What are you Baking the Week of October 24, 2021?

[Mike Nolan]

I may make the Hamelman semolina bread today, depends on whether my wife will eat the altamura bread or not.

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[cwcdesign]

I made dough for focaccia - it’s in the fridge for an overnight rise. Will top with garlic and rosemary and bake tomorrow

[Italiancook]

I baked cinnamon muffins for breakfast and the freezer.

[Italiancook]

I wanted to make a cake that requires only a hand-held mixer. Then it dawned on me: My 20-year-old hand mixer bit the dust while making mashed potatoes a few weeks ago. I had thought I'd buy the KitchenAid battery-operated mixer, but I wanted to think about it more. I never moved forward with the purchase and forgot it completely. I don't often use a hand mixer. Today, I decided not to spend the $99 or so on the KitchenAid. I ended up buying a Cuisinart hand mixer, although I was tempted by the much less expensive Hamilton Beach that has a storage container. I probably would have purchased the Hamilton Beach, but most of the reviews were part of a promotion. I wasn't sure what that means, so I passed. Does anyone know what it means when reviews are part of a promotion?

[BakerAunt]

Italian Cook--I have a Cuisinart hand mixer, and I am pleased with it. Hand mixers are more powerful than they once were. Mine also has a whisk attachment, which is handy for whipped cream. There were two "kneading" beaters, but my experience is that the mixer really cannot do dough. I bought my mixer about 11 1/2 years ago, and the company honored the warranty when I had a beater issue within two years and replaced the mixer. (I did have to pay the cost of mailing it back to them, but it was worth it.) My Cuisinart replaced a less powerful Kitchen Aid hand mixer, but I keep the KA one as a back-up.

[Mike Nolan]

I think well over half of reviews are 'placed', which means they aren't trustworthy. Then there are the insidious people who are posting negative reviews about product X in order to promote product Y.

And I see too many reviews that morph into promotions for something else entirely: This is a great mixer, but do you know you can improve your performance in bed by using blah blah blah.

And as my wife pointed out recently, these days the first several pages of a Google search are often useless.

[Mike Nolan]

My wife bought me an old fashioned hand-cranked egg beater a while back with removable beaters so it is easy to clean. I use it for things where I don't want the intense mixing of a stick blender, like making batter for crepes or popovers. I also use it for custards.

I don't know when the last time it was that we used a hand-held mixer, I'm not even sure where ours is, probably beside the microwave. It may not have been used since the Obama administration, probably for something like seven-minute frosting.

[cwcdesign]

I baked my focaccia today and the color is beautiful, but it did not rise very much on the end I cut into - it wasn’t as airy as it should have been and the crust is crackly.

I think I can figure out ALL the mistakes I made starting with the liquid, over mixing, then I think my first proof was too long and over baking.

So to start, Claire uses ADY and I have never figured out if you add the amount of proofing liquid to the liquid in the recipe - I googled it and could find it. I called KABC and asked the baker on the hotline. He said just follow the recipe without adding it. I’m wondering if I should have since the dough wasn’t very loose - ½ water for proofing + 2 ½ cups for the recipe an 6 cups bread flour. The dough wasn’t as loose as it was the last time I made it (I’m pretty sure I added it in). She says you can’t overmix it, but I thought maybe I had. Even though I marked the bowl, I do think it was overproved. Then I had to relax the dough twice for stretching in the pan. The overnight rise was fine, but since it’s hot and humid here, I may have left it on the counter a few minutes too long attempting to multitask.

I should have gone with my gut and switched it to the top rack after 20 minutes - it was golden and she said it should be brown - I know better for next time. We’ll still eat it and I nay still give part of it (the higher end) to my friend who I’m taking dinner to after her mom’s surgery on Thursday.

[Mike Nolan]

I don't use ADY a lot, but I always take what I need for proofing out of the total liquid called for.

[cwcdesign]

The way the recipe was written, it didn’t include the water in the ingredient list. The first step was to proof the yeast in ½ cup in the bowl of the mixer. Next you add 2 ½ cups water to the bowl, the flour and the salt. So I guess it would be 3 cups total

[Mike Nolan]

That's a lot of water, how much flour did it call for? I know focaccia is supposed to be a high moisture dough.

I've only made it a few times, and though it was good, we didn't finish all of it.

[cwcdesign]

6 cups of bread flour

[BakerAunt]

Monday was a day for baking. It had rained all night, and it rained most of the day--nearly 3 inches. I had some zucchini that needed to be used, so I baked my adaptation of the squash bread in Ken Haedrich’s The Harvest Baker. I also baked my variation of the Shipyard Galley’s Zucchini Muffins that was featured in a King Arthur email years ago. I added some of my stash of cinnamon chips to both, as I need to use these up. I will freeze the four loaves of zucchini bread (baked it in a 4-loaf Nordic Ware Bundt pan). I made six of the muffins as large ones, and I will freeze those as well. I made the rest as 12 regular-sized muffins in Halloween papers for us to have for breakfasts this week. I baked the larger muffins a little too long, and the bottoms are slightly scorched, although they were not done when the smaller muffins came out. I should have checked them again after another two or three minutes rather than waiting five minutes.

For dinner on Monday, I made my sourdough pan pizza with the usual toppings. The tomato sauce was made from tomatoes from our garden, and the red bell pepper was grown in our garden.

[cwcdesign]

BakerAunt - Shipyard Galley was our favorite sandwich place at home - Jan made great bread back in the day when bakeries were scarce - chocolate chip cookies and Will lived on their chicken salad at school. Thanks for the memory!

[RiversideLen]

A batch of rye/semolina/wheat buns.

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