What are you Baking the Week of October 25, 2020?

[BakerAunt]

Thanks for the tip, Mike. I'll try that next time I use a stamp for rolls.

I'm thinking as well that, in addition to the stamp, there may be a technique in how the ball of dough is shaped. I looked at some online pictures, some at The Fresh Loaf, and they are close to what I was trying to do at the end, but not quite.

Another possibility for getting that hollow in the center may be the kind of flour. I saw some discussion of that, with one person suggesting low protein flour and another advocating high protein. I think that the latter is correct. I could try using more of the BRM artisan bread flour next time. I noted as well that a lot of people were baking the rolls much darker, but I don't think that is right. I believe my recipe is from Daniel Leader, and he says the color of sand.

Another person swore by using the convection setting on the oven so that there is heat over and under.

So, no hole in the one I sliced today, and I doubt there will be any with a hole. I had it as a sandwich, with onion sauteed in olive oil, then put on the plate while I scrambled an egg. I put that on the rosetta roll, put the cooked onion rings on top, and ate it for lunch. Ideally it would have had bell pepper as well, but the one we have that is almost turned red in the house is slated for pizza this weekend. Why the scrambled egg sandwich? Because Cass remembered eating the rolls this way, and it is my way of toasting him. 🙂

[skeptic7]

The Rosetta rolls look lovely! I love the way that you move them from one container to another to monitor the rise.

I did whole wheat pumpkin yeast bread on Saturday/Sunday. I started with the recipe I used last year at this and started playing around with it. I started out wanting to use up one cup of pumpkin puree, and about 4 cups of whole wheat flour. I had a tiny preferment -- 1/4 cup water and flour and some yeast, I did a tangzhong 1/2 cup water and 3 tablespoons flour. I also had one cup pumpkin puree and one egg as the liquid. I mixed 1 teaspoon of salt, 1/2 teaspoon ginger two tablespoons of potato flour into 1 cup of whole wheat flour and beated it in. Then I just kept on mixing in flour until it was a reasonable consistency. I let this sit a while and then started kneading it on an oiled board. I put more oil until I had 2 tablespoons in the dough. I let it rise and then rolled it out, sprinkled 1 teaspoon of cinnamon and 1/2 teaspoon of allspice on the dough and rolled it up. I put this in my large loaf pan. I let this rise overnight and but it in the dutch oven and baked 1t 350 degrees for 50 minutes until it reached 190 degrees.
I sent half the bread off to a diabetic friend -- which is why there is no added sweetener.
The bread had a pretty subtle spiral and a good texture. Its all right but I wished I had made pumpkin cream cheese to go with it. It lacks pizzaz. But it was nice making a loaf of bread without following a strict recipe.

[BakerAunt]

Today I baked Whole Wheat Sourdough Cheese Crackers from dough I made up last week (or was it longer?)

While I like my quartz kitchen countertops, one drawback is that they are white with specks, and sometimes it is difficult to see where the parchment ends against the countertop. The parchment also slides while I'm rolling out the dough. A more serious problem is that when I put a metal baking sheet on the counter, after transferring the dough to cut into crackers, the rubbing of the metal on the quartz leaves black marks that I have to rub off. I had been moving the baking sheet to the dining room table, a not so efficient solution.

Today, I had a brilliant idea. A long time ago--back when King Arthur carried unusual and useful baking items, I bought what they called a "tagliere," or Italian kneading board. I had to look up the name to write this post and discovered that is actually the word for cutting board. What I have is a spianatoia or kneading and pastry board. It is made of wood--my husband says either maple or birch--with a lip on the underside in front that pushes against the counter and a backsplash 2 1/2 inches high. The dimensions are 24x16 inches. I used it a lot for kneading breads, hooking it on the edge of my kitchen table, although I then had to scrape off the flour that stuck. After I discovered Silpat mats, I tended not to use it. The kneading board has been sitting in the kitchen area of our garage apt., and I was thinking a few weeks ago that I wish that I could find a use for it.

I sent my husband to fetch it, wiped it off, then discovered it is a perfect fit for my kitchen peninsula. I rolled out the crackers on parchment on it, and I did not have the sliding, and I could see where the parchment ends. As an added bonus, the 3/4 of an inch I gain made it much easier to roll out the crackers--much less bending over and so much more comfortable. I've found a place to store it between the cabinet and my wooden rolling cart. I am so pleased.

