recipe a lot lately, but semolina is NOT a whole grain product. Triticale might help here, it has the nuttiness you get from durum wheat (not surprising since it is a cross-breed between durum wheat and rye), and so far I didn't notice much bitterness in it, and I'm using whole meal triticale, though the first batch was only 10% triticale. I may try doubling that this week.
Some people do have a genetic sensitivity to bitterness in whole wheat. I think it was Wingboy (?--S. Wirth would know), from the former KAF Baking Circle who had this issue with whole wheat, as well as a lot of beers. I suspect that it is an issue for my husband's cousins, as I've found that they avoid wholegrain bread that I bring in favor of white breads from a bakery. A semolina bread went over very well with them. I've also been able to use half white whole wheat flour in cinnamon rolls without their noticing.
So, if you want to get whole wheat into your children, the white whole wheat flour is a good place to start. I also use some in cookies where I don't want the whole wheat flavor to dominate. It's too bad that Bob's Red Mill ceased offering their "ivory wheat" flour, which was white whole wheat, as it was my favorite. I now have to buy from King Arthur online, which is pricier. White whole wheat flour, medium rye, pumpernickel, espresso powder, and cheese powder are primarily the reason that I renewed my Bakers Rewards membership with King Arthur, even though they carry less these days than interests me, and their prices are higher.
I baked muffins on Monday morning. I started with this recipe for Pear & Walnut Muffins from Stonyfield:
Pear & Walnut Muffins
As you might expect, I made MAJOR changes in the recipe, so much that I can claim it as my own. First, I didn’t want to grind up ½ cup of walnuts in my small food processor. I think the idea was a “walnut flour,” and it might be quite nice, but I’m lazy about cleaning up the food processor after grinding nuts, so I increased the flour by ½ cup and added 1/3 cup chopped walnuts. The recipe purports to be healthy, but it’s only 25% wholegrain as written. I used 1 cup AP flour and 1 cup whole wheat pastry flour. I added 2 Tbs. Bob’s Red Mill milk powder (to increase the calcium) and cut the salt in half. The amount of sugar in the recipe is also high. I cut the brown sugar (used light) in half, from 2/3 cup to 1/3 cup. I used Chobani Greek yogurt, as that is what I have. I deleted the vanilla, partly by accident, but I would not have used 2 tsp. vanilla for a muffin. As it turns out, the muffins don’t need it, but ½ tsp. might be nice. I used an unpeeled Anjou pear, as no type was specified, and that is what the store had. A Bartlett would be nice as well. The original recipe says makes 15 (must be small). I made 12 in a standard muffin pan. I used paper liners but sprayed them with non-stick cooking spray. They are very good plain, warm from the oven.
Muffins are often put on the "naughty" list for nutritional value because they are often loaded with sugar and minimal if any wholegrains. Stonyfield touts this recipe as "low in calories," but as originally written, the recipe, while low in saturated fat, is not particularly healthy.
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This reply was modified 6 years, 2 months ago by
BakerAunt. Reason: changed a word
No baking plans for today, but I'll be doing some more triticale tests later on this week (including pasta) and probably a pie.
The honey wheat recipe I have posted is one my mother-in-law used years ago and it was one of my wife's favorite breads growing up. I adapted it to use oil instead of lard. I've done it with butter, liked it better with the oil. Our younger son, who was on his own time schedule the last few years he lived with us, would make sandwiches with it twice a day.
It is about a 50-50 blend (I vary the proportions from batch to batch), and it has honey in it, so it is on the sweet side. I usually make it free-form but it does well in a loaf pan, too, you just have to be REALLY patient because it'll take 90 minutes or longer to rise, and some days it seems like it'll never get going. Sometimes I'll shove it in the oven with the light on to hurry it up a bit, but I can taste a difference when I do that.
The recipe seems designed to promote King Arthur's white whole wheat flour, which is not often available locally. The Kroger in the larger town where we shop was carrying it but discontinued doing so.
Stand mixers are often on wedding registries, although it is an expensive gift. I bought my stand mixer using gift cards from friends who knew I wanted one, although I also needed to use some of my own money. (I let my husband have the Amazon gift card to use towards a new chain saw, so we are even.) Although a lot of people might receive such a mixer, I wonder how many use it more than occasionally.
Other than the people on this site, I don't have any friends or acquaintances or family members who bake bread, even occasionally.
I wonder what percentage of younger households have a mixer or a food processor? The bread machine trend is past, these days the instant pot is in, though.
No-knead recipes (which I think are somewhat mis-named, they're really 'not-much-kneading' recipes) give people who don't want to spend 10-15 minutes kneading bread a way to make something that probably tastes a bit better than the mass-market factory-produced breads.
BTW, the New York Times had an interesting article on the 'just bread' trend, which King Arthur Flour is part of. There's been an interesting discussion of that on the BBGA forum, but I think any publicity for good breads is a positive thing, whether they're made at home or bought at a local (artisan) bakery.
I can't understand the no-knead trend. I have a recipe(s) which doesn't require much kneading, but even that requires some kneading to prevent dry and wet spots where the flour wasn't well distributed.
