What are you Baking the week of September 22, 2019?

[Mike Nolan]

No baking yet here, how about at your place?

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[BakerAunt]

It’s been a while since I baked “Grandma A’s Ranch Hand Bread,” which was a favorite on the former Baking Circle and is posted at Nebraska Kitchen. We are almost out of bread, and it’s a cloudy day that is struggling to rain, so a Sunday afternoon in the kitchen is welcomed, as would be three loaves of bread. I’ve played a bit with the mixing directions in that I prefer to start with the bread flour and whole wheat flour. I also add ½ cup flax meal and this time substituted in ½ cup dark rye flour for part of the wheat and AP flour, as well as ½ cup special dry milk. I replace the sugar with honey and 3 cups of the water with buttermilk. I use 4 Tbs. canola oil instead of butter, which I mix in after the first rest period. I’ve reduced the salt to 1 Tbs. I kneaded by machine for 4 minutes. [Note: this is a lot of dough, so know your mixer’s capabilities. There is also a scaled down recipe at Nebraska Kitchen that makes a single loaf and can be done in a bread machine, posted originally at the baking circle, by Zen, who now goes by the name Pyewacket.]

Added Note: The first rise was 1 hour, and the second was 40 minutes. I baked for 40 minutes, the minimum time, but they got a bit dark on top, so next time I’ll check them at 35 minutes.

• This reply was modified 4 years, 7 months ago by BakerAunt.
• This reply was modified 4 years, 7 months ago by BakerAunt.
• This reply was modified 4 years, 7 months ago by BakerAunt.

[aaronatthedoublef]

I made chocolate chip oatmeal cookies again for the XCountry team meet. This time I made them in my friend's restaurant kitchen. It was great having a 12 quart mixer and using full sheet trays with 20 cookies a tray. I made 10 dozen in under an hour and will be faster as I learn the kitchen.

[Mike Nolan]

20 cookies to a full sheet tray? Those were pretty big cookies!

[RiversideLen]

When I bake cookies on a half sheet, I get 10 - 12 cookies, I like to give them a little elbow room. So 20 to a full sheet sounds like my style.

[Italiancook]

I made olive oil-based chocolate chip cookies for the freezer & lunch. I replaced the cup of butter with 3/4 cup light olive oil. I mixed well the oil & both sugars to start the recipe. Here are my observations:

(1) The dough was looser than with butter. I scooped them out onto a baking sheet for the freezer. By the time I reached the end, the dough balls had spread. With butter, they hold their shape. Oil makes dough significantly more sticky. But it came out of cookie scoop okay.

(2) With butter, I freeze for one hour and they're ready to be bagged. I froze the oil ones for 75 minutes, but think they need at least 2 hours to maintain their shape when pulled off wax paper to put in bags. Because of this, I began to wonder if olive oil freezes. A Google search found that it does freeze. I put 6 cookies per bag. Normally, I bake them frozen. I'm worried that because of the stickiness, I'm going to have a glob of dough stuck together when I'm ready to bake them.

(3) Because of the spreading, I chilled the dough before baking eight for lunch. In spite of the chilling, the first ones had spread by the time the eighth was scooped. They baked-up nicely. They taste like chocolate chip cookies in spite of having no butter. What I really like about them is that baked, they're softer than with butter, using the same recipe.

[BakerAunt]

On Wednesday evening, I made up another double recipe of my lower saturated fat version of Whole Wheat Sourdough Cheese Crackers. I’ll bake the crackers in a few days.

I also am experimenting with another cinnamon roll recipe to see if it will work for my husband’s family reunion. My plan is to take along my bread machine. I modified his aunt’s Snails recipe, which was, from what I can tell, a recipe that she herself often varied. I substituted 1 cup of white whole wheat flour and added 2 tbs. flax meal and ¼ cup special dry milk. I replaced ¼ cup of shortening with 3 1/3 Tbs. canola oil. I used 3/4 cup buttermilk and 1/4 cup water in place of 1 cup milk. I also used the special gold yeast. It had no filling but was often used with one by her daughters, so I combined 1 cup light brown sugar and 1 ½ Tbs. cinnamon. I spritzed the dough before covering it with the mixture (except for about ½ inch at the end), then spritzed it again and used the back of a spoon to push it down into the dough. I’ll let it rise overnight and bake it in the morning.

