What are you Baking the Week of January 24, 2021?

[Italiancook]

Thanks, Mike, for the breakdown on dill products. I enjoy the flavor of dill weed, although a little bit goes a long way.

[Mike Nolan]

Having fresh dill in the Aerogarden is starting to have an impact on my cooking. We gave a bag of it to a friend and they used some in some tuna salad, so I added a little to the last of the tuna salad I made the other day. It adds a nice note.

We're going to move pizza night up to Thursday this week, since I have my first eye surgery on Friday. That way there will be left over pizza for dinner on Friday and Saturday, when I don't expect to be in the mood to cook much.

[Joan Simpson]

Mike I've had chicken salad with dill and it was delicious so I bet the tuna with dill would be good also.

Mike praying your surgery goes well,take care!

[kimbob]

Speedy recovery, Mike.
My friend's 70th birthday is tomorrow. I was planning on making a 6" maple pecan cake with cream cheese frosting. Yesterday, she got a free cake from stop&shop--pecan praline (they're the size of a giant cupcake). So, now I scrapped that idea and was going to make blondies. But since I have 2 bananas ready to go, I'll make her banana walnut bread. 🤷‍♀️

[chocomouse]

Today I made No Bake Chocolate Peanut Butter Oat Bars (but putting this in the "What are you baking this week?" forum!). Quick and easy to make. I'd never made these no-bake cookies as a bar, and it was so much nicer - no pressure to scoop out dozens of little cookies before the dough hardened. Unfortunately, the peanut butter flavor was lost. I have another recipe that calls for the peanut butter and chocolate and oat mixture to be layered, so I'll try that one when these are gone.

[BakerAunt]

I baked Bishofsbrot (Bishop’s Bread) on Wednesday evening. It is a kind of fruit cake with golden and regular raisins, walnuts, dark chocolate chips, and maraschino cherries. (The recipe is here at Nebraska Kitchen.) I always substitute in some barley flour, and I now use oil and buttermilk in place of the melted butter. I added 2 Tbs. Bob’s Red Mill milk powder this time. I used up some bittersweet chocolate chips and added enough Ghirardelli dark chocolate ones to make one cup.

[Mike Nolan]

Tonight was pizza night, a day early. I used 9 ounces of bread flour and 3 ounces of semolina in the dough this time, I think it came out really tasty, could have possibly stood another few minutes baking, that's always so hard to judge. I didn't get a picture, but it looked a lot like the last two.

I used more havarti and we put some cream cheese on part of it, probably better to use one or the other.

[Italiancook]

I had never heard of putting cream cheese on pizza, Mike.

I watched Julia Child make a Pain de Mie and Raisin Bread tonight. Interesting. She made one loaf by hand and the other in a stand mixer. By hand, she worked her dough much more than I do. She also let both doughs rest more times than I do as she makes it. She was a good teacher, because now I want a Pain de Mie bread pan! But if I had produced a raisin bread as dark as hers, I would have declared it burnt. She claimed the Pain loaf should be wrapped and refrigerated for 2 days before slicing. I guess the cold would retard mold, but I can't imagine I'd ever be willing to take a chance on the lifetime of the loaf.

So I pulled out my husband's jar of pickles to eyeball the juice for the eventual loaf of sandwich rye bread. I think the recipe calls for 3/4 cup, and there might be that much in the jar. So if I wanted to make this bread more than once, I'd need to buy another jar of pickles. Is that what y'all do? Or, do they sell pickle juice without the pickles?

[kimbob]

Made my buttermilk pound cake today with 4 oz cream cheese and cut the butter a bit. Used cake flour instead of ap. Really good.
Italiancook, I've never seen pickle juice for sale but you never know!

[kimbob]

Italiancook, found this recipe for making pickle juice.
https://shelfcooking.com/uses-for-pickle-juice

[BakerAunt]

Italian Cook--depending on the amount of rye, some rye breads should be allowed to rest 18-24 hours before being sliced. I'm not recalling the exact reason. Perhaps someone else remembers?

[aaronatthedoublef]

My deli rye needs to rest after it comes out of the oven for about 12 hours, at least, for the flavor to fully develop. It has about 1/4 cup of rye (don't have the recipe in front of me) but most of the flour is either bread or first clear.

Like BA I do not know why. Mike advised I do that and I suspect once he is recovering and back online he will explain it to us. I'll ask over at the BBGA too.

[chocomouse]

Italiancook, I was going to suggest you follow a dill pickle recipe and just make the juice, but now I'm going to check out the link Kimbob posted. If I have almost enough pickle juice, just not quite, I top it off with water. I've also used sweet pickle juice, entirely or partially, and find that works too, although I think I get a better "rye" flavor with the dill. I do add lots of mustard seeds, dill seeds, and caraway to get that rye flavor.

[Italiancook]

Thanks, kimbob, for the link! Thanks BakerAunt & Aaron for the info about letting the finished loaf rest before cutting. It's a good thing, chocomouse, that you told me to add water to top off the juice if necessary. I'd been planning I'd top it off with vinegar! LOL But water makes a whole lot more sense! Thanks, chocomouse. I now have all the seeds, although I could use more mustard seeds, because one loaf will use all I have. Now, I am waiting for the flour.

[Mike Nolan]

The surgery went well, I'm one-eyed until tomorrow, but the left eye was pretty hazy for the past several months anyway. I don't think I'll be online a lot, though, I can't wear my glasses today because of the patch over my left eye.

As I understand it, the gelatinized starch in a freshly baked bread needs a little while to set. For a wheat-based bread, this is measured in minutes. For other grains, like rye, it is measured in hours.

I think of it like resting a roast after it comes out of the oven.

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