aaronatthedoublef

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  • in reply to: What are you Baking the Week of September 4, 2022? #36391
    aaronatthedoublef
    Participant

      Choco, making maple syrup is NOT easy. Now your family are masters at it but I've tried it a couple of times with mixed success.

      But, even if I use the boiled cider (purchased or making my own) I'll have to add more water to make up for the water I've taken out of the cider so I might as well just use the regular stuff and find one I like. WF used to have a brand I really like but it has disappeared.

      I made mini layer cakes - chocolate cake with coconut buttercream I made a sheet cake and used a round cutter to cut the layers. I should have frozen the layer and done a crumb coat but I lacked the freezer space. I made cake balls with the leftover cake and frosting. Apparently they needed to be rolled in frosting too!

      We went to see my son's XC team run and my other son's singing group had an impromptu party so I made a bunch of oatmeal raisin cookies.

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      in reply to: What are you Baking the Week of September 4, 2022? #36347
      aaronatthedoublef
      Participant

        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.

        in reply to: Piperade as a pizza sauce? #36346
        aaronatthedoublef
        Participant

          I've never seen piperade before. It seems like, as Choco says, it would be good any place you used tomato sauce. When we make our own we also try to sneak in some spinach just to get some into our kids.

          Peppers and onions (usually sweet sometimes hot) are pretty common here with Italian sausage. Fry the all together. Standard fare outside Fenway before a Red Sox game. Tomatoes would be good addition to that.

          in reply to: What are you Baking the Week of September 4, 2022? #36322
          aaronatthedoublef
          Participant

            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?

            in reply to: What are you Baking the Week of September 4, 2022? #36320
            aaronatthedoublef
            Participant

              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.

              in reply to: What are you Baking the Week of August 28, 2022? #36307
              aaronatthedoublef
              Participant

                Thanks for the pie dough Mike.

                My impression was that whole meat like steak could spend a little longer in the danger zone than ground meat. I know at Shake Shack they make the burgers in the morning and keep them by the grill in a refrigerator until they cook them. So they come from cold right to cooking.

                I let steaks warm up some but I've never let it sit at room temp for four or five hours. And we would have advised customers against it at WF. We always offered to pack things in ice, too as did the cashiers and baggers.

                I've seen several chefs say that a could chef can cook a steak to well done without leaving it burned to a cinder. I've never seen it done and my family likes medium rare so I aim for that (and I usually get medium).

                in reply to: What are you Baking the Week of August 28, 2022? #36281
                aaronatthedoublef
                Participant

                  Okay... sorry too many posts but one more with a question...

                  Lots of recipes for things where butter is cut in - pie crust, biscuits, scones, etc. tell us to not over work the dough. But with things like biscuits and scones where we want layers that are visible and that require multiple folds. Even with pie crust, when I make it at least, it never completely comes together until I have it out of the bowl and "utz" as my mom used to say.

                  With yeast doughs I can let it rest and the gluten relaxes. Can't I do the same with pie-biscuit-scones? I usually chill them and let them rest before I bake them anyway...

                  Thanks

                  in reply to: What are you Baking the Week of August 28, 2022? #36280
                  aaronatthedoublef
                  Participant

                    I bought from Vitacost and it was easy and fast. I bout 2x5 lb. of BRM pastry and 2x1.5 lb. of semolina. Shipping was under $8.95, YMMV.

                    I ordered Monday and it was here Friday.

                    in reply to: What are you Baking the Week of August 28, 2022? #36276
                    aaronatthedoublef
                    Participant

                      Happy Birthday and congratulations on your 50th. That is fantastic!

                      I made challah on Friday. I was working on converting my recipe from volume to weight and calculated the hydration without thinking about the oil, eggs, or sugar so it started out super wet. I decided to see how it would turn out. I like the wetter bread. It's really soft. And I think it will be easier next time I'm teaching kids to make challah because they tend to add a ton of flour as they shape and this will absorb it and still be wet enough to stick together.

