What are You Baking the Week of July 12, 2020?

[Mike Nolan]

I miss having toppings on them, I usually top mine with cheese and my wife's with poppy seeds. But they were good toasted and topped with cream cheese, corned beef and swiss cheese.

[aaronatthedoublef]

The bagels look good Mike. What made you decide on a sweet vs. a alkali liquid.

IC, I can never make things stay flat. The closest I come is with English muffins and while they do not have a round top they have more height than width. This could be because the mass produced muffins go through a process I cannot duplicate or because they are made from batter not dough or some combination of both. Or something I do not know. My English muffins are from dough. And my kids like them. So that works.

I need to make more bread this weekend. We've gone through two and a half loaves not including the whole wheat bread that went moldy and had to be tossed.

[BakerAunt]

We are almost out of bread, due to mold on the end of the loaf, so I've switched Friday's plans and put off pizza until tomorrow and am baking the Sourdough Whole Wheat Pan Bread recipe that I first baked on May 20. I wanted to do a bread with sourdough, since after I fed it last night, it overflowed its container a bit, so I know it has plenty of oomph. I'm going to reduce the yeast more than last time, when I went from 2 1/3 to 2 tsp. I'm considering either 1 3/4 or 1 1/2 tsp. I thought it slightly dry last time, so I will make myself hold back on the bread flour, but I'll still use 1/2 cup of the high-gluten, as it needs to be used.

[Mike Nolan]

I went with the sweet poaching liquid based in part on the discussion on the BBGA forum a few weeks back.

It'd be a pain to have two pots of boiling water going, but I think for my next batch of bagels I'm going to do some in sweetened water and some in my usual baking soda water. (I sometimes use both baking soda and barley malt syrup.)

I will say these bagels, especially the 3 minute ones, remind me a bit of Montreal Bagels. (Of course, I've only had them once or twice.)

[aaronatthedoublef]

The fight of lye vs sweet was definitely passionate and kind of entertaining. I have expected a duel using baguettes at dawn (I was watching "Hamilton" the other night).

That and mixers seem to evoke immediate and intense responses.

I need to start making bagels! One more thing to add to the list.

[BakerAunt]

Bagels are on my list as well. I actually have a bottle of malt syrup, but it is on the older side. Does it expire, as the date would suggest, or is this one of those expiration dates that can be ignored?

[Mike Nolan]

My experience with barley malt syrup is that it gets really thick as water evaporates out. What I do is add some hot water to the jar and let it sit for a few days, that gets it back to a more liquid state.

Here's a shot of all 3 sets of bagels from today:

The 30 second one is on the left, the 3 minute one on the right. There's far less color difference in this photo compared to the two I posted yesterday.

I put them in a micro-perforated bag overnight, this morning they didn't seem either dried out or soggy, and the the chewiness seemed the same as yesterday. Bagels tend to go moldy in regular un-perforated bags after a few days, I'll see how these do, assuming they last that long; we've eaten 4 of 9 so far.

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[BakerAunt]

Hmm--The ones that were in the water longer kept their center holes much more so than the other two.

Today I tried converting the Buttermilk Coffee Cake recipe in King Arthur's 200th Anniversary Cookbook to use oil rather than butter. I was successful in that part, and also in using half whole wheat pastry flour. However, when I've made this recipe in the past, I always added 2 cups of fresh blueberries. I did so this time, and used the Celebration Nordic Ware Bundt pan. The batter could not hold up the blueberries, they sank, and when I turned the cake out, in most places the blueberry part stuck--It did come off the pan afterwards quiet nicely without scraping. My husband, upstairs, heard my disappointment and called, "Don't worry, we'll eat it!" I took the pieces, and we had them along side some frozen vanilla yogurt.

So, the cake will work with oil, but I would not try adding any heavy fruit. At least it tastes good!

[Mike Nolan]

I think that was just a shaping issue combined with some rising as they were waiting to go in the water.

The problem with the 'hole in the middle' method is the hole will shrink if the dough contracts. The 'wrap around the hand' method tends to produce a more uniform sized hole, because the dough doesn't contract as much, but it doesn't work with big hands and small (3 ounce) bagels.

