What are you Baking the Week of September 4, 2022?

[Mike Nolan]

Cooler weather is coming, but there are still some days in the lower 90's. Not sure I'm ready for any major baking projects yet.

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[chocomouse]

It's 90* here now, the prediction was for 80*. At least it now cools off a lot at night. I have several baking projects planned for the coming week - rye bread, raspberry muffins, hot dog buns.

[BakerAunt]

I was going to bake bread today but got distracted with other matters, so it is on the agenda for tomorrow. We had temperatures that reached the upper 70s--not the 80s originally predicted--but it was humid. We were blessed with a good rain between 6 and 7 this evening that popped up out of nowhere, as it was not even on the radar my husband had been watching.

[BakerAunt]

We ran out of bread on Monday, and I wanted to move past my usual four recipes. I took the recipe I had worked out for Sunflower Oat Wheat Bread and altered it to use 1 cup of Harvest Grains and the last malted wheat flakes (1/4 cup). I baked it as two 9x5 large loaves, which are now cooling. One we will begin slicing at lunch tomorrow, and the other I will freeze for later.

[aaronatthedoublef]

Made more challah yesterday. We were going to friends for a party and we needed a hostess gift. My braid was better than last time but still not where I want it. I am trying to do a four braid from the middle out. I don't remember where I saw the middle out braid technique but I like it because it tends to keep the middle of the challah plump. But it was for three strand not four. So I need to practice this some more. I did not take any pictures unfortunately.

The husband kept smelling the bread then telling everyone else to smell it. I think the apple cider adds a lot to it even if it's in the background. I need a better apple cider though. This one is good but not as good as the local stuff the store used to have.

[Mike Nolan]

I need to practice some of my braids, too. I'm still mystified about the 6 strand one in the documentary movie, Deli Man, which is done like a 3 strand braid working from the center. Jeffrey Hamelman told me he thinks it is the same braid as the classic 6 strand one in his book, but I'm just stumped on how it really works. The way the movie is edited you never see one loaf from start to finish.

Thomas Keller has this recipe for dead dough (used for practicing braiding and shaping) in his Bouchon Bakery book:

500 grams AP flour
1 gram yeast
25 grams salt
325 grams water

Mix until smooth, around 15 minutes. Let it rest for about 15 minutes.

It can be refrigerated and reused. Discard when it becomes discolored or less pliable.

[aaronatthedoublef]

Mike,

I really wish you'd figure that out as I have watched that brief scene many times and the only thing I can get is they start with three strands and fold them in half to get six. I've pinged Wise Sons, which is the deli where they filmed this, a couple times. Maybe I'll have to see if they'll let me come out to San Francisco and learn it!

BA - what are malted wheat flakes? What do they do for flavor?

[Mike Nolan]

Sprouted grain products (ie, malted grains) are more common in Europe than in the USA, where the grain most commonly malted is barley.

The malting process is probably something brewers are more familiar with than bakers.

For malted wheat flakes you soak the wheat berries until they sprout, which releases enzymes that start to convert the starch in the endosperm into sugars, among other things.

Then you dry the malted wheat and roll it into flakes. (Or grind it up into sprouted wheat flour.)

Why do you do this? Well, it adds some sweetness and usually a flavor that some might call nutty. It also changes the nutritional value of the grain.

Some sources say sprouted wheat flours store longer, but I'm not sure if that's accurate. Sprouted wheat flour performs differently when baking, too, I don't think it forms as strong a gluten matrix.

Being a whole-grain product could contribute to several of the above effects.

[BakerAunt]

I baked my Whole Wheat Sourdough Cheese Crackers on Tuesday from dough that I had in the refrigerator.

Aaron--I buy the malted wheat flakes from King Arthur, which has some recipes that use them. I need to order some more. My husband and I like the flavor. They can be used in oat bread recipes in place of oats.

For some reason, I am thinking that they are a British item, but I could be wrong.

[BakerAunt]

Aaron--have you tried the boiled cider that King Arthur sells? It is concentrated, so you would not use as much as fresh cider. It's my go-to for recipes that call for cider, since my husband cannot drink cider, and I cannot finish off a whole container by myself.

[Mike Nolan]

Aaron, aren't there some cider mills near you?

This is kind of a strange idea, but have you tried apple cider vinegar in your challah? I've seen vinegar used in other bread recipes, notably the Clonmel Kitchen's Double Crusty recipe that Paddy L posted on the OBC years ago. (I wonder if she's still online anywhere, I know she had registered for this site but I don't think she ever logged in or posted.)

[RiversideLen]

I made a batch of my sandwich/burger buns this afternoon but I withheld enough dough to make a pizza. I made the sauce with some tomato paste and some of the Mountain Magic tomatoes from my garden, added a little oregano and garlic powder to it. Topping were a little pepperoni, an Italian sausage that I cooked on the BBQ Sunday and peppers from my garden. It was excellent. Enough left over for tomorrow's lunch.

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[aaronatthedoublef]

Len - that looks FANTASTIC!

Mike, BA,

I have not tried apple cider vinegar or boiled apple cider. We have vinegar so I can try that but I want things a little more stable and consistent before I start changing things up. I reluctant to start using an ingredient I can only buy from KAB and mostly only mail order so I'll probably just stick with straight cider.

We do have cider mills here. Many are seasonal but we're in apple season now so they should be opening. The bigger ones have cider all year. CT cider production went way down when we passed a law that the farms couldn't use apples from the ground. If I had to guess I would suspect that those places lose a lot of crop to little kids picking and dropping apples.

There are probably five or six farm stands within a few miles of my house. I've been volunteering at a local kitchen and I pass at least two on the way there (it's a five mile drive).

I need to find one I like and then buy a bunch and freeze it.

[Joan Simpson]

I agree with Aaron...good looking pizza Len.

[Mike Nolan]

How much cider do you use in a batch of challah?

I grew up in NW Illinois and the locals said some of the apple trees in the county were planted by Johnny Appleseed himself (John Chapman), though there's no evidence of that in the historical records. (He planted mostly cider apples.)

The u-pick orchard I go to that has the winesap apples I like lost its entire crop this year to one of the windstorms, so no fresh apples this year. They've had bad luck with weather, they lost most of their trees to a tornado a few years ago. I don't know if the orchards in Nebraska City have any winesaps this year, and they're 50 miles away. Maybe I'll check with them in a few weeks, winesaps don't get ripe until late September or early October.

I may have to do pizza on the grill again this weekend, yours looks really good, Len.

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