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Tonight I made the KAF Ultra-Thin Crust Pizza, with each of us topping our pizza as desired. For me, that means tomato paste (the kind that comes in a tube), cooked ground turkey, garlic powder, Penzey's Tuscan Sunset, fennel seed, sliced mushrooms, chopped red bell pepper, halved black olives, sliced green onion, mozzarella, and Parmesan. My husband omits the spices, the black olives, and the Parmesan.
I got a good deal at T.J. Maxx (before we moved here) on some bags of Pereg "soup mix," which means simply that it's a mixture of all kinds of beans and some barley. I soaked it overnight, then rinsed and cooked the beans this morning with some chopped onion sautéed in bacon grease. After the beans were soft, I added sliced carrots, some Penzey's dried garlic (I'm out of fresh), a small can of tomatoes, some leftover mixed rice, and 3 tsp. of Penzey's Ozark seasoning. I'll have some for lunches this week, but I will also freeze some servings for later.
I began the week by making Mostly Whole Grain Waffles (wheat germ, whole wheat flour, cornmeal, buckwheat flour, and AP flour). I make Belgian Waffles, and I have four squares left over for the freezer and toaster breakfasts.
Topic: Oatmeal Flatbread–Again
Back near the end of March, I reported trying a recipe, Havremel Flatbrod (Oatmeal Flatbread) from Bernard Clayton, Jr.'s Complete Book of Small Breads. I was disappointed in them, as they were chewy, even though I baked them for nearly twice as long as the recipe specified. I was not planning to bake this recipe again, but my husband gobbled them up. He LIKED them, and he has been asking for them again. I decided to give it another try and see if I could get a more cracker-like result.
I again used the given variation where 1 cup of whole wheat flour is substituted for 1 cup of the AP flour. This time I used Gold Medal rather than the King Arthur AP. I did not dissolve the baking soda in the buttermilk; there was no reason given, and other recipes of this type do not do so. I mixed it in with the flour, and I also added the salt to the flour, rather than adding it to the melted butter with the 2 Tbs. sugar.
I used my Danish dough whisk to mix in the flour and buttermilk, alternating between the two, as stated, then stirred in the oats. I then used the flat beater to "knead" it for three minutes, on speed 2, adding a bit of pastry flour as it seemed slightly sticky.
In the course of rolling out each of the six pieces of dough, I made some discoveries. First of all, I used my heavy maple rolling pin. That dough did not have a choice but to roll out more thinly than last time! 🙂 I rolled each to a 33 x 39 cm. rectangle. (I find it a lot easier to cut even crackers if I use metric rather than English measurements.) Initially I rolled the dough on parchment with saran over the top, but the parchment kept buckling up under the dough and snagging it, so I decided to try rolling it on my silicone mat. That worked very well, along with picking up the dough every now and again and re-positioning it. I wondered if I could do without the parchment paper when baking the crackers. It turns out that I can. I flipped the dough over onto the saran, then carefully peeled off the silicone mat. I then turned the dough onto a baking sheet, and used my plastic pizza cutter to cut it into 3cm x 3cm squares.
I found that they needed 10 minutes to bake.
They still are not crisp, but I do like the thinner cracker I got this time. It was certainly a workout, rolling them out.
The recipe calls for rolling them on a pastry cloth with a rolling pin with a pastry sleeve. I don't know if that would let me get them yet thinner. I don't own either of those. The crackers are supposed to be rolled paper thin, but I'm not sure that I could handle a thinner dough than what I managed this time.
I've got a Zojirushi rice maker that I probably paid $50 for, but that was many years ago. It has a simple on/off switch. I've used it to make pudding a few times, but for the most part it just gets used for rice. The rice sticks a bit, but it soaks clean fairly easily.
We have a slow cooker that a griddle surface that you set the 5-6 quart pan on. We've never used the griddle separately.
Speaking of complex gadgets, our 48" dual fuel range has 4 gas burners plus a grill and a griddle, though we seldom use either of them. Both ovens get used frequently though. We also have as separate 4 burner electric cooktop and an induction cooker. (There's also a 2 burner electric cooktop in the downstairs kitchenette, but I don't recall the last time we used it.)
Both the kitchen and the kitchenette have warming drawers, which we've probably used less than a dozen times combined in 20 years.
There are 2 microwave ovens in the kitchen and another one downstairs, all 3 get used regularly.
And the instant hot water taps (one in the kitchen and another downatairs) both get used a lot.
Let's morph this thread into a discussion of specialty appliances.
I've never owned or used a pressure cooker. For people with large families or very busy schedules, I can see that it would be a timesaver. Anyone who does low-acid food canning must have one. The canning I do is jams and pie filling (acidic), so I have not had a need for a pressure cooker. I did buy the Ball electric water kettle that I use for canning those. (And, I did buy that Ball jam maker--the one that does the stirring--which saves my arm and is great for small batches of four or five jars.)
I have an old 3 1/2-quart crock pot, but I don't use it that much, as I prefer to do roasts in the oven, and it is too small for most soups. I just make them on the stove when I know that I will be home for a longer period of time while they simmer. Most crock pots have hot spots, and the food does not cook evenly or sticks.
Yogurt makers are not built for the long haul, so if used frequently (every week or two), the wiring starts to fail, and some of the individual containers do not get warm enough. I wore out two yogurt makers, as the wiring tends to stop working around individual cups--something that has frustrated my sister who makes yogurt now as frequently as I once did (weekly or every two weeks) for perhaps three years or so. I do have a new individual cup one (from Tuesday Morning) that I will probably start using here (once it gets unpacked!) because I cannot get plain yogurt easily (much of it has fruit or at least vanilla in it, and that means added sugar), and the store that carries Stonyfield, my brand of choice, is in the larger town where we do shopping runs every three weeks or so. I have a yogurt maker that makes a large 1-quart batch, but I'm not sure that it works anymore, and the yogurt does not keep as well as the quart of yogurt I buy in a container.
I find that I cannot get along without my rice maker, but I've written in another thread about the frustration of the non-stick pot getting scratched--and that replacing it would cost as much, if not more, than buying another. (I've started using a "spoonula rather than the plastic paddle that comes ith it, as I think that helped scratch it when dislodging stuck rice.) The simple rice cookers also tend to have the rice stick a bit on the bottom, and I find that I need to pull the container out immediately once the cooker switches from cook to "keep warm." I'm hesitant to spend a lot for an upscale rice maker that only makes rice. I've noted that when I search on store sites for rice maker, more often than not, the Instant Pot or Multi-Cooker comes up.
My sister's idea is that the Instant Pot will allow her to consolidate most of these appliances into just the one. I'm skeptical that one pot can truly "rule them all," and anything electronic has the potential for failure, and the more complicated the machine, the more probable that a glitch will occur, especially if used frequently.
