Len, I'll wait 'til you adjust the seasonings for your sausage before I try making some. But that sounds like a good start.
I have questions for those of you who bake your pizzas at 500*:
1. Thin or thick crust?
2. Lots of toppings, and do you pre-bake the toppings?
3. For how long? Thanks!
When I have baked mine (thick crust, lots of toppings, no pre-bake) at 450* the crust has been overcooked (almost burned), nearly raw in the middle, veggies charred.
Made pizza last night. To echo some comments from Mike and BA - I use parchment. I roll out the dough and place it on parchment on a peel. Then I put sauce and cheese and toppings on and then slide the pizza onto the pizza stone. A cookie sheet or the pack of a sheet pan would work just as well as a peel. I cook the pizza on the parchment on the stone until the crust is set then slide the parchment out and give the pizza a turn.
I understand people who don't like pizza stones and if I only used them when I was making bread or pizza I probably wouldn't use them either. But I leave them in the oven all the time and they help to regulate the heat and keep it constant.
We have a commercial range now and it is hard to disassemble and put back together. It goes up to about 500 and that is what I use to make pizzas. Before this we had a commercial range and it was stupid easy to take off the oven knobs and adjust it to 750-ish (750 is as high as my oven thermometers go) which was unsafe but made great pizza pretty quickly.
I made my own sausage last night. I used a 1.5 tsp of fennel, oregano, garlic, onions, crushed red pepper, and basil. I used 1 tsp of salt into 3/4 lb of ground pork. I could have used more of everything except maybe the salt and the red pepper. I might also add a little cayenne and the Italian sausage at the store adds parsley and thyme. Some of the online recipes say to grind the spices in a food processor which would only make sense if you have a little food processor or are making large quantities of spice mix. Either way my kids liked the sausage so I'll keep experimenting.
I may start making my own sauce and, if I am really ambitious I might try my hand at cheese making. The New England Cheesemaking Supply that Mike pointed out is about an hour or so away so maybe I'll drive up and talk to them.
Sunday was a busy day in the kitchen for me. I baked Christmas Crispbread, the same recipe from Beatrice Ojakangas' The Great Scandinavian Baking Book that I baked on Christmas Eve, but this time, I used 1 cup buttermilk and 1/2 cup of half and half that I need to use up. (The original recipe calls for 1 1/2 cup milk.) We are finishing up the first batch, which have kept very well for three weeks. My husband requested these for our Florida trip.
I also baked a new recipe, "Lemon Walnut [Pecan] Biscotti, from Bon Appetit (April 2005), p 119. The original recipe calls for walnuts, but I have a bounty of pecans to use. I will post an addendum tomorrow after I have a chance to sample them.
I made the dough for a single batch of my Whole Wheat Sourdough Cheese Crackers, which I will bake later this week. I want them for our trip, and I wanted to feed the sourdough starter.
Addendum: The Lemon-Pecan Biscotti are delicious. I think that I did not put in quite enough lemon zest, but there is still a nice lemon flavor with the 3 cups of chopped pecans. It also had an egg glaze and was sprinkled with sugar in the raw, which gives a nice crunch.
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This reply was modified 8 years, 3 months ago by
BakerAunt.
Lunch for me today was a turkey sandwich made with the no-salt Challah and some of the turkey breast tender that I roasted yesterday. I am hoping to find some ways to infuse some additional flavor into the turkey without adding salt.
Supper was pain perdue (French Toast), also made with the no-salt Challah.
I made my second pizza today. First time, I used a sauce recipe from a cooking site and didn't like it. Today, I used my homemade tomato sauce, made just a tad bit thicker than I'd normally make it. The problem with both pizzas is that the sauce was too runny for the pizza. Next time, I'm going to do what BakerAunt does and smear tomato paste on it. The crust today seemed a little wet, which I assume was from the green peppers, onions and mushrooms. Next time, I'll slice the mushrooms thinner.
The crust I used was KAF "The Easiest Pizza Crust You'll Ever Make." I made it without the optional Pizza Dough Flavor. I think that was a mistake.
