What are you Baking the Week of October 16, 2022?

[Mike Nolan]

I'm not sure I'll get any baking done today, though I will need to make semolina bread soon.

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[Mike Nolan]

I'm making the semolina bread today.

[BakerAunt]

On Tuesday, I baked Big Lake Judy's Best Ever Molasses Cookies. I have been craving them since last week, when Aaron posted about baking his mother's molasses cookies with Violet for his son's track meet, and then Mike mentioned BLJ's recipe. These are perfect for autumn afternoons, especially the rainy, with occasional snow, northwest Indiana is experiencing today.

I made one change by adding 2 Tbs. Bob's Red Mill milk powder. I used a #40 scoop and ended up with 28 cookies, which I baked for 14 minutes, switching halfway through the time.

[chocomouse]

I also am ready to make BLJ's molasses cookies, they are a favorite of ours. I just got back from a week in NY and am too tired and have too many really important tasks to take care of first, but they are now on my list!

[Mike Nolan]

I usually make BLJ's molasses cookies smaller, with a #60 scoop. I'd use a #70 if I had one. (I think I have #40, #60 and #100, but not #70 or #80.)

[BakerAunt]

If I made the cookies smaller, I would eat more each time. 🙂

[Mike Nolan]

As my wife points out, if you make the cookies smaller you can eat more individual cookies without eating a greater total amount of cookies.

But that only works if you can stop eating at some point.

I've long thought the serving information on Girl Scout Thin Mints cookies is wrong. A serving is one stack of cookies, isn't it??

[Mike Nolan]

Last night's semolina bread. I left the oil out of the dough by mistake, and that affected how much it rose, so it is a bit more dense than usual, but still tastes pretty good.

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[Joan Simpson]

Good looking bread Mike.

[navlys]

Mike do you use the semolina bread recipe on KA's sight? I still have some flour left over from making the cheesy semolina bread and want to use it up.

[Mike Nolan]

I use the one in Jeffrey Hamelman's book. I just looked at several semolina bread recipes on the King Arthur site, didn't see that one there but I might have missed it. It starts by making a 'flying sponge' with a bit under half of the flours, water, a little sugar and the yeast. You let that sit for about 90 minutes then add the rest of the flour, more water, oil and salt.

This appears to be close to the recipe in the book:http://fortheloveofbread.blogspot.com/2009/06/hamelmans-semolina-bread.html

The only changes I've made are that I use 20 ounces of semolina and 12 ounces of bread flour to make up the 2 pounds of flour. (That's 62.5% semolina, the original recipe is 50-50.) I also use regular oil rather than olive oil. (For the last year or two I've been using a blend of canola and soybean oil.)

I left the oil out of this week's batch. (Just got distracted and forgot it.) It came out a bit more dense than it usually does, how much of that was the missing oil and how much of it was the cooler weather is hard to say.

[navlys]

Thanks,Mike. I will check it out.

[navlys]

I recently made brownies using an "Inspired Taste" recipe. The recipe called for cocoa and I used the Dutch cocoa that I purchased from KA. They were delicious. Trying to find the recipe again I found another "Inspired Taste" brownie recipe that called for regular cocoa , 6T butter and 4T oil in lieu of 10T butter. It also included baking powder and an egg yolk. I am tempted to try this latter recipe but why fool with success?

[RiversideLen]

That bread looks great, Mike.

I made pizza dough the other day, enough for 3 thin crust pies. I used equal parts of semolina, duram, whole wheat and AP flours. So the past 2 nights I had pizza. Will make the final one tonight.

[Mike Nolan]

Back when we used to get semolina bread from McGinnis Sisters in the Pittsburgh area (a local chain now closed), I saved an ingredients label.

The ingredients were: enriched durum flour, enriched semolina flour, unbleached enriched flour with less than 2% of the following: rice flour, salt, sesame seeds, malt syrup and yeast.

I can't be sure, but it is possible that the rice flour was used primarily for dusting underneath the dough before baking. I've seen other recipes do that, rice flour apparently doesn't scorch as easily as wheat flour in a hot oven. I generally use corn meal for that.

No oil, so maybe this week's omission was worth repeating.

I don't currently have any durum flour on hand, which is why I've been using 62.5% semolina in Hamelman's recipe for the past year or so.

I may have to try using malt syrup instead of sugar in the flying sponge in Hamelman's recipe.

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