Today I'm making Vienna Bread and a batch-and-a-half of Hot Cross Buns (a total of 48 1.5 ounce rolls, one 16 and four 8's.) I"m putting a cream cheese frosting cross on them.
My newest neighbor will get the 16 rolls one, and I think one of the Vienna Breads, she's got family in town for Easter.
This evening I baked another experimental mixed grains bread in my Emile Henry long baker. The recipe started out as a KAF one with the Harvest Grains Blend and some semolina flour. This time, I used a mixture of bread flour, Harvest Grains (first soaked in buttermilk), and equal parts of whole wheat and dark rye flour, with 2 Tbs. of potato flour and 2 Tbs. of flax meal. Although the dough was wetter than what I usually do, it still baked up nicely, and the aroma brought my husband down from upstairs to see what was in the oven. I'll add a note tomorrow on taste and texture.
Recently I've been using celery seed in a lot of my cooking, I think it would go very well with salmon and couscous. Savory and marjoram also go good together. (And parsley is good on almost everything!)
We had salmon and couscous again, but I wanted a variation from the dill. I was going to use tarragon, but that was a no-go after my husband sniffed it and made a face. Instead, I used Penzey's salt-free Mural Seasoning, which I also use when I make salmon patties. (The Mural Seasoning passed the sniff test with my husband.) It's nice to shake up the usual recipe.
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This reply was modified 8 years, 1 month ago by
BakerAunt.
Today I made Baker Aunt's Orange Marmalade Oatmeal Crunch bars. Thank you for the recipe! Delicious and the perfect consistency; I've struggled to find a granola bar with the right texture, not to hard, not too sweet. I used strawberry preserves that needed to used up, and white chocolate chips. I think they'd be even better with raspberry jam and chocolate chips.
I also made the KAF recipe for Soft Wraps. We used them instead of hot dog buns for our Cheddar Wurst sausages, and it worked well. They are easy to make but a little time consuming. I need to learn to roll the dough even thinner. I also overcooked (dry-fried) some of them. The flavor is still good, but they are too crunchy to wrap around a hot dog.
I baked a new recipe this morning: Havremel Flatbrod (imagine a diagonal line to the right through the o) or Oatmeal Flatbread, from the recipe in Bernard Clayton's Complete Book of Small Breads (Simon and Schuster: 1998), pp. 107-108. He attributes this Norwegian recipe to Norma Wangsness of Decorah, Iowa.
I made the included variation that substitutes in 1 cup of whole wheat flour. I found that I needed an additional 2 Tbs. regular flour in order for the dough to come together. I also gave it a rest of 10 minutes before kneading it. I rolled out the dough as think as I could--the thinnest I've ever managed, but the 8 minute baking time was not enough, so clearly my very thin ones are not as thin as what Bernard and Norma manage. I found that 14-15 minutes is needed so that they will crisp. I did bake them on parchment paper on heavy baking sheets. I rolled each of the six pieces of dough into a rectangle of about 27x33 cm. (metric is SO much easier for cracker measurements!). These are a very slightly sweet, crispy oat-wheat cracker.
I wish that recipes would state if the product is supposed to be crisp. Just saying "golden" does not help, particularly when wheat flour is incorporated.
An unusual direction in this recipe is that the teaspoon of baking soda is dissolved in the 1 1/2 cups of buttermilk, which makes if foamier.
It made a large batch. I may make them again, depending on what we think when we eat our way through them.
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This reply was modified 8 years, 1 month ago by BakerAunt.
I'm gearing up for my pre-Easter Hot Cross Buns baking marathon starting Thursday. This year I think I'll be making at least 2 batches of the Hot Cross Buns from the KAF Whole Grains book, because we have 3 new neighbors, all with several kids, and I think I may try one batch using a gluten-free recipe for some GF people at my wife's office, plus I'll send in some of the whole wheat ones.
Was at a banquet this evening and one of the other guests at our table was talking about a Finnish brown bread she had recently, one that was made with rye flour and molasses. I see several recipes for this on the Internet, she's going to try to get the one she had for me. She said it was sweet, but not like Boston brown bread, which she's also had. She thought it had some seeds in it, I see recipes that have both caraway and fennel in them.
I've been collecting dark rye recipes for a while, I'm going to be trying to make a black bread that doesn't use something like coffee, cocoa or caramel to color the dough dark.
(Note: I had posted this in the wrong thread, so I moved it and two other posts to the current week's thread.)
Great save, Joan! You could have said it is "pull-apart" bread! Seriously, I've seen recipes where you do cut the bread in slices, then pack it into the bread pan.
This morning I baked Orange Marmalade Oatmeal Crunch Bars and threw in a cup of mini-chocolate chips. (Recipe is posted on this site.) These make a kind of granola bar, some of which I'll send in my younger stepson's care package.