                      At the last minute I decided to make a four strand braid and obviously need some practice on that. I made rolls which were huge - 7 ounces - and we used them for hamburger buns. No egg wash since this was mostly practice. We had some people over photographing our house (long story) so I cut the loaf in half and gave them each a half.

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                      in reply to: What are you Baking the Week of August 28, 2022? #36258
                      aaronatthedoublef
                      Participant

                        I've never order from Webstaurantstore so I don't know. The shipping charges I have had for flour tend to be about $1/lb recently so I would guess they would need to be in this range to be competitive.

                        If I want SAF yeast, Webstaurant and KAF seem to be the places I can order it from and no one is selling it locally anymore. Don't know why by Red Star and Fleischman have take over and they work find but I wanted some of the gold yeast for sweet doughs.

                        If you just need cold bags, the grocery stores by us all sell insulated bags that work very well, especially if I add an ice pack. And here they cost about $5 per bag for the expensive ones. They would hold multiple, 9-inch pies.

                        in reply to: When You Can’t Fit a Dough Sheeter into Your Kitchen.… #36257
                        aaronatthedoublef
                        Participant

                          Just saw this! BA - I have used our pasta maker to roll out cracker dough. It is only about six inches wide so I need to roll out six or more sheets of cracker dough as opposed to three bigger sheets. I think I started with 100 g of dough if I remember correctly.

                          Plus it needs extra flour to make sure the cracker dough didn't stick. Between the extra rolling and the extra clean up the pasta maker did not appear to offer me any benefit over my rolling pin.

                          Now a sheeter that is a foot or two wide could handle an entire batch at once!

                          I remember a "Good Eats" where Alton Brown used a pasta maker attached to an ironing board to roll out strudel. It was long and strudel dough is not wide so it was perfect. We just installed an ironing board that folds away into the wall - like a Murphy Bed ironing board so maybe something like that for Mike's fold-away sheeter? The problem with the foldaway ironing board for this is that it is smaller than a standard model - shorter & narrower. Plus with the cabinet it weighs over 100 pounds so installation is not trivial.

                          I have a milestone birthday next month and while I might be able to justify the cost, I have not place to put it and if it is a big project to take it out it won't be used very often. My family gave me a panini press that I am not allowed to leave on the counter so it is almost never used. Take it out, set it up, wait for it to heat up, make panino (or panini), then wait for cool down, clean up, put away... it's easier to just make hot sandwiches in a pan on the stove. Not as good, but much easier.

                          But a Murphy Bed sheeter arrangement would be cool. You would still need to be able to break it down and clean it easily.

                          I went to a local bakery for the first time and she rolls out all her croissants by hand. She said it takes her four days to make them.

                          in reply to: What are you Baking the Week of August 28, 2022? #36248
                          aaronatthedoublef
                          Participant

                            Just looked at Webstaurantstore and they have a TON of BRM stuff.

                            It's large quantities but you may be able to find what you are looking for there, too.

                            They only had WW pastry flour and not regular pastry flour, enfortunately.

                            in reply to: What are you Baking the Week of August 28, 2022? #36245
                            aaronatthedoublef
                            Participant

                              I made bread. Had a good rise then it spread in the oven and is sort of flat. Maybe it was over proofed.

                              I made it over the course of 24 hours. Normally I do it over three days. I wanted to tame the sour flavor and that worked.

                              in reply to: What are you Baking the Week of August 28, 2022? #36216
                              aaronatthedoublef
                              Participant

                                I'm with you Mike. Walmart is trying to our Amazon Amazon and has become a "marketplace". There is no oversight. I've seen five pounds of flour for outrageous prices like $50+.

                                I am also buying less from Amazon for the same reason.

                                in reply to: What are you Baking the Week of August 28, 2022? #36206
                                aaronatthedoublef
                                Participant

                                  BA, it appears you can still find BRM coarse grind. Here is a search response for it. I've ordered some pastry flour from Vitacost. I'll see how their service is.

                                Viewing 15 posts - 256 through 270 (of 1,337 total)