[aaronatthedoublef]

Wow. My six year old was just saying this morning that we should be starting our own garden! Out of the mouths of babes. Of course she wouldn't eat anything we could grow...

[aaronatthedoublef]

CT has had an influx on New Yorkers. Towns of a few thousand full time residents now have thousands of people extra. Our governor and town officials have asked that these people voluntarily quarantine themselves for two weeks. But it's also straining resources that are already taxed. Plus, many of the businesses that profit from out-of-towners are closed or running in greatly reduced capacity.

People have talked about restaurants closing from a business standpoint but no one has talked about the civic loss of these businesses. They are some of the most generous people we have. Despite being low-margin they are the first to volunteer time, money, space, and services to the various causes around the region.

[aaronatthedoublef]

The crispbreads look good. Never thought about the straight edge. That's great. I've used square biscuit cutters and I've used a pizza cutter or knife against a yardstick.

Is there a technical difference between a crispbread and a cracker or just two names for the same thing?

[aaronatthedoublef]

I made pizza too. No mushrooms because we were out. 🙁 But we had cheese, olive, sausage, and veggie which included olives, orange peppers, and red onions.

I want to make bread again this week. See if I can do it without overflowing the food processor.

[aaronatthedoublef]

Your bagel look great Choco! I am inspired by you and Mike.

I made Stella Park's 100% whole wheat bread yesterday with white whole wheat. At some point when things become more sane I'll try some red too.

It is a nice, fluffy loaf and is as high as the store bought loaves I buy. Good taste but I think I prefer honey to brown sugar that Ms. Park uses. But I will need to try it a few more times before I start changing things.

I allowed the flour and water to sit for the 2.5 hours before mixing in the second addition of wet and dry ingredients. It was a VERY slack dough - almost batter like - after I mixed it in the food processor. It overflowed the bowl and made a mess. Not sure if I can fix this or if I need to reduce the ingredients. The recipe calls for a 14 cup food processor and for some reason 10 is what sticks in my head for ours. It was much wetter than the KAF loaf which felt so dry I needed in some extra water.

I let the first rise go for 2.5 hours and the dough had firmed up some but it was still pretty wet. I shaped it and put it into a loaf pan and let it rise for almost three hour. The long rises are because our kitchen is cold (Ms. Parks time are base on a 70 degree kitchen and ours started at 66 and rose to 68) and also I was playing with my kids and lost track of time. I think the second rise went a little too long. I had the oven heated a bit above 350 then turned it down when the loaf went in. I let it bake for 25 minutes then tented it for another 15. I should have tented it sooner as the top is a little well done. I had a little oven spring too so that helped.

Now we have to see if my kids eat it. I ordered some bread from whole foods and they substituted cinnamon raisin bread without checking. My oldest has been eating turkey sandwiches on raisin bread after I told him it would be like a Thanksgiving dinner sandwich. He will eat anything! Of course he also ran 14 miles in 45 degree rain yesterday so he's hungry.

Thanks for the pointer to the recipe and for convincing me to use the food processor. I'll try this a couple more times before/if I start making changes.

[aaronatthedoublef]

I'm with you. But look on Amazon and see people selling $25 of paper towels for more than double that.

Bread machines seem not to be outrageous yet. Most are under $100.

[aaronatthedoublef]

No knead intimidates me because I have to take a 400 degree Dutch oven out of the oven, dump wet dough into it, and then put it back in the oven. This is made extra daunting by kids who inevitably decide to race through the kitchen when I have the oven door open and things cooking on the stove.

The other problem with bread machines and most electronics is that they have parts from China which had their factories shutdown for about a month. By the time they reopened we were in a pandemic and many other factories and suppliers had slowed down if not shutdown.

Then goods coming in are in quarantine as opposed to coming in and going right to whomever needed them. So that slows everything down again.

Add to this increased demand for home electronics, panics, price gouging and there you have KAF limiting bread machines to two per customer.

[aaronatthedoublef]

I usually go to those sites when I have a coupon or they have a special. I bulked up on Pi Day, for example. And now I have a $10 KAF coupon which will pay for shipping for my next order.

I suspect the limit on bread machines is to prevent people from buying many and price gouging on eBay and Amazon.

[aaronatthedoublef]

Putting this on two different threads. Just received an email from KAF that flours are back in stock!

[aaronatthedoublef]

Just received a KAF email that flours are BACK in stock!

[aaronatthedoublef]

I used to say anything that encouraged people to bake was a good thing. This may be an exception.

[aaronatthedoublef]

BA, Mike, Thanks. I'll pull down the recipe.

[aaronatthedoublef]

BA, that would be great. Thanks

And no one hear seems to use cream cheese frosting. The recipe I was looking at makes a nice, soft, rich dough. Why would you want to glop it up with cream cheese frosting.

Thanks everyone

[aaronatthedoublef]

This makes me wonder why I am buying cake flour instead of using pastry flour exclusively, except pastry flour is WAY more expensive than the cake flour.

I haven't tried the cake flour in an actual cake recipe like the white velvet cake in the Cake Bible.

[aaronatthedoublef]

Thanks. I was too lazy to look those up. I remember KAF writing that only about 80% of the protein in whole wheat went to gluten formation but I've never been able to find that reference.

Looks like my best bet is mixing some bread and pastry and maybe some white whole wheat! Thanks again.

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