What are you Baking the Week of June 6, 2021?

[BakerAunt]

I baked six large Oatmeal Date Muffins this evening. The basic recipe is from The Los Angeles Times food section, probably at least 35 years ago. I adapted it by substituting ¼ cup oil for ¼ cup butter, adding 1 Tbs. milk powder and 2 tsp. flax meal, replacing the milk with buttermilk, cutting the salt in half, and reducing the baking powder to 1 tsp. and the baking soda to ¼ tsp.

[chocomouse]

I think you could rightfully, legally, say that is not the LA Times recipe, but a recipe by BakerAunt!!

[Mike Nolan]

As a reminder, facts, like a list of ingredients, cannot be copyrighted.

What is copyrightable with regards to a recipe are the instructions. Even then it is the specific wording that is copyrighted, not the intent.

I find it is useful to know the provenance of a recipe, if only because that often tells you a lot about what went into its creation. Jim Lahey gets a lot of credit for the NY Times no-knead bread recipe, but it appears no-knead recipes had been around for decades. Lahey improved the recipe, clarified the instructions, and popularized the concept, and all of those are worth giving credit for.

The rule of thumb I've always heard is that if you change 3 ingredients in a recipe (different ingredients or significantly different amounts), then it is considered a new recipe. I still find it helpful to know its background, though.

[RiversideLen]

I made a batch of "Healthy Oatmeal Cookies" from the Martha Stewart site.

[BakerAunt]

I also like to know the background of a recipe, even if the cook or baker significantly altered it. When I write up a recipe for myself, I include that in my notes.

[Mike Nolan]

I'm trying an experiment this morning, I took some generic hot dog buns, brushed them with a little egg wash and sprinkled poppy seeds on them, then put them in the oven at 350 for 4 minutes to dry out the egg.

Hopefully, this will make the buns more like Chicago-style hot dog buns.

I'm also making a test batch of rosette di pane today.

[BakerAunt]

On Saturday, I baked Blueberry Cobbler, using my adaptation of the recipe in the King Arthur Baking Book. I used frozen berries, so I baked an additional five minutes.

I also baked my Whole Wheat Sourdough Cheese Crackers

[Mike Nolan]

The first test bake for the rosetta di pane taught me several things, notably that the dough needed to be a lot stiffer. As to the 3 different types of rosetta stamps that my son made for me to test, I'm not sure there was much difference between them, a stiffer dough will be a better test.

Some of the instructions I found online have you final proof the rolls upside down, others do not, so I tried both ways. I don't think this test bake resolved that question, the dough was too soft. (Kaiser rolls are often proofed upside down as well, that's supposed to help preserve the kaiser patterning)

The flavor could stand a boost, too. I may try a different recipe or try adding some rye and/or triticale.

[Janiebakes]

Hi, BakerAunt, that was Aaron talking about coffee powder in his brownies. I do like the esspresso powder better than coffee extract as well.
The Joy of Cooking recipe is very adaptable. I have made it with oil instead of butter, with two whole eggs and 4 eggwhites and cocoa powder instead of unsweetened chocolate and it turned out well. Not as well as the all butter, egg and chocolate version but still good. The sugar is mixed with the eggs so you can get away with these changes and still melt the sugar.

Yesterday I baked the Applesauce bread from SunMaid. A memory from my childhood, it is different with only orange rind for flavor, not the usual cinnamon and nutmeg. I also made a batch of whole wheat sourdough crackers from a recipe I picked off the internet. I like that it includes onion and garlic powders as well as fresh rosemary. There is also a version using manchego cheese and smoked paprika that sounds good.I rolled it to an 1/8th of an inch using my doughboard from KAF but it puffed up greatly in baking. The 350 degree baking temp I thought was way too low. The second cookie sheet was baked at 400 and it did brown but had to sit in the turned off oven for an hour or so to get crispy. Stored in a zip bag, it lost some of that crispness over night.

BakerAunt, is your recipe for your whole wheat sourdough crackers on this site? I lokked but could not find it. While searching, I noticed you bake it often, so it must be a favorite. Janie

[Janiebakes]

Mike, how did your poppyseed hotdog buns turn out?

[BakerAunt]

Oops--Sorry, Janiebakes. I did not mean to confuse Aaron's reply with yours.

I have brought up the Whole Wheat Sourdough Cheese Cracker recipe under the recent recipe section on the right of the page. I needed to add another note about the recipe.

[Mike Nolan]

I had one for lunch, a Fairbury all-beef dog, some mustard, sweet relish, some jalapenos (instead of sport peppers) and a pickle spear. And celery salt, of course. It was very good, the closest thing I've had to a Chicago dog in several years. I think I can get sport peppers, but I haven't looked lately, I know I can't get Vienna all-beef dogs or the day-glo green relish here. :sigh: But at least I can make something pretty close to Chicago-style hot dog buns now.

I made four of them to see if they have about the same shelf life as the buns I made them from do.

[Mike Nolan]

My wife ate two of the rosetta rolls from today's test bake, she likes the crisp crust, and I think with a few more test bakes I may be able to get them to be hollow. I used a different recipe than the one that was originally in Italian in that old BC thread, as I recall those were very good, they had some fat in the dough.

I put them in a micro-perfed bag, that should keep them from getting soggy overnight.

[BakerAunt]

Interesting, Mike. My rolls never sogged, but their crust was chewy not crisp. The recipe I used (Daniel Leader) does not use any fat. I thought that the dough was firmer with all bread flour. I am thinking of trying the recipe with high-gluten flour and extending the two rest times.

People who use the apple slicer as their stamp for these rolls get the design to stay. I think that is because the edges of the apple slicer are sharp. My rosetta stamp does NOT have sharp edges but is smooth metal; however, it is heavy, and that must be a factor. A heavy dough should hold the imprint.

[Mike Nolan]

I used this recipe yesterday: Rosette di pane recipe.

The list of ingredients is missing the water for the biga step (it is mentioned in the text), I added more water because it seemed too dry at first, the final dough was way too soft, so I should probably have left the water out of the second step.

An 18 hour biga gives it a lot of time for enzyme activity, which produced a flavorful bread, though I think it could be improved upon. (A little rye or triticale, maybe?)

I used my steam tube, I suspect it isn't quite as effective as a commercial steam injection oven but it is a lot easier for me to use than just dumping water in a hot pan and trying to avoid getting burned. I think what I need is a somewhat larger cast iron pan, maybe one of the square ones. Lately I've been pre-steaming the oven before putting the dough in, then adding more water to replace the steam that comes out the open door. The crust was a little pale, I may need to double-pan it so that I don't burn the bottoms.

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