I baked a new recipe this evening, Rye Soda Bread, from the KAF baking site. It's unusual in that it uses equal parts of pumpernickel, Irish wholemeal flour and AP KAF flour, as well as the Harvest Grains blend:
https://www.kingarthurflour.com/recipes/rye-soda-bread-recipe
I made two changes. I soaked the Harvest grains in 1 cup of the buttermilk for an hour before adding it and the rest of the liquid ingredients to the dry ones. I also cut the salt from 1 tsp. to 3/4 tsp. I baked it in a 9x4x4 inch pan because I wanted a taller, less wide loaf. It smells wonderful, and I'm looking forward to trying it for breakfast tomorrow. I chose to use currents and to add the optional 2 tsp. caraway.
Addendum: The recipe makes a tasty, crumbly (typical of soda bread), not particularly sweet bread. It will be great for the days leading up to Easter. There is still a bit of crunchiness--probably from the seeds--but I am glad that I soaked the Harvest Grains for an hour in half the buttermilk before I started.
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This reply was modified 8 years, 1 month ago by BakerAunt.
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This reply was modified 8 years, 1 month ago by BakerAunt.
Apropos of this thread, over the weekend I ran across a recent Epicurious article talking about a recipe that is remarkably close to my mother's oatmeal crisps cookie recipe:
Epicurious post
What I found interesting about this article is that the author was trying to improve her grandmother's 'Cowboy Cookie' recipe. Her conclusions: Changing from Crisco to butter adds a nice buttery flavor, but causes the cookies to go flat, something I've known since the 1950's. (My sister always made these cookies with butter. When my younger son tried experimenting with the recipe about 10 years ago, his first thought was to change from Crisco to butter, too. As Jean-Baptiste Alphonse Karr first said in 1849: Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose!)
Otherwise, add more salt and use less leavening.
Do that (and reduce the vanilla) and you wind up with the recipe MY mother always used. (I've experimented with using alternate chocolates, but I usually go back to Nestles Morsels.)
Her other suggestion, let the dough rest for 24-36 hours, is one that would NEVER have worked in our house, we kids (and my mother) ate almost as much raw dough as we baked.
Look at recent winning recipes from the Pillsbury Bake-Off, they all feature shortcuts to actually making dough. (And Pillsbury has IMHO been stacking the contest to favor those types of recipes.)
These days half of my net searches seem to bring up Twitter posts.
Is it any wonder that, according to the Wall Street Journal, Amazon is replacing Google as the primary search tool for products?
Tonight I made boneless center cut pork chops, baked in the oven in a little butter and lemon, with a classic Sauce Robert. (Demi-glace, onions, white wine, dijon mustard)
This is the first time I've tried making Sauce Robert (possibly one of the oldest sauces in the repertoire), I was pleased that my wife liked it.
Our two blueberry bushes arrived today. My husband says that they are trying to come out, so he has potted them and put them in the (heated) garage, which we keep at about 42F, where they will be protected from the cold surge that came in today, and the one that is predicted for after Easter. Once the weather is past the chance of freezing, my husband will plant them out front. He is so excited that he has gone back online and ordered a couple of low-bush ones for the terrace.
Riverside Len--It's always the season for pumpkin pie! My recipe, adapted from my Mom, uses brown sugar.
Today I baked Cinnamon-Apple Bars [the recipe adds with Peanut Butter Glaze] from KAF's Whole Grain Baking, pp. 345-346. I again reduced the light brown sugar from 1 1/3 to 1 1/8 cup, and the salt from 1 1/2 tsp to 1/2 tsp. (I keep thinking the salt amount must be a mistake.) Instead of the spices listed, I used 2 tsp. of Penzey's Apple Spice blend, which was a freebie from Penzey's. I added 1/4 cup chopped pecans and 1 Tbs. flax meal to the batter.
I line the pan with parchment, so that I can lift the cooled bars out and cut them on a board. I had baked this recipe about a month ago, and I noted at the time that the Peanut Butter Glaze was too strong; it was like eating peanut butter fudge--none of the bar flavor came through. This time I used 1 cup of KAF glazing sugar, 1 tsp. vanilla, and 3 Tbs. heavy cream. I spread it over the cooled, uncut bars. It should be set in time for dessert tonight.
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This reply was modified 8 years, 1 month ago by BakerAunt.
Bagels aren't hard to make, though most home bakers will boil them in an alkali solution made with baking soda rather than with cooking lye. (You really do need to wear gloves and use eye protection when using lye. I suspect you have to be careful what kind of pot you use for the lye solution, too, though I've not researched that.)
Several years ago an article in the New York Times suggested taking baking soda and baking it in a hot oven, turning it from sodium bicarbonate to sodium carbonate. That will make a more strongly alkaline solution, though still quite a bit weaker than one made with lye (sodium hydroxide.) I still haven't tried this.
Though I've done it a few times, I don't usually take the time to retard the bagels for 24 hours to develop the classic sour tang of a NY bagel, I can't say anybody's noticed.
I've tried several bagel dough recipes, the one I like best is Peter Reinhart's recipe in his Artisan book. He puts some barley syrup in the dough (and in the boiling water)
Yesterday I made a pumpkin pie. A recipe that uses brown sugar, I seasoned it with Vietnamese and Madagascar cinnamons and vanilla extract and nothing else (I don't care for the other spices that are usually used in pumpkin pie in pumpkin - I like those spices, just not in pumpkin). I haven't had a pumpkin pie in a couple of years. It might be out of season but I'm enjoying it.
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