I did some googling, and there have been issues for Subaru related to the electronics draining the battery. Subaru will take it in on a tow truck so that they can run a true test on the system. I would actually prefer a car that did not have such complicated electronics, but no one makes that kind of simple vehicle any more.
In the meantime, I think that a blueberry pie in an oil-buttermilk pie crust, with extra crust crumbs sprinkled on top would hit the spot and cheer us up, so I will head over to the kitchen and pull out a quart of the blueberry pie filling I canned last summer. This time, I will heat the filling and adjust for thickness before filling the parbaked crust. (Parbaking is necessary for an oil crust.) Details will follow.
I think people use more of the mother sauces than they realize.
Thickening a roux with milk (béchamel) is a pretty common practice, to make macaroni and cheese, potatoes au gratin, creamed tuna, etc.
Most of us use tomato sauce frequently, though we may not make it from scratch. It wouldn't be out of line to suggest that ketchup is similar to a tomato sauce these days, though ketchup has an interesting lineage--it actually started out as a fish sauce, tomatoes weren't included until around 1800.
And as I wrote some months ago, using a roux to thicken a stock (velouté) is basically the same process as making gravy.
Hollandaise and mayonnaise are similar, both are an egg and oil suspension (and both can be easily broken.)
Brown sauce (espagnole) is probably the least commonly used mother sauce at home, and not all that common in commercial kitchens, though demi-glace concentrate shows up in many high end restaurants. Demi-glace is a secondary sauce that starts with Espagnole. I've made Sauce Robert a couple of times (demi-glace, mustard, onions and white wine), it's excellent with pork dishes.
We had popovers, Veal Zurich (veal in a white wine cream sauce) and a trifle.
On Sunday, I made Native Grain Pancakes for breakfast—a recipe that uses mostly buckwheat flour, along with some wholegrain cornmeal and AP flour, and of course my favorite—buttermilk!
In the afternoon, I baked Semolina Rye Bread, using my adaptation of the KAF recipe that I baked perhaps a month ago. This time, I added 2 Tbs. special dried milk (to increase the calcium). I also used the water for proofing the yeast to clean out a honey jar before I proofed the yeast, so instead of 1 Tbs. sugar, I added just ¼ tsp. I used the bread machine to do the kneading.
Originally, I was going to make a sandwich rye loaf that I’ve not baked for a while, but we spent the morning dealing with a dead battery in my not yet two year old Subaru. My husband jumped it for me, I went to the store, then he had to come and jump it to get me home. Indeed, he had to go back and get his truck because his car was unable to give the battery enough power. Methinks a talk with the Subaru dealer tomorrow is in order.
Italian Cook: I use a nice silicone brush that I got from King Arthur (and which they do not sell any more) to brush the upper crust of my pizza lightly with olive oil before topping it. I think it helps keep ingredients from sogging the pizza.
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This reply was modified 6 years, 11 months ago by
BakerAunt.
I buy the 33 ounce jar at Sams for under $7, you want ones that haven't been marinated in oil (too greasy) or spices (you don't want the artichoke flavor drowned out.) Our Costco only carries ones marinated in oil.
DO NOT BUY THEM IN CANS, they'll taste tinny! You can find small jars of them, but the cost of the big jar at Sams is a MUCH better buy, even if you throw half of it out!
The jar only lasts 2-3 weeks after it has been opened, so once we open a jar we have to find things to do with them. We put them on salads and use them in recipes. Artichokes stimulate your taste buds, so they make everything taste more flavorful.
My wife is making a batch of pastry cream this evening that will go in a trifle for tomorrow's supper. She's using her mother's recipe since tomorrow is Mother's Day. (Recently we've been using the KAF recipe, although I've been known to make a classic creme patisserie recipe too.)
I have trouble finding $59 worth of stuff I want from KAF these days.
I have the same trouble with Bob's Red Mill, where free shipping is commonplace if not standard on a $59 order, though not for orders that include 25 or 50 pound bags. The Bob's Red Mill site will let you download a $1 off coupon once a month, that may be enough to keep me going in semolina for the next few months. I've still got 2 bags of KAF pastry flour in the freezer, so I'm not in need of their pastry flour.
A local store had KAF AP on sale for $2.99 a bag lately, so I bought a few bags, but now that the sale is over I see they've raised the flour from $3.99 a bag to around $4.29 or about 85 cents/pound. WalMart and Target have the lowest prices for KAF flours locally still under $4 a pound.
Wheat prices have come down lately (see Wheat Prices Charts), they've been fluctuating around $5 a bushel for most of the last year but recently have dropped to around $4.29. I don't know that they'll drop down to the levels we saw in 2016, when wheat dropped below $4 a bushel. But since a bushel of wheat yields about 42 pounds of AP flour that means the farmer's share of the price of flour is about 10 cents/pound.
