What are you Baking the Week of November 21, 2021?

[BakerAunt]

Chocomouse: I will post my version of the recipe. I looked at the comments but thought that the people who reported poor results may be inexperienced in the kitchen. Maybe they over creamed the butter, maybe they used regular rather than Greek yogurt, or used a brand that is not so great. However, the blog writer needs to give a clearer cooking time--a 15 minutes difference in possible baking time is just plain sloppy. Most of my blueberries stayed on top of the cake for a lovely presentation.

[BakerAunt]

Chocomouse--I have posted my adapted recipe of the Greek Yogurt cake in the recipe section.

I wonder if some of the people who did not have good results did not know how much 2 oz. of butter is. The recipe writer should have included that this amount equals 4 Tbs.

[rottiedogs]

I just took my sweet potato pie out of the oven. The house smells wonderful. For the first time ever I baked the sweet potatoes instead of boiling them. I had the oven on for something else anyway so I put them in. I am curious to see if there is a difference between boiling or baking them. Funny that Mike was talking about doing the opposite.

50% of us (not me) will not touch pumpkin pie with a 10 foot pole. Years ago for the first Thanksgiving after we were married it was requested. I had no idea and never heard of it before so I asked around at work. Lo and behold one of the women came in the next day with a handwritten recipe from her grandmother that she shared. I've been making it ever since.

[Mike Nolan]

I wound up baking the sweet potato, the sweet potato pie is in the oven now. So far today I've:

Helped my wife make a Germans Sweet Chocolate Cake for a friend's birthday.

Made 16 hard rolls (12 for tomorrow) I scaled the recipe I used last week up to 16 and added about 3/4 of a cup of triticale flour to it. Not sure I can tell its there.

Made 50 chocolate meringue cookies (using up the egg whites from the frosting for the cake)

Blind baked two pie crusts

I have the sweet potato pie in the oven now, I'll do the pecan pie later this evening in the 2nd blind baked pie shell.

[BakerAunt]

On Wednesday, I baked the Spiced Pumpkin Bread from Stanley Ginsberg’s The Rye Baker blog. As I did when I baked it last spring, I used the bread machine to do the mixing and ended up adding 2 Tbs. more whole wheat flour. Although the dough was sticky, coming out of the machine, it was not too hard to shape after the one-hour rise. The loaf baked nicely, although my slashing left something to be desired. I slashed too far down on one end, and that end broke open. However, it is still a nice loaf, and I look forward to slicing it at dinner tomorrow.

After baking the bread, I baked my pumpkin pie. Mike’s remarks about pastry flour reminded me that I still have some white pastry flour, so I used it rather than AP in conjunction with the whole wheat pastry flour. The crust dough was much easier to work with in my oil crust recipe—less dry—and I was able to make nice crimping around the edge. The pie is now cooling. Once again, I had that mystery spot in the back where on the pie surface, there is a “break out.” There is something about the Wolf oven that makes it happen, as I never had this issue in other ovens. I reduce the temperature for the pie from 425F to 350F after the first 10 minutes and turn it slightly. I’m using the regular bake setting, but perhaps I should try the convection setting. I am not sure how that would work with a "custard" type pie; it works well for fruit pies.

[Mike Nolan]

As I understand it, starting at a higher temperature or using a convection setting is done to help the crust set, which is why you lower the temperature mid-bake.

I do fruit pies starting at 385 convection for the first 20 minutes, then I drop the temperature to 350 non-convection for the rest of the bake.

My sweet potato pie used a par-baked pie shell, so it did not start at a high temperature. I did use the convection cycle for the first 10 minutes of blind baking, then lowered the temperature to 350 for another 10 minutes after taking the pie beans out, with a pie shield. I still got more shrinkage than I wanted, though.

[BakerAunt]

I was following the directions that ATK had with a partially blind-baked crust. However, the ATK is a butter crust, and I use an oil crust. The "bubble" didn't happen until after I had dropped the temperature and slightly turned the pie. When I bake my next pumpkin pie for Christmas (my husband's family tradition, I will experiment with using a lower initial temperature on convection.

Here's a little smile from Cathy in honor of pies:

https://www.gocomics.com/cathy-commiserations/2021/11/25

[Mike Nolan]

Tuesday's Cathy was quite good, too:

https://www.gocomics.com/cathy-commiserations/2021/11/23

[chocomouse]

Today I made bagels, using KABC's high gluten flour. I've used that flour only once before, in the same recipe, and the bagels were awful. No structure at all, quite a wet dough, very slack, and frankly, no flavor. This time - they came out great! They are a little more dense than I like, but the purpose of the high gluten flour is to make them chewy!

[Mike Nolan]

IMHO, the key to good bagels is to keep the hydration low. Some of the posters on the BBGA forum make much higher hydration bagels, I'm not sure how/why they work. (But baking is like that, there are more than a few baking recipes that SHOULD NOT WORK, but do!)

[BakerAunt]

I baked my Whole Wheat Sourdough Cheese Crackers on Friday from dough that I made last week.

[Joan Simpson]

I made sugar cookies today with added lemon juice,lemon extract and some karo syrup.I rolled it in a log will bake later.

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