What are you Baking the Week of July 23, 2023?

[Mike Nolan]

I didn't get the strawberry zucchini bread made on Saturday, hopefully today, along with peanut butter cookies.

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[skeptic7]

My plan for my next Mixer experiment is to make challah. Probably this recipe.
Any advice? I will only try a three braid bread. I might divide the dough and make two small Challah instead of one big one.
https://www.kingarthurbaking.com/recipes/mollys-challah-recipe

[Mike Nolan]

That recipe makes close to 2 pounds of dough, making two 3-strand challas would mean each strand would be in the 5-6 ounce range, which I think is a good size for rolling out and braiding. I personally think anything smaller than about 3 ounces doesn't roll out and braid as well, and anything over 8 ounces is either gonna be really thick or really long.

When I make a celebration two-layer challah, I make about 35 ounces of dough then divide the total dough by 9, then make 3 strands that each use 1/9th of the dough for the upper layer and 3 strands that each use 2/9ths of the dough for the lower layer. But this makes a loaf that is nearly 20 inches long!

[RiversideLen]

I really didn't intend to spend part of my Sunday baking but after lunch I was down to one bun, so I made another batch.

[Mike Nolan]

I made a batch of peanut butter cookies today.

We got to wondering if there were recipes for peanut butter zucchini cookies. I couldn't find any online so I'm going to experiment with a 2nd batch of the chewy peanut butter cookie recipe and add some shredded zucchini.

[Italiancook]

I searched through my recipes tonight, didn't find what I needed, but found this Taste of Home recipe. I've never baked it; we don't grow zucchini.

Zucchini Pineapple Bread

[BakerAunt]

I had planned to bake another batch of Len's buns to go with chicken salad tonight, but we went blueberry picking in the morning before running an errand, and after a late lunch, and hotter weather than we have had for a while, the last thing I wanted to do was to turn on the oven. So, I went back to an old recipe for Whole Grain Soft Wrap Bread, which started as a King Arthur recipe some years ago.

https://www.kingarthurbaking.com/recipes/soft-wrap-bread-recipe

It was long enough ago that the recipe is handwritten in a small binder not typed in my larger one. I had substituted ½ cup white whole wheat flour plus ½ cup buckwheat flour and added a tablespoon of flax meal. I decided to make the recipe half wholegrain by increasing the white whole wheat substitution to 1 cup, adding 1 Tbs. special dried milk, and using avocado oil. As each wrap finished cooking, I folded it in half and put it under a towel to keep warm, since once they cool, they break if folded in half. Mine are not fluffy like the King Arthur ones, but they are delicious, and we enjoyed them. I think they would be great with an egg or tuna salad filling as well.

[Mike Nolan]

I'm making a strawberry-blueberry zucchini bread today.

Maybe I'll try some peanut butter zucchini cookies later on, though it is supposed to get pretty hot here. The high is supposed to be in the high 90's through Friday. But it has been cloudy all morning and the temperatures haven't skyrocketed yet, so I figured I could get away with doing a zucchini bread in the small oven.

[Italiancook]

BakerAunt, the KA soft wrap bread looks interesting. Glad you told us to fold them when hot and place under a towel. Question: Do you freeze what you don't eat? I much prefer baking bread to eating it. I'll eat some when it's fresh baked and freeze the rest until needed. If I make these wraps, I'd only need 2 on baking day. I can't envision how I'd freeze the remainder. Any suggestions?

[BakerAunt]

Italian Cook--I have not tried freezing the wraps. If I were to do so, I would double wrap in saran, then stick the batch in a sealed plastic bag. To thaw, you could set one or two out on the counter about an hour or two before you planned to use it. I would then unwrap and discard the plastic wrap.

To warm up the wraps, I wrap them in waxed paper and microwave for 20-25 seconds. If I were to freeze them, I would do the same after I thawed them.

[BakerAunt]

I baked my Whole Wheat Sourdough Cheese Crackers on Tuesday from dough that I made last week.

[Mike Nolan]

The strawberry-blueberry zucchini bread is not quite what I was expecting.

I think I'd cut the cinnamon in half, and that's unusual for me because I often wind up doubling cinnamon from what recipes call for. The berries are pretty much drowned out by the cinnamon. However, this was the first one that I couldn't taste the zucchini at all. I think the cinnamon masks the cucurbitacin.

Adding the blueberries probably contributed to having too much moisture, the blueberries seems to burst in the oven and the area right around any of the fruit looks a bit like raw dough. (I don't think it is really raw, the internal temperature was 205 when I took it out, the total baking time was 20 minutes more than what the recipe called for.) The pictures on the site I got the recipe from has a bit of that, too.

It just calls for a loaf pan, it doesn't say what size. I used a 9x5, I don't think it would have fit in a smaller one. It sort of collapsed a bit as it cooled and more after being removed from the pan.

https://www.thefoodhussy.com/strawberry-zucchini-bread/

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[BakerAunt]

Mike is looking for ways to use up zucchini in baking, while I am searching for ways to use blackberries that I de-seed, since my husband's digestive system cannot tolerate them. I had a sudden idea about chocolate and blackberries on Thursday, so I googled brownies, and I found one recipe that uses blackberry jam and another that uses blackberry puree, although they did not de-seed their blackberries. Since we have so many blackberries, I decided to start with this one:

Bittersweet Blackberry Brownies

(note: it's behind a paywall, but you do get several free articles--or looks at the same article). It is from The Vegetarian Times.

I have mostly kept us away from chocolate, but since I'm taking a statin, and I had a 4 oz. bar of unsweetened chocolate in the refrigerator, I decided to try the recipe. (My husband's face lit up when he saw the unwrapped chocolate bar on the counter.) If the recipe comes out well, I will post my version, which uses white whole wheat flour, adds 1 Tbs. flax meal and 2 Tbs. milk powder (which yes, makes them non-vegan but still vegetarian). I also replaced the 2 Tbs. of coconut oil with 2 Tbs. avocado oil. I'm baking them in the countertop convection oven because it is too hot to turn on the big oven. Since I am baking them in an 8x8-inch glass dish and using the convection oven, I dropped the baking temperature from 350F to 325F and will bake for 20 minutes rather than 18.

After they cool, they are to be refrigerated for an hour before cutting. We hope to try them tonight, and I will post about the results.

[BakerAunt]

We cut into the brownies a bit early, having only refrigerated them for about 40 minutes. They have a strong, bittersweet chocolate taste, with hints of the blackberries. I wish that I had remembered to add some espresso powder. I used natural cocoa, since the recipe used 1/2 tsp. baking soda and 1/4 tsp. baking powder.

The next test will be how they taste tomorrow. I am refrigerating them due to the blackberry content.

[skeptic7]

I did my two little Challah using the KA stand mixer on Tuesday and Wednesday. They came out very well, soft and fine grain. I changed the recipe by leaving out all the sugar and the egg wash. The bread would have been improved by the egg wash, it came out a light brown and not especially pretty.
Why was there sugar and honey in an ordinary Challah recipe? Its not suppose to be a sweet bread or is it? I'm perfectly willing to put sugar in Moravian sugar bread, or chocolate bread, or other sweet breads but it seems odd for a Challah which should be savory.
This is my third bread with a stand mixer and I'm getting more used to its abilities. Also limitations -- this time I added flour by the spoonful, next time I might make a funnel out of a paper plate. Dumping the flour into the bowl from a quart container isn't going to ever work.
I went searching the Internet and there were people who really hated the way their Kitchen Aid mixer handled bread dough. Have you had any problems? Could I over heat the mixer if I tried to make two loaves at once?

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