What are you Baking the Week of June 19, 2022?

[Mike Nolan]

One teaspoon of salt in 6 cups of flour is less than 1% salt, so I wouldn't call that very salty. Maybe the other recipes are higher in salt, though.

A lot of classic French haute cuisine is scaled-up peasant food. Think cassoulet, for example. The peasant version uses pork skin and not much meat.

In terms of peasant food that got up-scaled, coq au vin also has to be the high on the list, it used to be made with an old rooster and left over wine, possibly going sour.

Onion soup also got up-scaled, it was made with chicken stock (not beef stock) and used stale bread and left over cheese.

[Mike Nolan]

It's too bad the video of King Arthur editor Susan Reid's laminated dough demonstration in Kansas City has apparently disappeared.

Just about everything that you can imagine went wrong. King Arthur's shipping department didn't get the supplies shipped to the hotel, so at 5 AM she's out hitting WalMart to buy flour and tools, like bowls and a rolling pin. She forgot to buy a dough scraper and wound up using a spare hotel room key card for that!

When the dough wasn't squaring off cleanly, she'd just grab the corner and stretch it. The idea of laminated dough being delicate seemed remote by the time she was done. And her croissants were fantastic.

[aaronatthedoublef]

Thanks for the encouragement to try lamination Mike. And it's less daunting now that butter is less than $7/lb.

The lava bread is not salty. It is sweet. Even Violet found it very sweet.

But the yeasted breads they served in restaurants and cafes was very salty to my taste. I have no recipes for those.

[Mike Nolan]

Jimmy Griffin's book on lamination is short but has a lot of information.

His youtube page has lots of examples of laminated doughs; when he rolls them out by hand he somehow manages to keep the edges straight. That's a master at work!

See https://www.youtube.com/c/JimmyGriffinbaking

[RiversideLen]

I made a white cake from a Betty Crocker box mix. The instructions say to use either 3 egg whites or 3 whole eggs, just seems to me that would make a difference in the texture and volume. So I split the difference and used one whole egg and 2 egg whites. I made it in my USA mini cake pans (first time I actually used it for cake, I usually use them to make my sandwich buns in). They are essentially the equivalent of 2 standard size cupcakes. I got 11 cakes out of it. They baked up nice and taste good. Haven't decided if I'm going to frost them.

[BakerAunt]

That is a great idea for baking small cakes, Len. I have two of those pans.

[chocomouse]

I have two also - perhaps the most used pans I own! They also make perfectly sized pies, tarts, quiches, etc. I use a 6" round cutter/ring (KAF used to carry this size, not sure if they still have them) to cut a rolled out crust. The wells in the pan are 4", with 1" high sides, so a 6" round crust is so easy to fit into the well. After a mini-pie is baked, I freeze them individually.

[aaronatthedoublef]

Thanks for the link Mike. I'll watch and maybe buy the book as well. I learn better from books and following steps.

My family likes white cakes and I would MUCH rather make a yellow cake. I haven't tried a mix (maybe I should) but taking out the yolks makes the recipe more challenging. I have had more than one white cake where I overbeat the whites and dried them and the cake out. But the crumb is very pretty and delicate. I do more hand mixing with white cakes.

Those cake pans are really cool. Where do you all buy your bakeware?

[aaronatthedoublef]

Thanks for the link Mike. I'll watch and maybe buy the book as well. I learn better from books and following steps.

My family likes white cakes and I would MUCH rather make a yellow cake. I haven't tried a mix (maybe I should) but taking out the yolks makes the recipe more challenging. I have had more than one white cake where I overbeat the whites and dried them and the cake out. But the crumb is very pretty and delicate. I do more hand mixing with white cakes.

Those cake pans are really cool. Where do you all buy your bakeware?

[BakerAunt]

Aaron--I bought my "bun pans" from King Arthur a long time ago when they were a new offering there. The older one was before USA was making them; the other is a darker, non-stick version. One actually has "sample" written on the back! I bought them for buns, but as we like smaller buns, and I have gotten better at shaping them, I have not been using them for that purpose. These are also great for sweet rolls, and I have made an apple sweet roll recipe from King Arthur in them. (If I figure out how to transform the saturated fat in the recipe, I will bake those again, when apple season rolls around.)

[RiversideLen]

I bought my pans at King Arthur but I'm willing to bet that Amazon has them, they do carry USA pans.

************ EDIT*************
I looked on Amazon, they have them for about $30
****************

BakerAunt, I'm actually real good at shaping burger buns (not hot dog buns) but I still use the mini cake pans to bake them in because the sides of the buns brown up nicer than just baking on a sheet pan. May not be a big deal for most people but I appreciate the difference.

[aaronatthedoublef]

Thanks Len. I saw them on Amazon too. I am just trying to ween myself off buying things from them. I'm not a big fan these days.

I've been making KAF potato rolls for buns and my family likes those. I've been hand-shaping them as well. You cannot get the two tone effect of a hamburger bun without a pan (or I haven't figured that out). I have never tried hotdog buns, freehand or otherwise. Looking at them they might be similar to mini baguettes and baguettes are surprisingly hard to shape.

[Mike Nolan]

I've used at least two different methods for shaping hot dog buns, one is similar to shaping a baguette, where you roll into an oval, fold, fold again and yet again. The other is to roll out logs.

Neither method produces hot dog buns as airy as the ones in the grocery store. My guess is this due to radically different production methods for mass-produced buns.

I don't have a New England Hot Dog pan, I sort of tried making them without the pan the last time, it wasn't all that different from rolling out logs of dough.

[Author]

Posts