What are You Baking the Week of April 19, 2020?

[BakerAunt]

On Sunday I assembled the rabbit cake that I made. I used a thick glaze (1 ¼ cup powdered sugar—sifted after measuring—3/4 Tbs. milk and 1+ Tbs. lime juice. I made it thick, spread it on a rabbit half, then put the other one on top, making sure the bottom is even. I let it rest on its side for about 15 minutes, then stood it up. I made another recipe of the thick glaze but added lime zest and used it somewhat like a frosting, although it is tricky, as it can drip, and needs to be pushed into lower parts of the rabbit. I kept back a bit of the glaze and thinned it with more lime juice, and I drizzled it over the two half eggs to show their design

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[Italiancook]

I finally made French Bread from The Wise Encyclopedia of Cookery. The author uses the term French Bread and Vienna Bread interchangeable. I think there's a difference between the two breads but don't know what. The bread is brushed three times with egg/water wash -- once before second rise & twice while baking. Thus, the crust is absolutely gorgeous. This cookbook was published in the early 1970s, and the bread is too salty for my 2020 tastebuds. I made the decision not to reduce the salt, because I wanted to replicate what I had served at dinner parties in the 1980s. People really loved it then, which goes to show we were all eating too much salt in the good old days. I made it in the food processor, as I did then. The difference is that I used bread flour today, instead of the AP recipe calls for. That used the last of my expiration date 2018 bread flour. I had to add a fair amount of water to the dough, which I never had to do with AP flour. But I'm pleased with the crumb, so no harm done.

BakerAunt, this cookbook has a recipe for Limpa!Below is a list of the ingredients, which Mike says we're able to post, in that it's only the instructions that are copyrighted. In case you want to compare and contrast.

LIMPA (from The Wise Encyclopedia of Cookery)

1 tsp granulated sugar
1/4 cup lukewarm water
2 tsp. caraway seed
1 tbsp salt
1 package dry granular yeast or 1 cake compressed yeast
1/3 cup brown sugar or dark molasses
2 tsp grated orange rind
1 1/4 cups milk, scalded
1/2 cup water
3 1/4 cups sifted all-purpose flour
3 tbsp melted shortening
3 cups sifted rye flour

[Mike Nolan]

French law is pretty specific about what bakers can sell as 'French bread'. It must be a lean dough, ie, the only ingredients are flour, water, salt and yeast or levain. (A little dough conditioner is allowed to compensate for certain flour conditions, but the list of conditioners allowed is short. Prof. Calvel's book goes into the history of dough conditioners in France and how they impact the quality of the bread.)

Every recipe I've seen for Vienna bread is an enriched dough, usually with egg and oil/butter in it, and often a little sugar. As a result, a Vienna bread generally has a much longer shelf life than a French baguette, which goes stale in a day. That's why there are so many French recipes for using up old bread.

[BakerAunt]

Thank you for posting the ingredient list, Italian Cook. It seems that Limpa bread has a LOT of variations. I ran into a similar problem with Pfeffernusse, before finally finding a recipe in the L.A. Times that produced the version I remembered and enjoyed, and still enjoy.

• This reply was modified 4 years ago by BakerAunt.

[Mike Nolan]

I'm making a batch of bagels today, using 75% bread flour and 25% first clear flour. Next batch I may throw in some triticale.

I'm also making the box brownie mix I got out a week ago. I figure the oven's already hot, so why not do them now?

[aaronatthedoublef]

I am on day one of my first starter! I decided to go with the Serious Eats starter as it's simple. I started with an ounce of water and .5 ounce of white whole wheat, stir, and cover with plastic. Day 2 is just stir. I will see how it goes!

I also have flour and water autolyzed and frozen. I'll thaw it and see it I can make it into whole wheat bread!

[Mike Nolan]

I started a new rye starter today, using Ginsberg's instructions again.

I remember when I was testing Peter's starter instructions for ABED, it took FOREVER before I saw any signs of activity. However, that was in December/January and it was usually fairly cold in the kitchen. After three weeks, I was about ready to give up and start over again, but Peter advised me to just give it another few days, and it started to bubble during that time.

Deb Wink's 'pineapple juice' approach is pretty reliable. She's an expert in micro-organisms who decided to put her training to use in the kitchen. It has the advantage of creating a low pH environment faster, thus discouraging some of the less desirable bacteria from getting a foothold in your starter. I'm hoping that after the world re-opens they can reschedule her sourdough class in a place and time I can attend, I was really looking forward to it.

