I started with a semi-coarse sponge and Kosher salt. It was slow going, not so much because of rust but the crud cooked onto the skillet. I remembered that there were some SOS pads (left there in the house when we bought it), so I have now used three of the four, wearing the down to nothingness. It has helped, and I can see the actual skillet, but I am now going to see if there is any oven cleaner around here (we never use the stuff), spray the skillet and put it in a garbage bag for a couple of days, and see if that will get me there faster.
I decided to bake an apple streusel pie, using the "No-Roll Vegetable Oil Pie Crust in the King Arthur 200th Anniversary Cookbook (p. 399). I made the dough, patted it into the pan, put it in the refrigerator, then looked at the baking instructions. I missed where it said in the second paragraph of the headnote that "this type of dough is best baked "blind" or without a filling to make it as crisp and as short as possible." (When I find where I packed the highlighters, this sentence will be highlighted in yellow.)
Uh, oh.
I'm thinking of cooking up the apples, then blind baking the crust, throwing in the apples and putting the topping on, and hoping it will bake properly. The original recipe calls for 15 minutes at 425F, then 375F for 45 minutes. With the apples pre-cooked, I'm thinking that I could bake at 375 for around 30 minutes, or maybe less. I'll have to keep an eye on it.
There is another oil pie crust recipe on p. 399 that is very similar to the first, except that it uses more flour and milk. It seems to suggest that the filling can be baked with the crust.
Any suggestions?
I have a cast iron skillet that came from my husband's parents' home. It sat in a basement and has some rust. There is also a never-used (still has tag) apfelsikver cast iron pan that has just a bit of rust. I've been looking at the internet on the best way to remove the rust and re-season them. The skillet may have stuff burned onto the outside.
The simplest method I've found--and one where I already own the "equipment"--is to use a rag and kosher salt to scour off the rust. Then the skillet gets coated in a neutral oil, inside and out, placed on foil (to keep the oven clean), then heated for an hour (I'd have to look up the temperature again), then allowed to sit overnight in the turned-off oven. One site said to do that twice.
Another method suggest buying a woven chain square (Lehman's has them) and using that to remove the rust. I'd have to buy that.
Has anyone worked with an older cast iron skillet that needed some TLC?
Nothing fancy at this point, just pouring tempered chocolate into silicone molds. Last night's batch also bloomed, I'm not sure why, but I'm re-melting the pieces and will try again this afternoon.
I need to get the tempering process down before I go further. We made 10-15 pound batches in a half sized hotel pan in school, at home I make smaller batches, more like 2-3 pounds at a time.
I've got several molds to make filled chocolates with, and that's mostly what we did at Chocolate School, but that's a 3 step process: Make the shells by filling the molds then dumping out the excess chocolate, filling the shells with some kind of filling (ganache, opera cream, etc) after they set, and then putting a little more chocolate in to form the bottom.
I made my personal sourdough pizza crust on Wednesday.
I also baked my adaptation of Rustic Sourdough (KAF in the Spring 2016 Sift but probably also on their website) I used Irish Wholemeal flour, as I did last time. I was short 2 cups, so I used spelt flour to make up the difference. I increased the dark rye flour to ¾ cups and added 2 Tbs. flax meal and 2 Tbs. special dried milk. As I did last time, I reduced the salt to 1 ¾ tsp. In spite of increasing the amount of dark rye flour, I still had to add ¼ cup KAF AP in addition to the 2 ½ Cups. I slashed it before baking, and I also misted the loaf before putting it in to bake, and then after 5 minutes, and then another 5 minutes. The loaf had great oven spring, but it blew out along one side. I’ve not had such a dramatic blowout in a long time. Possibly it was slightly under proofed when I put it in the oven. It could be that my shaping or my slashing was not good enough. It may be this oven. I also think I should have put the loaf in width-wise (I used a hearth bread pan). This bread will still be a delicious loaf to eat and to use for sandwiches.
We had fish for supper (orange roughy for my wife, salmon for me) with broccoli.
I've been making Christmas chocolates the last two days, I made some dark chocolate ones last night but the chocolate wasn't tempered right and 2/3 of them bloomed too much to use. I made a batch of milk chocolate ones this morning that came out nice and reprocessed the dark chocolate this evening, hopefully I got the tempering right this time.
Just some simple molded pieces: trees, santas, ornaments, teddy bears, snowflakes, stars, etc. We made up an Advent calendar for our granddaughter filled with some of them, and my wife is taking some to her office tomorrow.
We had pizza for Wednesday dinner. I made my sourdough pizza crust, and I topped it with sliced tomatoes (yes, we still have some that have ripened inside), cooked ground turkey, sliced mushrooms, and mozzarella cut into small pieces and sprinkled on top. I also sprinkled it with Penzey's Tuscan Sunset (salt-free blend). I make it in a half-sheet pan.
