What are you Baking the Week of June 25, 2023?

[Mike Nolan]

Almost the end of another month, and summer is here for sure, yesterday it hit 95 here.

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[BakerAunt]

For Sunday breakfast, I baked Oatmeal Date Muffins as a thunderstorm was just finishing moving through our area. We got 0.65 inches of rain--and a life jacket and a plastic chair washed up on our shore. I posted to the local information list to see if anyone is missing the items. It's the third life jacket we have found over these past few years, although one was in our driveway. None were claimed. My husband and I joke that we will start a salvage store. As for the chair, some person without a clue about weather on a lake probably left it on the pier, and the winds and currents took care of the rest.

In the afternoon, as another thunderstorm headed our way, with a tornado watch to boot, I used my adaptation of Ken Haedrich's flat bread from The Harvest Baker to bake a 1 2/3 sheet pan of it. When I have used it for his beet and goat cheese flatbread, I usually leave out the egg. That began when I forgot the egg once, and the crust was fine, although I had to add a bit of water. This time I used water rather than milk and added the egg, since my friend who has a milk allergy will be visiting this week. I brushed it with olive oil before baking at 400F convection on the third rack up. I had planned to bake for 20 minutes, but as it approached 15 minutes, it looked done, so I took it out, then removed the parchment and let the cracker bread cool on the pan. We sampled it with our soup this evening, and it makes a nice snacky cracker that would do well with humus, maybe a bit of salsa. Some parts were darker than others. I might divide the dough next time onto my two regular large baking sheets. I might also reduce the baking time to 10 minutes.

[Mike Nolan]

I am making both peanut butter cookies and semolina bread today.

[navlys]

I only had a little more than 1/2 cup of semolina flour left and dough improver (not yet open) so I looked for a pizza recipe that only used 1/2 cup of semolina flour. The recipe only made one crust but it looked thick so I divided the dough in half. I ended up with a pizza cracker instead of a pie. Oh well.

[Mike Nolan]

I just bought another 50 pound bag of semolina, so I should be good for about 6 months. (We go through a lot of semolina bread in the summer, and a fair amount of homemade pasta in cooler weather.)

Each batch of semolina bread that I make takes 20 ounces of semolina (to 12 ounces of AP/bread flour.)

I also bought a 5 gallon food-safe bucket with a twist on lid to store most of it.

[BakerAunt]

My friend arrived on Tuesday evening for her third, and what will likely be her last visit to this area for a long time, now that her mother has passed away. My friend has a milk allergy, so I baked the Spiced Pumpkin Rye Bread from the Rye Baker blog for us to enjoy at lunch tomorrow and the next day. I also baked Big Lake Judy's molasses cookies.

Wednesday evening, I made the dough and shaped my Cinnamon Rolls for Vegans, which I will bake for breakfast tomorrow, the last day of my friend's visit. This morning, she guided me through the steps to make almond milk. I now feel confident that I can make it whenever I have guests who have milk allergies or who are vegan.

[navlys]

You are such a considerate host BA! Or should I say "hostess"?

[BakerAunt]

Thanks, Navlys. I try to be sensitive to my guests' dietary needs, as I hope people would be to mine.

I sent the six remaining cinnamon rolls with my friend when she left today. She meets up with her husband and two sons on Friday, and the cinnamon rolls will be a surprise for them. I also sent as much of the almond milk with her as she could use, but I still had about 1 ½ cups left. I decided to make another recipe of the Cinnamon Rolls for Vegans to use up another half cup, as well as a bit in the frosting. I have used slightly more than half white whole wheat flour the previous two times, so this time I used Bob's Red Mill whole wheat flour for that proportion. I made the dough and shaped the rolls tonight and will bake them in the morning.

I will need to find one more recipe to use up the remaining cup of almond milk. Some kind of scone would be nice.

[Mike Nolan]

I'm not big on scones, because they're usually a bit dry, but these are made with almond milk and look good:

https://www.orchidsandsweettea.com/dairy-free-blueberry-almond-scones/

[BakerAunt]

The one downside to that recipe, Mike, is that it calls for vegan butter, which I am reluctant to buy unless I have vegans or dairy allergy people staying here for a while. I'm going to discuss more in the thread on baking challenges.

[Mike Nolan]

There may be alternatives to vegan butter, which I've always found disappointing. (We have some vegetarian/vegan friends, they're always looking for a better vegan butter.)

I made bagels today, using Hamelman's recipe with a slight modification of his procedure, I left out the bulk rise, shaped them right after kneading and refrigerated them overnight. He also has you put the bagels in an ice water bath after boiling them, that led to an increased baking time. But they came out pretty good, the last batch was badly overproofed and they were wrinkled. These were a little flatter than I was expecting, but the interiors were good. They've got a good shine to them and a satisfying snap in the crust.

Diane said she liked this recipe better than the one I've been using (Reinhart), other than procedure the major difference is Hamelman's uses diastatic malt powder instead of malt syrup.

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[chocomouse]

Friday I made BakerAunt's adaptation of the Maple Buttermilk Whole Wheat bread. It was a slow riser, but did rise and is excellent.

[BakerAunt]

I baked Len's Rye/Whole Wheat/Semolina buns (as 10 buns) on Friday for us to have at dinner with salmon patties.

[chocomouse]

I made the Apricot Oatmeal bars, but used my blackberry jam. The blackberry flavor is not as strong as it is when I used the jam on something more plain, such as an English muffin. But the bars are very good.

I also made hoagie/sub buns and this time they look really really good -- practice makes perfect on the shaping!

[Mike Nolan]

I'm thinking I might try the cinnamon pretzels in the Classic German Baking book this weekend, probably only a half-recipe because a full recipe makes 64 pretzels.

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