What are You Baking the Week of March 1, 2020?

[BakerAunt]

It's a new month of baking! I'm not baking today, but I have plans for later this week.

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[Mike Nolan]

I was going to do some more triticale tests today, but I had a work project that had to be completed and I spent 4 hours Saturday getting the vinegars set up, so I will do it later this week. I'm still hoping to get a carrot cake made today, though.

I need to make semolina bread some time soon, too, I took the last one out of the freezer a couple of days ago. I need to get back onto the rye project, too.

• This reply was modified 4 years, 9 months ago by Mike Nolan.

[Mike Nolan]

Carrot cake is out and needs to cool before I can frost it, I used Wingboy's recipe posted here but not his choice of spices. (I used 2 tsp of cinnamon, 1/2 tsp of allspice, 1/4 tsp of nutmeg and 1/4 tsp of clove.)

About half way through baking it, my wife said it smells like it needs raisins. :sigh:

[Mike Nolan]

I think the spice blend on the carrot cake is about right, it could stand to be a bit taller, adding raisins and/or nuts would add some volume, or I could use a 10x10 pan instead of a 9 x 13. I was afraid it might be on the dry side, since I'm using carrots that have had most of the juice extracted, but it seems fine. I did use the full cup and a half of oil in Wingboy's recipe, but only 1 1/2 cups of sugar, as he recommends.

I made the 'standard' recipe for cream cheese frosting, 1/2 cup butter to 8 ounces of cream cheese and a pound of powdered sugar, with a little vanilla. Next time I may go with half as much butter, so that the cream cheese flavor is stronger.

We're sending over half of it in to my wife's office tomorrow, because I'm sure it's full of carbs. I wonder how many carbs there are in the carrot pulp and how much was in the juice that went into the jar to make vinegar? Carrot juice is pretty sweet.

[Mike Nolan]

I'm making semolina bread this afternoon and will probably be making a large batch of pate fermentee tonight so that I can do some more triticale tests tomorrow. I think I'll run the triticale up to 20% of the total flour this time.

I want to do some playing around with shapes, I'm thinking I'll do an epis de bles, a fendu, a fougasse and an auvergnat (cap), and maybe a boule or batard. If I still have dough left over, I'll do some baguettes.

[BakerAunt]

I look forward to seeing those pictures, Mike.

On Monday, I baked a new recipe from the online Bon Appetit February newsletter for Earl Grey Yogurt Cake:

https://www.bonappetit.com/recipe/earl-grey-yogurt-cake:

I had waited to bake it until there were some reviews, as I thought the amount of oil in the recipe excessive. There were about ten reviews, and about half of them stated that the bread was oily, and a number commented on how long it took to bake and that the center did not bake well and also fell.

I proceeded to change around the recipe. I used a Kaiser loaf pan that is 10 x 4 ½", measured at the top, and 8 ½ x 3 ½", measured at the bottom; it’s 3” deep. I used the Grease and did not do the parchment sling, of which the magazine staff is perhaps excessively fond, considering that the original recipe also called for oiling the pan.

I used half AP flour and half whole wheat pastry flour. I replaced the kosher salt (not a good idea for baking, people!) with ½ tsp. sea salt and added 2 Tbs. Bob’s Red Mill milk powder. I ground the Earl Grey with my mortar and pestle, but some larger pieces did remain. I reduced the vanilla by 25% to 1 ½ tsp. (People in test kitchens with access to expensive ingredients can go wild. The rest of us like to determine if it is necessary.) I switched to my cake whisk when incorporating the flour. I baked it on the third rack up in my Wolf oven, and it tested done after an hour. I let it rest for 15 minutes in the pan, then turned it out onto a rack to cool. The batter nicely filled the pan, and I didn’t have the center sinking that some reviewers reported. I’m not planning to sample it until tomorrow, at which time I’ll comment on taste and texture.

[BakerAunt]

I made my Sourdough Pan Pizza for Monday night’s dinner. I replaced the ¾ cup King Arthur AP flour with KAF’s White Whole Wheat Flour but left the semolina, durum, and dark rye flour alone. The crust was slightly dense. I’ll add an additional 1 Tbs. of water next time.

