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[BakerAunt]

I have another recipe from Jan Hedh's book to try: "Lemon Crispbread with Kamut Flour and Olive Oil (pp.146-147). When I saw 50g of yeast, I knew that did not seem right. I re-read the introduction on yeast, and he goes over the several kinds and says that fresh yeast is his favorite. He is a professional baker. I looked through the recipes in the book, and it seems to me that some of them, given the large amount of yeast (50g is about 4 Tbs.) appear to use fresh yeast, while others, like the Barley Crispbread I describe above, appear to use active dry yeast.

I wrote to the book publisher again and received a nice reply:

"Yes, 4 Tbs. would be a lot of active dry yeast, particularly for a crisp bread! I believe your hunch is correct, and that the recipe is assuming you’re using fresh yeast. On page 23, the author mentions he prefers fresh yeast because it yields better results, but that certainly should have been noted in each recipe where it applies. Apologies, again!

I hope the crispbread is delicious—it sounds it!"

If I keep baking from this book, I should be able to help them develop an errata sheet.

[Mike Nolan]

I don't see any working links in your post. Sometimes getting links to work is a bit tricky.

There used to be a vendor at the Sunday farmer's market near us who had a Forno Bravo wood fired pizza oven on a trailer. (Forno Bravo sponsors Peter Reinhart's Pizza Quest blog site.)

But when the market changed locations two seasons ago, he stopped coming.

[Mike Nolan]

Italian meringue isn't hard to make, you make a hot sugar syrup (240 degrees F, though I just wait until it starts to thicken up), pour it slowly into the whipped egg whites, then re-whip a bit longer (they may deflate a bit due to the sugar syrup, but they'll rebound quickly), usually adding some more sugar. Some recipes have you add some corn starch to the sugar syrup, as best I can tell, mostly what it does is tell you when the syrup is sufficiently cooked, since the corn starch will turn clear then.

Be careful not to add too much sugar to the re-whipped egg whites or the meringue will be overly sweet, since there's already sugar in the sugar syrup. And the best part is that since the egg whites are now fully cooked, you can lick the bowl to your heart's content.

Swiss meringue is a bit trickier, though if you've made 7 minute frosting, you've basically already made it.

[aaronatthedoublef]

I had landlords who made their own mascarpone from ricotta. I am sorry I never had them show me how to do it.

I just had a conversation this weekend about freezing mozzarella. I usually buy it 10 pounds at a time in one pound block (loaves?) and keep it in the freezer. I thaw it and use it as we need it. I have yet to find a shredded mozzarella that my wife likes but I've frozen both. The woman checking me out didn't know you could freeze mozzarella which led to a discussion of freezing cheddar (which does not work for me).

[RiversideLen]

I usually buy shredded mozzarella because it's easier (and yes, it does melt!). When I buy it in a chunk, I like to run it through my KA food grinder for pizza, I really like it that way.

[BakerAunt]

I am grateful for Mike's tip that mozzarella can be frozen. I buy one that is made with part skim milk, and cut it into 4 oz. chunks, wrap each in saran, pop into a bag and freeze. That way I always have cheese for pizza (just have to remember to thaw it!). For my pizza, I cut the cheese into small cubes and sprinkle evenly on top.

• This reply was modified 6 years, 3 months ago by BakerAunt.

[Mike Nolan]

My impromptu sour cream raisin pie came out pretty good. The recipe I was using was for a 9" pie and I had enough left over pie dough for an 8" blind baked pie. So I cut the recipe by a third, except for the egg yolk, which I left the same since I wanted 3 egg whites worth of meringue, and the cinnamon, which I doubled. I also substituted nutmeg for ground clove. My wife's only comment on taste was that she thought it could have used more sour cream, which I agreed with. I think she was disappointed I used an Italian meringue, which doesn't weep. (She likes the brown droplets from the weeping, I don't, and I took this as an opportunity to practice making an Italian meringue.)

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[BakerAunt]

For lunch on Monday, I pulled out my recipe for Turkey Wild Rice Soup, which came from a Pillsbury cook booklet (#34), over thirty years ago. The original recipe used ½ cup margarine and half and half. I altered a few years back to unsalted butter and nonfat milk. Today is a further evolution/adaptation of that recipe. I deleted the butter and flour and replaced the 2 cups of nonfat milk with 12 oz. of low-fat (2%) evaporated milk. I used two 6 oz. cans of chicken. (If I waited for leftover chicken or turkey to make this soup, I would wait a long time because there never seems to be any leftovers.)

