What are you Baking the Week of April 18, 2021?

[BakerAunt]

Older recipes are interesting. A blog that I read occasionally is Cooking in the Archives:

https://rarecooking.com/

I discovered it after King Arthur's Sift did a story on it and published a cookie recipe the author had modernized. I baked them but was not impressed. Although I enjoy reading her blog occasionally, I have not been inspired to try any more of the recipes.

[Mike Nolan]

One of the reasons I like the older editions of the Joy of Cooking is that they don't get carried away as much as some of the more recent editions do. (If I want to get carried away with a recipe, I'll pick up Mastering the Art of French Cooking or nearly any James Beard book.)

There are some pioneer recipes in the Nebraska Centennial Cookbook (my wife's mother was the editor who assembled all the recipes, testing nearly all of them), but I think my favorite old recipe was a bread recipe in a book my wife found in the UNL library.

The instructions were something like this: Grind up a peck of wheat and add enough water to make a good dough. (I think it also called for salt and 'old dough' for leavening.) Bake in a hot oven.

Nothing about how long to knead, how long to bulk rise, how big to make the loaves, how long to let them rise or bake. A sure-fire recipe, right? And yet, I'll bet my great-grandmother could have followed that recipe and made a table full of bread from it.

I ran across an article citing some recipes from ancient Rome, the writer of the article actually got several of them to work, though figuring out what the ingredients actually were was challenging.

[chocomouse]

Today I made Olive-Gruyere Rolls. I rolled the dough out into a rectangle, spread it with grated Trader Joe's cheddar-gruyere and chopped green olives, then rolled it up (like cinnamon buns). I sliced it into 24 pieces which I put into oil-sprayed muffin tins. These are great with soup or salads.

[kimbob]

Mom is visiting my bro for 12 days to give me a rest from caregiving the last 3+ yrs. Been crossing stuff off my to do list so haven't been doing much cooking or baking.
Got around to making a cream cheese pound cake and www bread this morning.

[chocomouse]

I made another batch of the Oatmeal Bars, this time using homemade raspberry jam instead of apricot. I also drizzled chocolate over the jam before crumbling the topping over them. The chocolate is Raspberry Liquor Fudge Sauce from Stonewall Kitchen.

[BakerAunt]

That sounds yummy, Chocomouse.

On Wednesday, I baked cornbread to go with beef stew for dinner. I used two pans with five hearts each for separate little cakes.

[Joan Simpson]

I'm gonna have to try those olive rolls chocomouse,I know they have to be good!

Blessing to you Kimbob I do know what caregiving can take out of you,glad you can be there for your Mom.

[chocomouse]

BakerAunt, I will continue making variations on that oatmeal bar theme. My husband loves them. I've decided I will not be trying the flapjack recipe Smitten Kitten posted. It calls for way too much sugar -- I would be sweeter than I like, and it's more sugar than I can eat.

[Janiebakes]

I needed to make a birthday cake and decided to use my grandmother's recipe for "Piskota" an everyday little cake made by every cook in Hungary. Years ago Kid Pizza told me it was not a balanced recipe and he was right. More often than not it did not turn out well but I kept using it anyway because of tradition. The recipe is one egg, one tablespoon of sugar and one of flour for every egg. Seperate eggs, beat the yolks with the sugar, fold in the flour and lastly, fold in the whipped egg whites. Bake at 350. Even if it fell, you just sliced it, layered strawberry slices in the middle and covered it with whipped cream and it was not too bad at all. This year I did some research and found a much better recipe. I have been emailing my aunt who still lives in Hungary and she gave me her recipe. It uses a little baking powder and it also uses a technique I have not seem before. After you seperate the eggs, you add water as well as sugar to the yolks as well as to the whites. They are whipped seperately. Mix the baking soda with flour and sift half of that over the egg yolk, water and sugar mixture. Fold in half of the whipped egg whites, water and sugar. Take the last half of flour/baking soda and fold it into to whipped eggwhites/water/sugar, then add all that to the eggyolk/flour mix. It is easier than it sounds. I do wonder if I translated it correctly because I got some wet lumps of flour when I folded the flour into the eggwhites. Baked it at 350 for about 30 minutes and it was a success. Tall, airy and golden with moderate sized holes in the crumb.

[Mike Nolan]

Is that one tablespoon of flour per egg or one cup of flour?

Beating egg yolks with a little sugar is fairly commonplace, some call it 'ribboning' the yolks. Adding a little water would probably keep it from getting so stiff.

Egg whites and sugar is meringue. Egg whites are already about 90% water.

[BakerAunt]

Friday morning, I baked “Toffee-Pumpkin Snack Cake, my adaptation of a recipe from a seasonal magazine, Better Homes & Gardens Fall Baking (p. 28). I bake a half recipe for the two of us, and I reduce the oil in it from ½ to 1/3 cup and use homemade pumpkin puree, which I had frozen. I replace the pumpkin pie spice with my own blend and reduce the toffee pieces (used milk chocolate ones) from ½ cup to ¼ cup, which is mixed into the batter. I add 2 Tbs. milk powder. This time I reduced the sugar from ¾ to 2/3 cups. I strewed the top with pastel sprinkles, in a nod to spring. I omit the cream cheese frosting.

[Mike Nolan]

This is what tonight's pizza looked like before it went into the oven.

I made a slight change to my Roman dough recipe, this one had:

8 ounces bread flour
2 ounces semolina
1 ounce whole wheat flour
1 ounce corn meal

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[Joan Simpson]

Pizza looks good Mike,I've been wanting some.

[Janiebakes]

Yes Mike, it is one tablespoon of flour or each egg. I have often beaten egg yolks and sugar until it "ribbons" but adding the water is new to me. It really is necessary though because of the amount of sugar called for. I had no idea of the water content of egg whites but an surprised that you can add water to the egg whites and still get a stiff foam. I baked the cake again today. April is a busy month for birthdays in my family. This time I added the flour mixture to the egg yolk/sugar. Folded in half the whipped whites. Then added the second half of the flour to that mixture and finished up with the last of the egg whites. Much easier than mixing flour into egg whites, for me at least. I had too much batter for my 8x3 pan so baked the rest as a single layer. I took that out of the oven and cooled it a bit then sliced into biscotti sized pieces and baked it for another 15 minutes. It came out tender crisp and light. A crunchy biscotti. Back in the 1400's biscotti came up from Italy to Hungary. Biscotti turned into piskota. I am going to look around and see if there is a place to post this recipe.

[Janiebakes]

The Roman dough crust recipe is also my favorite one from American Pie.

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