[cwcdesign]

BA I noted that you saw comments about strong flour which would make sense of your observation to use a higher protein flour in your Rosetta rolls. In the British Isles, at least, plain flour corresponds to AP and strong flour to bread flour

[Mike Nolan]

As I understand it, Italian wheat varieties tend to be not as strong as North American wheat varieties.

[BakerAunt]

If Italian wheat varieties are not as strong as American varieties, that may be why Cass told me to use half KAF All Purpose and half Bob's Red Mill Artisan Bread flour.

I've also wondered if Italian flour already has malt added to it. The KAF and BRM artisan bread flours certainly do.

I will need to give some thought to what I might do differently next time. I still think that the shaping of the balls before they are stamped may play a part.

The taste of the Rosetta Rolls is wonderful, so even if I were never to achieve the hole and the perfect design, I would still bake them.

[Mike Nolan]

When I made a version of them back during time of the thread on the old BC, I also thought they were pretty good. We don't make dinner rolls very often, though, so I haven't gotten back to these, since I can't find the right kind of stamp.

I sent a link to photos of both the metal and the plastic rosetta stamps to my son, maybe he can figure out how to make one on his 3D printer. (He recently made bannetons for rising dough.)

A combination of a Kaiser roll stamp and an apple corer might work, but I've never bought a Kaiser roll stamp. The metal stamp is interesting because it doesn't cut into the rolls along the outside, only in the center. That might help create an air pocket, I suppose.

[RiversideLen]

Mike Nolan wrote:

My experience with putting rolls like Kaiser rolls face down on parchment for proofing suggests that you need to lightly oil the parchment, or the dough will stick.

When I make Kaiser rolls with a stamp, I put the rolls face down on lightly dusted with flour parchment. That has always worked for me.

[Mike Nolan]

My son just sent me an image of a model for making a rosetta stamp on his 3D printer.

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[Joan Simpson]

Amazing what them printers can do!

[BakerAunt]

Wow! 3D printers are amazing. Thanks for posting that picture, Mike.

Thanks, Len for the advice on flour. It certainly helped when I turned the rolls back over.

• This reply was modified 4 years, 2 months ago by BakerAunt.

[BakerAunt]

So, now I'm looking at Italian flours at this website:

https://brickovenbaker.com/pages/information-about-caputo-flours

I'm thinking that this one might be close to what would work for Rosetta rolls, but at $16.95 per 5 lb. bag, it is not inexpensive:

Antimo Caputo 00 Saccorossa (Rinforzato) Flour

I wish that they would state their shipping costs without making the buyer have to do the checkout steps first.

[Mike Nolan]

I'm thinking I may try AP flour mixed with a little lower protein pastry flour. I can get a one pound package of an Italian flour at a local store but it is outrageously priced, and the package doesn't really say much about what type of flour it is.

[skeptic7]

I like the idea of the "spianatoia" and am so glad that you found a use for yours instead of just leaving it in storage. I didn't get one for myself because it looked like it would be hard to wash and store. I normally knead on my largest plastic cutting board for a loaf of bread, and on the plastic sheets made for rolling out pie crust for larger amounts. This gives me a clean surface to knead but they do tend to move around the counter top.

[BakerAunt]

Last year I experimented with creating a maple cookie, low in saturated fat, using an Italian Breakfast Cookie recipe I had found, and using maple syrup in place of honey. It was ok. On Wednesday, I tweaked the recipe further, using maple sugar in place of regular sugar, using ¾ cup white whole wheat flour with ½ cup AP, and adding 1/8 tsp. maple extract. I used Halloween Nordic Ware Cookie Stamps on balls of dough, scooped out with scant 2 Tbs. dough (Zeroll #30), which gave me 11 cookies. I refrigerated the stamped cookies (took the impression well) for 30 minutes. I baked at 375F for 10 minutes, turning halfway through. The cookies needed an additional six minutes to be crisp on the bottom. We had a couple for dessert tonight, and the maple flavor comes through. These are not as sweet as most cookies, but we find them satisfying.

On Wednesday, I also made another batch of Maple Granola, and this time I had a stash of raisins, hidden from my husband to mix in after the granola baked.

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