[aaronatthedoublef]

Last week was good. Sam came home on Tuesday instead of Wednesday. My in-laws came in Monday night which stressed out Kate some. But her dad cannot make the long drive for now, at least.

I made the crust for the pumpkin and pecan pies. Violet rolled out the crust, mixed, poured and baked the pumpkin pie all on her own! And her crust looked better than mine. I think I am trimming it too much.

Now I need to get her making the pie crust dough and melting the chocolate for the chocolate, hazelnut pie.

I made baked doughnuts, scones, and coffee cake for breakfasts. Sam took the last of the scones when he and his buddy drove back to NYC yesterday. They drove in a soft-top Jeep with no windows and mesh doors. It was in the 30s so I can only imagine how cold it was at highway speeds.

I have to make a birthday cake for Henry this week. He keeps asking for a citric acid cake. I am going to make a lemon cake. I have the frosting and filling figured but do you think I can just add some lemon juice and lemon peel to a yellow or white cake?

[aaronatthedoublef]

Thanks Mike. Thanks BA.

Mike - I used to us a pinch of sugar in my pizza dough for the yeast. I've stopped and haven't noticed a difference. That may also be partly from shifting from ADY to instant. Challah has sugar in the recipe so adding a pinch wouldn't make a difference I suspect.

BA - One of the good things of the sourdough movement is slower, longer rises. My ciabatta from Jim Lahey uses .3% yeast. The rise is refrigerated for 18 or so hours. The rise after shaping really needs two or more hours. I'm not usually that patient but I still have a good, open crumb just not huge holes (which I don't like anyway).

[aaronatthedoublef]

I did an unintentional experiment when making challah. My recipe calls for 2% yeast which for my 14 loaves is 75g. I thought I had a lot more yeast with me than I did which was only 17g. 17g is about .45%.

I could have driven home and picked up more (I had a new, unopened 1lb package of SAFInstant yeast) but I just decided to see what would happen (kind of stupid in hindsight considering the cost of the other ingredients). But you all have talked about the strength of modern yeast and how we use more than we need so I wanted to see what would happen.

So I mixed it all and put it in the fridge for its usual overnight rise. I gave it a couple extra hours before I came in to cut and pre-shape it.

When I came in there was some rise but definitely nothing close to normal. I then cut the dough and shaped into balls. Normally these rest to loosen up but since I go back home for the rest I refrigerate them for a couple hours. This time I left them at room temp for three hours - more rise.

Then I came back for the braiding but turned on the oven first. I let them rise at room+oven temp for about 1 hour 45 minutes.

They might be a little denser than normal but they not so anyone other than I can distinguish - an advantage I suppose of not having regular "customers".

I think if this happens again I will go grab more yeast. I realized after the fact that I was only about five minutes from a Whole Foods. But it is also nice to know I can make this work if I have to.

[aaronatthedoublef]

I like this dough. It's tasty and I've always been a crust person anyway. But rolling it in sugar is a good idea. Thanks

[aaronatthedoublef]

One of the things I needed was more sheet pans. The kitchen used to have a big stack. Now they have four and I'll need all those for challot. I went and bought six full sized sheets.

I have OLD pie dough I just pulled out of the freezer.

I think it is still good. Can I just use regular pie dough to make hand pies? I see lots of recipes using a cream
cheese dough but I don't want to make another one.

Thanks

[aaronatthedoublef]

I've made ciabatta rolls for sandwiches so far. This is also a dozen week for challot (plural of challah). I have two KAs so I am bringing one with me and I am thinking about making some cookies while the challah does its second rise. Need something in the slack time.

[aaronatthedoublef]

Never seen Sweet Emmas but if I did I would buy them because I have a lovely niece named Emma. She is definitely sweet.

I've been using honey crisps because they are on sale and are actually pretty inexpensive for now.

[aaronatthedoublef]

Might be worth the book JUST for a decent Italian beef recipe.

I searched for one for years with no luck. Then a couple years ago "The Bear", https://www.imdb.com/title/tt14452776/ Italian beef is all over the place!

[aaronatthedoublef]

Thanks BA for the tip on toasting panko. My chicken strips used flour and baking soda, no bread crumbs. It was pretty crisp, too. It may be a little while before Violet can each them again, anyway a she is in the process of getting braces and her mouth is pretty sore. She couldn't even eat a cheese quesadilla last night. Grapes hurt too.

Today I made her some applesauce just as a way to give eat some soft fruit. First time I have made applesauce in many years.

[aaronatthedoublef]

I don't have a deep fryer and don't deep fry often. Believe it or not my kids actually prefer baked doughnuts so this is the first thing I've deep fried in a LONG time. I used a pot on the stove. It was a little tricky keeping the temp right but I erred on the side of keeping it too hot which was better than too cool.