I baked an Apple Crisp on Tuesday. The recipe comes from Baking Illustrated (2004), p. 290. I made a few changes. I used a combination of Jonathan and Winesap apples instead of Granny Smith and McIntosh. I decided not to peel them. I reduced the topping by about 25%, slightly more for the butter, as I used 3 Tbs., reduced the salt to 1/8 tsp. and used Penzey’s Apple Pie spice (a free sample). I also used whole wheat pastry flour instead of AP flour. I used my pastry cutter, not the food processor, to incorporate the butter, and I used ¼ cup pecan meal in place of ¾ cups nuts, which would have been ground in. Instead of a 9x9 inch pan or a 9-inch deep pie plate, I baked it in a ceramic 8x11 rectangular dish. We had it with some frozen low-fat vanilla yogurt. We enjoyed it tonight and will enjoy it for the next two nights as well.
I made more pecan pie tarts today. I had some filling leftover from Thursday, so I added to that a couple squirts (maybe 2 tablespoons, I guess) of store-brand Karo, 2 good spoonfuls of white sugar, 2 tablespoons of butter, and about 3/4 cup of pecans. My husband says the tarts are good, "sweeter that the first batch." I still plan to use Karo brand syrup from now on.
I made rolls which started out in my bread machine. Because I hadn't used the machine in a while I looked at the manual (Zojirushi) and noticed that if you are using instant yeast you use the "Quick Dough" setting instead of "Basic Dough". This resulted in a shorter proofing time and second rise. The rolls weren't that tasty. Do you think I could have used the "Basic Dough " setting even though I was using instant yeast?
Aside from the fact that I still think many Wolf stoves are ugly, that or Viking would be my first choice if I ever had to replace our 21 year old DCS range. (When we bought it, DCS was just ending its manufacturing relationship with Viking.)
DCS is owned by Fisher & Paykel these days, parts are available but sometimes have to come from New Zealand. My son has a F&P dual wall oven, aside from the fact that it's got several modes I don't understand, it works well. I don't think the 'cold oven start' bread recipes would work in it, though, because it seems to use the upper element during the preheat cycle no matter what mode you use.
SubZero has done a good job keeping parts in stock for our freezer and refrigerator, which is good because the newer models are about 11 inches taller and that'd mean losing the cabinet space above them.
For Friday night’s dinner, I tried a new recipe, “Oprah’s Kale and Farro Soup,” which I got from an email sent by Tasting Table. I tweaked it slightly, in that I cannot find leeks in the grocery store here. I also did not have a 3-inch Parmesan rind to add. I used close to 3 rather than 2 lbs. of butternut squash. I deleted the can of tomatoes because tonight I felt like a non-tomato soup. I didn’t add any salt. It seemed to be missing something, so, taking a hint from a barley-butternut recipe I like, I added 2 tsp. cider vinegar. It made a very chunky soup, but we like chunky soups. It’s the first time we’ve tried farro. It is chewy and mild. We had the soup with a turkey sandwich (our hosts and hostess last night kindly sent some turkey home with us) on a yeasted pumpkin roll.
Here's a link to the recipe:
https://www.tastingtable.com/cook/recipes/oprah-kale-farro-soup-recipe
And in case you are wondering what the heck farro is, I did some googling. I'm not sure that this story explains it, but it is a start:
https://www.npr.org/2013/10/02/227838385/farro-an-ancient-if-complicated-grain-worth-figuring-out
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This reply was modified 7 years, 5 months ago by
BakerAunt.
Well, I started the two thighs in skin down and when I turned them over in 20 minutes I added the turkey tenders. The thighs got done a little before the breast meat, but they needed to rest more anyway. There was enough juice off the turkey in the bottom of the pan to kick the gravy (made with a roux and turkey stock) up a notch.
I think I was the only one who ate any of the dark meat, but that didn't surprise me.
For a change, I got the potatoes cooked enough that they weren't any lumps after I whipped them in the mixer. But I started them about 20 minutes earlier than in past years.
My son in Pittsburgh did duck legs using a sous vide circulator for 18 hours. He said they were incredible.
When I bake pecan pie--which I have not done for years, I use the recipe in Bernard Clayton's pie or pastry cookbook. (I can't check it right now because that is one of the books still packed.) My only change is to use half light and half dark Karo, which is what my mother claimed was the secret to her pecan pies, which I think were the recipe on the back of Karo.
I will only use Karo for corn syrup recipes, just as I will only use C&H or Domino brown sugar. I tried a cheaper brown sugar once, and yuk--too molasses tasting.
Hi Chocomouse. I used Karo and I checked the back and the recipe does call for two TBSPs.
I used a KAF recipe and it calls for a whopping EIGHT TBSPs! I didn't really think about it until I saw the Karo recipe. It has more sugar than KAF. Not sure which is supposed to be worse for you now.
Good thing I only make it once a year. 🙂
Here is the Karo recipe:
1 cup Karo corn syrup
3 eggs
1 cup sugar
2 TBSP butter
1 tsp vanilla
1 1/2 cups (6 ounces) pecans
I unbaked deep dish pie crust
