BakerAunt
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My baking on Thursday: I have been craving English muffins--specifically the Easy Buckwheat Oat English Muffins, a recipe at Nebraska Kitchen that I moved from its posters original post at the last rendition of the King Arthur Baking Circle, and that I have made several times in the past. It has always been a difficult dough to work with, but I thought it would be ideally suited to the Ankarsrum. I make a few changes to the recipe, such as substituting 1 ½ cup of buttermilk for part of the water and reducing the salt to 1 tsp. This time, I also added 2 Tbs. milk powder and 1 Tbs. flax meal. I also decided that instead of oat flour I would use an equal amount of old-fashioned oats. The recipe definitely mixes better in the Ankarsrum. I could never get the paddle on my previous mixer to do the work correctly and would resort to the dough hook. I even did the dough in the bread machine, but due to its stickiness that was a messy clean-up. I mixed the dough on the first speed, then on second speed for 5 minutes before adding 2 minutes, then 1 minute, then another 1 minute. I think that it is easier to get the dough completely hydrated with the Ankarsrum.
I left the batter-like dough in the mixing bowl to rise. Ankarsrum comes with a cover for the mixing bowl for just that purpose. After two hours, I turned out the dough onto my Silpat mat coated with plenty of semolina, which made the shaping much easier. I covered them with an old deli cover to rest for 20 minutes but started heating my cast iron pans, coated with a little Vegalene, at 15 minutes. I should not have pre-heated the pans for so long. I had to turn them off and let them cool slightly before I could proceed, although, since the muffins cool down the pan when they hit it, I should have allowed for that temperature drop. It is hard to maintain a consistent pan temperature on the stove top. It ranged from 270-330 F. I used a cast iron flat, round flat griddle pan for three at a time, and a Le Creuset "skinny" rectangular griddle pan for another three, then did the second batch. I used my instant read thermometer to make sure the centers were at 185-190 F. I am looking forward to having a couple, toasted, tomorrow with Land o' Lakes Sweet Cream spread (canola oil and butter) and some of the pear jam I made last year. I like that the recipe does not require muffin rings, and yes, they are not the greatest circles. Coating with the semolina makes them easier to move to the griddle pans.
Thursday night was more soup for dinner at our house. That was good because it gave me time for my baking project.
We found three large bone-in chicken breasts on sale at the grocery store yesterday, so for dinner on Wednesday, I roasted them. I think that most people do not want to deal with the bones, but Scott cuts off the meat after I roast the pieces, then I freeze the bones for broth, so that is a win. Scott harvested more of our green beans, so I made our favorite Green Bean, Cherry Tomato, and Greek Cheese salad. Most of the cherry tomatoes were from the farmers market, but four of them were from our plants.
After dinner, I made another jar of refrigerator dill pickles, using our pickling cucumbers and dill from our garden.
You can never go wrong with blueberry muffins!
Good luck with your beans, Len. Our green beans are producing well.
Tuesday night's dinner was some of the soup that I made on Sunday.
I needed to use up two pickling cucumbers that Scott missed in the garden, so the skin had yellowed. I pared them, then cleaned out the seeds before dicing them. I mixed them with a can of Del Monte tomatoes with Hatch chilis, then added some chopped onion. It needed some punch, so in went two tsp. of Penzey's Salsa & Pico seasoning. I bought a large bag of Tostitos at the grocery store, so I will be having the salsa and chips along with my lunch.
What lovely tomatoes, Len! Ours are so slow this year, and I am yearning for that turkey bacon and tomato sandwich. At this rate, we won't have any until September, and there are not that many.
I have been looking for ways to use blackberry puree (what is left after I remove a lot of the seeds) other than in jam, as we can only eat and give away so much. While Scott would have been happy with a rerun of the Bittersweet Blackberry Brownies, I need a break from intense chocolate, so I googled and found a recipe, "Blackberry Swirl Coffee Cake" by Melissa at the blog "A Latte Food."
I used a scant cup (probably 7 oz.) of blackberry puree, while she calls for 1 ½ cup fresh or frozen blackberries which she purees with ¼ cup of sugar. I instead heated my blackberry puree with the sugar and let it cook a bit, then stirred in 1 Tbs. of chia seed to thicken it, before letting it cool.
