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[Mike Nolan]

Tonight was dine out to help out (the food bank), so we did takeout.

[BakerAunt]

I had a day of baking on Wednesday. I am thankful that my husband helped me with the dishes. I baked my Rustic Wholegrain Sourdough Bread (made the levain last night), using the cloche top and the Rommerhof bowl. I did three shapings of the loaf, with 5 minutes between each time. Next time, I will do just two, as the dough becomes harder to form into a nice-looking round after the second time. The bread still baked well, and I look forward to slicing it tomorrow.

My second project was the wholegrain Pumpkin Snacking Cake, using a cup of peanut pumpkin that I had frozen last year. I am mindful that I need to make room in the freezer for this year's pumpkin bounty. The vendors have gotten to know me and have promised to save back a peanut pumpkin for me when they are ready.

My final bake on Wednesday was a recipe for Applesauce Muffins, from a Los Angeles Times Magazine piece featuring three muffin recipes from the 1990s titled "Muffins are Back." I recall at the time thinking that I had not known that muffins had ever gone away. I had cut out the page with the recipes and found it a while back as I was sorting some of my stacks of recipes. I had some commercial applesauce to finish in the refrigerator, so today was a good time to try at least one of the recipes, and the oven was already warm. I made some adjustments in that I used white whole wheat flour instead of AP, added some milk powder and flax meal, and added a bit of water as I did not have enough applesauce. I replaced the dried apricots and raisins with some dried fruit mix from King Arthur that I wanted to finish, and I microwaved the fruit with water to liven it up. I baked the recipe as six large muffins and will probably freeze a couple for quick breakfasts.

[Mike Nolan]

I am making Jeffrey Hamelman's Vermont Sourdough Bread (version 1, with some rye flour) tonight. They'll be in the oven soon. The levain was very active, the final dough not as much, so I'm giving it a little extra time in final proof.

[RiversideLen]

With the cooler temps today and the next few days, I thought it would be a good time to catch up on pizza. So I made enough pizza dough for the next several days. I used equal amounts of rye, semolina, AP and white whole wheat, hydrated at 70% plus (I started it at 70% non fat milk and added a little water during the kneading process to get the right consistency). Plus a tsp of sugar, 1/4 tsp of salt and 1/2 tsp of yeast. The total weight of the flour was 360 grams, the weight of the finished dough is 650 grams.

I used my last sandwich bun for lunch so I am also making a new batch of buns.

[RiversideLen]

I made brownies from a box mix. I added all the ingredients the box called for (egg, a little water and oil) but also added a half cup of oats, milk and dried fruit. Also made a chocolate frosting for it (a cup of powdered sugar, 3 rounded tablespoons of cocoa powder (Hersey's Dark), a small pat of butter, a splash of vanilla and enough milk to get the right consistency. I used my new mini candy apple mixer for this and it all came out real fine. Real happy with it so far.

[Mike Nolan]

I don't have any immediate baking plans but might make something just to test out my new stainless steel dough hook. (The enamel was chipping off the old one.)

My wheat starter is looking good, maybe I'll look around for a sourdough recipe to try.

[chocomouse]

Dinner tonight was venison backstrap (steak), corn on the cob, yellow, green, and purple string beans, sliced tomatoes and onions marinated in Italian dressing. This was the last of a 2nd planting of beans, but I have another planting coming along so we should have more in 3-4 weeks, depending on the weather. We're on our 4th day of high humidity and temps in the 90s, and I have no idea how that will affect the garden produce. We have more storms and cooling predicted for tonight, but that was also the prediction for last night - we got the storms but no cooling.

[RiversideLen]

Skeptic, I have 3 although only two are in service. My original is a white bowl lift "Heavy Duty" model that I bought as a close out at Carson's more than 20 years ago. It still works but I boxed it up and put it in on a basement shelf. My second one is a blue "Professional 5 Plus" that I bought from Chef's Catalog about 11-12 years ago. It's been a work horse and will continue to be so, my only complaint is that it is loud and is a little difficult with the small batch kneading. My Little Red Apple (I like that name!) will of course be a supplement to the larger one, possibly taking the place of the hand mixer in some applications.

The pizza was good!

Joan, thanks. I really do like the color.

This is my first tilt head, I have to remember to lock down the head when using it.

[Mike Nolan]

Back in the 70's it was said that there were 5 different style of Chicago-Style pizza. (Some people said 7.)

Stuffed pizza has always been a sub-specialty, even the places that claim to have invented it never made them the star of the menu.

Chicago-style thin was always the odd duck, it is similar to tavern style but different in some subtle ways. I haven't found a thin/tavern style crust recipe I'm happy with yet.

Pasquale Bruno Jr's book, "The Great Chicago-Style Pizza Cookbook" is still IMHO the definitive text on them, but it gave short shrift to thin/tavern style.

[Mike Nolan]

Jeffrey Hamelman had a post on the BBGA Forums a while back in which he talked about his rye starter, one he brought with him to King Arthur years ago and is continuing to maintain now that he has retired and is no longer baking large quantities of breads on a daily basis.

He says he keeps it at about 15 grams total after each daily feeding between baking sessions, building it up for a couple of days if he needs more starter for the recipe he's getting ready to make.

