What are you Baking the Week of May 23, 2021?

[Mike Nolan]

I should check with my son on how he was doing trying to reproduce the rosetta stamp on his 3D printer. He's been pretty busy with his job lately, he told me he hasn't baked any bread in weeks.

[BakerAunt]

The Key Lime tarts came out well but are exceptionally tart. I attribute that to my husband's not picking them until they had turned yellowish. To my surprise, my husband also ate one at lunch, so he will remember not to let them go so long next time. When I serve remaining ones, I will top each with a small scoop of low-fat vanilla yogurt to balance the tartness.

[Janiebakes]

Years ago focaccia baked with chopped up vegetables was popular in grocery store bakeries in Charlotte, where I lived at that time. Yesterday, thinking about what to make for dinner I realized that I had random bits of veggies, cheese and a chicken sausage to use up so decided to go that route. I don't like thick bread focaccia so I decided to use pizza crust. Looking in Peter Reinhart's "American Pie" I picked his recipe for pizza americana crust. He said it was bready and stood up to heavy toppings. I was suprised to see it included sugar or honey as well as milk but went ahead and followed the recipe. The topping was two carmalized onion, three grated, well sauteed zucchini and sauteed sweet mini pepper rings, a three oz chicken sausage and a handful of grated Swiss and Romano cheese. The crust edges browned but stayed as soft as Wonderbread. The crust was amazingly soft and sweet. There was too much dough for my pizza needs so I shaped the remainder into a small boule and baked it. Today we sliced it up and ate it toasted with formage blanc with lemon and blueberries. Very dessertish with a cup of coffee. I would not use this crust recipe again. Way too soft and sweet. My go to from that book is the Roman pizza dough.

• This reply was modified 2 years, 10 months ago by Janiebakes.

[Mike Nolan]

I've been making the Roman crust (or a variant on it) for a while, I'm still not completely satisfied with it. I'm looking for a crisper crust. Maybe I need to play around with baking time/temp more?

[Janiebakes]

I've read that increasing the amount of semolina flour can help. Also, oiling the peel will put a layer of oil on the dough and it tends to fry a bit crisper. Wood fired oven? 🙂

[Mike Nolan]

I like a little semolina in pizza dough, but if you put in too much it changes the flavor profile and texture, corn meal does that too.

We haven't done a pizza lately, just hasn't sounded good.

[Italiancook]

Yesterday, I baked a new chocolate chip recipe from allreceipes.com. Best, Big, Fat,, Chewy Chocolate Chip Cookie. I used bittersweet chips, my preferred, even though recipe calls for semisweet. I like the recipe, because it calls for melted butter. I don't have to deal with softening butter, which I always do in the microwave. It calls for 1/4 cup portions, so I used that size ice cream scoop. Made big cookies! And, they were fat. I used only 1-3/4 cup chips, that's all I had, even though recipe calls for 2 cups. For my taste, 2 cups would be too many, and next time, I'll go down to 1-1/2 cups chips. I like the recipe, because it doesn't use nuts, which I shouldn't eat for medical reasons. My Yield: 16 cookies. I gave away some of the cookies. I hadn't planned on that when I started baking, but the finished product looks spectacular, so I had to ignore the pandemic and give away some. This is now my go-to choc. chip cookie recipe. They're that good. I froze what my husband and I didn't eat. I hope they'll be delicious thawed out.

Later in the day, I baked KABC Blitz Bread: No Fuss Focaccia. I added 2 teaspoons marjoram to the dough & sprinkled the top with marjoram. The spicy bitterness of the herb shined through, and I didn't like it. Next time, I'll try a combination of dried thyme and dried rosemary - crushing the rosemary in the mini-food processor. Because the house was cold, I let it rise longer than the 60 minutes called for in the recipe. I'm much happier with the results than previously. I cut it into rectangular soup dippers and froze.

[BakerAunt]

That was WAY too much marjoram, Italian Cook. My pea soup recipe only calls for 1/4 tsp. (makes about 8 cups), and I can just taste it, along with the 1/2 tsp. thyme. Just that tiny amount adds to the soup, and I would miss it without, but more would overpower it.

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