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[BakerAunt]

I agree with Cwcdesign, Aaron: you already have great bread skills. There are also some breads that require less kneading than others, and those do better with hand kneading.

Bread machines are very nice for kneading single loaves. The larger ones can handle almost 5 cups of flour, but I'm careful not to push mine too far. For a single loaf of bread or for sweet rolls or coffee cake, it is actually less cleaning than the stand mixer. If you can get a good used one (where the mixing pan is in good condition), it's a great helper. The brand I got is not even made anymore.

Cwcdesign--be sure to give us a report on how the new bread machine works!

[BakerAunt]

This afternoon, I will be baking Christmas Crispbread (Julknackebrod--imagine umlauts over the a and the o) for the first time. It's a Swedish holiday crispbread. It will give me a chance to try out the new knackebrod rolling pin I bought earlier this month. They will be part of the Christmas Eve light meal with cheese and beef stick from Hickory Farms, as well as pears from Harry and David.

I'll report back on how the Julknackebrod turns out.I'm using Beatrice Ojakangas' recipe from The Great Scandinavian Baking Book.

Addendum: The Julknackebrod is excellent, and the recipe made a lot: 112 crackers. They are tightly stored in Tupperware and are supposed to last well. I followed the recipe except that I used buttermilk rather than regular milk.

• This topic was modified 8 years, 4 months ago by BakerAunt.

[Italiancook]

BakerAunt, when I read your post about not having a family baking student, I immediately thought of the Boys & Girls Club (Big Brothers/Big Sisters). If you want to search for baking/cooking prodigies, you may want to see if there's a Boys and Girls Club in your area, or a nearby city. If they have a kitchen, they may be interested in having you teach the children with their Big Brother or Big Sister. Probably don't have money to pay you, so think volunteer work. You'd probably have to carry your own pans, and maybe the ingredients. But the Club may be willing to pay you for the ingredients.

Another thought that came to mind is The Salvation Army. They have programs for children after school and in the summers. The one I'm familiar with has a full kitchen.

RiversideLen, your Stollen looks beautiful. I'm curious: Is that real powdered sugar or KAF's non-melting powdered sugar? Whichever, it looks scrumptious!

[Mike Nolan]

If space and money weren't a problem (which they always are), I'd look at a 12 quart mixer, but I doubt I'd use it very much, these days a full batch of Double Crusty Bread or Challah is about as much dough as I make at one time.

[Italiancook]

For the first time, I made pizza. Since I didn't have semolina for Mike's dough recipe, I used a KAF recipe, "The Easiest Pizza You'll Ever Make." It made dough for 3 or 4 pizzas, depending on crust thickness. I made 4 for medium-thick crusts. I froze 3 of them and made one 12" pizza (ok, approximately 12").

I used Valerie Bertonelli's (Food Network) Marinara that's in her deep-dish sausage pizza recipe. I put on too much sauce, which made the finished product runny, but not soggy. I added cooked sausage & sautéed mushroom. Probably the oil in the mushrooms added to the runniness. Next time, I'll use fresh, uncooked mushrooms.

I'll buy semolina to try Mike's recipe, because I'd like a better tasting crust. I'm also thinking I'll try the KAF thin crust that BakerAunt likes. I told a 6-year-old niece that I'd teach her how to make pizza when her family comes for a visit. So I'm under pressure to perfect my pizza-making.

[omaria]

Well hello everybody ! Merry Christmas and a happy New Year. I found my old password sheet and here I am. Speculaas molds that I have (besides very old ones) are made by Gene Wilson . http://www.cookiemold.com. I also have the book "Cookie Molds" by Anne L. Watson. When we were still on the Baking circle I made a remark that her speculaas recipe was not very good and low and behold she answered . The molds by Gene are beautiful. I have Sint Nicolaas on the horse. I also have the Dutch boy and girl.. My old molds have windmills, sail boats, and so on. I had pictures on the BC. but do not know where I have them now, The speculaas did keep the shapes nice and sharp.

[navlys]

Well, just to let you know the maple shortbread cookies (thanks to BA) came out great. I sliced and baked them. The cheese crisps with leftover cheddar, smoked gouda, sharp provolone, manchego and parmesan cheeses are also very tasty.

[luvpyrpom]

We had a belated birthday party on Tuesday for my mother. I made baked Korean Chicken wings, roasted broccoli and green beans. And one of the Chinese comfort dishes - sticky rice. It's a one pot dish - using glutenous rice, diced Chinese sausage, and diced BBQ pork. Usually there's diced shitake mushrooms in it too but too many of the kids don't like the mushrooms so I left it out. Tonight we had wonton and noodles, pulled from the freezer. I usually make the wontons ahead of time and freeze them individually.

I also made Swedish Pancakes (recipe from my father) on Monday, with homemade peach syrup and strawberry jam as options to spread on them.