The crust was not crisp enough to suit us, but I don't have or want a pizza stone. Recipe instructions say to cook it on the pan if you don't have a stone. Both times, I've used parchment in the pan for easy cleanup. Next time, I'm putting the pizza directly on the pan to see what will happen. I'm going to try one more pizza with this recipe (I have 2 rounds of dough in the freezer). Then I'm going to try the crust BakerAunt uses, unless it has ingredients I shouldn't eat.
Bottom Line: I do not yet feel like a good pizza-maker, and if I don't come up with a better pizza after 4 tries, I'm giving up on them.
BakerAunt (or anyone else), In your recipe post you wrote that the bran muffin recipe was from the wheat germ jar but the recipe calls for wheat bran. I thought those were different. Are they the same thing? Or are they interchangeable? Also I'd like to make these with spelt flour. Should I make any adjustments to the other ingredients? Thanks.
I have made the Vienna bread but from a different recipe. As I recall (I don't keep good records like BakerAunt!), there were no problems with it. Fortunately for me, my family will eat most anything I bake.
I also checked a recipe I have for Dutch Crunch topping and it is almost identical to the one used by luvpyrpom.
Italiancook--I don't heat the buttermilk (it separates if you do), and I have not had any problems. It will get warmed up enough from the mixer or the bread machine. I do use active yeast, so if a recipe calls for all milk, I use 1/4 of the liquid as water to proof the yeast and use buttermilk for the rest. (I use active dry yeast, and I'm always more comfortable seeing it foam.) I do not primarily taste the buttermilk.
Very Easy whole wheat focaccio or pizza crust
This has been adapted from Yeasted Olive Oil Pastry from New York Times.
1/2 teaspoon active dry yeast ( 1/4 teaspoon in the summer )
1/2 cup lukewarm water
1 large egg, at room temperature, beaten
1/4 cup oil
2 cups whole wheat flour sift before measuring, separated
1 tablespoon potato flour optional
1/2 teaspoon salt
Note: more water or flour might be needed
1. Dissolve the yeast in the water, and allow to sit. Mix in about 1 cup flour or less to form a thick batter ( thicker than a pancake batter but still stirrable with a spoon ). Let it sit in a warm place until spongy and full of holes. This is called a sponge or a preferment. The water and yeast provides a medium for the yeast to grow.
2. Mix the salt and the potato flour into the rest of the whole wheat flour. Beat the oil and egg into the sponge. Mix in the salt and flour mixture until the flour is just combined. Let the dough sit for 15 -30 minutes. This is the autolyse step where the flour absorbs the water. The potato flour is particularly good at absorbing water
3. Knead the dough gently until the flour is completely mixed in. Add a little water if necessary. If the dough is very wet add just a little more flour. Put the dough back in the bowl and let it rise till double.
4. Oil a 10 inch cast iron frying pan or a 9 inch cake pan. Pat the dough into the pan and let sit for 10 minutes or so. This is the bench rest step, waiting here lets the dough relax and be more manageable. Now press the dough flat until it fits the bottom of the pan. If you are planning on a pizza push the edges up the side like for a pie crust. If you want a focaccio you can let the dough stay in a more rounded shape. If you want sprinkle dry or fresh rosemary on top and press down lightly. If you are using fresh rosemary be generous, the herb will shrink during cooking.
5. Cover and let rise again till double. I like medium and thick crust pizza, if you want a thinner one don't let the dough rise so much before baking.
6. Preheat the oven to 350 or 400 degrees. Put some pizza toppings on the dough and bake till done about 15-20 minutes at 350 degrees. If you are not making a pizza, bake at 400 degrees for 15 minutes or until done
The original recipe was made by Martha Rose Shulman can be reached at martha-rose-shulman.com.
June 22, 2009
Note: I mix the dough and let it rise in a metal mixing bowl. I provide a covered environment for the dough to rise by putting the whole thing in a medium size tupperware cake container with the cover on, and water in the bottom of the cake container. I do the final rise in a plastic underbed storage container with a jar of water to add moisture.
BA, I know of Ginsberg's book, but it is not one I currently have. I don't currently maintain any starters because the sourness of most sourdough breads is something my wife can't tolerate. Oddly enough, when we're in San Francisco, where our younger son lives, she has no trouble with sourdough bread there.
