[BakerAunt]

Our utility company has told us that on Tuesday, our street, and a few nearby ones, will have an electrical outage for a period between 8 a.m. and 4 p.m. for a power upgrade. I wish that they could have narrowed it down more, but at least we were notified. As a result, I spent a lot of time in the kitchen on Monday. I baked two loaves of the whole grain bread that I have been developing, and I think that I now have the recipe where I want it. I will decide after we slice it at lunch tomorrow.

My other baking project was my adaptation of King Arthur's Apple-Cinnamon Bars, which is actually more of a cake. I opened a pint jar of apple butter while we had guests, so I had it to use in the bars. I made a 1 ½ recipe, although I used two eggs, both of which were small. I reduced the brown sugar by half, used white whole wheat flour, replaced butter with some avocado oil, halved the amount of cinnamon chips, and added 2 Tbs. milk powder and 1 Tbs. flax meal. I baked them in a glass dish that is about 12 ½ x 9 inches. I always make half the glaze and spread it over the top rather than trying to drizzle it decoratively. We each had a piece for dessert, although it should actually rest for about four hours to set the glaze, but the end was cool enough to cut. For the glaze, I used Wholesome Organic Fair Trade Powdered Confectioners Sugar, which I found at Vitacost. Instead of cornstarch, it uses tapioca starch as the only other ingredient to the cane sugar. The taste is better than a cornstarch powdered sugar, but it is not like the glazing sugar that King Arthur once carried in which the sugar did not obscure the cinnamon in the glaze at all.

[BakerAunt]

For dinner on Monday, I made pecan crusted boneless pork slices, which we had with more of yesterday's green bean, cherry tomato, and feta salad, and applesauce from the freezer. It will be an easy meal to re-run tomorrow, since we are uncertain as to when in an eight-hour period the power will be out and for how long.

[BakerAunt]

I made yogurt on Sunday, and I made an absentminded error. Instead of plugging in the yogurt maker, I plugged in the coffee maker, which is only still on the counter because our guests left behind ground coffee which, being cognizant of the soaring price of coffee, I am drinking in the afternoon. (I am still having my French Press cup in the morning!) I discovered my error after two hours. I have no idea how it will affect the yogurt. I re-set the timer for the usual five hours and forty minutes.

I made our favorite green bean, cherry tomato, and feta salad for dinner to go with the leftover chicken thighs, brown and mixed wild rice, and mushroom sauce. I used the 6 oz of green beans we had from our garden, but I supplemented with a pound from the farmers market; ditto with our four cherry tomatoes, which were augmented by a basket of mixed colored ones. Our cherry tomatoes went dormant for a while, but more green ones are now forming.

[BakerAunt]

I baked Whole Wheat Sourdough Cheese Crackers on Saturday from dough I made on Monday.

[BakerAunt]

Yum, yum, Joan!

To go with the rest of the pasta salad for Saturday's dinner, I made roasted salmon with a maple, Dijon, and pecan topping.

[BakerAunt]

Skeptic--That's an interesting question, but not one to which I know the answer. I don't think the baking powder should make much of a difference in how the dough feels or whether it windowpanes. King Arthur's Hot Cross Buns recipe uses baking powder as well as yeast, and when I made that recipe, a couple of times, years ago, I don't recall any difference in how the dough felt. Mike regularly uses the HCB recipe, so perhaps he can weigh in on it.

[BakerAunt]

That brownie recipe is one of our favorites, Joan!

. Follow-up Notes on the bread I baked on Wednesday: The bread is interesting, but I would cut back on the aniseed, which overwhelms the other flavors. It works fine as the base for a shaved ham sandwich, but I like it less for my turkey bacon and tomato sandwiches, as I want the bacon and tomato not to have flavor competition from the aniseed. I'm not sure that I will bake this recipe again.

[BakerAunt]

For dinner on Friday, I took the recipe, "White Wine-Braised Chicken with Artichokes," which I have now made twice, and replaced the artichokes, which Scott will not eat, with sliced mushrooms and increased the white wine by 2 Tbs. It is a quick recipe that cooks on the stove top. I cooked a mixture of brown and wild rice in my rice cooker to have with the chicken, mushrooms, and sauce. I like this version of the recipe, although I might increase the paprika by 1/4 tsp. next time, as I omit the oregano in deference to my husband's digestive system. We also had microwaved fresh broccoli.

