What are you Baking the Week of October 17, 2021?

[Mike Nolan]

Better late than never, though I haven't done any baking this week myself, too busy playing techie.

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[BakerAunt]

On Sunday, I baked Whole Wheat Oat Bran Bread—Take III—as I continue my adaptation of Peter Reinhart’s recipe. This time I used half bread flour and did not substitute in any high-gluten flour. I kept the changes of using half whole wheat flour, grinding the oat bran, reducing the yeast to 1 ½ Tbs. and the salt to 1 Tbs. and using just 5 Tbs. honey. I increased the buttermilk substitution to 3 cups, using just ½ cup water. I ended up adding 1 Tbs. of water as the dough kneaded. Next time, I will use 5 oz. water. I reduced the olive oil that I add from 4 Tbs. to 3 Tbs. Instead of using two 9x5 pans (makes enormous loaves), I baked it as three slightly small 8x4 loaves, a size that works better for us. I started the baking at 375F for a couple of minutes, then lowered it to the 350F of the recipe. The loaves were done at about 42 minutes. Note: The flavor and crumb are very good. I think with the addition of another ounce of water (to make a total of 5 oz water), the recipe will be ready to be typed and added to my baking binder.

I felt ok enough after my Covid-19 booster on Wednesday to bake the Whole Wheat Sourdough Cheese Crackers from dough I had resting in the refrigerator. I have decided not to add any salt on top of these from now on. I was keeping a light hand, but there is plenty of sodium in the cheese powder, as well as some in the milk and milk powder.

[Italiancook]

I went back to the 1970s and baked a Piecake for the first time since that era. I used a can of cherry pie filling. Recipe calls for 1 teaspoon cinnamon. I was careful to level off the cinnamon, but we still couldn't taste much of the pie filling. Nevertheless, we enjoyed all the cake. It's not something I'll make again, because it's heavy on sugar with the pie filling. I used half white splenda with the sugar. The cake doesn't taste overly sweet, but I know it's caloric from the pie filling and white sugar. Of course, that never bothers me when I make Texas Chocolate Cake!

[Mike Nolan]

Depending on what kind of cinnamon you buy, I find I need about 50% more than the recipe calls for to be able to taste it. Some of that may be that as you get older (I'm 72) you need stronger flavors to be able to taste them.

I tend to buy the 16/18 ounce containers from Tones or McCormick, which is pretty generic cinnamon. My wife likes the Watkins cinnamon for her oatmeal but it is hard finding a Watkins dealer these days, Amway dealers are even harder to find. A close friend has been selling Tupperware for many years, she's trying to wind that down and is slowly getting rid of her inventory.

[KathyD]

I have not been here in a long time. Thank you for the email that the site was down and now back up....it gave me the push to find you. Right now I have Sourdough rising. Going to make cookies over the weekend. And will be looking to bake from Dorie Greenspan's new book!
Nice to be back
KathyD

[Mike Nolan]

Welcome back, Kathy.

I'm working on making a version of Altamura bread, made with 100% semolina flour and using a semolina sourdough starter that I've been building for a couple of weeks now. It's supposed to be somewhat cake-like in texture.

[KathyD]

Thank you for the Welcome Mike.
I'll be interested in your 100% Semolina Flour experiment. I would think that it is too course to make bread with just Semolina. I'll be interested in how that works for you.
I know its not the right place to do it but may I ask if anyone has heard from Kidpizza lately?
Enjoy your day!

[RiversideLen]

I buy the Vietnamese cinnamon from KAF or The Spice House. I think it has very nice flavor.

[chocomouse]

Today I made a carrot cake, but have not done a taste test yet. I used apple sauce in place of some of the oil, added chopped and smashed pineapple chunks (prefer crushed, but chunks is what I found in the pantry), 4 cups of shredded carrots, and walnuts. I'm telling myself this will be a healthy snack. Oh, I did forget about the cream cheese frosting!

[Joan Simpson]

Welcome back KathyD.

[cwcdesign]

Welcome KathyD, BakerAunt is in touch with Kid Pizza - he celebrated his birthday not too long ago.

I made the dough for chewy ginger molasses cookies from Claire Saffitz’s Dessert Person. The cookie balls are in the freezer waiting to be baked on Thursday to take to my manager and her mom who is having full knee replacement surgery on Wednesday. I’ll also be taking my vegetable barley soup and some kind of bread which will depend on my schedule next week.

[Mike Nolan]

I've been making Jeffrey Hamelman's semolina bread for around a year, he uses a 50-50 blend of semolina and bread flour, I've been increasing the semolina to about 63%.

His is an interesting recipe because it uses a 'flying' sponge, a term you don't run across very often. You take the yeast, mix it with about 1/3 of the flour blend and water, then let it sit for about an hour, by which time it isn't exactly bubbly but it is clearly active, then add the other ingredients.

True Altamura bread (which has PDO status in the EU, like parmigiano reggiano) is made with 4 different strains of locally grown Italian durum wheat (some call it reground semolina), there was a demo on it as part of the J&W bread symposium using a flour mix sold by Puratos and I ran across a take on that recipe in Andrew Whitley's book, Bread Matters. The original Altamura bread is made with a semolina sourdough, Whitley's recipe uses an overnight sponge, I'm building a semolina sourdough starter so that I can experiment with this recipe and some others.

My rye starter died this summer, fallout from the refrigerator failure. Considering that I was only using a few teaspoons of it to inoculate a levain for rye breads, I may try the semolina starter on some rye recipes rather than build a new rye starter. As cooler weather hits, I'm going to try to get back into the Ginsberg Rye project, though.

[Mike Nolan]

I think BakerAunt was trying to help KidPizza get back to posting, but it seems that he is still reading this site from time to time, he offers comments through her (and others) about threads that interest him. He's had to give up making cheesecakes due to his health.

[KathyD]

Chocomouse, your carrot cake sounds delicious. Let us know how it turns out.
Joan Sampson, thank you for the welcome. So many names are familiar.
CWCDesign, thank you for the heads up about KidPizza. I miss him and would to give him a shout.
Mike Nolan, your bread sounds great. Jeffrey's bread book is one of the ones I don't have yet. Anxious to see how your bread turns out.

KidPizza, Just wanted to say hello and see how you are doing. I would love to chat when you have time.

Thank you all, I promise not to steer another thread in the wrong directions!
KathyD

[Mike Nolan]

The third edition of Jeffrey's book came out recently, I've got the first edition. I know he's revised some recipes (fixing some errors, including one in the semolina bread recipe) and adding some new ones. It's kind of pricey, but maybe not so much when compared to the Modernist series. Modernist Pizza just came out, and it only weighs about 30 pounds.

A new edition of Emily Buehler's Bread Science just came out, that one I may order from her (she self-publishes), she has a PhD in chemistry and does a pretty good job keeping track of the scientific literature on bread. I don't have access to all the technical journals, and I'm not sure I understand even half of the articles when I read them.

I'm still trying to get my head around the presentations on sourdough that were part of the Johnson & Wales bread symposium; much of what I thought I knew about sourdough appears to be wrong. The presentations from the symposium will be available on Youtube next year. When they're up, I'll post links to several of them.

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