I will certainly report anything interesting, but I've been substituting herbs and spices for years as a workaround for my wife's garlic allergy. I find marjoram is a good herb, it isn't an overpowering flavor and its unfamiliar enough to most people that it adds interest. It's a close cousin of oregano (but milder, imho), and is often paired with it.
I've been experimenting with savory, but in small quantities. (Winter savory is different from summer savory, too.)
I've been using a lot of dill weed with fish, I really like a dill/lemon/butter sauce on a mild fish, like cod or salmon. I have some more exotic spices that I plan to start playing with.
I like nutmeg on meat (and one of the original uses for nutmeg was as a meat preservative), but it can get overpowering and too much nutmeg can cause problems, nutmeg induced hallucinations have been reported. My wife doesn't care for nutmeg as much, so I use it very lightly.
Italian Cook--The yeast does not depend on the salt to make the bread rise, and too much salt can affect yeast negatively. The salt is there in part to control the yeast's rise. A lot of bread recipes strike me as having too much yeast. When I reduce the yeast, I also reduce the salt a bit. However, I have read that salt is important to a bread's structure as well as to its taste, so I proceed cautiously. I suspect that the yeast-salt issue is partly because recipes are designed for the "one-hour" first and second rises. Home bakers have been trained to be impatient.
Tuscan bread does not have salt. I also have a no-salt bread from Bernard Clayton's first edition of his bread book (not in the second) that I used to make for a friend's mother when she would visit her daughter. It did not have the domed rise of a regular bread.
It helps to know that very few of us are going to consume the entire loaf of bread or every roll in a recipe in a single sitting.
In cooking, I have tended to limit salt, even before I met my husband who limits it due to high blood pressure. (Of course, now The Powers That Be are saying that in half the cases of high blood pressure, limiting salt intake makes no difference. Sigh.) Even without limiting it for my husband, I would be limiting salt for me, as it acerbates a facial nerve issue that I have. I like Penzey's Mural Seasoning, which I use on eggs and in my salmon patties. It's a no-go for Mike, however, since it contains garlic. Penzey's Tuscan Seasoning is no-salt, and it is my go-to for pizza topping for me. They also have a Forward seasoning that I need to try that is salt-free. It helps to stay away from most poultry seasoning, which has a lot of salt; instead, I do my own combination of rosemary, sage, thyme, sweet curry (maybe I should check the ingredients on the curry), and fresh parsley.
What we miss most are potato chips! We used to treat ourselves when we were in Indiana by buying "evil potato chips," but we agreed once we moved here permanently to banish them from the pantry. Tortilla chips are an occasional treat, but I buy the brand with the least salt. For snacks, I've been making my own crackers, and that helps for controlling salt, as well as what kind of fat is used.
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This reply was modified 8 years, 4 months ago by
BakerAunt.
My food tastes aren't really 'haute cuisine' either. I think many restaurant foods have too many ingredients in them and aren't properly sauced. (I'm not a big fan of balsamics.)
Restaurants, snacks and prepared foods are probably the biggest things I'll have to cut back on, plus things like sausages and cheeses. Cutting back on restaurants won't be that hard, we don't eat out much because of my wife's garlic allergy anyway. I don't think I use that much salt when cooking (certainly not as much as CIA recipes do), cutting back a little shouldn't be too hard. There's little or no salt in my stocks and soups, for example. Increasing some other herbs and spices will help take the place of salt as a flavoring.
I'm also looking at some variant on the Mediterranean diet, though neither of us like things cooked in/with olive oil and processed olives are high in sodium. But I'll be looking into using more whole grains in my baking.
I honestly think limiting myself to 48 ounces of fluids a day could be a bigger challenge.
Someone asked in a recent thread about new years resolutions. Well, I've been handed several by my cardiologist.
In the past few weeks I've had a battery of heart tests, and I have some arterial blockage, but not enough to require a stent or bypass surgery.
But I have been placed on a low sodium diet (1500 mg/day) and restricted to 48 ounces of fluids a day. So that's going to make some significant changes in my diet. I'm also starting an exercise program.
I thought of you today Aaron while reading a ATK recipe in one of their Holiday Baking magazines (which year by year repeat most of the same recipes, sigh) for a gooey cinnamon bread. As with all ATK articles, the author pontificated at length. He was trying to get a Japanese style bread without ordering the extra high gluten flour of his base recipe. Several points he mentioned: getting more air into the dough gives a higher rise (one reason doing it with machines helps), doing folds helps incorporated more air for a higher rise (something I've never tried), and adding butter toward the end (he suggested cutting up the butter and coating with a Tbs. or so of the flour to help get it incorporated at that late stage). Butter coating the flour will inhibit gluten development. Kid Pizza told me the same about oil; however, it is not that easy to get the oil incorporated at later stages.
