What are you Baking the Week of October 29, 2023?

[Mike Nolan]

Nothing planned yet, I want to do the apple cider Challah soon, though, and I'm out of sourdough cheese crackers. (They go really well with cheese dip.)

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[aaronatthedoublef]

Mike,

When you make apple cider challah I'll be interested in your feedback. I started with straight cider and then switched to boiled cider. We notice a real difference with the boiled. It's a stronger and sweeter flavor. My kids love to drink it but it is too sweet for Kate and me.

There are rules about how much juice can be used instead of water in bread. Too much and it is cake and not bread. I reduce the cider by about a third and I can put more cider flavor in without exceeding the juice-to-water ratio.

I boil my own cider because I can use local stuff that I know and like and support CT farmers. It also lets me use different ciders. For example I can buy regual, mixed apple cider or all gala or all Honeycrisp. So far I have stuck with mixed. The Honeycrisp carries a price-premium that I am not sure is worth it.

I have not run the numbers to see if it actually saves me money. These days, with shipping, it actually might.

The other thing it lets me do is put other flavors into the cider if I want to. For example, I can toss in some cinnamon sticks and that changes the taste of the cider. I haven't tried it in challah yet but it is on my list.

If I just bought KAB boiled cider it would be limiting.

I need to make ciabatta and cookies this week. Henry made Osso de Morto cookies this week for a Halloween party. Pretty interesting. Mostly almond flour and powdered sugar. We were not able to taste any 🙁 because the recipe only made 16. I might have made a couple small ones but I try not to interfere unless asked. They needed to be refrigerated overnight which Hen didn't know before he started so they only had about 45 minutes. They were a little wonky but they looked good to me.

It was a very different recipe and something he hadn't seen or tried before so I was pretty proud of Hen for being adventurous.

[Mike Nolan]

Are the Osso de Morto cookies shaped like bones? I made some shaped like that a few years ago, some of them looked like bones, the shaping is tricker than it seems.

[aaronatthedoublef]

Mike, the Osso are shaped like bones and Henry did a good job. They just didn't hold their shape in the oven. They also puffed up then shrank.

[Mike Nolan]

I've made them with a few different recipes, one of them had very little leavening in it, and the bones were more likely to keep their shape, but they were quite hard to chew.

They make bone molds, mostly for dog biscuits, I think, but they'd probably work for this.

[Mike Nolan]

I'm making honey wheat bread today. I haven't made it in a while, but I've made it enough that I didn't need to look up the recipe.

[BakerAunt]

I baked a Sourdough Pan Pizza for dinner tonight. It was misty/rainy today, and the dough was very wet. It was a sticky mess to get it out of the bread machine. However, it made an excellent crust. I did my usual toppings. The tomato sauce, from our tomatoes, came from the freezer where I stashed it in the late summer. The red bell pepper and green onion tops are from the garden and my husband's pot of green onions. I added a yellow bell pepper from the farmers' market, along with mushrooms from the grocery. Of course, I used Canadian bacon, mozzarella, and Parmesan. I added a few Greek olives on my half.

[cwcdesign]

I made snickerdoodle bars from Sarah who used to be in the Baking Circle - she had a blog called The Cook's Life and wrote that hysterical piece on Mis en Place which I need to try to find. Everyone at work loves snickerdoodles so I made for tomorrow as we are setting up for Christmas - it's that time of year, even though we are later for retail businesses.

I learned something today - did you know there is a right way and a wrong way to "screw" your KitchenAid mixing bowl into your mixer? I could not figure out why my bowl was always wobbling but it turns out this lefty was turning the handle counterclockwise instead of clockwise. What a difference it made today - the bowl didn't wobble out of the base 🤣🤣🤣

[BakerAunt]

I remember that article on Mis en Place and Sarah's definition that I will paraphrase as "French for having someone to do the dishes after you cook or bake!"

[Mike Nolan]

I'm making the dough for another batch of sourdough cheese crackers, this time I'm using fine ground whole wheat durum flour instead of my coarse ground hard red wheat flour.

[BakerAunt]

I baked Skeptic's Pumpkin Biscotti on Tuesday in honor of Halloween. I used autumn-colored sugar to sprinkle on top of them.

I also baked another recipe of crackers from that pizza crust/flatbread recipe that Ken Haedrich has. This time, I replaced half of the whole wheat flour with barley flour and baked each tray for eleven minutes instead of ten. The previous batch was somewhat bland, but these crackers have more flavor. I may try half barley and half Italian-style flour next time. These crackers are still sturdy enough to withstand my covering them with hummus.

[chocomouse]

Today I made a pan of blondies with fresh cranberries and white chocolate chips.

[BakerAunt]

On Wednesday, I baked my adaptation of the pumpkin cake recipe that came with the Nordic Ware 3-D pumpkin pan. The pan bakes the two halves of the pumpkin, which I will assemble tomorrow with some glaze to stick them together. The recipe uses 1 2/3 cups AP flour. I substituted in 2/3 cup barley flour. I added 2 Tbs. milk powder and 1 Tbs. flax meal. I replaced 1/3 cup butter with 4 Tbs. of avocado oil and deleted the water, since my homemade pumpkin puree has more water than canned pumpkin. I look forward to assembling the little cake tomorrow.

I first adapted this cake and wrote up notes on it on October 10, 2020 but never got back to trying it again until today. I am on a mission to use all of my lovely autumn Nordic Ware pans before the end of November.

[BakerAunt]

Follow-Up on Pumpkin Cake: When I went to trim the cake to assemble it the next day, I discovered that it had not cooked through in the center. I am kicking myself for not having used my trusty digital thermometer. To try and salvage the cake, as my husband wished, I set the oven at 350F and put the halves and the trimmed pieces in for about 25 minutes, which dried them out enough that most of the cake (thankful it is small) is edible. Next time, I will cook it longer and use the digital thermometer!

[Mike Nolan]

I baked two trays of sourdough cheese crackers today, rolled to 2mm thick like last time, then took the scraps from trimming those trays and rolled them out to 1mm thick and baked those.

That way I can see how much different they are when I roll them out thinner.

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