Wednesday afternoon consisted of two baking experiments. I took the KAF recipe for Zucchini Chocolate Chip Pecan Bars that I baked in September and we liked. However, I already had 8 oz. of shredded squash that I needed to use, and I did not want to clean the food processor. I am also out of quick oats, and I wasn’t feeling a desire for chocolate. So, I mixed the canola oil and light brown sugar, added the egg, then mixed in the squash. I added 1 ½ cups of 5-grain rolled cereal (Bob’s Red Mill). I deleted the vanilla. I used white whole wheat flour and the rest of the dry ingredients as given, except that I cut the salt to ½ tsp. and added ½ tsp. cinnamon. I also stirred in 60g (about 1/3 cup of cinnamon chips. I baked them for 37 minutes. They came out well with my changes, although a bit chewy from the 5-grains cereal. I've been avoiding the cinnamon chips due to the saturated fat (14g in this half cup), but I have a lot (leftover from before KAF stopped selling them), so I try to use them occasionally, and I wanted that cinnamon flavor in the bars.
My other experiment is a recipe for Three Grain Bread, from Breads, Breads, and More Breads (no. 37) in a Pillsbury recipe booklet from about thirty years ago. It’s another bread that I used to bake all the time, and that was when I kneaded by hand. I recall baking it about six years ago and discussing it with the now defunct KAF Baking Circle. I made some changes in that I increased the medium rye flour and the whole wheat flour to 2 cups each and reduced the bread flour by ½ cup. I reduced the two packages of yeast to 3 ½ tsp. I reduced 2/3 cup honey to 3 Tbs. and 2 Tbs. molasses to 1 tbs. I added 1/3 cup special dry milk. I replaced ¼ cup “shreds of whole bran cereal” with ¼ cup flax meal. I used 2 cups buttermilk in place of the regular milk. The dough was a bit dry with ½ cup water that I used to proof yeast. I added 2 Tbs. Next time I’ll use 1/3 cup water. I also used ½ cup less bread flour. I replaced the 3 Tbs. margarine with 2 Tbs. canola oil. The bread took 90 minutes on the first rise and 1 hour 15 minutes on the second and perhaps should have gone a bit longer. The house was cool, and I forgot until the second rise that I need to put a mat under the dough container since the counters are cold. There was not much oven spring, so the loaves are smaller than expected. We’ll see how they are when I cut into them tomorrow.
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