What are you Baking the week of March 15, 2020?

[Mike Nolan]

I think I'll make more Challah today.

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[BakerAunt]

To go with soup on Sunday night and the next night, I’m baking cornbread muffins. I’m using my Nordic Ware snowflake muffin pans, which I had not gotten around to using this winter. We did have a wet snow yesterday, but it melted earlier today.

[skeptic7]

I'm going to make Rosemary Foccacio as a gift for a neighbor. The hot cross buns turned out well, soft and a little spicy. Now that they are cool, I'm going to frost them.

[Mike Nolan]

I may have to forego my tradition of making Hot Cross Buns to give away on Good Friday this year. My wife will be working mostly from home the rest of the semester so I won't be sending things to her office. I'll probably make some for us, though.

[BakerAunt]

On Monday, I baked King Arthur Flour’s Favorite Fudge Birthday Cake. The layers are cooling. I’ll make the ganache and assemble the cake later this evening, so that it is ready for my husband’s birthday tomorrow. He looks forward to the cake all year, which is the only time I will allow us to revel in its saturated fat deliciousness, particularly when we don’t have other people with whom to share it. My only change is to use half and half rather than whipping cream in the ganache, as that worked well last year. The cake baked beautifully in my new oven.

[Joan Simpson]

Happy Birthday to your husband BakerAunt,enjoy the cake!

[skeptic7]

My Rosemary Focaccio came out well and I delivered it to the neighbor across the street. We kept four or five feet apart as I handed her the bread in its plastic bag. If she hadn't answered the door I was going to leave the bag on the door knob.
My plan was to spend the next two weeks baking and giving away Hot Cross buns but I am thinking of just baking enough for myself and not visiting even at a decent distance, I basically feel fine now but feel the very start of a cold coming on.

[RiversideLen]

Happy Birthday to your husband, BakerAunt, the cake sounds delicious!

[BakerAunt]

My husband thanks Joan and Len for their birthday wishes. Last year's cake came out dry (I blame the apt. oven), but this year's is just right. It's a tradition that we cut the cake at lunch rather than waiting until dinner, at which time, we have another slice. The tradition started when we traveled here on spring break every year, and we needed to eat up most of the cake before heading back to Texas, although we would take it back and eat it along the way. As is also a tradition, I set the cake on his mother's candlewick glass pedestal cake plate, that she always used for their birthdays, to cut it. As the cake plate has no cover, the cake is on a plate that I can put back into a plastic cake holder after dessert.

I should mention that I use half bittersweet chocolate and half semisweet chocolate for the filling and the ganache. Ah, heaven!

[RiversideLen]

I made sandwich buns today.

[RiversideLen]

I bought a bag of Almond Flour from KAF, my plan is to add a little to baked goods like cake mix. My question is, do I need to add more liquid to the mix when adding the almond flour? I'm thinking about adding 1/4 cup.

[skeptic7]

RiversideLen;
I wouldn't think so, that isn't very much flour compared to the rest of the ingredients in a cake.

Wednesday I made a large batch of Hot Cross Buns. It was basically from a recipe found in King Arthur Flour's baking newsletter but I changed the spices to be more varied. I baked it, checked the temperature and then put it back in the oven to bake longer till the internal temperature was180 degrees. A small pan came out loooking beautiful but was too soft inside and I am treating them like brown and serve rolls and rebaking before eating. I gave most of the properly cooked rolls away.

I also make Cornish Meat Pie from "The Garndener Museum Cafe Cookbook". This is a meat pie with 2 lbs of hamburger and a little carrot and onions and potatoes. Its very heavily seasoned with 1 tablespoon each of dried thyme, marjoram and basil, and minced garlic. I used my favorite oil based pie crust. This turned out very well, with about 2 cups of filling left over after the pie was made. I used a 10 inch frying pan as a pie pan so it made a deep pie, it would probably have made 2 shallower pies. It was slighly bland which surprised me as I remembered it as being very strong tasting. But it cut beautifully after being refrigerated overnight and I look forward to the leftovers. I opened a jar of cranberry sauce I had canned last year to go with this.
This differs from a traditional Cornish pastry in that the hamburger is cooked before being mixed into the filling. I think its easier to manage and less likely to cause food poisoning this way.

[Mike Nolan]

I'm making the Ginsberg Salty Rye Rolls recipe today, report later today or tomorrow.

[BakerAunt]

I began Friday by making pancakes, using some of the free sample of pancake mix I had received from Bob’s Red Mill (1 cup), increasing the water to ¾ cup, and adding ¾ cup quick oats. It made six pancakes. I had four, and my husband had two after eating his oatmeal.

Friday was also a day to experiment with my Swedish Limpa Bread recipe. I had considered trying the one in The Rye Baker, but I did not have coriander seed. I also had bought two organic oranges for their peels, and the recipe I’ve made for years requires orange peel and the Ginsberg recipe does not. Decision made.

I’ve looked for the original recipe (from McCall’s Cooking School) as I have made changes over the years, and I wanted to go back to basics. However, I could not find it. I did have notes, so I was able to re-think the recipe. I wanted more dark rye, so I increased it to 3 1/2 cups (still short of the 5 cups I noted in the first recipe). I replaced a cup of bread flour with a cup of first clear flour, and I used either 2 or 3 cups more bread flour. (I was keeping notes, but the husband came in and distracted me.) I reduced the molasses to 3 Tbs. from 4, and the salt from 1 tbs. to 2 tsp. I used half special gold yeast and half active dry yeast, for a total of 4 tsp. (The original recipe was 4 1/2 tsp.) I replaced 1 1/2 cups of water with buttermilk, and 4 Tbs. butter with 3 Tbs. canola oil. I've never been satisfied with the spice (2 tsp. anise seed), as I wanted to replicate a bread I recall from a bakery/restaurant called Griswald's in southern California that I recall from my high school days. I looked at Ginsberg's recipe and decided to toast 1 tsp. fennel and 1/2 tsp. anise in a skillet but not grind them as he did.

I baked them in the hearth pans I got from KAF a long time ago, but the dough was such that I probably could have just done them on a cookie sheet; I think that they would have held their shape, and the bottoms were a bit too dark, which happens with these pans. (If they ever offer them again as USA pans, I'd buy them.)

I slashed each loaf twice--and it was some of my best slashing. The loaves baked beautifully, except for the slightly overdone, but not burned bottoms. I look forward to slicing one tomorrow and checking out the taste and texture.

[BakerAunt]

Len--I agree with Skeptic that the small amount of almond flour should not require additional water in the recipe.

Skeptic--Your meat pie sounds divine. Was it a 2-crust pie?

I look forward to Mike's report on the rolls, since my frustration with that recipe is that it is hard not to burn the bottom of those rolls.

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