I'd be interested in knowing if others have experimented with adding butter or oil later.
Several weeks ago, I experimented with my own recipe for a bread using the King Arthur mixed grains. I baked it again today, only I substituted in some barley flour I wanted to use up for half the whole wheat flour. I again used the Emile Henry long bread baker that KAF is selling, and it makes a stunning loaf of bread. This time, after greasing it, I sprinkled farina (cream of wheat) instead of semolina to prevent sticking, since the semolina tends to burn a bit. My rising times were long since the house is so cold, but I thought a slower rise might be nice, or I could have put it near the wood stove.
It was a cozy day for baking. The lake froze two nights ago, and temperatures are bitterly cold. It started snowing again this evening.
I really almost overdid it this past weekend - baked tons of cookies (honey bars, mint chocolate chip, fudge cookies, thin & lacy oatmeal, molasses, white chocolate w/cranberry, snickerdoodles, lemon coconut snowball, peanut butter), orange-cranberry-dried fruit mini bundt cakes, chex puppy chow, and cranberry bliss bark (candy). I also made Bernard Clayton's Chopped Apple Bread - two loaves of that. The liquid leaked underneath the parchment peper and just stuck to the pans horribly. I literally had to soak the pans for 2 days and then gently scrape off the burnt stuff. Almost ruined my 9x5 pans, don't know what to use next time as I'm afraid of what other pans to use. Alao made a pan of KAF Honey Wheat rolls for the Christmas dinner. I think I am done baking sweet stuff for the next few months. Had to freeze some of the leftover cookies to eat for later in the year.
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This reply was modified 8 years, 4 months ago by
luvpyrpom.
Yesterday I made my first batch of bread dough for pan de mie in the Zo. The cycle was finished after my mom left and it was the nicest dough I’ve made in a long time. I don’t think I took quite enough care putting it in the pan and on the rise - it overflowed just enough to glue the lid to the pan. Then when I baked it the additional time without the lid, I took its temp and it was 181. I made the mistake of cooking an extra 5 minutes instead of 2 so it got up to about 204 (it was supposed to be 190). It then sagged in the middle. Will says it’s still delicious and he’s glad to have Mom’s homedmade bread again.
On Christmas Day I roasted the turkey to go with the broccoli casserole and the stuffing (blue bag) and scalloped potatoes that my mom brought. Now we have leftovers for days!
For Christmas dinner tonight, my husband roasted a turkey. I made the Pepperidge Farm Dressing (blue bag!), mashed potatoes, gravy, and steamed green beans.
Merry Christmas! Here on the lake in northern Indiana, we have a white Christmas, due to four inches of snow that began at 8:40 a.m. yesterday and continued into the evening. My husband, who does the shoveling has decided that a paved rather than a gravel driveway, albeit a short one, is in order. It is in the 20s this afternoon, although the sun is shining brightly. This morning icy slush floated on the lake near shore, but the wind has broken it up--no frozen lake yet. Our local Santa portrayer went by in a canoe with one of his dogs. (When the lake is frozen, he ice skates; other years, he paddleboards.) We are having a quiet holiday with just the two of us and the dog. The three kids called in from California, after we failed to figure out how to set up skype with them. We will try to figure it out by New Year's Day.
This morning, at my husband's request, I made Wholegrain Waffles. We had about 4 inches of snow the past couple of days, so my husband was ready for breakfast when he came in after clearing the walks yet again.
Last night I made a buttermilk pie crust (3/4 of the recipe for a single-crust deep dish pie) and added 2 Tbs. sugar. I also made it with all-butter rather than a combination of butter and Crisco. This morning I baked a French apple pie (has streusel topping) from Bernard Clayton's pie book. It will be the Christmas dessert.
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This reply was modified 8 years, 4 months ago by BakerAunt.
2 cups diced cooked turkey
1 banana sliced
1 orange cut in chunks over banana so juice drips on banana
1/2 c peanuts
1/4 c raisins
1/2 8 oz. can jellied cranberry sauce chilled and diced
1/2 c pineapple-orange yogurt
1/2 c mayonnaise
1 tsp. curry powder or more.
mix 1st 6 ingredients together. mix next 3 together and fold in. Chill
Greetings and Merry Christmas from Orlando Florida, where we are celebrating Christmas with both of our sons, daughter-in-law and granddaughter. It's supposed to be a lovely 75 today, compared to an expected high in the 20's in Lincoln. (We'll be back there all too soon.)
We've spent the last several days at the theme parks, but we're staying away from them on Christmas. Instead, we're going to Star Wars, although the women are getting massages instead.
