What are you Baking the Week of August 28, 2022?

[Joan Simpson]

I made a pumpkin pie today that I've made before from KAF suppose to let filling set overnight but I've made it before when pressed for time and it was fine.It's in the oven now.

I need to make more pie crusts now as I used my last one.

Visited with my friend today she's going through Chemo treatments and they were thankful for the cinnamon rolls.

[aaronatthedoublef]

Just looked at Webstaurantstore and they have a TON of BRM stuff.

It's large quantities but you may be able to find what you are looking for there, too.

They only had WW pastry flour and not regular pastry flour, enfortunately.

[BakerAunt]

Aaron--What are the Webstaurant's store's shipping prices? I was looking there recently, and they do not tell you until you have put the items in the basket and entered the credit card. (I despise that system.) I know that they have a membership that for a price ($99 per month) gives free shipping. Way too high for regular people.

I was looking at catering bags at Webstaurant. I am thinking of taking one or two pumpkin pies to my husband's family reunion in September. It is only about a 90-minute drive, but I think that pumpkin pie needs to be kept cold. I'm trying to decide which size would fit pie containers with 9-inch pies inside.

[BakerAunt]

Joan--What a thoughtful gift for your friend. Love and baking is excellent medicine!

I have been working on an oil-based version of a recipe for Muesli Cookies that came from Bob’s Red Mill and uses their Old Country Style Muesli. I baked it about six weeks ago, and decided it needs more muesli, so I increased it to 1 1/2-cups and let the dough rest 15 minutes before scooping. I also added 1 Tbs. flax meal this time. It also helped to space them with twelve to a large baking sheet, which kept the separated on the sheet with 12 but the one with 13 had a bit of touching that I cut loose after removing from the oven. I am pleased with the size. We will have a couple for dessert tonight.

[Joan Simpson]

My pumpkin pie turned out well,good flavor , no cracking and my pie crust was crispy and flaky on the bottom...win win.

I had a little leftover filling so I filled 2 custard cups and baked them along with the pie.

[aaronatthedoublef]

I've never order from Webstaurantstore so I don't know. The shipping charges I have had for flour tend to be about $1/lb recently so I would guess they would need to be in this range to be competitive.

If I want SAF yeast, Webstaurant and KAF seem to be the places I can order it from and no one is selling it locally anymore. Don't know why by Red Star and Fleischman have take over and they work find but I wanted some of the gold yeast for sweet doughs.

If you just need cold bags, the grocery stores by us all sell insulated bags that work very well, especially if I add an ice pack. And here they cost about $5 per bag for the expensive ones. They would hold multiple, 9-inch pies.

[Mike Nolan]

When I ordered 50 pounds of semolina from webstaurant a couple of years ago, the flour was about $26 and the shipping was about $29. It took me about 18 months to go through that much semolina, but the per-pound price delivered was nearly $2 less than what I could buy semolina for locally, when it was in stock.

I suspect both prices and shipping costs have gone up since then. Last time I ordered semolina I bought a 25 pound sack of BRM semolina. I think it was around $30 plus shipping at the time, webstaurant currently has the 25 pound sack of it at about $41 plus shipping.

[Mike Nolan]

I'm planning to make a Texas Chocolate Sheet Cake later tonight, an 8x8 for tomorrow (my birthday) and a 10x10 for the 17th (our 50th wedding
anniversary.

[chocomouse]

Happy Birthday, Mike!! Funny -- you told us you've been married 50 years, but not how many birthdays you've had!!!

[aaronatthedoublef]

Happy Birthday and congratulations on your 50th. That is fantastic!

I made challah on Friday. I was working on converting my recipe from volume to weight and calculated the hydration without thinking about the oil, eggs, or sugar so it started out super wet. I decided to see how it would turn out. I like the wetter bread. It's really soft. And I think it will be easier next time I'm teaching kids to make challah because they tend to add a ton of flour as they shape and this will absorb it and still be wet enough to stick together.

At the last minute I decided to make a four strand braid and obviously need some practice on that. I made rolls which were huge - 7 ounces - and we used them for hamburger buns. No egg wash since this was mostly practice. We had some people over photographing our house (long story) so I cut the loaf in half and gave them each a half.

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[aaronatthedoublef]

I bought from Vitacost and it was easy and fast. I bout 2x5 lb. of BRM pastry and 2x1.5 lb. of semolina. Shipping was under $8.95, YMMV.

I ordered Monday and it was here Friday.

[aaronatthedoublef]

Okay... sorry too many posts but one more with a question...

Lots of recipes for things where butter is cut in - pie crust, biscuits, scones, etc. tell us to not over work the dough. But with things like biscuits and scones where we want layers that are visible and that require multiple folds. Even with pie crust, when I make it at least, it never completely comes together until I have it out of the bowl and "utz" as my mom used to say.

With yeast doughs I can let it rest and the gluten relaxes. Can't I do the same with pie-biscuit-scones? I usually chill them and let them rest before I bake them anyway...

Thanks

[Joan Simpson]

Aaron your bread and rolls look very good.

Happy Birthday Mike.

[Mike Nolan]

Water and kneading both develop gluten. That's why the vodka pie crust technique works, vodka doesn't bind with gluten. (I think oil also doesn't bind with gluten, which is why oil-based pie crusts work.)

You'd think there'd be other liquors that would be used with pie dough, but there really aren't a lot of those kind of recipes around, the flavored liquors must be too assertive. I've seen the occasional dash of rum in a pie dough, but that's about it.

Letting pie dough rest does relax what gluten there is, chilling it hardens the fat, which is also good.

The Kenji Lopez-Alt paste technique https://www.seriouseats.com/easy-pie-dough-recipe is worth playing around with, if only as a learning experience. I think it makes more of a mealy pie dough than a flaky one, we made both in pastry school (we also had to make pie dough where we cut the butter in manually with a chef's knife), the mealy pie dough was their preferred one for a bottom crust. I do a variant on it, reserving some of the flour until after the butter has been cut in, I think that preserves more of the flakiness. (He also developed the vodka technique when he was at ATK/Cook's Illustrated, but he can't write about it much because of non-disclosure agreements.)

[Joan Simpson]

I enjoyed reading the article Mike about pie crusts.

[Author]

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