I thought this sounded like an interesting idea, because the idea of throwing out half when feeding a starter with 3-4 ounces or more of flour once or twice a day has always struck me as wasteful. (And that's not how commercial bakers handle starters anyway, they feed then pull what they need for the day's production.)

So I started a new rye sour starter a few weeks ago; they're pretty easy to get started. And once I was starting to get into the routine of working with it at least once a day, I started a wheat starter. The rye starter started smelling right after less than a week, the wheat starter has taken nearly 3 weeks to start to look like it is developing a stable and active microculture community, but I think it's getting there.

I've maintaining the rye starter at about 150-200% hydration with daily feedings of 5 grams of starter, 5 grams of medium rye flour and around 8-10 grams of water, anything less than that and it looks almost dry in 24 hours. I had the wheat starter at the same ratio for about 10 days and it was pretty soupy, but have been moving it towards 100% hydration, doing a full feeding with 15 grams of starter, 15 grams of flour and 15 grams of water once a day and a partial feeding adding 10 grams of flour and 10 grams of water in the evening.

I'll post some pictures in the next update and I hope to start baking with them in another week, including some rye recipes from the Ginsberg book, probably a couple I'm familiar with before launching into new recipes. Like Jeffrey, I'll build a starter up so that when I do bake I feed that starter, wait an hour, then remove what I need for that day's bake, returning to a 15-20 gram base for the rye starter and a 45 gram base for the wheat starter.

These starters are not being refrigerated at all.

If my wife still has trouble with sourdough breads from the wheat starter, I'll try the Chad Robertson approach next, inoculating a levain with just 5% starter.

[BakerAunt]

Thanks for the input, Mike. I use the convection setting for crackers and get a more even result. I also use it for all my pies, although my pies are streusel-topped these days. I cover with foil for the first 45 minutes, then remove it to brown the streusel and let the pie finish in 5-10 minutes. I will report on how the convection setting works with cookies.

On Thursday evening, I baked a batch of the Whole Wheat/Rye/Semolina Buns (AKA Len's Buns) as 10 buns. We are planning a picnic tomorrow, so we needed buns for sliced turkey sandwiches.

I forgot to mention that on Wednesday morning I baked Pumpkin-Oat muffins. I did not think they were among my best, as they had a craggy appearance, but they tasted good, and they had disappeared by Thursday afternoon, so the rest of the family did not let appearance deter them.

[RiversideLen]

I made a pizza for lunch, about 100 grams of dough (slightly larger than what I use to make my sandwich buns), I stretched it out in an 8 inch lightly oiled non stick skillet and then lightly browned the bottom of the crust. Removed it and placed it on my toaster oven pan, and put the topping on (toppings were a few pepperoni slices, a sliced up hot dog and Mexican style cheese, an eclectic combination). Baked it in the toaster oven until the cheese was melted and the proper color, it took about 15 minutes starting in a cold oven. Fairly easy and didn't have to preheat the big oven.

Dinner will be a burger and a side of broccoli.

[BakerAunt]

Wednesday's Dinner was Cherry Tomato Sauce. Vegetables (zucchini, yellow squash, red and yellow bell pepper, green onions, and mushrooms), and Rigatoni, with the addition of leftover roast chicken.

[RiversideLen]

Thanks, everyone.

It arrived late this morning and I immediately washed the bowl and attachments and then set out to make an extra small batch of pizza dough. I used 180 grams of flour (about 6.4 ounces). The total weight of the dough after kneading was 320 grams. It did a good job overall although I had to scrape down the sides of the bowl a few times early on. I'm going to make three lunch time pizzas out of it, each pizza using 107 grams of dough, which is just a little larger than one of my sandwich buns.

I love the color and it's cute. It's a lot more quiet than my Professional 5 Plus. I'm glad I bought it even though it's a little pricey.

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[RiversideLen]

KA is running a sale right now on their website. You can save as much as $100 on a stand mixer. There are discounts on attachments and accessories too. The sale runs through 09-16-23.

Why I know this. I placed an order on Saturday only to discover that they started the sale on Sunday.

So, I was making a small batch of pizza dough in my 5 quart mixer and the dough hook had difficulty grabbing the dough. I have to work with it for a while before it's eventually able to do it. This is something that I have done many times before. It got me thinking that the 3.5 quart KA Mini would be a good choice for the small batch mixing jobs. This is something that I've been thinking about for a while. I went to the KA site and found the 3.5 quart Mini in candy apple red. It's kind of pricey though, for $379.99. But it said to log in and get a reduced price, so I did and was offered for $360.99. Well, a $19 saving and free shipping, I placed my order. On Sunday I wanted to verify some of the features it has so I logged onto their site again and discovered the sale, my item is now being offered for $299.99. Darn it! (I really didn't say "darn", I used the other word). I decided I will contact them and ask for the sale price. But due to the weekend and holiday I could not get hold of anyone until today. In the meantime my mixer has gone to shipping.

I got hold of someone this morning and was told that they were unable to make any changes to my order because it's in shipping. They would, however, give me the difference, $61, as a credit on my account. Good enough. I selected a glass bowl and cover for the mixer at $65.99. They discounted it so the $61 credit would cover the whole thing.

I spent part of yesterday making room for my new mixer in the appliance garage. It should arrive in a couple of days. The first thing I'm going to do is to whip up a small batch of pizza dough to validate my purchase!