What are you Baking the Week of December 19, 2021?

[BakerAunt]

Chocomouse--I had wondered if that was your base recipe for your rye bread. I used to bake it a lot, usually with a mix of dark rye and medium rye and to use the deli rye flavoring. I note that the new recipe from KABC says 1 Tbs. mustard seed or regular mustard. I wonder if that is a mistake, since I don't think one would use the same amount of mustard seed as prepared mustard. I cut it to 1 tsp. I may adjust carraway, dill seed, and mustard seed next time depending on the taste.

[chocomouse]

I've never used mustard in rye bread. I don't measure the seeds, just pour some from the spice jar into my hand, but I'd say it's at least a tablespoon. We're having ham for Christmas dinner with family tomorrow night, so will have ham on rye sandwiches for our Christmas Day lunch. Unfortunately, my daughter's family is all sick, so they will not be here. She saw a physician today and was tested for Covid and flu, both negative, so it's sleep, fluids, aspirin. The grandkids, college students home for vacation, also tested negative. Her husband is not sick at all! We are all vaccinated and boosted, but I'm glad they will not be here to spread their love!

[Mike Nolan]

My cherry pie is in the oven.

[BakerAunt]

I finished my Thursday in the kitchen by making the dough and shaping cinnamon rolls to refrigerate overnight and bake for Christmas Eve breakfast.

A big thank you to Italian Cook for giving me the link to Frank and Sal. I ordered the candied citron on Monday, and it arrived today--free shipping UPS.

[Joan Simpson]

BakerAunt when I made that recipe of the rye bread way back I used yellow mustard and I didn't have dill seeds so I left that out and added a little more caraway.I liked the bread and it had a good texture and taste.

Chocomouse praying for your family to get better.

[Mike Nolan]

I'm making tangzhong cinnamon rolls to go with the chili for Christmas Eve dinner. I'll make a cream cheese icing to go with it, serving it on the side.

The recipe is a mashup of two I found online.

[BakerAunt]

For Christmas Eve breakfast, I baked the cinnamon rolls that I shaped last night and parked overnight in the refrigerator. After I glazed them, I sprinkled some red, green, and white nonpareils over the rolls to make them seasonally festive.

This afternoon, I baked my pumpkin pie, as that is my husband's traditional Christmas dessert. We will slice into it tomorrow,

My pumpernickel bread is excellent. I do not think that I would change anything that I did. I used 1 1/4 tsp. caraway, 1 1/4 tsp. dill seed, and 1 tsp. mustard seed. The pickle juice I used gave it great flavor. I don't think that it needs that deli rye flavoring with this combination. As Joan notes, it has a great, light texture. It can also be sliced thinly. I will be baking it again!

[Mike Nolan]

The tangzhong cinnamon rolls were excellent, I'll be making them again, though I may try to see if I can do a half-recipe, because 16-18 rolls is way too much for the two of us. I'll be interested to see how long they stay soft, my guess is they may be gone before they can dry out too much, though. That's probably breakfast.

[skeptic7]

I just did cranberry scones at my Father's house. First baking I've done since October. Used White Lily flour in the first white flour/butter scones for a couple of years. The White Lily flour is a soft white flour mainly prized for biscuits. So my memory might not be the greatest but the White Lily flour doesn't absorb as much moisture as KAF AP flour. The resulting scones were tasty and possibly lighter than other white flour scones, of course that might be because it was a dropped scone rather than rolled and cut.
It turned out great and had it for breakfast.

[Mike Nolan]

White Lily isn't made in the South any more, and there are sites on the web devoted to how they 'ruined' it.

[Mike Nolan]

I reheated one of the cinnamon rolls from last night, it was soft and tasty.

[BakerAunt]

Pastry flour or part pastry flour would also work well in scones. I recently discovered how well a combination of white and whole wheat pastry flour works in my pie crust.

[RiversideLen]

I did some baking this week. First, I made Stollen. Then I made oatmeal raisin with mini chocolate chip cookies. Finally I made Pfeffernusse. I have never made pfeffernusse before and don't think I have ever had one either. I used a mashup of 2 recipes. I used the spice blend from Martha Stewart because I had all those on hand. I used the dough recipe and method from Chef John from Food Wishes (he's on Youtube). His recipe does not use any butter but calls for 2 tablespoons of heavy cream or milk. I used half and half. My dough came out hard and dry so I gave it a good splash of additional half and half. Then the dough looked right and was workable. I used the Chef John glaze (lemon juice and powdered sugar) and enrobed the cookies with it.

I'm not sure about them as I have nothing to compare them to. The texture is more bread like than cookie like but they are OK. If I make them again I might use the Martha Stewart recipe which calls for 1 stick of butter.

[BakerAunt]

Len--THere is a great variation in Pfeffernusse recipes. I tried two or three before I found a recipe that I like, which I have posted here at Nebraska Kitchen. I suspect regional areas in Germany favor different recipes. I've seen some with molasses, which do not tick the Pfeffernusse box for me, and a variety of spices are used. For me the citron and anise are key, and they do require butter and powdered sugar coating.

I have been buying and using the King Arthur non-melting sugar for years, but this year, I had a difficult time getting it to stick to the warm cookies, and even now the sugar goes flying when we bite into them. I contacted KABC to ask if the formulation had changed. I was told no, but that they would be happy to refund my money since I was disappointed. I told them there was no need for a refund, as I did use the product, even though it did not work as well. I did note that the sugar seemed to be of a finer consistency, with less clumping this year, so now I wonder if they are manufacturing it differently.

[Italiancook]

Cass, when Christmas Eve morning dawned, I decided to take a laid-back approach to the day. The Portuguese Bread didn't make it to the oven. I'll post when I make it.

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