What are You Baking the Week of November 14, 2021?

[Mike Nolan]

Of the pie apples available in stores at times here, Jonagolds are probably the best. They don't keep well, though, so they're usually only available for a few weeks in apple season. Golden Delicious is OK, and it is often available all year, I'd use it if I had to but that's why I bought 30+ pounds of Winesaps that I'm down to about 9 pounds of. They do keep fairly well if kept cool but I need to finish them off the next week or two.

[Italiancook]

BakerAunt, thanks for your effort in passing along Cass's suggestions for the Portuguese bread. I've copied and pasted them into a Word document.

Cass, I plan to use all your suggestions, so I saved the Word document. I think using part Gold Medal flour and part KA makes sense, since I don't know what type of flour the recipe-writer used. My KA all-purpose is unbleached, but I can only find bleached Gold Medal AP flour. Will the bleached make a bad difference?

I appreciate you analyzing the recipe and telling me to use a pan, Cass. I certainly don't want to invest the time or ingredients to end up with a pancake!

Cass, you offered an interesting idea for enjoying the bread with olive oil. We'll try that for sure. I'll report back with the results in a couple of weeks. Initially, I had posted I was going to make this bread next week. I hadn't thought about Thanksgiving. Now, I'll bake it the week after the holiday.

A long time ago, on a vacation at Seabrook Island, I ate at a restaurant that offered an appetizer of bread for dipping in olive oil. It was the most scrumptious appetizer I've ever eaten. I can't believe it, but I didn't ask the waiter the name of the olive oil or the bread (homemade).

Fast forward recently, and I read something about Portuguese olive oil. I had never purchased good olive oil. I buy olive oil in a large can -- the same brand my mother-in-law used! I e-mailed portugaliamarketplace.com to ask which olive oil to purchase for dipping. I also asked what type of bread to use. A rep sent a suggestion for both. I don't recall the name of the oil, but when I bought it, the site said there were only 2 left.

This will be my first adventure with anything Portuguese, so I thank you Cass for your help, and BakerAunt for sending the help my way.

[BakerAunt]

Italian Cook--I'm pretty sure that Cass would tell you to use all King Arthur unbleached rather than use any bleached Gold Medal in this bread.

Bleached flour is good for shortbread but not for bread.

[Italiancook]

BakerAunt, thanks for the flour information. I have no idea why Gold Medal unbleached isn't sold in this area. After Thanksgiving, when stores aren't so busy, I may check around again to see if anyone has added unbleached GM.

[Mike Nolan]

As Cass has written, bleaching flour weakens the gluten structure. So it is good for things that don't need a strong gluten matrix, like cookies and shortbread. I prefer an even lower protein flour for pie crust, I found I can get Bob's Red Mill unbleached white fine pastry flour (not the whole wheat one) at Natural Grocers at a much lower price than King Arthur unbleached pastry flour (under $6 for 5 pounds vs $9.95 plus shipping for 3 pounds), so that's what I'm currently using.

This time of year stores here tend to have a lot of sales on flour, it's always bleached, either house brand or GM. You have to look harder to find the unbleached ones.

[aaronatthedoublef]

Thanks BA. Thanks Mike.

This is much simpler than the guild recipe that starts w/13 kg of flour and requires understanding baker's math and scaling everything down. It's actually easier once you get the hang of it but...

I'm working with this fellow again next Wednesday, so I'll walk through this with him then.

[aaronatthedoublef]

Thanks BA. Thanks Mike.

This is much simpler than the guild recipe that starts w/13 kg of flour and requires understanding baker's math and scaling everything down. It's actually easier once you get the hang of it but...

I'm working with this fellow again next Wednesday, so I'll walk through this with him then. I think he might be looking for a sweet bread recipe which they have here too.

[Mike Nolan]

Baker's math formulas can be intimidating. Here's a post on that issue with some examples of how to convert a recipe in baker's math format into a list of ingredients in units you can measure:

https://mynebraskakitchen.com/wordpress/using-bakers-math/

[Author]

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