[BakerAunt]

Clearly I lucked out with my unconventional starter over 25 years ago. Mine used 1 cup of skim or low-fat milk (cannot recall which I used), 3 Tbs. plain yogurt, and 1 cup of flour. I may not even have been using King Arthur flour at that time. I looked at the directions, and initially the warm milk (100F) was mixed with 3 Tbs. yogurt (no idea what kind; it might have been my homemade yogurt). After 18-24 hours in a warm place and a curd formed, the flour was mixed in. It was covered tightly (I use a glass jar with a rubber or silicone gasket and a wire closure) and left it in a warm place for 2-5 days until it was full of bubbles. From then on, I used it regularly and fed it, and it lives in my refrigerator. Once or twice it was neglected longer than it should have been, but I was able to bring it back. It moved to Texas with me, in its own little cooler, and it moved to Indiana in the same small cooler. My husband thought it was weird to have it in the refrigerator, until I started making the sourdough crackers and pizza crust. He's become a sourdough convert.

I've given starter from it to three people over the years, but I don't think any of them kept it going.

• This reply was modified 4 years ago by BakerAunt.

[Mike Nolan]

There are many good ways to create a starter, some ways, like the pineapple juice method, may succeed where others fail. I guess it's somewhat dependent on what micro-organisms are in your environment. I've created a total of 3 wheat-based starters using 2 different methods and one rye-based starter (with a second one under way), all of them worked, some much faster than others. The first rye starter was ready in about a week, for example.

I stopped maintaining the wheat-based ones because my wife was having problems with the breads I was making, too sour for her, I think. One of these days I'm going to try a variant on Chad Robertson's method, as detailed in the Tartine cookbooks, adapting the feeding schedule so it doesn't require throwing out 95% of your starter frequently. His method is supposed to produce a starter that generates less lactic acid.

[BakerAunt]

I had a bag of cranberries in one of the two fruit and vegetable drawers in the refrigerator that should have been used long ago. I pulled it out and after sorting had about a cup of useable fruit. I have a favorite recipe for Cranberry Scones that came with my Nordic Ware scone pan. (It’s the same recipe that appears in Biscuits and Scones, by Elizabeth Alston, pp. 32-33). I recalled Skeptic making a faux scone with oil, and I decided to try adapting this recipe by substituting 1/3 cup oil for ½ cup butter. I usually make it with 1/3 whole wheat pastry flour, but this time I used 50% whole wheat pastry flour. I whisked the oil and buttermilk together for a minute until frothy, which is what I do for my pie crust, before adding the egg. I coated the scone pan with The Grease, baked for 25 minutes, then cooled in the pan for 15 minutes. That is how I came to have tea and a scone on Tuesday afternoon. Although it will never have the texture and taste of a butter scone, it is delicious in its own right, with a firmer texture than a muffin but still crumbly.

• This reply was modified 4 years ago by BakerAunt.

[chocomouse]

I made bagels. I used the same recipe, but 100% AP flour instead of part AP and part bread flour. The outside were very crispy, and the insides even softer than the usual. I'm curious to find out tomorrow if they are less crisp and/or less soft inside.

[Mike Nolan]

It'll probably depend on how you store them overnight. I store mine in a plastic bag, but I always toast them, so if they get a little soft on the outside the toaster takes care of that.

I've made bagels with everything from private-label AP bleached flour which was almost certainly at the low end of the scale for protein to very high-gluten flour that my neighbor said was only good for pizza. Once you get the dough right, everything else seems to fall in place.

[BakerAunt]

Chocomouse--I don't know if you are still looking for coconut flour recipes, but I just saw this one for cookies in an article: https://www.foodandwine.com/recipes/coconut-flour-butter-cookies

[chocomouse]

Thanks, BakerAunt. I bet they are delicious - a stick of butter, and only 3/4 cup of flour? I just read that the "19" in Covid-19 stands for the amount of weight one will gain during the distancing/isolation/etc. Those cookies would surely help me reach that goal!

[chocomouse]

The morning after - and the bagels I made yesterday are still tasty but the texture is entirely different. The outside no longer shatters when you bite into it, and the inside is very chewy, not soft. I think they are no different from the the bagels made from 100% KAF AP, or from the 50% AP and 50% bread flour.

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