[KIDPIZZA]

MARLISS:
Good evening my friend. I think your problem is the effectiveness of the release concoction you employed. If you like you can post it's recipe & any special application insructions in it's removal of the baked article.
To be effective there is a time after baking when you should remove the cake from the pan.

If I think I can help your recipe I will provide you with my secret release recipe when I can call you again.

Have a nice day.

~KIDPIZZA...CASS.

[aaronatthedoublef]

I have sourdough and pizza dough rising refrigerator and a whole wheat autolyse on the counter. The sourdough and pizza dough should be ready tomorrow (pizza dough is on day 4). I'll make the whole wheat today. We're almost out of bread. We've gone through three loaves this week.

BTW, anyone have any recommendations for preventing mold? Sourdough is fine but the whole wheat goes moldy very quickly. I slice the loaf and freeze it taking a few slices out as needed. I have some medicine that comes with the little moisture absorbing packets and I am thinking of saving them and adding them to the bread bags.

[BakerAunt]

Aaron--PJ suggested using rice in her article on preventing mold. However, she had the bread in a glass container, and most of us do not have a glass container for our bread.

My experience is that whole wheat goes moldy faster in warm and humid weather, especially if it was high in liquid. That weather would be what we are having here and have been having for well over a month.

I keep my bread in a large Tupperware container. I leave one corner not pressed down so that it is not airtight. The idea is to let the moisture out.

[BakerAunt]

Hi, Cass--so good to hear from you. As you asked, I'll give the details here and my list of ingredients.

The blueberries had all sunk to the bottom of the Bundt pan, so I do think the disaster was caused by the batter being too thin to deal with these rather large blueberries that we picked locally. The batter was thin, due to using oil rather than butter, so it could not support the blueberries, and they sank.

I used the GREASE (1/3 flour, 1/3 oil, 1/3 Crisco), and the rest of the cake had no issue--just the part where the blueberries had sunk. I let the cake rest 15 minutes after removing from the oven. That is typical for larger Bundt cakes, but I debated with myself trying to turn it out after 10 min.

Here is the list of ingredients:

1 1/2 cup King Arthur AP flour
1 1/2 cup whole wheat pastry flour (Bob's Red Mill)
2 Tbs. flax meal
2 1/2 tsp. baking powder
1 tsp. baking soda
3/4 tsp. salt

1/2 cup canola oil
1 cup granulated sugar
1/2 cup light brown sugar
3 eggs
1 1/2 cups buttermilk
2 tsp vanilla

I added the 2 cups blueberries to the batter. I did not toss in flour, which I should have done, not that I think in this case it would have made a difference.

The filling was 2 tsp. cinnamon and 1/3 cup light brown sugar. I swirled it in at two points before adding more batter to the pan.

I baked at 350F on the third shelf up in my oven, which works well for Bundt cakes, for 50 minutes. It tested done.

The lower part of the cake is fine. When we cut into it, my husband admired the lovely cinnamon swirl. At some point, I will try this adaptation as a straight cinnamon swirl cake, and if that works, I'll post the recipe.

I've made this one with butter, and it worked. However, I used a flatter round ring pan, so the batter was more spread out.

[aaronatthedoublef]

Rice... That's funny. We used to have rice in the house. Then my 17 year old learned how easy it is to make and he mixes it with some microwave Indian food. And now we have no rice. 🙂 I think he has used about four cups uncooked in the last five days.

I need something food safe and inedible. Just took 100% whole wheat out of the oven. It's red wheat and I do not know where it is from. But don't look a gift bag of flour in the mouth! It is the Stella Park recipe from Serious Eats but I dropped the hydration from 75% to 70. And I dropped the second rise time to about 1.25 hours from two or so to make up for a warmer house. I may try dropping hydration another 5%. It is still pretty slack and loose but now I am starting to get some peak.

Oh, and my wife has decided she likes my sourdough. I'll bake that and maybe more crackers tomorrow.

• This reply was modified 4 years, 5 months ago by aaronatthedoublef.

[Mike Nolan]

I found the Stella Parks recipe went moldy faster than most breads. But my go-to whole wheat bread is only 50% whole wheat and has 4 ounces of honey in it (for 2 loaves), and sugar/honey acts as a preservative, so it prolongs shelf life by a couple of days.

But these days, with just the 2 of us, almost any breads I make are cut up and most of it frozen.

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