What are you Baking the week of December 15, 2019?

[Mike Nolan]

A thread for your Baking exploits.

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[chocomouse]

I made two loaves of whole wheat sandwich bread this morning.

[Mike Nolan]

We're just about out of the semolina bread I made last week, so I need to start another batch in the morning.

[Joan Simpson]

I pulled out my sourdough starter yesterday and started getting it ready for some more bread.Tonight I mixed it up and have it sitting on the counter overnight.Will get it baked sometime tomorrow.

[Mike Nolan]

I made 2 more loaves of semolina bread. I also took 3-4 ounces of the dough to make a few breadsticks, which I rolled in sesame seeds. They've got a different taste from the bread, because they're crunchy, and they're quite tasty. They baked for about 25 minutes at 375.

[Joan Simpson]

I kneaded the sourdough this morning for 8 minutes and it passed the window pane test.I got it in the 9x5 loaf pan rising for a couple hours and my friend called,she was driving her 95 year old aunt to put flowers on her husbands grave and car wouldn't crank.So my husband and I went to help.Ended up calling a wrecker (my husband thinks fuel pump is bad)because the battery turned over with no problem.Now back to my bread,I forgot about it or I would have put it in the refrigerator.when I got home 3 hours later it had risen a good inch and a half over the top and had fell to the side like handles.When I slashed the top it fell to even with the top of pan and didn't rise back up all the way but it's still a good loaf of bread.I wish it hadn't sat on the counter so long but all's well.I'll be happy for fresh toast in the morning.

[Mike Nolan]

You could probably have degassed and re-shaped it, but that adds time, as the new final proof will generally be nearly as long as the original one.

Back when I was testing recipes for Peter Reinhart, one of the things I did was to take dough that has been retarded in the fridge for several days and put it through multiple rises before shaping and baking it. Although many authors claim that the yeast eventually runs out of sugars it can digest, I did not see that occurring, even after five rises.

The more times I let it rise, or the longer I kept the dough in the refrigerator, the more it took on characteristics of a sourdough. Eventually the dough did start to go bad, but that took over a week in the fridge with daily degassings.

[RiversideLen]

I made Martha Stewart's Noel Nut Balls. I will not decorate them yet (calls for drenching them in powdered sugar), I will freeze them. Some will be for Christmas day and others for New Years Eve. I'm thinking about dipping them in white chocolate instead of the powdered sugar. I would like to color some of the white chocolate green and some red but am not sure how the white chocolate takes to food coloring.

Also am making my sandwich buns. They are in the first rise right now and I am pondering what shape to do.

[Mike Nolan]

The best way to color white chocolate is with colored cocoa butter. It isn't cheap, though, about $20 per 8 ounce bottle. As far as using food coloring, our instructor at chocolate school recommended against using it, though I'm told the paste colors work a little better than the liquid ones, which are water based and can cause melted chocolate to seize. The trick is getting the paste color to blend in evenly, colored cocoa butter does a better job because its mostly cocoa butter.

[BakerAunt]

I, too, had a busy day in the kitchen. On Monday afternoon I baked the Healthier Whole Wheat Sourdough Cheese Crackers from dough I made last week.

I also made up dough for the Springerle Shortbread recipe that Frank Tegethoff developed for King Arthur Flour, which is posted on their website. These are for my sister and nieces, and I plan to bake them tomorrow.

My last project on Monday was to bake my adaptation of Wholegrain Pumpkin Bread, a recipe posted on Nebraska Kitchen. Four of the six mini loaves are destined for the freezer.

• This reply was modified 4 years, 11 months ago by BakerAunt.

[RiversideLen]

Thanks for the info, Mike. One year I tried to color powdered sugar but that didn't work. So, I'll either go with the traditional powdered sugar or white chocolate.

For my buns, I made 4 the traditional shape with Everything Bagel topping and 4 of them with the basket weave.

[Joan Simpson]

Thanks for the information on degassing & reshaping the dough Mike,I almost did that but decided not to as I had no idea what would happen.

[Mike Nolan]

Once or twice a year I forget I have dough rising until it is well past the point where it will bake properly. Usually I just deflate it, reshape it, let it rise again, and bake it; most of the time nobody other than me would ever notice the differences.

I think it tends to produce a finer or tighter crumb, ie, one with fewer and usually smaller holes. That's because all the holes are formed during kneading, so anything after that can only result in fewer holes. (Boyle's law is the physical principle behind this.)

[Joan Simpson]

I mixed up more sourdough this morning,it's rising nicely.The bread I baked yesterday has a good taste and was very good toast this morning.

[chocomouse]

I made a cinnamon apple coffee cake which is delicious.

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