What are you Baking the Week of January 15, 2023?

[Mike Nolan]

I've made more errors rescaling recipes than I care to admit.

I find it useful to run the final numbers through a baker's math analysis tool I wrote several years ago whenever I've tinkered with a recipe. I can see if the hydration is where I expect it to be, if the fat/flour ratio looks right, salt content, leavening, etc.

Rewriting this tool to handle multi-stage recipes and possibly using the BBGA formatting structure, then making it generally available has been on my 'todo' list for a long time. (I was going to add nutritional analysis, but the USDA database isn't as useful as it used to be.)

I'm tempted to add a fat/sugar ratio for things like cookie recipes.

[BakerAunt]

My rye bread is excellent. Increasing the spices and pickle juice made the flavor perfect. The extra oil (in this case I used olive oil) and water also gave the bread a soft interior texture. It goes very well in ham sandwiches.

I baked my oil-based cranberry scones on Wednesday evening, so that I have some quick breakfasts for the freezer. I usually use half Irish Whole Meal flour, but this time I made it 2/3 of the flour. I also deleted the salt, given the amount of baking powder and baking soda.
I'll report tomorrow on the results.

[aaronatthedoublef]

I really need to shift this to a spreadsheet Mike. I have printed recipes with hand written notes

I've seen pickle juice a couple times here lately. What flavor does it add? I want to start spinning up my corned beef again I wonder if I could reuse that brine. I saw a post on Instagram where some women used their pasta water to make pizza dough.

Rye is funny. It invokes passion from people that other breads do not.

[aaronatthedoublef]

BTW, many screw up many measurement conversion and some are more consequential than others.

There was a movie based on the first flight between Montreal and Edmonton after Canada converted to metric. They fueled the plane with the number of liters they would normally fill with gallons so the tanks were about a quarter full. I wish I could find that movie again. I cannot find the movie but here is a link to the story.

And I was just worried about my shortbread!

[BakerAunt]

IMO, Aaron, it has to be what is the right pickle juice for the baker--the flavors you like in your rye bread. We buy jars of these German dill pickles, usually from Best Buy or, more expensively, Tuesday Morning. I like no other pickle in my potato salad or tartar sauce. The juice retains that flavor, due to the spices (dill, mustard seed, onion, and maybe something else). I strain the juice, so the whole spices do not go into the bread.

I cut the salt to 1 tsp. this time, since I know that the juice is salty. I increased the yeast a previous time to 2 1/2 tsp., in order to use more wholegrains, and that seems to be what is needed. I also use Bob's Red Mill Bread flour, which I find gives better results with a more wholegrain loaf.

[Mike Nolan]

A lot of dill pickles have garlic in the brine. I've tried the pickle juice idea a few times, we weren't that impressed with it. I think I used the brine from homemade pickles, because the ones I can myself don't have garlic in the brine, nor mustard seed. My mother sometimes put alum in dill pickle brine.

There are some people who are pretty passionate about their sourdough starters, but I tend to agree that rye is one of those subjects where opinions tend to be stronger.

[chocomouse]

The brine does retain some dill flavor, but I've also used the juice from Gherkins when that's all I had. And since I had dill seed (not weed, I think the seed has a stronger flavor), mustard seed, onion, and caraway seed to the dough, that increases the flavor. I made a dill brine about a month ago, with no cucumbers, but I did add garlic. I let it "marinate" in the fridge several weeks, and it worked as well as the commercial dill pickle juice when I used it in rye bread.

Mike, when I used to make several kinds of pickles every summer, I used alum in all the recipes. I recall it is used to help keep the cucumbers crisp, but I'm not sure.

I have read, cannot cite where, in several places about using acids in breads. It supposedly helps with the rise. Since rye needs a lot of help, I suppose that may be why it is recommended for rye breads?

[Joan Simpson]

I enjoyed the read Aaron those people were blessed!

[Mike Nolan]

Acid helps speed up the breakdown of starch into sugars that the yeast can feed from, which is why it helps the bread rise more. It may also suppress the amylose activity, and rye bread is prone to excessive amylose activity, which is what makes the dough gummy.

[BakerAunt]

I baked an apple pie Friday evening, using more of the Winesaps that we got last November. I reduced the sugar slightly, from 3/4 to 2/3 cup, since it still has 1/4 cup sugar in the streusel topping. I used 3 Tbs. avocado oil in place of 1/3 cup butter in the streusel.

[aaronatthedoublef]

Progress!

250g bread flour (instead of 130)
040g cornstarch
228g unsalted butter
140g brown sugar
1 tsp vanilla
1 tsp salt

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[Mike Nolan]

Looking good, Aaron. I wonder if you could switch from bread flour to AP (slightly lower in protein) and leave out the cornstarch?

KidPizza (Cass) would probably recommend you use bleached flour for cookies. I keep some on hand (GM AP) for that purpose, though most of the time I use KAF unbleached AP flour.

I do keep pastry flour on hand for pie crusts, lower protein/gluten content flour has a noticeably impact on the tenderness of the pie crust.

[aaronatthedoublef]

Thanks Mike. Not sure I want to buy yet another flour. 🙂 And I am not sure where I would keep it. We're out of flour storage space so something would need to go.

I have white and whole wheat pastry flour too.

Kate's granny said the Scotts used rice flour when she was growing up.

[Mike Nolan]

The KAF Whole Grains cookbook has a Scottish Shortbread recipe that uses 2 1/2 cups of oatmeal ground up in a food processor plus another 1/2 cup of wheat flour. It is very good, I've used it as a base for several apple desserts, it doesn't quite hold together well enough to be a pie crust (it sinks along the sides) but it makes a pretty good base for an apple crisp or an apple tart.

I've also made it as a bar cookie with some chopped pecans, but you have to cut it quickly as it firms up as it cools.

[Joan Simpson]

I stirred up another batch of sourdough,you know I'm not great with the scale.I dropped more starter than called for but knew I had to add more water before and this time too so it's all mixed up for a overnight rise . Will pan up and bake sometime tomorrow.The good thing about a scale it's less washing as everything is in one bowl.

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