What are you Baking the week of February 23, 2020?

[Mike Nolan]

No baking plans for today, but I'll be doing some more triticale tests later on this week (including pasta) and probably a pie.

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[BakerAunt]

I baked muffins on Monday morning. I started with this recipe for Pear & Walnut Muffins from Stonyfield:

https://www.stonyfield.com/recipes/pear-walnut-muffins

As you might expect, I made MAJOR changes in the recipe, so much that I can claim it as my own. First, I didn’t want to grind up ½ cup of walnuts in my small food processor. I think the idea was a “walnut flour,” and it might be quite nice, but I’m lazy about cleaning up the food processor after grinding nuts, so I increased the flour by ½ cup and added 1/3 cup chopped walnuts. The recipe purports to be healthy, but it’s only 25% wholegrain as written. I used 1 cup AP flour and 1 cup whole wheat pastry flour. I added 2 Tbs. Bob’s Red Mill milk powder (to increase the calcium) and cut the salt in half. The amount of sugar in the recipe is also high. I cut the brown sugar (used light) in half, from 2/3 cup to 1/3 cup. I used Chobani Greek yogurt, as that is what I have. I deleted the vanilla, partly by accident, but I would not have used 2 tsp. vanilla for a muffin. As it turns out, the muffins don’t need it, but ½ tsp. might be nice. I used an unpeeled Anjou pear, as no type was specified, and that is what the store had. A Bartlett would be nice as well. The original recipe says makes 15 (must be small). I made 12 in a standard muffin pan. I used paper liners but sprayed them with non-stick cooking spray. They are very good plain, warm from the oven.

Muffins are often put on the "naughty" list for nutritional value because they are often loaded with sugar and minimal if any wholegrains. Stonyfield touts this recipe as "low in calories," but as originally written, the recipe, while low in saturated fat, is not particularly healthy.

• This reply was modified 4 years, 9 months ago by BakerAunt. Reason: changed a word

[skeptic7]

Muffin recipes seem to suffer from ingredient creep -- they were originally a type of plain bread then gradually more sugar and fruit and butter were added to the recipes. I hated when Martha Stewart started popularizing recipes that started with creaming butter and sugar together instead of using melted butter. I always thought creaming butter and sugar was reserved for cakes, while muffins were meant to be thrown together quickly.
Joy of Cooking 's muffin recipe has 1 3/4 cup flour to 1/4 cup sugar which always seemed plenty sweet to me.

[BakerAunt]

Mike--I made a correction in my post, before Skeptic's reply, and my post disappeared again. Can you restore it, or do I need to try to re-post?

[Mike Nolan]

It should be back, it got tagged as spam again. I don't know why this only seems to happen to you, it must be something your computer is doing.

I like Akismet (the anti-spam tool nearly all WordPress sites use), but it isn't very informative about what it calls spam.

[Mike Nolan]

About the only muffins I make are banana nut mini-muffins, and they're not low carb.

I don't generally buy muffins from bakeries because they're too sweet and they tend to be HUGE, they'd be a boatload of carbs even if they weren't so sweet.

I may have to experiment with triticale in muffins. Steve, the wheat breeder, told my wife he could get more triticale for us any time. I'm also going to try putting triticale in the KAF whole-grain hot cross buns recipe I like.

[BakerAunt]

I will often make six large rather than twelve small muffins, particularly if I'm planning to freeze them (less to wrap). I also prefer greasing large muffin pans to small ones. My large ones are nowhere near the size of bakery muffins.

However, I have a lot of muffin/cupcake papers, mostly for standard muffins, and wanted to begin using the supply, and my husband is more likely to snack on a small muffin than a large one. That said, bakeries sell giant muffins that resemble cupcakes and are often loaded with butter and sugar. Those are the ones that I see at the farmers market.

[Mike Nolan]

We have several 'non-stick' mini-muffin pans; they weren't all that non-stick to begin with and I'm sure some of that coating has worn off over the years. (I've pretty much stopped buying non-stick pans, because when the coating comes off, it probably means we're eating it.)

I need to start experimenting with ways to get mini-muffins to release better, melted butter just isn't working these days. I won't use the sprays, because they leave a residue that builds up on your pans. I tried the pan grease once, it didn't work very well for some reason, maybe I should try it again. A flour/butter paste might be worth trying, too.

