I sympathize with you on the pie crust, Mike. In my case, it was those two "not pie pumpkins" that put me behind on preparations. At least you will be able to use the first crust in another way.
This Thanksgiving morning, I baked Stella Parks’ Yeasted Pumpkin Bread as twelve rolls, following her directions, except that I baked them in a 9x9-inch pan rather than in a cast iron 10-inch skillet. Of course, I used my stand mixer, added 3 Tbs. flax meal, used white whole wheat flour (1 1/2 cups and made up the rest of the weight with the bread flour), and added 2 1/2 Tbs. special dried milk. I used grapeseed oil rather than butter. I will take these to the friends’ house where we are invited for dinner tonight. The pumpkin and maple should make a delicious accompaniment to the traditional dinner.
Thanks. Went to Bed, Bath, and Beyond and it took me three people before I found someone who knew what a pie plate was! 🙂 All they had were Pyrex pie plates. I'll start earlier next year.
My pie crusts are blind baked. I followed the aluminum on bottom and top AND low (350) and slow. I chilled the crusted in the pans before baking for an hour. I used 50/50 pastry and bread flour (I don't have AP) with some powdered buttermilk thrown in. I used all butter and my liquid was heavy cream.
I did realize one thing. I can add less liquid if I just dampen the mixture, lightly mix it, then put it onto plastic wrap and wrap it up and "utz it together" as my mom used to say
I still had shrinkage. Oh well... I used one aluminum pie pan and one Pyrex. The aluminum had better results than the Pyrex.
I will try this again (not today) and I will sub out heavy cream for water or vodka (always wanted to try the vodka) and see if that helps. If I still have shrinkage I'll try subbing out some butter for some shortening or margarine.
Pizza's been on my to-do list for a while, I even bought a 5 pound bag of whole milk mozzarella at Sams that I haven't opened yet. Probably not the next few days, we'll be munching on leftovers from Thanksgiving, even though I'm not making a whole turkey. (I could eat the whole bowl of DGBC in a single sitting.)
I roasted two pumpkins, which turned out not to be pie pumpkins. (See details in the "Is there Pumpkin in Your Pumpkin Pie? thread). After throwing it out, I roasted another pumpkin that is a pie pumpkin, and this one I made into puree.
Well, the next pumpkin that I tried to cut into also resisted my knife, so I stopped. I tried another one, and it cut more easily. I think that it smells and looks more like a pie pumpkin, so I am roasting it now. If it caramelizes, then it is a sugar pumpkin. If worst comes to worst, I can pull some frozen puree from the freezer.
This little episode has wasted a huge part of my day. I googled to see if I could find an explanation of how to distinguish between a pie pumpkin and a small jack-o-lantern (or perhaps decorative only pumpkin?), but even the one article that covered outside appearances, after first saying that the pie pumpkins are a darker orange, then said that some varieties of the sugar pumpkins are lighter in color. Aurgh!!
I baked KAF pumpkin pie that has black pepper in it(I've baked this one before) and it was very good.I cheated and used a store bought crust,had too much filling for the deep dish pie crust so I baked 2 custard cups of the filling only 20 min baking for them and the pie took about 45 min looks good no cracking and I'm eating one of the custard cups now and it's hitting the spot with a dollop of whip cream.
Well, the joke (?!) is on me. What the pumpkin producer at the farmers' market sold me back in October are NOT pie pumpkins. They seem to be a small variety of the jack-o-lantern type pumpkin. The first clue was the extremely hard-to-cut through skin. The second was when that skin was still hard after an hour, an hour and a half, and two hours of roasting. The third clue, when I took them out after the two-hour mark, is that the hard shells separated almost completely intact from the puree, which I was able to cut into chunks. There was no caramelization, so these two are definitely not sugar pumpkins.
They won't have much taste. I don't want to use them in baking. I'm not ready to make pumpkin/black bean/tomato soup again, where the pumpkin is just an element without much taste, and what taste it has is not tasty. I have thrown it away.
I have another three small pumpkins. I'm pretty sure one is a sugar pumpkin, so I may go ahead and bake it for my rolls. I'm not sure that I want to deal with the other two today.
I think that these vendors grow the pumpkin as a side project. From talking with them, I gather that the wife does not cook or bake with them. I may have to stick with peanut pumpkins and the blue-green ones and look elsewhere for my pie pumpkins.
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This reply was modified 7 years, 5 months ago by
BakerAunt.
Note: I also could not read the article because of the paywall.
The two sugar pumpkins that I now have roasting were very difficult to cut open for some reason, even with my Kuhn-Rikon sawtooth pumpkin knife if was quite a struggle. I resorted to sticking a butter knife in where I'd started cutting to create a wedge, but it was hard going. At that moment, a can opener and a can of pumpkin looked appealing....
Jack-o-lantern pumpkins make very thin puree, and as Skeptic notes, do not have much taste. My mom used to cook them--even roast them--when she got a good deal at the end of Halloween (free). It's a wonder any of us still like pumpkin.
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This reply was modified 7 years, 5 months ago by BakerAunt.
I use all the big winter squash and pumpkins interchangeably. In the past I've used long necked pumpkin, Long Island Cheese, Boston Marrow, Pink Banana and now I have Red Warty Thing ( I thought the name was a joke but I looked it up and there is a seed company that sells it ). This year the local supermarket had a sale on small pie pumpkins for 50 cents on Halloween, so I got three.
I've been disappointed in some pumpkins which didn't have enough flavor but mostly all of these work well. A check on the Internet showed that pumpkins and squashes are all in the same family and can crossbreed easily.