[BakerAunt]

We did our big shopping trip to the little city about half an hour away, which means hitting three grocery stores, a Ross and a Marshall's, and running a couple of errands. It was good to have the rest of the turkey-zucchini loaf and more of the pasta salad for dinner.

[BakerAunt]

My husband uses some orange deer fencing around the house, and also around some small areas of trees in his woods. He has had some success applying "Deer Out," but it has to be reapplied when it rains or wears off.

Those bucks are crazy. Some of it is rubbing the velvet, but my husband thinks that they also want the tree scent--think of it as Hai Karate aftershave for deer!

[BakerAunt]

We had planned overs from Tuesday.

[BakerAunt]

I fed my sourdough on Monday when I made crackers, and it is lively. On Wednesday, I tried baking a new recipe, "Whole Wheat and Rye Sourdough Bread," a recipe on the King Arthur site attributed to Marilyn Mulgrew of Rochester, New York. It was a challenge, and not just because I made a couple of changes. I increased the whole wheat by ½ cup, replacing that much AP flour. I also used bread flour rather than AP. I replaced ¾ cups plus 2 Tbs. warm milk with 7 oz. of water and added 2 Tbs. special dry milk. I also cut the salt from 1 tsp. to ¾ tsp. I mixed and kneaded the dough in the bread machine. I should have kept a closer eye on it near the end, but it seemed to be coming together ok, and I had added a couple more tablespoons of flour earlier. The dough was a sticky mess all over the machine at the end of the kneading cycle. I ended up scraping it all out onto a mat floured with another 2 Tbs. whole wheat flour and kneading it some more. After the rise, I did a couple of stretch-folds before shaping it the best I could and plopping it into a 9 x 4-inch baking pan to rise for 45 minutes. I chose that pan because some recipe reviewers felt that the sides needed more support, and this pan is a little deeper than my standard pans. The recipe called for a 9 x 5-inch loaf pan, but reviewers commented on their loaves being rather short. The bread is baked at 400 F for 25 minutes, but it only registered 178 F at that time and was getting overly brown on top, so I lowered the temperature to 375 F, tented it with foil, and let it bake another 10 minutes, at which time the internal temperature was 205 F. It is not a typical loaf in that it looks very much like a batter bread.

I suspect that part of the issue is that I have a starter with more liquid than the recipe developer or King Arthur. I would add another ½ cup flour next time and maybe reduce the liquid by 2 Tbs. Of course, whether there is a next time will depend on taste and texture when I slice it tomorrow.

[BakerAunt]

A lower fence can work if the deer cannot see a way to land. Before we had the backyard fence for the dog, my husband made the garden long and narrow. The only issue we had was a deer once chomped off the top of a tomato plant that came above the fence. So far, the deer have stayed out of the backyard because with the garden and the trees, they do not see an easy landing place.

My husband's real problems with deer are in his woodlands, and those properties are rather large for fencing. It's not so much the eating, although it can be a problem with young trees but the rubbing by the male deer, as they can kill even a larger tree.

[BakerAunt]

For dinner on Tuesday, I made another large pasta salad, using the rest of the multi-colored bow tie pasta, sliced carrots, celery, onion, and chopped red bell pepper and cucumber quarters, and halved multi-colored cherry tomatoes. I'm still working out the dressing. Currently, I use ½ cup olive oil, ¼ cup red wine vinegar, 1 tsp. Dijon mustard, 2 Tbs. maple syrup, and 2 tsp. Penzey's Sandwich Sprinkle blend. I also add Greek olives and sprinkle feta cheese over individual servings.

We had the pasta salad with Turkey-Zucchini Loaf with Peach Dijon Mustard Glaze. We have enough planned overs for two more meals, which is good, as I am catching up on laundry after having had guests.

[BakerAunt]

On Monday, I tackled the large zucchini that had been sitting in my refrigerator for a couple of weeks. When I halved it, I was pleasantly surprised that it did not have the usual large seeds. I grated it with my food processor, then set aside 340 grams, which I used to bake a revised version of King Arthur's Double Chocolate Zucchini Bread. I like my new adaptation better than the original recipe and have posted it here at Nebraska Kitchen.

I always thought the original recipe was odd, as I just do not like honey with chocolate. I also thought the original recipe had an off taste, which I think was due to the baking soda, which I replaced with more baking powder.

I also made dough for Whole Wheat Sourdough Cheese Crackers, as the last batch vanished during our guests' visits. 🙂

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