With mini-muffins, after they've cooled I just pop them in a zip lock bag and freeze them, my wife likes taking 5 of them in a small sandwich bag, that helps her get through the day without blood sugar spikes or crashes. I've been known to eat them straight out of the freezer, but they defrost in 3-4 minutes or a few seconds in the microwave.

[Italiancook]

Mike, I use this brand muffin liners for my standard pans. They don't need to be sprayed and work great. Pricey, but I gladly pay to avoid treating the pans. I don't use mini's, but here's a link to mini liners. Last time I checked, they were cheaper at Target.

https://www.amazon.com/PaperChef-70090-Culinary-Parchment-Baking/dp/B003FXT3HA/ref=sr_1_3?crid=3TMC6IO9W4B4Q&keywords=paper+chef+mini+baking+cups&qid=1582646407&sprefix=paper+chef+mini%2Caps%2C154&sr=8-3

I use Vegalene spray from KAF. My experience is that it hasn't left a sticky residue on my non-stick baking pans. With Vegalene, I can put them right into the dishwasher and they come clean. With other products, I first had to wash by hand to remove the residue. Here's the link:

https://shop.kingarthurflour.com/items/vegalene-food-release-spray-17-oz

[BakerAunt]

On Tuesday afternoon, I baked the Espresso and Kahlua Brownie Chip Cookies (the recipe is here at Nebraska Kitchen), substituting 1/3 cup of oil for the butter, using white whole wheat flour, and omitting the chocolate chips. For further details, see the "A Chocolate Question" thread. Yum!

[Mike Nolan]

Not sure if I've ever tried Vegalene, not sure if anybody locally carries it. I don't buy a lot of things in a spray can.

[Mike Nolan]

I made some pie dough today but probably won't get any of it rolled out until tomorrow, then I'll probably blind bake one pie shell.

[skeptic7]

I did a Rosemary Focaccio bread on Monday. My Rosemary went through the mild winter very well, although one variety is notably paler in color. This one has also been flowering which I hope is not a reaction to stress.
I gave it to a friend and have not heard back on how well she liked it. Focaccio is my "not much kneading" bread since it is so well hydrated. It does need kneading to prevent wet and dry spots in the dough. This time I patted the focaccio into the pan, let it rest for around an hour, then sprinkled on the rosemary and pushed the foccaio into the corners of the pan. I had to oil the top of the dough to prevent my hands from sticking, but doing it this way, pushing the rosemary into the top of the dough kept the rosemary from falling out after it was baked. I let the dough rise for another couple of hours before baking.

[BakerAunt]

CWC Design--we have not heard from her for a long time--liked the spray that KAF offers.

I've also tried to get away from spray cans. I do keep an olive oil spray can, which I use for pizza (a light spray before drizzling olive oil on the pan) and for casseroles or roasting racks. It takes a long time for us to go through these sprays. I attempted to buy a pump spray, and the mechanism broke when I opened it, so it was back to the can.

With the baking sprays, I felt that the cans did not last all that long and had a tendency to clog and become useless. It also seemed to result in a darker crust. So far, the Grease has worked well for me and saved money I would have spent on the baking spray cans, as well as decreased my non-recyclable trash. I've used it on large muffins, but I do not particularly like to do standard muffins (takes a long time to prepare the pans so I often just use Crisco), and I'd be very unhappy if I had to coat a large quantity of mini-muffin pans.

• This reply was modified 4 years, 9 months ago by BakerAunt.

[Mike Nolan]

I tried a number of spray misters for oil, the Evo mister has worked well for me for several years. It comes in two sizes, I think the smaller one makes more sense. I think they're intended for use as oil and vinegar salad spray sets, but I put oil (currently a blend of canola and soybean oils) in one and water in the other, because that's what I use the most when cooking.

I use the fan spray setting, it does a good job covering the entire width of a loaf.

I also keep a spray bottle of bleach solution handy for sanitizing the sink and countertops, but those sprayers seem to wear out in a year or two.

As I gear up for trying some of the fermentation recipes in the Noma book, I've now got a spray bottle with 60% grain alcohol in it. They recommend that for sanitizing large surfaces or ones that you can't sanitize in a dishwasher, like a 5 gallon crock.

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