What are you Baking the Week of December 15, 2024?

[Mike Nolan]

Any Christmas baking at your house? I'll be doing some chocolate croissants later in the week for a party on Friday.

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[BakerAunt]

I've been racing to get the Christmas decorations up, since we came back with just two weeks until Christmas. The halls have now been decked, and I will be turning my attention to cookie baking this week.

On our way home from Florida, I convinced my husband to stop at Ellis Brothers for pecans. He was skeptical, since most of the places along the highway are tourist traps, but Ellis Brothers is a family business that alternates between selling pecans and peaches--and lots of other goodies as well. I bought three pounds of pecan pieces for baking, so that should have me set for a while. I also bought a 3 lb. bag of pecan meal, which I haven't been able to find since King Arthur stopped carrying it. I like it in biscotti and plan to try it in a crumb crust. The cashier told me that some people like to use it as a coating on pork chops, so that is on my list to try.

[aaronatthedoublef]

I made more molasses cookies. I made a double batch to give-away.

It's also a ciabatta week. I usually would cut and bake the whole batch then freeze what I didn't need and thaw. Last batch I tried leaving the dough in the fridge and baking as needed. I did cut and freeze some dough then thaw and shape as needed. That works but not as well and I still need to work out the timing for thawing/shaping/rising. Pulling off and shaping some cold dough really is the best option.

I kept my challah dough in the refrigerator for a month and it still had some rise in it. I did not try eating it because I didn't want to risk making myself sick.

I also have been letting them rise at room temp under a quarter sheet of parchment. This morning I let it rise at room temp inside a tented baking bag. They came out higher so maybe the parchment has been weighing them down?

I made New Haven style pizza but for some reason the dough was really elastic. I took it out of the freezer and let it thaw in the refrigerator then for the last few hours I let it sit on the counter. I will try thawing and rising for longer. This may make it a little more relaxed.

Anyone ever converted from compressed yeast to instant? I have a recipe that calls for .8 oz of compressed yeast. The calculator I found on the web (https://www.omnicalculator.com/food/yeast-converter) says this is 7.5 g.

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