Home › Forums › Baking β Breads and Rolls › What are you Baking the Week of January 5, 2025?
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January 5, 2025 at 10:13 am #45152January 5, 2025 at 2:17 pm #45153
I did Apple Challah, KAF recipe yesterday. This ended up in a 9 x13 pan as I didn't have a round pan of the proper depth. I like the taste and texture, but it was very pale and didn't brown on the top or bottom.
January 5, 2025 at 2:38 pm #45154Baked custard sounds like baking to me (baked is in the name!)
I'm making a fresh (sweet) cherry pie. Cherries are from Argentina. I don't think I've ever made a fresh cherry pie, so I looked on youtube to get some ideas.
I pitted about 4 cups of cherries and mixed them with 1/4 cup of sugar, then put them in a saucier and cooked them a little. They gave up a lot of juice. I tasted them for sweetness, it was just about right. Then I estimated how much corn starch to use, mixed about 3 tablespoons with 1/8 cup more of sugar and mixed it in the cherries off the heat. It thickened up pretty good, so I'm sure that was the right amount. Then I mixed in a little lemon juice, a big pat of butter and about a tsp of vanilla, stirred it up and it looked just fine. After the filling cooled down, I filled the pie shell (pie crust is the store bought refrigerated kind that you unroll). It's in the oven now, I'll post a pic later.
January 5, 2025 at 9:47 pm #45158I forgot to set a timer and over baked it by about 5 minutes. Otherwise I think it came out pretty good.
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You must be logged in to view attached files.January 5, 2025 at 9:56 pm #45161Doesn't look overbaked to me, but looking at the bottom crust will settle the issue, often the top crust looks great but the bottom one is still half-raw. As long as the top crust isn't DARK brown or black, I don't consider it overbaked.
There was a thread in the Bread Baker's Guild forums a while back where bakers were talking about how they like their breads to look and what sells. The nicely caramelized crusts that many bakers strive to produce sit on the shelf while the ones that are a tepid tan sell out.
In Appolonia Poilaine's book about the Poilaine bakery, there is a recipe for their punitions (sugar cookies), she says they come out all sorts of shades from off white to dark brown, and some customers prefer the light ones while others prefer the darker ones.
I made that recipe and there is a noticeable taste difference between them, the darker ones have more caramelization and that adds flavor complexity. (Biscoff cookies are a perfect example of this; they taste quite spicy, but the only spice listed is cinnamon.) Harold McGee says they have identified at least 1000 different compounds that are created when you caramelize sugar.
In one of Gordon Ramsay's shows a while back (I forget which series), the contestants were asked to bake a pie. In judging them, he cut a slice, scooped off the filling and looked at the bottom crust. If it was soggy at the top, he called it 'raw' and pushed it away without tasting it. Most of the pies failed his bottom crust test. (Some year I want to eat in one of his restaurants to see if I can order a well-done steak that isn't totally dried out, a challenge he's used several times on Hell's Kitchen, giving the contestants 3 identical steaks and asking them to deliver at the same time one rare, one medium-rare and one well-done. I know I can do the well-done one properly, I think I'd struggle to get all 3 done simultaneously.)
January 6, 2025 at 11:40 pm #45166On Monday, I baked Rustic Sourdough Wholegrain Bread, using a Romertopf bowl with a cloche on top. I thought the dough was a little dry when I kneaded it, so I added another tablespoon of water. We will see what it is like when we slice it for lunch tomorrow.
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