What are you Baking the Week of December 11, 2022?

[chocomouse]

Today I baked 2 loaves of Baker Aunt's version of All-Purpose Maple Buttermilk Bread. As usual, it hardly rose at all during the hour long first rise, but what tremendous oven spring! We know the flavor is excellent. Right now I have pizza dough rising for dinner. And I have Chex mix baking in the JennAir oven.

[BakerAunt]

In my quest for more cookie variety that fits a low-saturated fat way of eating, on Thursday I baked Biscotti al Cioccolato, a recipe from a small cookbook, Biscotti, by Lou Seibert Pappas (pp 26-27). I probably picked up this book from the marked down rack at Barnes & Noble some years ago. These chocolate-hazelnut biscotti do not require added fat, just three eggs, and the recipe uses natural cocoa, which I have but do not use enough. I made two slight changes. I replaced ¾ unbleached AP flour with that much white whole wheat and used the King Arthur AP for the rest. Instead of 1 Tbs. powdered coffee, I used 1 tsp. of the King Arthur espresso powder, which I think is stronger than instant coffee. With slightly damp hands, the dough was easy to form into logs. I have tasted some of the crumbs and think these will go well with either milk or coffee. My husband is not overly fond of them; he does not appear to be a hazelnut fan, but I doubt that will stop him from eating them.

I also made dough for my Whole Wheat Sourdough Cheese Crackers on Thursday. I will bake them sometime next week.

[Mike Nolan]

I got in 3 letter fold turns on my croissant dough tonight, so that gives me 55 layers. I think I rushed the turns a bit and the butter was still too cold, so some of the butter I could see under the surface shattered, but I don't know if that happened all the way through.

I think this picture after turn 2 shows what happened:

Even if the butter did shatter in the inner layers, I think the croissants should be OK, though probably not quite as flaky as if the butter layers were more intact.

Next time I'll allow more time in between turns.

I made about 700 grams of croissant dough, I'm not sure how many chocolatines that'll produce, I'm planning to roll them out to 4mm and cut them into 7x11 cm rectangles. I'm hoping to get at least 24, I think I might be able to get up to about 30.

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[Mike Nolan]

I only got 19 chocolatines from this batch of dough, and one of them is made up of trim scraps so it might not even stay together.

I made a double batch of the chocolate pie filling, using 75% dark chocolate and 25% milk chocolate. A single batch wasn't filling a 9" pie shell up to the top.

I'll post pictures of the chocolatines and the pie later today.

[Mike Nolan]

Here's the chocolate cream pie:

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[Mike Nolan]

Here are the chocolatines before baking:

And here they are after baking. They should probably have come out a minute earlier, they're not burnt but they're darker than I think they should be.

There was enough butter leakage that the bottoms are almost like they were fried in butter. I'll have to work on that.

A couple of them popped open, I need to work on that, I need to make sure the end of the roll is tucked fully tucked under. The one that was made from scrap pieces fell apart, but that wasn't surprising.

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[BakerAunt]

They still look delicious, Mike!

[chocomouse]

I bet those scrap pieces still taste great!

[Joan Simpson]

Mike the chocolate pie and chocolatines all look great to me.

[Mike Nolan]

We'll be cutting into the pie shortly, the chocolatines went over great at the party, several people took a few home so all we have left here is the two mis-shapen ones, and that's fine, we've got the pie.

[aaronatthedoublef]

The pie looks great. We need to up our pies game! The chocolatines are really impressive. They look amazingly consistent. And proper darkness, at least here, is being debated as we've had an influx of European master bakers who bake things darker than Americans typically like them.

I have the sides of my house baked. The roof was in the oven too but then the oven shelves were too close and I accidentally wrecked them. I crushed up some Jolly Ranchers and put them in the windows to try to simulate glass. Kate and Violet were pretty impressed but it all looks rough to me. I rolled it all out on parchment but I may use silpats next time, at least for the ones with windows.

I promise, I'll take pictures.

[Mike Nolan]

The chocolate cream pie is one of the pies we made at SFBI pastry school. The recipe calls for semi-sweet chocolate, I tried 25% milk chocolate this time, and may try 50% next time.

I'm getting more comfortable with using the hand-cranked laminator, I made 700 grams of dough this time, that was enough that I was able to get in 3 letter-fold turns which gives me 55 layers. I split it in half for final roll-out.

It looks like for planning purposes 700 grams of dough will make about 16 chocolatines, as I think they shouldn't be too big. Croissants come in a wider range of sizes, though we prefer small or medium ones rather than the 90-120 gram big ones that are common at bakeries. I need to see if there's a way to reduce the butter leakage, though.

I want to try making a kringle. I might try the O&H recipe that's on the food network site (https://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/kringle-recipe0-1941189), it uses egg and lemon extract in the dough. The raw dough has a pronounced lemon odor but by the time it is baked it is much more subtle. I may need to play around with scaling it down. The butterscotch filling that is part of that recipe is great, I've used it to fill Danish.

[BakerAunt]

This one is for Aaron, the Gingerbread House baker:

https://www.msn.com/en-us/entertainment/comics/curtis-by-ray-billingsley/ss-AA15nVS3?ocid=msedgdhp&pc=U531&cvid=eaf51093ea044630adc0bea7c11bf2c0#image=1

[Mike Nolan]

Are there people who actually eat the gingerbread house? I've always thought that kind of gingerbread, almost a dead dough, was nearly inedible.

[BakerAunt]

That is why I bake a gingerbread cake in Nordic Ware molds!

I baked another batch of the Cinnamon Stars (Zimtsterne) on Saturday. I will hide them for a couple of days as they improve with age. I also hope to put a couple on a cookie platter I want to do for neighbors. I had refrigerated the topping that I used the first time and mixed it up and brushed it on. I noticed that it is not as sticky, nor as shiny as the first time.

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