• This reply was modified 8 years, 4 months ago by luvpyrpom.

[BakerAunt]

Aaron--I did not buy a Kitchen Aid because there had been so much negative written about their ability to handle more than a loaf of bread. While I was working, I needed to make at least two at a time, and I really liked doing three and freezing the extra. I bought a 7-quart Cuisinart (ok, I used mostly gift cards from friends when we got married), and it really does a nice job on up to three loaves of bread. I'm still not completely happy with its work on cookie dough, but I don't do a lot of large batches of cookies, so usually I stick with the hand mixer. It did ok with my large batch of sugar cookie dough yesterday.

On the former baking site from KAF, one of our members, pmiker, always baked 5-6 loaves at a time. [He is allergic to oats, so he needs to control what goes into his bread.] After his KA died, he got a Bosch, which, as he put it, chokes on a blueberry smoothie (blender attachment leaked into the motor). He bit the bullet at that point and bought:

https://pleasanthillgrain.com/ankarsrum-swedish-stand-mixer-heavy-duty-kitchen-mixer?_vsrefdom=gpnbr&gclid=EAIaIQobChMI9ILHz-Wb2AIVzbjACh1OsgaxEAAYASAAEgINMPD_BwE

[King Arthur was also selling them before Christmas for the same price.]

There was a learning curve, but Mike was very happy with the mixer for bread.

The downside is that it is expensive. So, maybe hold out for that Hobart!

• This reply was modified 8 years, 4 months ago by BakerAunt.

[aaronatthedoublef]

The other day one of my sons asked us "After saffron what is the most expensive spice?" I answered "if it's considered a spice then vanilla".

Which, of course, was the answer... I've never thought of vanilla as a spice.

BTW, I cannot find the original item where Baker Aunt talked about vanilla in shortbread but I have vanilla in mine. I checked Jamie Oliver's "Cooking with Jamie" which is the closest thing I have to a Scottish cookbook (I bought it at a book store in Scotland) and Mr. Oliver DOES NOT USE vanilla. So maybe I will take it out of mine.

He does use semolina or corn flour.

• This reply was modified 8 years, 4 months ago by aaronatthedoublef.

[aaronatthedoublef]

Thanks Mike. If I ever do get to see a large scale bread factory I will. Hartford Baking Company (HBC) where I made bread did not have a proofing box at the time, probably because there wasn't room. It was a small location that shared space with the retail operations and we spent at least an hour and a half of each shift moving the retail gear out and the bread gear in and then setting the retail back up at the end. They did have a magnificent steam injection oven and an incredible mixer that looked like a huge Bosch style. It would make something like 75 lbs. of bread dough in five minutes. We proofed on sheet pans on bakery racks under cloth covers because that was what space would allow.

I'll try some of the suggestions from BA and ChocoMouse. I even have some vital wheat gluten I've never used and I have a foil baking pan I can use to cover the dough while it's proofing and/or when I put it in the oven.

I hate my KitchenAid for bread. Mostly it's because KitchenAid promised it would work with recipes with 9 cups of flour and it will not handle a bread dough that has more than three cups. My rye bread is too much dough so I mix it by hand. Also, there is something soothing about doing it by hand. But I usually make 3-4 lbs. of dough and that overflows the mixer.

I do not have any more room for appliances which is why I do not have a bread machine or a slow cooker (I would love an InstaPot). A dough machine might actually work better.

So maybe I'll just have to scale back my recipe. Or I have a friend with a 30 quart Hobart who would let me use it. He's offered it to me when his shop buys a new mixer.

Bennisons is fantastic. And seeing the actual Coupe de Monde is extraordinary. Buying doughnuts from the fellow who won it is unbelievable! There is a neat, new bread bakery in Evanston called Hewn. It is walking distance from my brother's house and is on my list the next time I am there.

[RiversideLen]

On Monday I baked a loaf of braided bread, 50% whole wheat. Wednesday I baked a batch of Acorn cookies from a recipe posted here. I also have dried fruit (KAF fruitcake blend and raisins) soaking in rum that I will use in Stollen.

[BakerAunt]

Late Wednesday afternoon, I made the dough for a full recipe of the No Fail Sugar Cookies from the Fancy Flours website. I'll bake the cookies tomorrow.

In the evening, I baked Easy Holiday Eggnog Muffins, from the KAF website.

https://www.kingarthurflour.com/recipes/easy-holiday-eggnog-muffins-recipe

I made some changes by using 1 cup whole wheat pastry flour, 1/2 cup white whole wheat flour, and a cup of Pillsbury unbleached flour. (The pastry flour was deliberate; the white whole wheat was a bit of an accident.) I reduced the sugar in the batter from 3/4 to 1/2 cup, as the topping includes an additional 1/2 cup of sugar. For the crumb topping, I used KAF flour. I used the Loran eggnog flavoring in addition to the 1 1/4 cups eggnog. I've concluded that eggnog by itself does not have a strong enough flavor in baked goods.

