[aaronatthedoublef]

The pie looks great. We need to up our pies game! The chocolatines are really impressive. They look amazingly consistent. And proper darkness, at least here, is being debated as we've had an influx of European master bakers who bake things darker than Americans typically like them.

I have the sides of my house baked. The roof was in the oven too but then the oven shelves were too close and I accidentally wrecked them. I crushed up some Jolly Ranchers and put them in the windows to try to simulate glass. Kate and Violet were pretty impressed but it all looks rough to me. I rolled it all out on parchment but I may use silpats next time, at least for the ones with windows.

I promise, I'll take pictures.

[aaronatthedoublef]

Violet and I started a gingerbread house a couple weeks ago. The recipe was too small (and my first attempts at cut outs were wonky). I made a double recipe yesterday and will cut it and bake it with V tomorrow. I need to make some royal icing. I found a recipe that works with pasteurized egg whites. I had some meringue powder but cannot find it. The recipe I have is for flooding cookies so I think I'll need to add some powdered sugar to it to stiffen it up for mortar.

[aaronatthedoublef]

Wednesday was my middle child, Henry's, birthday. Hen is quiet and didn't or wouldn't tell us anything he wanted. So for breakfast I made him pancakes topped with bacon and Choco family fantastic maple syrup topped with a fresh baked chocolate doughnut and whipped cream. Violet said "that's what I want for my birthday breakfast."

I made him Stella Park's coconut cake which he liked but liked less than my patched-together-piece-meal coconut cake recipe. I'll have dig through my notes and resurrect it.

No pictures as I am going between computers and don't have everything on a shared drive yet.

I did a lot of baking last week and we still have pie left! I also have baked pumpkin pie filling. I'm thinking of putting it in a jar and labeling it pumpkin pie butter and giving it to some friends. Might be could on crusty toast.

[aaronatthedoublef]

Thanks BA. I may try avocado oil instead of canola or vegetable. Canola has really fallen out of favor here. I still use it as my alternative to olive oil though.

I also have used some coconut oil but it has a definite coconut smell/taste. It's good if you're making something coconut flavored like buttercream but not sure I would want to use it in something more neutral like pie crust (unless I was making a coconut cream or maybe a key lime pie). I am going to use it next time I fry doughnuts I think.

My crusts are blind blaked. I reduced them temp from 375 to 350 and only baked them for 15 minutes. Violet and I will make the pies today - pumpkin and pecan - so the flavor should be set by tomorrow for dinner. Tomorrow we'll make the hazelnut chocolate tarte.

[aaronatthedoublef]

Hi Choco. Glad you are feeling better. People who don't bake don't realize how physical it is.

Thanks for the tips Mike. I did it exactly backwards. I mixed in the butter a third at a time. I'll try it the other way next time. Also, the bakeries I know all mix in the butter in their mixers, like you. And they mix A LOT. I have a bowl shield and it doesn't do much good. I wonder if I couldn't do a hybrid method of cutting it in some by hand and then finishing it in my KA to keep the flour contained. I stopped using water and started using buttermilk for my liqiuid. Before that I was using powdered. I've also used heavy cream too.

BA, for something like pie crust do you use a neutral oil or olive oil? Here, with all the keto followers, coconut and avocado are the big oils. Costco now has giant bottles of avocado oil here. I don't know if that is country-wide or not.

I think I'll blind bake today and then Violet and I can make the apple and pecan pies tomorrow.

[aaronatthedoublef]

BA - have fun with your bonus kids! I'm sure they will enjoy the blueberry pie.

Thanks mike. I wondered about this. I wouldn't pound the butter before mixing it in because I cut it but I'll try pounding the mixed dough and let you all know.

Also, usually I just toss the butter in the flour mixture but I spent a good amount of time cutting it in. I was told by a baker friend this helps reduce shrinkage.

[aaronatthedoublef]

It's pie time... Can I whack my pie crust before rolling it out like I would the butter in laminate dough? Will it make it more pliable? Will it make it less flaky?

Thanks

[aaronatthedoublef]

Lot's of bread making last week. Violet and I also made pie dough and I'll roll out the crusts and blind bake on Monday.

I'm making my sourdough and still not happy with my shaping but it is improving.

I've also started making challah again. I am trying four strand braids and finally had one this week that was not a mess. It's still not to my liking as I like smaller ends and a plumper middle but at least it was not a total mess.

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[aaronatthedoublef]

Mike, the post on baker's math is good. When using a guild recipe it really is the only way to go. Scaling down from 13 kg of flours is easiest if figure out if you start with how much flour you want to use and figure the percent for everything else. The guild recipe I found makes around 18 kg of dough.

The thing I need to figure out now is how to account for a biga/poolish. If I use 250 g of starter at 100% hydration mixed with flour and water at 75% hydration how does that affect the rest of the mix. If I use flour and water at 65% hydration, is the overall mix 70%?

I'll talk with my friend on Wednesday

[aaronatthedoublef]

Thanks Mike. Thanks IC. I'll see my friend tomorrow and talk to him. I also need to see if he wants this or the sweet kind of Portuguese bread.

[aaronatthedoublef]

Thanks BA. Thanks Mike.

This is much simpler than the guild recipe that starts w/13 kg of flour and requires understanding baker's math and scaling everything down. It's actually easier once you get the hang of it but...

I'm working with this fellow again next Wednesday, so I'll walk through this with him then. I think he might be looking for a sweet bread recipe which they have here too.

[aaronatthedoublef]

Thanks BA. Thanks Mike.

This is much simpler than the guild recipe that starts w/13 kg of flour and requires understanding baker's math and scaling everything down. It's actually easier once you get the hang of it but...

I'm working with this fellow again next Wednesday, so I'll walk through this with him then.

[aaronatthedoublef]

Thursday I made ciabatta. I'll make more sourdough this week. I'm going to try ciabatta pizza again this week.

Sam had a track meet about an hour away Saturday so we made cookies for him. It is the one recipe my mom gave me of hers. Mom called these ginger snaps but they're really molasses cookies.

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[aaronatthedoublef]

That's the same picture in the cookbook. Ours are quite a bit thinner which may be the result of overbaking or too big a pan. I think I used a 9x9 but maybe it's bigger. I'll measure it.

We skipped the icing on top which is more white chocolate. Oddly while the recipe calls for chopped white chocolate for the blondies it says to use white chocolate chips for the icing.

Mike, to your wife, I've known some poor, unfortunate souls who were allergic to chocolate. And on the Kids Baking Championship they used have a blondie v brownie competition.

[aaronatthedoublef]

Maybe bread was too pedestrian for them before.

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