One of these days I may try the Chad Robertson (Tartine Bakery) method for producing a less 'mature' sourdough starter, to see if my wife could handle it. But it's kind of an intense process and there are a lot of steps where you have to throw away as much as 95% of your starter, and I hate throwing usable food away.
That's how I make oat flour from rolled oats, the longer you process it in the food processor the finer it is ground up.
There are a number of King Arthur Flour recipes that utilize products that they sell on their website, the Whole Grain Bread Improver is one of those products. Hopefully the Vital Wheat Gluten and a little vinegar will have a similar effect.
Diastatic Barley Malt is often added to wheat flour at the mill. (Look on the label, you may see 'barley flour' or DBM listed.) It contains enzymes that help break down the starch in the flour into simple sugars that yeast can digest. Yeast contains similar enzymes, but adding the DBM gives the yeast a bit of assistance.
You may also see sources for non-diastatic barley malt. In this case, the barley has been heated to disable those enzymes. NDBM is basically a flavoring ingredient, it adds a nutty taste and a bit of sweetness to the dough. Adding barley syrup accomplishes pretty much the same thing.
'Malting' refers to sprouting a seed before grinding it up. When a seed sprouts, it becomes a chemical factory, manufacturing a number of compounds, including several enzymes, that aren't present in the seed if it is just ground up into flour. So you will sometimes see malted barley flour or malted wheat flour in the grocery store, there are a number of interesting recipes that call for malted wheat flour.
Also, I have seen recipes using oat flour. Can I make that by running rolled oats through the food processor until it is the consistency of flour? BakerAunt I am also trying to branch out to other whole grains. I have a few recipes that I make with spelt flour (cake and muffins) and will try a spelt bread recipe soon. I like the taste of whole wheat flour but also like variety.
Mike--Have you looked at Stanley Ginsberg's The Rye Baker? I bought it this fall but have not yet gotten around to baking from it, in part because most of the recipes require a rye starter, and my husband is not that fond of rye bread. Also, sometimes it calls for more specialized ingredients than I can find easily. I have marked the Salty Rye Rolls as the one that I will attempt first because it does not require a rye starter and I have all the ingredients.
Baking for someone, like the professor from Germany, who knows good bread, should be a pleasure. We are getting ready to go on vacation to Florida for two weeks, and because I have become such a bread snob, I'm wondering what I'm going to eat after I run out of the baked goods I'm taking with us. 😮 I've been told that Publix grocery stores have pretty good bread. My husband and I will also make a trip to the National Bakery in Tarpon Springs, since he is very fond of their Greek cookies. (Those of you who were on the old KAF Baking site may recall my attempt to replicate them. I think that the thread is posted here.) We will try their bread also.
Here are three of my favorite recipes from the Whole Grains book: Pretzels, Scottish Shortbread and Hot Cross Buns. (I tried a number of hot cross buns recipes, these are the best I found.)
I'm still exploring the KAF Whole Grain Baking book. I have repeatedly baked their Soft Barley cookies and their Dark and Dangerous Cinnamon Rolls--which are all whole wheat--as well as their Lemon Barley Scones and their Vanilla Pound Cake. Many of their recipes will use some AP or bread flour, but that is ok with me, as I do not need to banish white wheat flour from my diet. I also liked the Hazelnut Waffles I made on Sunday--once I found out what the missing liquid ingredient and its amount should be. The Lemon-Oat Squares were also very good. There are other recipes that I have marked favorably as well. Of course the Peach and Ginger Turnovers I tried baking this summer reduced me to tears, and I have a note that suggests the Gingered Oatmeal Muffins (p. 40) did not come out correctly (I vaguely recall disappointment), but most cookbooks will have some recipes that do not come out well for whatever reason. There are also some recipes that I read and am not excited to try, so I pass them over. On my "To Bake" list right now is the Cinnamon Spiral Bread (pp.252-254) and the Golden Raisin Hearth Bread (233-234).
Now that I'm retired, I have more time to experiment with new recipes. When I was working, I often needed a recipe where I knew how it would turn out because I did not have time to bake something else in its place.