[BakerAunt]

Follow-up: The cinnamon rolls are yummy. I may cut back the glaze by using just 3/4 cups of powdered sugar next time, but they are certainly delectable, and in MHO, definitely Level 1. 🙂 Now we'll see if they pass the Cousins Test at the reunion.

Oops: Mike just reminded me in a post down below that I should have said Level 3.

• This reply was modified 4 years, 7 months ago by BakerAunt.

[chocomouse]

Baker Aunt, I wonder about using a low-fat cream cheese frosting on these? Even if it is only a thin layer, not the thick, rich, delicious frosting that is more typical?

I made zucchini-raspberry-lemon muffins. It may be the last zucchini from the garden, but we'll keep picking raspberries for another month, as long as we cover some with a tarp if/when we get a freeze warning. They are good only for pies or sauce for ice cream when thawed from the freezer, so I try to use everything I can when they are fresh. My husband has them on his cereal every day now, too.

[BakerAunt]

On Thursday, I’m baking the King Arthur Whole Grain cookbook’s Maple Granola, but using the tweak posted online in their recipes of reducing the oil to ½ cup and adding ½ cup milk powder. (I use Bob’s Red Mill, not the KAF special dry milk.) I also add 2/3 cup pumpkin seeds.

Chocomouse--Welcome Back! For the frosting/glaze, I used 1 cup powdered sugar, 2 Tbs. 1% milk, and 1/4 tsp. vanilla. My husband says, "Don't change a thing!" I drizzled it on about twenty minutes after I took the rolls out of the oven.

NOTE: I meant granola, not biscotti, and have changed the post to reflect that. (Yes, I've also had biscotti on my mind.)

• This reply was modified 4 years, 7 months ago by BakerAunt. Reason: I corrected an absentminded error

[Mike Nolan]

Level 1 is amateur, no way those rolls are level 1, an amateur would use dough in a tube.

[BakerAunt]

Oops: I became confused and forgot that the higher number is the more experienced baker. Clearly it is bed time.

[BakerAunt]

Italian Cook--Thank you for posting about your olive oil chocolate chip cookies. I've been toying with the idea of trying an oil-based chocolate chip cookie. (Of course, the chocolate chips, with their saturated fat, are part of the issue for me.) I have a couple of comments:

You might want to reduce the oil to 2/3 cup. Usually 1/3 cup oil is the substitute for each 1/2 cup of butter. I try to mix in some milk powder with the dry ingredients, as I do with my sourdough crackers, since I think it gives a better flavor, but that may just be me, and you may not be able to use that ingredient. (I use Bob's Red Mill because it is finely ground, but the regular granules could be ground in a small food processor.)

When I make an oil pie crust, I use some buttermilk in place of the oil because, again, I think it improves the flavor and reduces the oil a bit. I follow their directions of beating the oil and buttermilk (or regular milk) together to make a "creamy emulsion" before mixing it with other ingredients. When I've made a cake, I've done that also before beating in the sugar, then the eggs. For a cake, I mix in the flour at a very low speed or by hand.

The directions for the oil-based pie crust say that after putting it in the pan, it is good to refrigerate it for about an hour because it helps relax the gluten. It says not to refrigerate it in a mass and then try to shape it, so your decision to go ahead and scoop them was good. I'm wondering if refrigerating the scooped dough, then freezing the balls before packaging, might solve the issue of the balls forming one large mass.

Another possibility: I bought the following item from King Arthur:

https://shop.kingarthurflour.com/items/cookie-dough-freezer-trays

I have not used them yet, but if I do bake some chocolate chip cookies, the best way to control how many are eaten at a time would be to freeze some of the dough, so I plan to try them. At least with these, the dough balls will not clump.

Your experiment with oil-based cookies encourages me to try some, so thank you!

[skeptic7]

I did Gingerbread scones on Friday with candied ginger, powdered ginger and fresh ginger just because. I was able to bake this in the oven as Friday was relatively cool.

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