What are you Baking the Week of October 20, 2024?

[Mike Nolan]

I'm planning to try making a keto-friendlier apple pie today or tomorrow.

I ordered a 'pie bag' from King Arthur, it's supposed to make it easier to roll out pie dough, but I'm also hoping it will work for pizza dough. It's due some time today but if it isn't here by 3PM I will probably defer the pie until tomorrow.

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[BakerAunt]

Someone, I don't recall who, was looking for a pumpkin-shaped bread recipe. I mentioned that King Arthur has such a recipe. There was a link in today's KABC email:

https://www.kingarthurbaking.com/recipes/sourdough-ginger-pumpkin-bread-recipe?trk_msg=J1DM9373DS5K9161GKST0GO56G&trk_contact=76QMPS4J1FELGVOK858GLJTEC8&trk_sid=KDPJIUR90KJHPPPR3CL5JG1N4G&trk_link=9BLTU2JKRR0KVA2PDT6UDQB2FK&utm_source=ltk_master&utm_medium=email&utm_term=https%3a%2f%2fwww.kingarthurbaking.com%2frecipes%2fsourdough-ginger-pumpkin-bread-recipe&utm_campaign=ec241020&utm_content=sunday-halloween

[Mike Nolan]

The cinnamon stick for the stem is cute, but probably more decorative than flavorful.

[BakerAunt]

I made cornmeal pancakes for breakfast on Sunday, using Bob's Red Mill coarse grind cornmeal and white whole wheat flour. The recipe came from a package of the BRM coarse cornmeal--back before they were so focused on gluten-free. I make half a recipe, which is just right for the two of us.

[Mike Nolan]

I have the lower-carb apple pie in the oven, it'll be a while before it's done and cool enough to taste.

It's out and it looks like an apple pie:

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[Mike Nolan]

The apple pie is pretty good, I used the all-butter crust recipe I usually use, but with Carbalose instead of pastry flour. I did have to add a bit more water to get it to form a dough, that's typical with Carbalose products. Could have used a little more cinnamon, but that's always subjective. (And Diane almost always thinks a recipe needs more cinnamon.)

This year's Winesap apples are a bit more tart than the ones I got (at a different orchard) last year, I noticed that when I was peeling them, and I also didn't adjust the recipe for the difference in sweetness between sucrose and allulose (about 70% as sweet), but sometimes that recipe is almost too sweet.

The Carbalose crust was reasonably flaky, perhaps a bit more assertive in taste than pastry flour, but it definitely tastes like an apple pie.

Instead of an egg wash, I used cream, with just a little sparkling sugar (adding less than 1 carb per slice). I took it out of the oven a few minutes early because the outer edges were getting dark but the crust seems fully baked.

I used my new pastry rolling bag from King Arthur, it seemed to help keep the crust from fracturing. Now I need to test it on pizza dough.

[cwcdesign]

I made the pumpkin chocolate chip bread from KABC. It turns out you can follow their directions for reducing the purée and over reduce it - fortunately someone else had had the same issue and was told to add water back to total the weight of the purée you are supposed to have - At least now I know the consistency for next time. I did use 1 cup of AP and 3/4 cup WWW. We liked the flavor, it wasn't too sweet, and I might have been able to reduce the baking time a couple of minutes.

[Mike Nolan]

Playing around with the recipe tool in Carb Manager, it looks like my croissants (small, 40 grams each) are about 15 grams of carbs each. If I use allulose, cream and carbalose flour, I can get that down to 5 net carbs each (10 total carbs). Adding chocolate sticks to make chocolatines adds another 5 carbs back.

Will have to try that to see how they taste but based on the apple pie I made on Sunday probably similar to the croissants I made some years ago using soft red winter whole meal wheat flour instead of AP flour.

[BakerAunt]

Thanks for reporting back on that pumpkin bread recipe, CWCdesign!

On Tuesday, I baked three loaves of Whole Wheat Oat Bran Bread. Two go into the freezer, and we will start eating the other one at lunch tomorrow.

[BakerAunt]

I was going to bake small loaves of pumpkin bread on Wednesday, but then I remembered my recipe for Pumpkin Chocolate Swirl Cake, which I adapted from a recipe that came with the Nordic Ware Autumn Wreath pan. So, I mixed up a large batch of the grease, as I plan to use a lot of my Nordic Ware pans this autumn and winter and baked the cake. We should have waited until tomorrow to slice it, but we do not have that much self-control. The cake is delicious and will be even better tomorrow.

[Joan Simpson]

I baked two loaves of banana bread for my friends today.

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[aaronatthedoublef]

The pie looks great Mike. Joan - you are a good friend!

Has anyone experimented with making grain free bread? I have a friend who is trying it with marginal success.

I did not bake this week but Violet did. She made her first cake for my birthday. It came out very nicely. I made the frosting mostly because I wanted to try a new method. I also did the clean up for her so she only had the fun part of baking.

Last week was a challah bake but the temple was locked up on my bake day (Thursday) so I had 15 lbs of dough sitting in the fridge. I came in Sunday and gathered it up and brough it home. Can't waste that much dough. I've given away a few pounds of raw dough and a couple dozen 100g rolls and I still have plenty left. It seems to still have rise as I pull it out of the fridge and make rolls, proof, then bake. I haven't weighed how much is left.

[Joan Simpson]

Apple pie looks good Mike. Aaron , glad to hear Violet is still wanting to bake ❤️ Last night I baked a new recipe drop sugar cookies but I rolled them in tablespoons balls then dipped the bottom of a glass in colored sugar.They stayed soft overnight and that's what I wanted. I gave them all away today.Aaron I do try to be a good friend 😉
That's a lot of challah Aaron and that's on my list of bakes to do, never baked that.

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[Mike Nolan]

I've tried a number of keto-friendly recipes, ones without wheat, barley, rice, oats, corn or rye. (I generally don't do anything with teff, millet, sorghum, kamut, quinoa or other grains, so they didn't factor in to my testing, though I may play with teff to see if I can make a good injira.)

Mixed results--at best. Texture is an issue, few of them have the lightness you get with wheat. The ones that used a lot of whipped egg whites tended to be a bit lighter, but IMHO the egginess is an issue. It does not appear you can make them with liquid egg whites, not sure if powdered egg protein would work or not, so you need a plan for what to do with multiple egg yolks. (I've made gluten-free angel food cake and ladyfingers with powdered egg whites, the ladyfingers were more of a success though we used both in a gluten-free trifle, by the time the pastry cream, jello and fruits were added the cake and ladyfingers were not impacting flavor much.)

Almond flour is a common ingredient in keto baking and I got tired of the taste of almond flour quickly. Other nut flours didn't seem to help much. I concluded that flax meal adds a bitterness I don't like.

Fathead doughs (almond flour usually with cream cheese and mozzarella) never really gave us a 'bread' feel, though the taste wasn't too bad and it actually toasted fairly well. If I HAD to make my own keto breads without any wheat products, I'd probably start with a fathead recipe and see what I could do to improve it, a task many others have attempted with only modest results.

Coconut flour has potential but the trick is to avoid it tasting like a coconut candy.

I'm still playing with fibers, such as bamboo fiber and oat fiber, I don't know if the latter meets the criteria of 'grain free', though.

[kimbob]

Apple pie looks great! Joan, your banana bread and cookies look so good! I made your sour cream coffee cake this morning. It's still hot so I'll have to wait to have a piece later.

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