What are You Baking the Week of June 12, 2022?

[BakerAunt]

I baked Wheat-Oat Flax buns on Sunday to use with salmon patties at dinner. I adapted the recipe from King Arthur but am still making some changes. I think it is almost where I want it.

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[chocomouse]

I made the Wild Rice and Onion Bread from the Brother Juniper Bread Book. The only changes I make are to cut back on the salt, and sub 2 cups of whole wheat for 2 cups of the bread flour. It is very wet, so I do add flour to get the right texture dough. I don't make it very often, but it is delicious.

[BakerAunt]

I was looking through some "to try" recipes last week and found Mrs. Cindy's "White Chocolate Cherry Almond Bread." On Monday, I baked it. I made some changes--most of them intentional. I used regular almonds, as I do not have Macona almonds. I used 1 1/2 cups white whole wheat flour to replace that much bread flour. I reduced the salt to 3/4 tsp. I replaced the 2 Tbs. butter with avocado oil. I used special gold yeast, which I thought would work better with a sweet dough and reduced it to 2 tsp. I have some white chocolate chunks, rather than chips, so I used 60 grams (a little over 1/3 cup). I meant to use 2 Tbs. potato flour instead of the 1/4 cup potato flakes; unfortunately, I forgot and put in 1/4 cup potato flour. I replaced a cup of water with buttermilk. However, when I started the machine, I realized that I had added 1/2 cup water rather than 1/4 cup. That meant a frantic effort to add more flour as the machine was running. I added another1/4 cup bread flour and 1/4 cup regular whole wheat flour. (In my desperation, I forgot that I was using white whole wheat.)

After the first rise, the dough was slack, so I kneaded just a bit more flour into it, then pre-shaped, let rest 5 minutes, then pre-shaped again, and panned it into an 8-inch round, 2-inch-deep cake pan. I let it rise for 50 minutes, then baked at 375F. It was not done after 30 minutes and needed an additional 6 minutes. It did have great oven spring.

We had some of the bread as dessert tonight. It is soft and sweet. The cherries did not stay in large pieces, and most of the white chocolate melted into the bread, although occasionally there is a little nugget. The crust got very dark, but it does not taste burned. It is a good bread to have with tea, or even for breakfast. I plan to bake it again, at some point with the correct amount of liquid.

I believe that the recipe is here at Nebraska Kitchen.

[aaronatthedoublef]

Hi BA. The bread sounds good. Did you toast the almonds first?

I made KAF's crumb coffeecake from their big baking book for our contractors yesterday. I use half the crumb because making all of it use way too much butter, even for me. It also makes it less sweet and highlights the cake's flavor which is very good. I may need to use more as the top looks bald. I could always make the full amount of crumb and save some out.

This morning I made apple pie pancakes. I just caramelize some apples and add cinamon. I should probably add some nutmeg too but no one in my family likes nutmeg.

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[Mike Nolan]

I am planning to make a kouign amann on Sunday, as my father's day present to myself. It always seems like it is a grown-up version of what I do with scraps from laminated dough projects, throwing them in a baking pan with some additional butter and sugar.

There's been a thread on this recipe on the BBGA forums, it sounds like one of those recipes where things work out great even if it looks like a total mess going into the oven.

[aaronatthedoublef]

I thought that's where kouign amann came from: leftovers and unusable croissants.

Good luck and happy Father's Day in advance.

[Mike Nolan]

When I took my pastry course at SFBI, they served breakfast every day. One of the things they made was bread pudding made with day-old croissants.

It was so good we had them include the recipe in our notebooks. I haven't made it yet because I never have enough day-old croissants to do it.

[Mike Nolan]

I am making semolina bread today, since the last of the previous batch got tossed a couple of days ago.

I also plan to make two batches of my mother's oatmeal chocolate chip cookies this evening, one using a gluten-free flour mix. These are to go to a party Thursday evening where several of the participants are gluten-free. (At least one is mostly vegan, but I've never made these cookies with an egg replacement.)

[Joan Simpson]

Aaron your crumb cake looks good and the pancakes with apples do too.

[Mike Nolan]

Aaron, have you tried making Dutch Baby pancakes? When we lived in the Chicago/Evanston area, we tried to get to Walker Brothers Original Pancake House every few months for a Dutch Baby. There was always a long line.

[BakerAunt]

Aaron--I didn't toast the almonds, which might be why they, too, have mostly disappeared into the bread. I used those cut almonds. Next time, I think that I will use whole almonds I cut up myself. Toasting might help keep their flavor. The bread has a lovely brownish-red interior, no doubt due to soaking the cherries and using the liquid.

[Mike Nolan]

I wonder how some candied slivered almonds would work? I find that ramps up the almond flavor quite a bit.

[aaronatthedoublef]

People are always dinged in baking challenges for not toasting their nuts these days. The one or two dishes I make with nuts call for toasting but in at least one of them that is to help remove the skins as much as for flavor.

Thanks for all your kind words about my pictures. I did not think they looked great which is part of the reason I started posting them. I see so many single, perfect things on Instagram and I wanted to show that not everything has to be camera-ready to be good and to feed people. I'm more impressed by a dozen loaves with basic scoring than one loaf with lots of intricate, fancy designs cut into it (although those are cool).

Oh, and Len, the dark loaf was gone in under 12 hours and my wife and I only had one piece. With Sam home from college, we're back to two teenage boys who boy eat tons of bread.

[Mike Nolan]

The Challah Prince's website is apparently being revised; previously, you'd see a number of his loaves are quite dark. He uses an egg yolk wash and the protein in egg yolk adds a lot of color. Plus, challah is something that is better a little overbaked than a little underbaked.

It is an issue that comes up on the BBGA forums a lot, some customers will take the darkest loaves they can get, others only want the palest of them.

[aaronatthedoublef]

Challah really is a fine balance. I tend to make a wetter dough because I have a better crumb that way and a softer interior. It's something my mom figured out and I picked up from her long before I knew about "hydration". And being baked just enough, not too much or too little because it shouldn't be dry and it definitely shouldn't be doughy. I've had that and it is very unpleasant.

I like loaves to be pumper in the middle but I'm coming to realize that is an ascetic too. Some people like them straight without any taper at the end.

And crust color is a topic that can go on for pages and pages and everyone has an opinion.

And, what I did not realize before Mike sent the link to the page with all the different egg washes, was how many egg washes there are and what they all do. I've lost the link but I have the page printed out.

The original recipe I started used an egg and an egg white. I just used an egg because I didn't want to waste an egg or worry about saving and then reusing a yolk. Then I added some water to loosen it.

The dark one came out dark because my oven heats from the back not the bottom and it was closest to the back.

Thanks

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