I was warned that the Jack-O-Lantern pumpkins were bred for color and size and are too watery and tasteless to be good to cook, but all pumpkins are edible.
I wasn't able to read the article because it is behind a pay wall. But I had heard that before. My way of thinking on it is winter squash and pumpkin are pretty much the same thing (depending on variety) so it's all good. I have roasted sugar pumpkins and honestly can't tell the difference once it's made into something, i.e. pie, donuts, muffins, waffles etc. The Libby's always gives me good results and it's so easy to use. Plus it's consistent, I don't have to worry that the moisture content is going to vary as it might with a pumpkin I roast.
The key to making pumpkin pies from scratch is to start with the right pumpkin. I've used sugar (pie) pumpkins for years. The "peanut pumpkin" (origin France) has particularly nice texture, as does the blue/grey Jarrahdale pumpkin (origin in Australia). I like a nice thick, non-stringy puree. Some pumpkin varieties taste better than others. I did not like the white Lumina. The Cinderella had far too much water to make it worth the trouble, given how little puree was produced after extensive draining.
I cut the pumpkin in half vertically (a sawing knife helps) and scoop out the seeds with a grapefruit spoon. I roast the pumpkin in a Calphalon roaster, cut side down, at 325F for at least an hour or until flesh softens. With some varieties, water may accumulate in the pan; just pour it off. I turn the sliced halves over and let them cool briefly--until I can handle them. I scoop out the flesh and make puree in my Cuisinart food processor.
I've done five pumpkins so far, and I have five more to do. I'll be roasting two of the pie pumpkins tomorrow.
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This reply was modified 7 years, 5 months ago by BakerAunt.
Skeptic--buttermilk will separate if heated to a high temperature. You might want to warm it only. However, the separation won't hurt it if it is stirred into the cornmeal-water mixture.
What kind of cornmeal are you using--i.e., what grind? I have made KAF's Asiago bread, which uses polenta. For that recipe, the polenta is cooked first in milk and butter, then allowed to cool to room temperature. (I put it on a plate to cool.) For cornbread, I've found that the fine or medium grinds (Bob's Red Mill) work well. The coarse grind made a flat, denser cornbread, which we did not like. Sometimes I mix the medium and the fine.
For spices, you might want to add some dried parsley. Pepper is good as well. Your idea of dried onion also evokes stuffing for me. Perhaps reduce the egg to just one, and maybe increase the yeast by 1/4 tsp.? Too much egg might make the bread more fragile.
I had November 12 th as a holiday so I baked 3 little pie pumpkins. I bought them on sale on Halloween for 50 cents! I actually bought 4 pumpkins but one started to mold and had to be thrown out. These had a lot of seeds and not so much flesh. I only have 2 pints of rather dry pumpkin puree.
I also made a cornmeal - whole wheat bread flavored with dried rosemary, sage and thyme. I've given the recipe in another posting. The temperature was so cold I felt wonderfully happy to be able to preheat the oven and then bake the bread for nearly an hour and a half. There was no guilt about heating up the kitchen for so long as there would have been in the summer.
I also made a gluten free, vegan apple-walnut maple syrup quick bread the next day. This is the first time I used Bob's Red Mill gluten free flour. Its very white. It seems to behave just like regular white wheat flour and bakes for the same amount of time. I made it for a friend and didn't actually taste it or examine its texture.
On Friday I made the Easy One Bowl No Knead Apple cake from KAF 200th anniversary cookbook. This starts by slicing and cooking two apples with sugar and spices and a little butter. Then making a yeast batter with both white and wheat flour and brown sugar and spices. Place the batter in a 9 inch round, and then carefully placed the cooked apples on top. Let rise ( it says 1 1/2 hours ), I let it rise over night and then bake. This was actually good! Its very strange, I thought it wouldn't rise with the apples weighing down the batter but it does. I also thought the liquid from the cooked apples would wreck the batter but it doesn't. This is amazing.
I also make a cornmeal-whole wheat yeast bread with cheese on Friday, but that is described in detail elsewhere.
I looked for a small (10-12 lb) turkey at the store today, and there were none. Lots of 26-28 pounders, which were hard to find back in the days when we had 30 or so dinner guests.
Dinner tonight was ham steak on the grill, Creamy Cheesy Mashed Potatoes ( a new recipe, which was good, just too much fat, probably won't make it again), garlicky green beans, and cole slaw. Enough leftovers for another meal. So, now we have leftovers for Tuesday and Wednesday dinners, and after Thursdays turkey dinner, we go into turkey sandwich mode 'til we run out of turkey!
At my husband's family reunion in October, we did an early Thanksgiving dinner, and one of his cousins spatchcocked the turkey. Lots of butter seems to have been involved, as well as cheesecloth. It did make a succulent and delicious turkey. (I tried not to think of the saturated fat in it or the mashed potatoes.)
Hm--so they want to make smaller turkeys, even as they are growing larger chickens--with the white striping issue we discussed on this site affecting the chicken breast meat. I seem to recall that smaller turkeys used to be easily available. Perhaps too much Norman Rockwell and Charles Dickens (yes, I know it was a goose) in marketing has led the American public astray.
We are invited to Thanksgiving dinner at the home of friends, and given that we are readying the house for renovation, that is a blessing. Our turkey--12 pounds--will stay in the freezer for Christmas. I'm going to bring Stella Parks' Yeasted Pumpkin Bread made as rolls, so I'll be baking not cooking this year.
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This reply was modified 7 years, 5 months ago by BakerAunt.