I topped it with cherry tomatoes, cut in half, cooked ground turkey, Penzey's Tuscan Sunset, Garlic Powder, and Roasted Onion Powder, mushrooms, 4 oz. cubed lower fat mozzarella, coarsely grated Parmesan cheese, and red bell pepper, which I only remembered at the end.

[Mike Nolan]

The carrot cake I made last night didn't have any vanilla in the cake batter, with 4 spices it just isn't needed. There was a little in the cream cheese frosting.

The pieces of cake I sent in to the office were well-received, and nobody complained about the softer texture from using carrot pulp rather than shredded carrot, and some asked when I was going to make it again.

One person who had her wisdom teeth extracted on Friday and is still on a soft diet was able to eat a piece of carrot cake because it doesn't have the chewy bits of carrot in it. She was delighted to have something tasty to eat other than just things like mashed potatoes.

[Mike Nolan]

I'm making 6 pounds of triticale dough today, more or less following Reinhart's Pain de Campagne recipe, except that I swapped triticale for the whole wheat flour and raised it to 20% of the flour weight.

I'll be making 2 epis, a baguette, a boule, a fendu, an auvergnat and a fougasse.

[Mike Nolan]

Two of my shapes didn't come out as well as I would have liked, the auvergnat fell over and the fougasse was sticking to the parchment and didn't get spread out as much as it should have after making the cuts.

I've tried searching for pictures of an auvergnat loaf, the the only ones I can find also appear to have fallen over, so maybe that's not unusual. I remember having problems at first getting a two-layer celebration challah to not fall off to one side, I'll definitely have to try this shape again. My wife likes the way it came out, she thinks it looks somewhat like a lion. (She collects lions, that's her sorority's mascot.)

Next time I may try shaping the fougasse on the work table and transferring it to the pan after stretching it, or perhaps putting it directly on the sheet pan or put some corn meal on the parchment first so the dough doesn't stick down so much. Live and learn.

I'm still taking pictures, I should have them posted later tonight or in the morning.

The 20% triticale dough was very tasty, we ate one of the epis with our onion soup for supper. Most of the bread will be going in to my wife's office in the morning, this time she's going to take some butter and a knife to cut it, especially the bigger loaves.

[Mike Nolan]

Pictures from today's bread shaping with triticale dough.

Here are two epis de bles and a baguette:

Here's a boule. (Not much different than the ones from two weeks ago in appearance).

Here's a fendu, I think this one came out fairly nice.

Here's the fougasse, the cuts on the sides are supposed to go all the way through like the one down the middle did. This increase the amount of crust, which I think is largely how shape impacts flavor.

And here's the auvergnat, from two angles:

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[Joan Simpson]

Mike your bread looks wonderful!

[Mike Nolan]

Epis are one of our favorite bread shapes, there's a lot of crust on each 'grain', so it is really crunchy. And you can just tear one off, no bread knife needed. It makes a great presentation bread at the table, we have a bread board that it fits on very nicely:

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[BakerAunt]

I'm in awe of your bread shapes, Mike!

[Mike Nolan]

I was happier with one of the epis than the other, and the baguette wouldn't have done well as a competition bread, the slashes were too uneven and there wasn't a clean 'ear' on any of them. The fendu came out very nice. Two of the shapes were new for me and were definitely learning experiences, but shaping bread is something I enjoy doing, and it still amazes me how much shape influences taste.

A few years ago I got into braiding breads, and I braided just about everything for several months, until my wife started complaining. (Braided breads tend to have shapes that don't make good sandwiches for things like sliced meats.)

I saw a suggestion in Marcy Goldman's book A Treasury of Jewish Holiday Baking to make a braided challah but put it in a loaf pan, so you get a nice square bottom but the braided top. I may try that.

A friend of ours is downsizing and brought a bunch of stuff over for my wife's annual Memorial Day garage sale. We got to talking about bread and she's never had challah, much less used it for French toast, so there will probably be challah on the schedule soon.

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