I'll add a note to this post tomorrow about how the sugar reduction worked.

Note: The sugar reduction works. The original recipe has 20 Tbs. (60 tsps.) of sugar, or 5 tsps. per muffin for 12 muffins. The reduction has 16 Tbs. or (48 tsps.), for 4 tsps. per muffin. While that is better, perhaps we should just call this recipe a cupcake.

• This reply was modified 8 years, 4 months ago by BakerAunt.
• This reply was modified 8 years, 4 months ago by BakerAunt.
• This reply was modified 8 years, 4 months ago by BakerAunt.

[Mike Nolan]

If you ever get a chance to tour an industrial bread operation (I've done it twice), jump at the chance. It is truly eye-opening to see loaves of bread as far as the eye can see. But what you really want to watch for is how they do quality control. (And they won't generally talk about that much, for good reason, also because it's not very interesting except to another baker.)

A commercial bakery of the size you've worked in (600 loaves/day is a fairly big shop) has access to a few ingredients (types and grades of flour, for example) that we don't really have access to at home, as well as a few pieces of equipment, like a 40 quart mixer, tightly controlled environment proofers and steam injection ovens, but I think a good home baker can do about 95% of what those bakeries can do.

Dough behaves differently in a 40 quart mixer than at home, but mostly that's a matter of limiting over-oxidation of the dough while working it more evenly. Proofing in an 80/80 box (80% humidity at 80 degrees) is a little tricky to match at home, and there's no substitute for that steam lever, but I think I can get close enough that I'd stack some of my best efforts against any bakery in town.

Peter Reinhart talks about the batch of bread that won his prize as being magical, and that magic is something I try to achieve every time I bake, and it really only gets magical once every few weeks.

The bakery I would almost pay to work at for a week is Chad Robertson's Tartine Bakery in San Francisco. His books are delightful to read and his bread is out of this world on an average day and almost a religious experience on a day when the magic happens.

Where the home baker fails is consistency. A commercial bakery HAS to be consistent, because customers demand it, but some days it's just better than others. Our families will eat what we bake for them even if we miss the mark from time to time. (Ï'm not sure my wife even notices when I slightly under-proof or over-proof dough or when the baking is just a tad short or over, though I do.)

I've probably only thrown away loaves of bread around 20 times over the years, and some of those were experimental recipes. My wife will never forget the time I (apparently) put in 4X the salt instead of 1 part salt and 3 part sugar in an Austrian Malt bread. But to be fair, I remember the time she tried to make an angel food cake using powdered sugar instead of cake flour, and we both remember her first attempt to bake me an angel food cake 45 years ago, when neither of us knew that the lower element in the oven in our apartment wasn't working, so essentially she baked it under the broiler.

Of all the books I have on baking bread, Hamelman's book does the best job of translating what happens in a commercial scale bakery into the home.

What has always amazed me about small scale bakeries is the breadth of their daily output, not only do they do dozens of loaves of several types of bread every day but also several dozen types of donuts plus cookies, rolls, brownies, cakes and pies.

When we were first married there were two incredible bakeries in Evanston Illinois, and at least one of them, Bennisons, is still there and still going strong, though under different ownership. Their lead baker is truly a master baker, and he has the Couple du Monde cup in his window to prove it. I'd stage for a week under Jory Downer at the drop of a hat, too, in fact he's the reason I joined the Bread Baker's Guild of America. Just being a member of an organization that has bakers like Jory, and Peter Reinhart and Jeff Hamelman is worth the $85 annual dues to me, though their quarterly newsletter is also worth the annual dues.

[Mike Nolan]

I've got beef stock, chicken stock, brown chicken stock (the bones are roasted first), turkey stock, duck stock, goose stock, veal stock and demi-glace all in the freezer, plus beef shank bones, beef neck bones, beef knuckle bones and veal shank bones for mid-winter stock making. (Nothing heats up the house better when it gets cold and snowy than simmering stock overnight.) Might be a ham bone or two, too.

Most of the stocks are in relatively small containers, a cup or less, so that I can add them to recipes. (Ikea makes some very good containers for this.) But I do have a few 3-4 quart containers of beef and chicken stock, so that I can make soup, which I usually make in 8-10 quart increments.

I've also got frozen soups: Vegetable Beef, French Onion Soup and Chili. There might still be some ham and bean soup left, too, but I think we ate up the last of the chicken noodle soup. (Found out the hard way that chicken and dumpling soup doesn't freeze well, the dumplings just fall apart.)

Tupperware makes an 8 1/2 cup round container that I wish they sold separately, that's just about the perfect size for soup for two for a meal plus a little left over for lunch the next day.