Results: I prefer roasted chicken or turkey to the canned chicken. The flavor is ok, but I do miss the richness that the butter added. Oddly, the 2 Tbs. of sherry that always gave the 6 cups of broth plus the milk great flavor can hardly be tasted. I’m debating as to whether adding more would help the flavor emerge, or if it’s a matter of the drastic reduction in fat.

[chocomouse]

After searching the net and a number of my cookbooks (including BBA and ABED), I decided to start with KAF's recipe called simply "Bagels". I made only 2 changes: I cut the salt from 2 to 1 teaspoon. And instead of 4 cups of bread flour, I used 2 of bread flour and 2 of AP (all KAF flours). I used barley malt syrup in the dough and in the boiling water bath. I did not use baking soda in the water bath because the recipe didn't call for it. I prefer smaller bagels, so I made 12 instead of 8 bagels, each weighing 81 grams, just slightly less than the 3 ounces Mike uses.

I'm pleased with the texture and the flavor. It's the wrinkly skin I don't like! But I've been looking more closely at photos online of bagels - and see imperfections in a lot of them, that I never noticed before. So, maybe mine are not so bad after all. I've also watched several UTube videos, and maybe I just need to practice.

Next time - I think I will reduce the boiling time to 30-40 seconds per side, as BakerAunt said Cass suggested. And I'll use brown sugar instead of barley malt syrup. And maybe add some baking soda.

• This reply was modified 6 years, 3 months ago by chocomouse.

[Mike Nolan]

Report on Frisian Rye Bread (The Rye Baker, pps 184-186):

I forgot to take a picture of the whole loaf before cutting a slice, but it was made in a 9x5 loaf pan and is about 3 3/4 inches high. The recipe made one loaf that weighed about 1100 grams. It can be sliced fairly thin, a slice is between 40 and 50 grams.

The top is quite dark compared to the interior, so I've provided a shot showing the exterior and both the interior and top:

When it first came out of the oven there were distinct notes of molasses in the bread, though there's no molasses in the recipe, but that faded somewhat overnight.

I did tinker with the recipe a bit, because I have nearly 1200 grams of sour rye starter that was discarded during feedings. So rather than build the first level sponge using fresh rye flour inoculated with a little of the rye sour, I took about 360 grams of the discards and added water to match the amount of flour and water in the formula. It was a little slow to rise (having just come out of the refrigerator), so I added a little more rye sour the next morning and let it sit until the following morning, by which time it was sufficiently active. The second stage sponge seemed to perform as the recipe suggested it should, and the dough was like a very thick batter after 8 minutes of kneading, which was also how I expected it to be.

This recipe starts out in a cold oven, with the temperature turned down 20 minutes after the oven is at the initial temperature setting, so it doesn't use steam. The loaf cooled for 24 hours before it was sliced, per the instructions.

The interior is more moist than I thought it would be, even though the interior temperature was over 205 degrees when I took it out. It might have benefited from another 10-20 minutes in the oven.

There's a very assertive sour flavor to it, which doesn't really go away when the bread is toasted. How much my tinkering with the recipe, using over 360 grams of 'discarded' rye sour, is unclear, I may have to make this recipe a second time at some point.

Toasting it doesn't appreciably change the flavor, but a buttered slice of it (untoasted) paired very well with baked pork-n-beans. I tried spreading some of the cheese dip on a slice, it went well, too.

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[Mike Nolan]

We're having assorted snacks (with cheese dip), reheated pizza, rye bread and baked pork-n-beans.

[BakerAunt]

On Sunday afternoon, I started making yogurt. It will be in the yogurt maker (actually a warmer or incubator) until around 10 p.m.

For dinner, I'm making Salmon and Couscous. I plan to use Penzey's Mural Seasoning as the spice. We will eat in the front room next to the wood stove because my husband needed to glue part of the clawfoot back on one of my antique dining table's legs, so he has it clamped. I was surprised when it came off, as I had not realized that it was glued. Apparently, that was how it was made over a hundred years ago.

