What are you Baking the Week of January 18, 2026?

[BakerAunt]

Those are lovely loaves, Joan. Some people find whole wheat bitter. When I bake bread when Scott's cousins are around, I use white whole wheat flour, which is more mellow. King Arthur, in their whole grain baking book, uses about 1/4 cup of orange juice to mellow out regular whole wheat flour. (That was before they got into selling white whole wheat flour.)

However, like you, I bake what the people want to eat, not what I think that they should eat.

[Joan Simpson]

I'm show you the bread before panned up still trying to figure what I am doing.

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[BakerAunt]

Very helpful picture, Joan!

On Wednesday, I pulled out Stella Parks's recipe for "Yeasted Pumpkin Bread," which I first baked perhaps five years or so ago. We discussed the recipe at Nebraska Kitchen; it is one of her recipes that uses the food processor to mix the dough. I am not a fan of cleaning the food processor after mixing dough, so I instead mixed and kneaded the dough in the Ankarsrum. I am still working out how to knead a smaller amount of dough in it. The recipe has some challenges in that it was written for the food processor, and using fresh pumpkin puree means that the flour will vary. I also decided to use at least half whole wheat. I held back some of the bread flour, which is typical with this mixer. I baked it as twelve rolls in a 9 x 9 pan for 23 minutes. The rolls went very well with the spaghetti squash lasagna. The "basketball" pumpkin puree is more assertive than the usual pie pumpkin, but we did not mind it.

[RiversideLen]

Nice looking loaves, CWC and Joan.

I became interested in a proper Chicago style thin crust pizza recently after watching an ATK video. So, yesterday I made one and stayed as close as I could to their recipe for the crust (toppings are my own). So I made it with all white bread flour, I usually always use some whole wheat and semolina and have to been known to use rye as well. Although they called for AP, I have more bread flour on hand so that's what I used. While ATK calls for using a food processor, I used my stand mixer, kneaded it for just 5 minutes.

The ATK recipe calls for 2 ½ cups of flour but didn't list the weight (they probably list it on their website but that is behind a pay wall). Since the hydration ratio for this crust is important, I wanted to weigh the flour. I recall that ATK thinks a cup of flour is 5 ounces (a pretty heavy cup, in my opinion) so that's what I went with (12.5 ounces total). The dough came together nicely and quickly. When it was done I weighed it, it came out to 20.4 ounces, which is pretty close to ATK weight of 20 ounces. So that tells me I figured out the weight correctly. It's a slow fermentation, about 2 ½ hours.

The dough rolled out easily.

The pizza came out good. It baked for 10 minutes. The crust is pretty thin yet firm so it doesn't flop when holding a piece. I'll be making this again, adding in some whole wheat.

The dough recipe makes two 12 inch pizzas.

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[Joan Simpson]

Len your pizza looks nice!

[Mike Nolan]

Len, if someone brought that pizza to our table at a pizzeria, I'd be quite pleased with it, you did a great job shaping, topping and baking it. Hope it tastes as good as it looks.

[BakerAunt]

That is a lovely pizza, Len. I'm particularly fond of thin crust pizzas.

[RiversideLen]

Thanks, you all. The pizza was pretty good.

[Joan Simpson]

Today I made Georgia Cornbread cake for the poker game and two more loaves of sourdough, one for a friend and one for me.

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[Mike Nolan]

white whole wheat (KA is now calling it 'golden') is said to be less bitter, but I've never really noticed a difference with it.

The primary recipe I make with whole wheat flour has a 1/4 cup of honey in it, that probably covers up any bitterness.

[BakerAunt]

With whole wheat, I think that bitterness is in the taste buds of the person eating it. I recall a guy on the Baking Circle who was particularly sensitive to tasting bitterness in whole wheat. As for me, I never found it bitter. Perhaps, it is genetic.

I baked five small loaves of Wholegrain Pumpkin Bread on Friday, using more of the puree from the "basketball" pumpkin. The puree is thick and does not have water separation after resting in a bowl. I used half whole wheat flour this time, and I think that is what I will use from now on rather than white whole wheat flour or whole wheat pastry flour. The pumpkin and spices are strong enough that the whole wheat does not overwhelm them. I will freeze three loaves. I always think of S. Wirth when I bake this recipe, as she pointed it out to me in the recipes at Nebraska Kitchen that were saved from the Baking Circle. It has become my go-to pumpkin bread recipe.

[Mike Nolan]

I made oatmeal cookies using mini M&Ms instead of chocolate chips, and I am making another loaf of Austrian malt bread.

[BakerAunt]

I baked Whole Wheat Sourdough Cheese Crackers on Saturday. I also baked cornbread to go with leftover stew for dinner

I mixed the levain for my Wholegrain Sourdough bread this evening in preparation for bread baking tomorrow. We have had a high of 6 F today, and the ice fishermen were out in their tents. The birds were appreciative of the seed we put out for them.

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