Mike--I don't allow the crackers to rise before I bake them. I usually roll them out, brush with avocado oil, cut them, prick each cracker a couple of times, then put them into the oven. With the first two trays, I don't turn on the oven until the second tray is started, so it does sit longer than the rest. I have not noticed any difference. I think that some of the main development comes from the rest period of 5-7 days in the refrigerator. I divide the dough (double recipe) into four pieces, wrap in saran, and park it in the refrigerator. I've baked them earlier than five days, but I think the taste suffers.
I'm going to post my updated oil recipe later today--probably with the original recipe as an alternative.
Aaron--I'm glad to hear that your challah project continues successfully.
BakerAunt, I'm always annoyed with KAF! You probably haven't noticed, but unless you are ordering online (and having the goods shipped to you) that the sales don't apply. Since I live just 10 miles from the store, it would be ridiculous and wasteful, for me and the environment, to have something shipped to me instead of picking it up when I go by the store. And any "savings" would be spent on shipping.
There's a new pepper out that averages 2.693 million Scoville heat units. That's about 1 million more than the Carolina Reaper. (A Ghost pepper is around 1 million Scoville units.)
It's called Pepper X, and was developed by the same breeder that developed the Carolina Reaper.
I accidentally got a spicy chicken sandwich patty in my sandwich at Wendy's a few weeks ago, it may have been their Ghost pepper one. I couldn't finish it and my mouth burned for over an hour. (I thought about taking it back but at that point I don't think I could have eaten anything.)
I just don't understand why people would want to eat these things.
Yes, I roll them out on the parchment, that way when I'm done I just move the whole thing onto a half size sheet pan for baking. You do need a little flour under the dough so it doesn't buckle as it gets thinner, but that's true when you roll stuff out just using the platform.
I use a straightedge tool (like the kind used for painting or wallpapering that are reinforced so they don't bend, see link below) and just press it down firmly into the dough. I start by trimming the edges into a rectangle (the trim gets added to the dough for the next tray), then just work my way across. They aren't quite the same size, but pretty close.
https://www.lowes.com/pd/Warner-12-in-Plastic-Paint-Guide/1000024777
When I took my chocolate course, that's what they were using as a straightedge. So now I have them in two sizes.
Aaron--King Arthur is (was?) running a special where some of its unusual flours were on sale for $4 off the regular price. I had some Bakers Bucks to spend, so I ordered some of those flours yesterday, including another bag of the Italian-style. I'm not sure if the sale is still on for today.
I was irritated with King Arthur, in that they were offering a free spatula yesterday, with a minimum purchase amount. However, I was told that I am not allowed to use a Baker's Bucks coupon and a free spatula code on the same order. I politely declined the spatula, which the rep. said was the better buy, as it normally costs $16, and my BB coupon was for $10. While I would have been happy to pick up another spatula for free, I preferred to use my coupon. I'm considering writing a complaint to King Arthur, as that should have been spelled out in the email.
Aaron, I went back and looked at the challah spreadsheet I posted on Sep. 21st, it doesn't have post-bake weight information (that's something I'm still experimenting with, along with a way to generate nutrition information).
I don't know where you got 16 ounces as the post-bake weight, unless that's something from an earlier post you made as your target weight. I used 24 ounces in part because that's what it was set to from the spreadsheet I used as the starting point for this one.
I wind up weighing my ingredients when I resize a recipe, including eggs.
The USDA says large eggs are supposed to average 2 ounces each in the shell, but they lose weight through evaporation over time. (That's why there's a bigger air cavity in an egg that you've had in the fridge for a couple of weeks.) I get 1.7 ounces of liquid from a large egg or slightly less.
I think even the one at the top right corner of the photo is edible. Some of the first tray got a little darker than I wanted, too. Every day you learn something else about baking.
Measuring the thickness of very thin and soft things like cracker dough can be challenging. You can't just put them in a micrometer. 🙂
Assuming I understand the settings on my sheeter (and that they're accurate), I had it set on 2mm thickness at the end. They're on parchment so that has to be factored out. A sheet of parchment paper is about 1/500 of an inch thick, so that would make them about 1.95 mm thick, or 0.073 inches, which is a bit thicker than 1/16 of an inch but thinner than 3/32.
I can measure the thickness of the baked crackers using my micrometer, they're mostly between 2.8 and 3.8 mm thick.
Here's what the second tray looked like, I did them for a total of 9 minutes at 325 using a convection cycle. I did NOT rotate the pan, you can see that the top part (which was to the left side of the oven) is more well-done than the bottom part, though both appear to be fully baked inside.
So it seems the convection cycle in my oven doesn't even baking temperatures out across the entire baking area as much as I would have liked. That's something I've wondered about but never tried to test.
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This recipe did not call for peeling them, by the time they had cooked for 12 hours the peels were pretty soft and an immersion blender finished the job of disintegrating them.
I also wound up adding around a teaspoon of nutmeg and a teaspoon of allspice to the apple butter, Diane says now it tastes right.