[aaronatthedoublef]

Thanks Mike. And I should have known Caputo was unbleached because they sell it at Whole Foods which doesn't sell bleached or bromated flours. Interestingly it is the least expensive flour there even with all the shipping involved. My family's favorite cake - white cake from "The Cake Bible" calls for cake flour. I had it in the house for that and tested it for pizza to try to simulate the lower gluten flours in Italy before I found anything like Caputo. My family liked result. Since then I've added white whole wheat flour for fiber and flax meal (I prefer red to golden) and chickpea flour to increase fiber and protein. Whole Foods sells Caputo oo and an Italian grocery near my doctor sells semolina but my family (who loved it in Italy) has rejected that here. But maybe I'll try it again.

Many of the bakers here prefer shortcuts. They're doing whatever they can to stay alive, especially if they only have retail customers. Still not sure why it's so hard to find real sourdough since once you have the starter going you just have to maintain it but the none of the local bakeries have it.

Most of our bagels are still NY style but I've seen a few Montreal style popup and they are smaller. They tend to be smaller and sweeter but I have not been to Montreal in years and did not go out of my way to note bagels there the last time I did.

I have taken several drug screen tests that asked if I'd eaten poppy seeds in the last week (some screens go back farther). But the last screen I did (four weeks ago) did not ask me any questions about diet or medications which is interesting. There was a plot in "Seinfeld" where Elaine tested positive for heroin because she ate a poppy seed muffin every day.

[Mike Nolan]

According to the web, all Caputo flours are unbleached, and any European flour is unbrominated. I don't think I have a local source for it, but I don't use a lot of cake flour anyway.

Personally, I think I can taste coffee in both bread and chocolate. It's a cheat anyway, that's NOT how Eastern European black breads are colored! They do it the old-fashioned way by slow baking the bread so the Maillard reaction happens on the inside. Adding molasses or barley syrup will also darken breads, and there are some rye bread recipes that call for them.

What bagel recipe did you use? I've been using the one in Reinhart's Artisan book (ABED) because it makes a smaller amount of dough. Bagel dough should be really smooth, Peter calls it satiny. I scale it, rolling it into balls, then let it rest for a few minutes before shaping it. I use the poke a hole in the middle method to shape bagels for two reasons. One is I have fairly big hands. The other is we prefer 3 ounce bagels to the 4.5 ounce ones you get at the deli, and that's just not enough dough to do the wrap around the hand method.

Most recipes tell you to make sure the bagels pass the float test before boiling them, but most of the time by the time I've finished shaping a pan of bagels the first few pass the float test already. I give them a minute or two to rest while I set up the toppings. I boil them for 30-40 seconds per side.

My favorite topping is cheese, I use a four cheese blend of shredded cheese that I get at Sams. My wife likes poppy seeds, with or without sesame seeds, on BOTH sides. (BTW, I've heard that if you eat too many things with poppy seeds on them, it can cause you to fail some drug screening tests for opiates.)

I still haven't tried making sodium carbonate by baking sodium bicarbonate, that's supposed to raise the pH of your poaching liquid from about 8.3 to over 11, and it is safer to use than lye. I usually throw a little honey or barley malt syrup in the poaching liquid along with the baking soda.

We have a number of Middle Eastern ethnic grocery stores and even more Asian ones and one Russian one that I've not been impressed with. I don't recall seeing any flours there.

[aaronatthedoublef]

Mike, the pie bottom looks great! Never though of transferring a pie too. I may have to try a Norpro pan. My Norpro griddle has been a bit of a disappointment.

Around here (central CT) and in Portland/Camden MA where I've talked to bakers coffee is trendy to put into dark rye breads for color. I'm not sure how it affects taste. And for me to really know I would need to taste it blind.

My wife has never liked rye but after giving her some rye without caraway we discovered that the caraway is really what she objected to.

I tend to think I live in a suburban backwater but we can find lots of things in the grocery stores here even if it's more expensive than online. We also have a lot of ethnic groceries - various Asian and eastern European - and rye flours are popular in the German and Polish groceries. And I'd rather support small grocery stores than buy online.

I've made a slight change to my pizza dough. I stopped using cake flour and started using Caputo oo flour. It's pretty fine but there is very little info on the bag. It might be bleached. I'll need to research on the internet. But it's half the price of cake flour.

Chocomouse, congrats on the bagels! They're on my list for this year. Did you put baking soda in the water?

And BA thanks for the tip about boiling to long. Most recipes I've read have you boil them for several minutes per side.

• This reply was modified 6 years, 3 months ago by aaronatthedoublef.