You may want to get an oven thermometer (if not more than one) that you can monitor from outside the oven to see if you can figure out what's happening. It may be as simple as your oven needs re-calibration because of the new bottom element.
I remember when we were first married we had an apartment with an oven that wasn't working properly, the bottom element worked only intermittently, and the top element would kick into pre-heat cycle to compensate, though we didn't figure that out for a while. My wife was essentially broiling things, which didn't work very well with an angel food cake she tried to make for my birthday and even worse on a turkey.
I made the Oatmeal Chocolate Chip cookies that were KAF's recipe of the year a few years ago, my first time making them. The flavor was fantastic, but I didn't like the texture - they didn't spread at all, and seemed dry. They were brown on the bottoms (bottom element was replaced) but a pale white on top. I have the new element in my oven, but not sure it is working right, although maybe it is just my perception as the old element might have been failing over time, giving me odd results. My hamburger buns and bread, baked on different days, were pale, although I followed the usual recipes. The scones were way over cooked, top, bottom, and middle. Guess I'll just have to keep baking more to figure this out.
Durum wheat is often used for crackers, in part because it can be readily shaped into sheets and doesn't have high elasticity. (It has to do with the ratio between the two gluten proteins, glutenin, which contributes to dough elasticity, and gliadin, which contributes to dough extensibility.)
The main advantage of using a wine over plain water (I often use vermouth or sherry, and have been known to use brandy) is that the alcohol helps dissolve the fond.
An acid should also work better than plain water, if you don't use too much of it that shouldn't flavor your sauce much. I've used white wine vinegar and rice wine vinegar to deglaze a pan and help flavor a sauce One challenge with apple cider vinegar is that sometimes it's labeled 'apple cider flavored' and I don't honestly know what that means, so I don't buy those brands.
If I'm adding chicken or beef stock to my sauce, sometimes I'll use some of it to deglaze the pan.
You probably wouldn't want to use balsamic, in part because of the flavor profile, but also because it tends to be expensive, I've seen bottles of it that cost over $100.
Semolina is made from durum wheat, the difference is in how coarsely ground it is.
In a modern roller mill, the first thing they do when milling wheat is grind off the germ and bran in a series of grooved rollers. What's left is called the middlings and is pretty much all endosperm. The bran and germ is separated out, then the middlings are ground to produce patent flour. (This is a major simplification of the process, leaving out a lot of steps.)
Semolina is made by cracking durum middlings into pieces rather than grinding it to produce durum flour. The semolina can be further processed using steam to produce couscous.
Semolina is a bit more granular, somewhere in between a flour and couscous for size. Because it is more granular, it has a different consistency when turned into dough, it tends to be more extensible and less elastic, which are good properties for a pasta dough but not so much for a bread dough.
For bread, I'd probably use durum, for pasta I'd use semolina.
I came across this short article from Saveur about Sardinian Flatbreads, which has a link to the recipe. I've printed it for myself and plan to try it. Without the toppings, it might be a good snack for me. I'm also wondering if as "chips" it would work with salsa. (I gave up tortilla chips after looking at the saturated fat, sigh.)
https://www.saveur.com/shatteringly-crisp-sardininan-flatbreads
I'm a bit confused as it says semolina (durum) flour. I have separate semolina and durum flours from KAF. Which should I use?
It's so nice when site members get to meet each other! It's even better when they get to bake for one another.
I spent Tuesday morning shelling pecans from our Texas stash. In the afternoon, I made Apple Cinnamon Bars, using my much-adapted recipe from the KAF site. I replaced the 6 Tbs. of butter with 4 ½ Tbs. canola oil and reduced the brown sugar by a third. I used the other half of a jar of apple butter that was in the refrigerator. I replaced the AP flour with ¾ cup white whole wheat and ½ cup barley; I added 1 Tbs. flax meal and 1 tbs. Bob’s Red Mill powdered milk. I cut the cinnamon chips to 45g (scant 1/3 cup). After they cooled, I glazed with my lower-fat adaptation. I always halved the recipe, as it makes too much, but I replaced the water and butter with two “mini-moos” half and half. I used glazing sugar, which I still have from when KAF sold it. The bars are delicious.
After the bars came out, I made my Cherry-Pecan Granola, but I cut the coconut amount from 1 cup to ½ cup, since ¼ cup coconut has 9g saturated fat. I also added 1 Tbs. flax meal.
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This reply was modified 6 years, 12 months ago by BakerAunt.