Apple butter is usually made with softer apples than winesap, but I would not use Red Delicious because the peels on those are inedible these days. (And they're not the only over-bred apples with inedible peels, I think Granny Smiths are that way, too.) Golden Delicious is a good cooking apple, but just about any apple that is used for applesauce should work.
I used 5.5 pounds of winesaps and wound up with 7 half-pints of apple butter for the canner.
Here's the recipe I used:
Apple Butter Recipe
And here's the apple scraps jelly recipe that I'll use after processing the rest of the apples, maybe over the weekend.
https://www.thespruceeats.com/apple-scrap-jelly-1327811
I wound up adding a bunch more cinnamon (probably 2 more TB) and another 1/8 tsp of clove to the apple butter, although I liked it, Diane thought it needed more spice. I'm letting the additional spices cook into the apple butter for an hour or two, then I'll start canning it.
Consumer Reports has a report on stand mixers that looks at 39 different models and around two dozen brands, but Anksarsrum isn't one of them Most of them appear to be priced below the KA ones.
You have to buy a login to their site to see the ratings, and I have no idea if the full report was published in the magazine, which we haven't subscribed to for probably 40 years.
If I go ahead with my subscription bread service, I might be looking for a 20 quart spiral mixer that can produce at least 15 pounds of bread dough at a time. I don't think the Anksarsrum and similar mixers can do more than 8-10 pounds of dough at a time (and the videos for a large batch show it climbing up the dough hook), though that'd still be over twice what I can get from my 4.5Q KA.
My elder bonus son arrived for a visit on Sunday morning. After his father picked him up at the airport, they arrived here at 10:30. I put together brunch featuring my adaptation of King Arthur's Butterscotch Apple Sweet Rolls. I had made the filling last year and frozen it, so it was easy to put them together this morning. We had them with scrambled eggs.
Ken Haedrich has a recipe for Yeasted Olive Oil Dough that he uses for flatbread or crispy pizza crust. I modified the recipe, so while I use his suggested variation of half whole wheat flour, I replace the remaining AP flour with King Arthur's Italian-Style flour and add 2 Tbs. semolina flour. In the early summer, I used the crust to make one giant flatbread, which we broke into crackers and ate with soup. On Sunday, I made the dough again, but to control the baking better, I divided the dough in half, and once I had rolled out a half, I brushed it with avocado oil, then cut the piece into 5x5 cm crackers. I also baked each pan at 375F convection, on the second rack up (middle of the oven) for ten minutes, turning halfway through the time. After removing it from the oven, I separated all the crackers, then carefully pushed them off the parchment onto the still hot pan and let them cool there without touching each other. I have not sampled any tonight, but they are crisp and should be thick enough to hold up to being spread with hummus or dipped into it without breaking. I will be making hummus tomorrow and testing them. The taste, I noted, last time I made them, is not assertive, so they should go well with a variety of toppings or dips.
We might get a frost tonight or tomorrow, so I picked a big bowl of tomatoes today, though I didn't pick everything, so if we don't get that frost I might get another picking in a week or two. I also picked the last of the full-sized spaghetti squashes. There are a couple of littler ones that may never get ripe enough to pick. But I got 4 of them that were in the 35-45 ounce range, and that's not a bad return on a $2 packet of seeds.
But I'm already thinking ahead to next year's garden plans. I probably won't grow the Porter tomatoes, and I might cut back a bit on the Fourth of July, putting in more Italian Heirlooms and Amish Paste. If I can get a better source for First Lady tomatoes, I'll put some of them in, but only 1 of 4 plants produced much fruit this year, and what I thought was a 5th one turned out to be an Italian Heirloom, either I made a (fortuitous) mistake with the seeds or with labeling.
I'll probably do spaghetti squash again, not sure I'll do melons or broccoli. I'm thinking I might order some leek plants from Johnny's and put in a couple rows of them.
The Urban Soil Improvement project will send out a different common plant for everyone to grow in 2024, this year it was zucchini. I actually liked those zucchini, so I might do them again if I can find seeds (the variety is dunja). One plant is probably enough for us, though.
I can't say I'm surprised, Cooks Illustrated was going downhill for a long time before they dumped Christopher Kimball, and seems more interested in selling things (including site subscriptions) than providing useful information to cooks these days.
Well, the parsnip-apple-coriander-cumin soup was a disappointment.
Let's start with the recipe. It says it can be made in 35-45 minutes. It took me about 2 hours and I'm not sure the parsnips were cooked enough when I blended them.
I don't think the coriander/cumin spice mixture was really to our taste, others might like it, though.
We tried adding some cinnamon, that helped. Adding some apple cider helped even more. I thought about adding some brown sugar, but sweetness wasn't really what it needed.
I finished my bowl and then finished Diane's bowl, but there's a lot left over. Diane will take some of it to the wine teacher who recommended the recipe later this week. (Monday and Tuesday is fall break at UNL.)
Followup: After sitting in the fridge for a few days, the spices in the soup have mellowed and the parsnip-apple flavor is more prominent. I'd probably want to play with the spice blend a bit (less coriander and probably less cumin) but the soup is something I might actually make again now.
