What are You Baking the Week of July 1, 2018?

[BakerAunt]

Fireworks kept us awake last night and terrified our dog, so breakfast was later than usual this morning. I made wholegrain waffles. Leftovers have been frozen for quick breakfasts. The weather here is hot and humid, so that may be the extent of my baking today.

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• This topic was modified 6 years, 5 months ago by BakerAunt.

[RiversideLen]

I baked a layer cake today, one layer red, the other blue. I'm going to pop it in the freezer until Wednesday when I will decorate it with white frosting.

[Mike Nolan]

After almost two weeks on the road, we're back home and I'm making Vienna bread. I'll start experimenting with the first clear flour another day, probably starting with using it in the honey wheat recipe, since we're out of that, too.

[BakerAunt]

I'll be interested to hear how first clear flour performs in breads other than rye breads.

[BakerAunt]

Like Len, I wanted a patriotic dessert for tomorrow, so on Tuesday afternoon, I baked Confetti Cookies, a recipe from the Smitten Kitchen blog (May 12, 2016). Instead of rainbow sprinkles, I used a mix of red, white, and blue nonpareils—until I ran out, at which point, I switched to rainbow ones. I found that I needed to bake mine 11 minutes rather than the 9-10 stated, but I have heavier baking sheets. I ended up with 40 cookies. I love the light texture and the crunchiness from the nonpareils. I will definitely bake this recipe again.

[Mike Nolan]

Yesterday I made the honey wheat bread using first clear flour and whole wheat flour, I doubt that anyone could tell much difference, I sure couldn't.

[chocomouse]

That's interesting. What proportions of first clear to whole wheat did you use? I'm going to try it in my buttermilk-maple-oatmeal-wheat next week. That recipe calls for 4 cups of AP or bread flour, and I usually sub for 1-2 cups of the AP either 2 cups of whole wheat, or 1 cup of rye or assorted whole grains and seeds. I think I'll start by subbing in just 1 cup of first clear for 1 cup of AP. I hate to waste my expensive first clear if it isn't going to make a difference!!

[BakerAunt]

On this Independence Day, I baked the KAF recipe for Wheat-Oat Flax Buns, with my changes, this morning. We are planning to grill hamburgers tonight.

Re: First Clear Flour. I may regret not having Mike pick up a bag for me, although storing 50 pounds right now might have been an issue, as we continue to wait on our contractor so that we can get the remodeling done--and then have a second good refrigerator. (The one we brought with us is in the apartment and working great, but the one that came with the house is on its way out, and we are hoping it will have enough life in it, by the time our contractor is ready to start, that we can qualify for the $50 rebate from the power company for removing a working inefficient refrigerator.)

• This reply was modified 6 years, 5 months ago by BakerAunt.
• This reply was modified 6 years, 5 months ago by BakerAunt.

[Mike Nolan]

I made Irish Apple Cake using Darina Allen's recipe for dough and the Winesap apple pie filling I made last fall. I made 9 of them in ramekins, now I just have to wait for them to cool enough to dig in. They look and smell great.

[Mike Nolan]

I used my honey wheat recipe which calls for equal weights of AP and whole wheat flour. The whole wheat flour was a mixture of hard red winter wheat and soft red spring wheat that I had ground up in my impact mill. I substituted the clear flour for the AP.

I wound up filling 4 plastic bags with about 4 pounds each of clear flour, plus several large flour canisters. The bags and possibly one of the flour canisters will go in the freezer.

Clear flour has a somewhat higher protein content than most AP flours, so the loaves may have risen a bit more than normal, but the taste is about the same.

The irony of first clear flour being expensive these days is that it used to be an inexpensive alternative to patent flour, but the cream color was considered undesirable for a 'white bread', so it was used mostly for rye bread.

[RiversideLen]

Re my Red White and Blue cake, do you know what happens when you add blue food color in a yellow cake batter? I do, it turns green. So my Independence Day themed cake looked more like a Christmas cake. That didn't detract from the taste, though.

[Mike Nolan]

And the red one probably came out more of a red-orange, too. I think that's one reason why red velvet cake has so much red food coloring in it.

Anyway, now you know how to make a lovely cake for Columbus Day. 🙂

[BakerAunt]

Last week, I bought zucchini at the farmers' market. I baked the KAF recipe for Double Chocolate Zucchini Bread on Friday afternoon. I know from having baked this recipe several times before that the 1/3 Cup of honey in the recipe is too strong for my taste, and I have looked for ways to reduce it. (I'm not crazy about honey and chocolate together.) Last time I used 2/3 Cup light brown sugar and 2 Tbs. honey, but I still felt the recipe needs work. This time, I wondered if perhaps the additional brown sugar in a chocolate recipe also gave an off-taste, so I used the original ½ Cup light brown sugar and added ¼ Cup granulated sugar. I reduced the honey to 2 Tbs. (I think it might be there to deter staling—something Cass always told us.) To make the recipe slightly healthier, I substituted 2/3 Cup white whole wheat flour for that much of the KAF flour, I added ¼ Cup powdered milk, and 1 Tbs. flax meal. I used Ghirardelli dark chocolate chips. (Hey, dark chocolate is healthy.) 🙂 I baked them for 30 minutes in the U.S.A. 8-well mini-loaf pan. They rose a bit over the rim, but it works well. We ate one of the little loaves for dessert, and we liked the taste and texture. I’ll freeze at least half the batch for “emergency” desserts.

• This reply was modified 6 years, 5 months ago by BakerAunt.

[RiversideLen]

Baker Aunt, "emergency desserts", I like the way you think!

Mike, the red cake wasn't a deep red, maybe slightly pink but more red then pink. I didn't use a lot of food color, I think 3 or 4 drops.

[BakerAunt]

Oh, I also made Cherry Granola on Friday morning. I like it for an occasional breakfast. My husband likes to snack. Guess who will probably eat most of it? 🙂

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