What are you Baking the week of March 22, 2020

[skeptic7]

I did Whole Wheat Hot Cross buns -- mixed the dough on Sunday, kneaded it and formed it on Monday, baked Monday night, and then gave almost all of it away on Tuesday. Well aside from the ones I ate. This was a doggy safe version, dates, cranberries, orange and lemon peel, but no raisins or currants or prunes. I gave it to friends who have dogs, and one friend who likes whole wheat and less sweet pastries. Dogs need to celebrate Easter too! I made maple icing for the crosses.
Traditional Hot Cross buns need to come with a warning that they aren't dog friendly.

[BakerAunt]

I made up dough for my Whole Wheat Sourdough Cheese Crackers on Wednesday. The dough, divided into four pieces, will rest in the refrigerator four or five days, then I will bake the crackers. I have warned my husband that he should slow down on consuming these until I can be sure of getting another bag of whole wheat flour. 🙂

• This reply was modified 4 years, 8 months ago by BakerAunt.

[Mike Nolan]

I've posted my adaptation of my wife's aunt's banana cream pie recipe.

[BakerAunt]

I realized this morning that when I fed my sourdough yesterday evening, I only fed it half the flour I should have. I was wondering last night why it was so thin. It sat on the counter overnight, and when I realized my error this morning, I mixed in the other half of flour. I'll leave it on the counter until this afternoon, when I'm thinking of baking bread with it.

[RiversideLen]

I made a small batch of my rolls today, 6 instead of 8. I also made pizza dough for the weekend.

[BakerAunt]

I baked a new recipe on Thursday evening, Blood Orange Yogurt Loaf:

https://www.howsweeteats.com/2018/01/blood-orange-yogurt-cake/

I made a few changes in that I used 1/3 barley flour. I also used nonfat Greek yogurt, which is what I have on hand. I replaced the ½ cup melted coconut oil with canola oil. I changed the mixing directions in that I mixed in the oil after the vanilla. I’m not sure why some of the cake recipes I’ve seen tell bakers to mix the oil in after the flour is added to the dry ingredients. I find that it incorporates better if added earlier. I baked it in a Nordic Ware loaf pan that has swirls, using the Grease to coat the pan. I baked it on the third rack from the bottom for 45 minutes (tested at 40 minutes).

On Thursday evening, I also mixed the levain for the KAF “Honey Spelt Sourdough.” I use ¼ cup of my sourdough starter, however, rather than 1 Tbs. I also weighed a cup of spelt flour, and it weighs 4.6 oz., not 3.5 oz. (This recipe only works if I do volume measurements; the KAF weights are off.) I’ll bake the bread tomorrow. I chose the recipe after realizing I have spelt on hand.

[RiversideLen]

I don't like bananas that get too soft but I'm being mindful to be less wasteful right now. I had 2 bananas that were too soft for me so I decided to make them into banana oat waffles. Not bad but could have used another banana.

[Mike Nolan]

Soft bananas are an excuse to make banana nut muffins. It usually takes 4 for a batch, sometimes I'll peel them, put them in a bag and freeze them until I haven enough for a batch of muffins.

[Mike Nolan]

I made a batch of bagels today.

[BakerAunt]

The Blood Orange Loaf cake--with the glaze recipe from the chocolate cake I made about two weeks ago--came out very well. I will make it again, with my changes, the next time blood oranges are in season.

I baked the Honey Spelt Sourdough on Friday. It didn’t get the rise that it has in the past. The house was cold, so maybe I should have let the second rise go longer than 1 hour and 45 minutes. The first rise was fine in an hour, but the bread machine warms the dough as it mixes, and there was no such warmth for the second rise. The house was warm and sunny this morning, but by 1 p.m., clouds had cooled the house considerably. I also subbed in ½ cup of high gluten flour for that much AP., but I don’t think that would have made much difference. We’ll see how it is when I cut into it tomorrow.

I also made sourdough crust pizza for dinner. It too had difficulty rising until my husband started a fire in the woodstove and I moved it to the front room. I used more dark rye in it this time, and less AP. It made a very nice crust. I topped it with olive oil, cooked ground turkey, fennel seed, Penzey’s Tuscan seasoning, garlic powder, and onion powder, whole cherry tomatoes, mushrooms, red bell pepper, mozzarella cheese, and Parmesan.

[skeptic7]

BakerAunt, your pizza sounds wonderful, as does your blood orange cake, as does the Sourdough cheese crackers. I wish you lived close enough to visit.

I hope to do another batch of Hot Cross buns this weekend but I need to clean up at least part of the house so that might not happen. I will be doing a pizza but mine are normally very simple cheese pizza without fennel or Tuscan seasoning or cherry tomatoes or other nice things.

[BakerAunt]

Skeptic--If we all lived closer to each other, there would be some stupendous potlucks!

I put the fennel seed on the pizza in order to give the ground turkey a "sausage" taste. My husband insists that our joint pizzas have meat, and since we gave up salami (sigh), ground turkey it is. I just happened to see the cherry tomatoes when we did a grocery run on Tuesday. They weren't the best (were not sweet, as I like), but they worked amazingly well left whole on top of the pizza, although I had to bake the pizza for nearly 20 rather than the usual 15 minutes, so that they would start to burst. I'm trying to convince my husband that we need at least one cherry tomato plant in our garden.

[Mike Nolan]

Maybe we should set up a virtual potluck?

[chocomouse]

Today I made bagels, using KAF "Bagels" recipe, but subbing 2 cups of whole wheat for 2 cups of the AP. I used barley malt syrup in the dough. I made 12 bagels, 75 grams each, which is smaller than typical. Len, each finished bagel weighed about 65 grams.

I shaped each one into a smooth ball and let them rest about 10 minutes. Then I poked a hole in the center of each and carefully stretched each one into the bagel shape. I let them rest for 20 minutes.

To make the boiling water bath, I added 1 teaspoon of barley malt syrup and 1 teaspoon of baking soda (not called for in the recipe but I see that many recipes do call for it; not sure I can tell the difference) to the water in my old electric skillet. That is really not deep enough for the job, but I do not have another wide, shallow (4 inches deep is recommended) pan.

I boiled the bagels, 4 at a time, for about 1 minute, then flipped for another 30 seconds or so. They went into a 425* oven for 25 minutes. Next time I think I will try 20 minutes. The outside is crisp and chewy and the interior is a little chewy but soft. I use AP flour instead of a stronger (bread, or high gluten) flour because we do not like them real chewy.

The texture is what we like. The flavor is excellent; we also love whole wheat. The shaping is much better than the first batch I made a couple of months ago.

• This reply was modified 4 years, 8 months ago by chocomouse.
• This reply was modified 4 years, 8 months ago by chocomouse.

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[Mike Nolan]

Your bagels look great, a bit more baking soda in the water might have given them a little shinier surface, the alkali bath changes the surface starches a bit. (I'm almost out of baking soda, if we buy a new large bag of it I plan to bake some of it into sodium carbonate, which gives a much higher pH, though still well below that of lye.)

I'm making the Buttery Crispbread from the Ginsberg book today, but they're supposed to air dry for 24 hours before you eat them, if I can last that long before sampling them.

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