Never thought about freezing it. That's a good tip. If I wanted to reuse it maybe I could strain it and freeze it.

I knew a fellow who would get used restaurant oil and convert it to biofuel for his car. His garage smelled awful and his car smelled like whatever the oil had been used for - fries, Chinese food. It was kind of funny.

[aaronatthedoublef]

I made homemade chicken tenders. BIG hit with Violet. She ate them three days in a row.

I may bake them next time but this time I fried them in avocado oil. Do you deep fry things? What do you do with the oil when you're done. I've always thought about frying a turkey but it has the same problem on a much larger scale. What do you do with used oil after frying?

Thanks

[aaronatthedoublef]

Mike - now I have sheeter envy. I wish I had the space for it. Not sure I could measure 1mm thickness.

I am working with my synagogue to see if I can bring in equipment. I am storing flour, yeast, and eggs there. They're giving me honey leftover from the High Holidays but I am not sure how much they have. And having a big Blodgett oven is great. At some point I could expand to a lot more than a dozen loaves.

Ahhhh. This week I made more challah. My shaping is improving which is part of the reason I am making it each week instead of once a month. I'm also developing a routine in my new kitchen. I think I am going to bring my old KA mixer there and start making cookies or something in the slack time waiting for things to rise. I also need to bring in some more sheet pans.

I also made ciabatta again this week. I substituted a third whole wheat for bread flour and Violet didn't complain so that's a success. I also dropped the weight down from 5 to 4.5 oz. They have become our go-to sandwich roll and Violet prefers it to the olive bread from Whole Foods which is major coup for me!

[aaronatthedoublef]

Mike, the Osso are shaped like bones and Henry did a good job. They just didn't hold their shape in the oven. They also puffed up then shrank.

[aaronatthedoublef]

Mike,

When you make apple cider challah I'll be interested in your feedback. I started with straight cider and then switched to boiled cider. We notice a real difference with the boiled. It's a stronger and sweeter flavor. My kids love to drink it but it is too sweet for Kate and me.

There are rules about how much juice can be used instead of water in bread. Too much and it is cake and not bread. I reduce the cider by about a third and I can put more cider flavor in without exceeding the juice-to-water ratio.

I boil my own cider because I can use local stuff that I know and like and support CT farmers. It also lets me use different ciders. For example I can buy regual, mixed apple cider or all gala or all Honeycrisp. So far I have stuck with mixed. The Honeycrisp carries a price-premium that I am not sure is worth it.

I have not run the numbers to see if it actually saves me money. These days, with shipping, it actually might.

The other thing it lets me do is put other flavors into the cider if I want to. For example, I can toss in some cinnamon sticks and that changes the taste of the cider. I haven't tried it in challah yet but it is on my list.

If I just bought KAB boiled cider it would be limiting.

I need to make ciabatta and cookies this week. Henry made Osso de Morto cookies this week for a Halloween party. Pretty interesting. Mostly almond flour and powdered sugar. We were not able to taste any 🙁 because the recipe only made 16. I might have made a couple small ones but I try not to interfere unless asked. They needed to be refrigerated overnight which Hen didn't know before he started so they only had about 45 minutes. They were a little wonky but they looked good to me.

It was a very different recipe and something he hadn't seen or tried before so I was pretty proud of Hen for being adventurous.

[aaronatthedoublef]

I ran into Temple and pre-shaped the challah and then Violet and I shaped it and baked it. It was nice having full-sized sheet pans and a large, professional oven. I could bake all 14 loaves at once. Violet now wants to do challah bakes with me every week. It's funny - she loves the smell of my dough and, of course, the smell of baking bread, but she dislikes challah. Who dislikes challah (everyone asks that)? Violet does. Although she says mine is better than others she still has not desire to eat it.

Saturday Violet and I made my birthday cake. She is funny. She asked my favorite and I pulled out the recipe and told her she could see how often I'd made it by the mess on the pages. 🙂 It is Rosie's chocolate fudge cake. Rosie had wonderful bakeries in the Boston area when I lived there. I moved to Seattle and was a little homesick, saw the baking book on remainder in Barnes & Noble, and scooped it up. It is a sour cream chocolate cake with a non-cooking version of a boiled chocolate frosting. We added milk chocolate chips between the layers to add some texture and contrast to the unsweetened and semi sweet chocolate. The we added toasted and untoasted coconut to the outside.

And, this is the REALLY big news - Violet asked if she could turn the cake pans in the oven and then take them out of the oven. She has always been afraid to do this so I am really proud of her.

And we still need to work on grabbing a cake pan by the edge and not sticking one's thumb in the cake. But I still do that sometimes so...

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