I replaced her AP flour with King Arthur's Golden wheat (white whole wheat). Instead of 1/4 cup granulated sugar and ½ cup brown sugar, I used ½ cup granulated sugar. As I would be using buttermilk rather than regular milk, I changed 2 tsp. baking powder to 1 tsp. baking powder and ¼ tsp. baking soda. I added 2 Tbs. Bob's Red Mill milk powder and 1 Tbs. flax meal. I replaced the 1/3 cup melted butter with 1/3 cup avocado oil. I used the equal amount, as I would be replacing the sour cream with nonfat Greek yogurt, so I thought a little more fat would be good. I replaced the milk with buttermilk. For the topping, I cut the recipe in half; like King Arthur, she is clearly a fan of the deep streusel topping. I replaced the cold butter with an equal amount of avocado oil. I baked it in a 9 x 9-inch ceramic dish, because the acidity of the blackberries would damage the coating on the USA pans. It only needed 30 minutes to bake. Once the coffee cake had cooled, I needed to run a knife around the sides to loosen it. We each had a slice for dessert, and we decided the recipe is a keeper.
Dinner on Monday was the leftover shrimp and fettuccini from Saturday.
For Sunday breakfast, I made Pumpkin Oat Wholegrain Belgium Waffles. I cut the brown sugar from ¼ cup to 2 Tbs. With maple syrup, the waffle itself does not need to be overly sweet. Annie, of course, was in heaven, as she loves waffles.
I made soup for dinner on Sunday. I used some broth from the last batch I made, and I boiled up the bones from the split chicken we had last week to add to it. The soup was my usual with the Bob's Red Mill mixture of brown and red lentils, split green and yellow peas, and barley. I used browned ground turkey and sauteed carrots, celery, a yellow bell pepper, and a few leftover mushrooms. We have plenty to alternate with other meals this coming week.
We had a lot of rain, starting Friday night and lasting until late Saturday morning. Scott's rain gauge showed two inches had fallen, some of it in hard spurts. More is predicted for this evening, and a number of counties are under a flood watch. (The draining of wetlands that would absorb the excess water is a contributing factor.) We are on high enough ground for it not to be a problem for us. Annie is scared of the rain because she worries there will be thunder. To make matters worse, at 1:15 a.m. this morning a smoke detector announced that its battery needed replacing, and the high-pitch screech sent her downstairs to cower in her safety corner for the rest of the evening. I was not happy either at being awakened, as I had gone to bed late and was just drifting off. I had the battery out before Scott could even get up.
I took advantage of this cooler, humid day to bake two loaves of my adaptation of Len's Whole Wheat, Rye, and Semolina Bread. I needed to use up the last bits of molasses in a jar (nothing goes to waste around here), so I replaced the honey in the bread with molasses, rinsing out the jar with the water I would use to proof the yeast. I got two lovely, nicely risen loaves. As I noted when I baked this bread in Florida, this recipe is made for humidity. I look forward to sampling a slice tomorrow and tasting the difference in using molasses.
For dinner on Saturday, I made my adaptation of a Lemony Shrimp Pasta Primavera. The original recipe used the vegetables of spring: asparagus and peas. I used a zucchini cut into quarter wedges, which I caramelized on one side in olive oil before adding chopped red and purple bell pepper and sliced onion to the pan. I then added three small cloves of minced garlic, then a bunch of halved red and purple cherry tomatoes from our garden. After letting the cherry tomatoes begin to release their juice, I added just a bit of lemon juice (left over from when I baked cookies), then a bag of cooked in shell (and shelled) frozen shrimp. I tossed it with fettucine, and I grated a little Parmesan over each serving. So, what do I call the recipe? Primavera means spring. Google tells me that the Italian word for summer is estate, so maybe Shrimp Pasta Estate?
Our Friday night dinner was simple. I roasted some potato chunks and nine minutes before they were done added the leftover zucchini from last night. We had it with the rest of the roast chicken.
That's quite a set-up Mike.
We have yet to get any large tomatoes, although there are two green ones. We are doing well with cherry tomatoes. We have had a first picking of green beans, and more are on the way. The pickling cucumbers are doing well, and I just made my second batch of refrigerator dills from our garden. However, my husband forgot about two in the garden, and they have yellowed skin. I will see if I can peel them and use them in another way. We have some small green peppers on all the plants. The pumpkin plant has finally formed some flower buds, but it looks like they are all male flowers. We may have a repeat of last season when most of the pumpkins developed too late. The potato plants have really grown, and my husband had to cover up a potato or two that had started to show.
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