BakerAunt
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Aaron--I am still learning to use the Ankursrum, which I have had for less than a month. So far, I really like it for my three-loaves batches of bread. I use the dough knife and dough rollers. A dough hook is included, but it is suggested only for heavy bread or making mincemeat. I find that I use less flour in recipes with this mixer than with my Cuisinart stand mixer--and with it, I used less flour than when I kneaded by hand. I also give it high marks for making Sourdough Cracker dough.
I have not yet tried mixing cookie dough. Their recipes call for using the second plastic bowl that comes with it and is affixed over a central post. There is a "cookie whisk" attachment that comes with the mixer to use. Butter must be very soft. There is also a balloon whisk attachment that came with it.
I'm not so sure this mixer would work well for making frosting. That would be a reason to keep a small Kitchen Aid around.
I'm hoping to try cookies and a cake in the next week. Maybe I should start an "Adventures with the Ankarsrum thread?
With cabinets, be sure to know what you are getting and to measure. My Franciscan ware Desert Rose plates are too wide for the shelves in our cabinets. As I had never had that issue any where I lived before, it never occurred to me to go in with tape measure and measurements of my dishes. I did not go for pull out drawers in the lower cabinets only because I was expecting FULL shelves, but modern cabinets only have half second shelves. We put in two large utility cabinets to use for the pantry, but I did not realize how deep they are or that they only allowed for three shelves on the bottom and one on the top. They are too deep, and the shelves too far apart to be as useful as they need to be. And of course, I have had the problem of shelves in the utility cabinets collapsing because it did not occur to the designers that I would be putting a lot of stuff on them. Scott and I are currently trying to work out how to modify them. If I had had my druthers, and the space, I would have preferred open shelving in that back area, or better yet, I would have loved a walk-in pantry, because where we live, the big grocery runs happen only every three or four weeks.
With whole wheat, I think that bitterness is in the taste buds of the person eating it. I recall a guy on the Baking Circle who was particularly sensitive to tasting bitterness in whole wheat. As for me, I never found it bitter. Perhaps, it is genetic.
I baked five small loaves of Wholegrain Pumpkin Bread on Friday, using more of the puree from the "basketball" pumpkin. The puree is thick and does not have water separation after resting in a bowl. I used half whole wheat flour this time, and I think that is what I will use from now on rather than white whole wheat flour or whole wheat pastry flour. The pumpkin and spices are strong enough that the whole wheat does not overwhelm them. I will freeze three loaves. I always think of S. Wirth when I bake this recipe, as she pointed it out to me in the recipes at Nebraska Kitchen that were saved from the Baking Circle. It has become my go-to pumpkin bread recipe.
On Friday, it was 0 F when I awoke, and it never got above 2 or 3 F. I made and canned six more pints and one 4 oz. jar of apple butter, with some left for us to have on bread and rolls. I do the canning in the Annex apartment's kitchen, so I bundled up when I went out. It was tolerable as it is a short distance, and Scott did a great job getting all the snow off the sidewalks, so they were dry when the deep cold set in. We are in for at least a week of deep cold. The lake has frozen. A couple of ice fishermen went out, but not for long.
For dinner, I made Beef stew, using stew meat from the farmers market that I bought a while back and incorporated some fresh rosemary from my rosemary plant.
That is a lovely pizza, Len. I'm particularly fond of thin crust pizzas.
We had the rest of the spaghetti squash lasagna for dinner on Thursday. That allowed me to spend the afternoon cutting up apples for the 6 1/2-quart and 3 1/2-quart crockpots. These are for apple butter, which I will finish making and canning tomorrow.
Our temperatures are also dropping, and we are in for a week of bitter cold.
Joan--I am also fond of avocado toast. I usually mash the avocado with Penzey's Salsa & Pico blend to give it a bit of a guacamole taste.
I do have plenty of the Bob's Red Mill milk powder, which I buy from Vitacost, so when I run out of the special dry milk, I will switch to it. I've mostly used the BRM for non-yeast recipes.
Aaron--Williams Sonoma sells a version of the crank popcorn popper that is induction compatible. I know because several years ago, I bought a Whirley Pop for my sister and nieces, then had to have them send it back for a Whirley Pop that is induction compatible. The advice I gave my bonus daughter and her fiancé on cookware is to buy cookware that will work on an induction stovetop, even if that is not what they have now because induction is likely the future.
We had more of the Spaghetti Squash Lasagna for dinner on Wednesday, along with some pumpkin whole wheat rolls that I baked.
Very helpful picture, Joan!
On Wednesday, I pulled out Stella Parks's recipe for "Yeasted Pumpkin Bread," which I first baked perhaps five years or so ago. We discussed the recipe at Nebraska Kitchen; it is one of her recipes that uses the food processor to mix the dough. I am not a fan of cleaning the food processor after mixing dough, so I instead mixed and kneaded the dough in the Ankarsrum. I am still working out how to knead a smaller amount of dough in it. The recipe has some challenges in that it was written for the food processor, and using fresh pumpkin puree means that the flour will vary. I also decided to use at least half whole wheat. I held back some of the bread flour, which is typical with this mixer. I baked it as twelve rolls in a 9 x 9 pan for 23 minutes. The rolls went very well with the spaghetti squash lasagna. The "basketball" pumpkin puree is more assertive than the usual pie pumpkin, but we did not mind it.
Those are lovely loaves, Joan. Some people find whole wheat bitter. When I bake bread when Scott's cousins are around, I use white whole wheat flour, which is more mellow. King Arthur, in their whole grain baking book, uses about 1/4 cup of orange juice to mellow out regular whole wheat flour. (That was before they got into selling white whole wheat flour.)
However, like you, I bake what the people want to eat, not what I think that they should eat.
We are having very cold temperatures. We made it into the upper teens today after starting at low single digits. It was 9 F when we did our grocery store run in the later morning. Scott estimates our snow total since a week ago at 12 inches.
I made my faux lasagna that uses spaghetti squash in the place of pasta for dinner on Tuesday. I added some chopped sautéed celery with the sliced mushrooms.
Earlier in the day, I roasted the last two of the pumpkins with the basketball textured skin because I thought that they might be starting to go bad, but they turned out to be fine. I have some pumpkin recipes in mind for this batch of fresh puree, but I have also frozen some of it.
Navlys--I don't count on rental places having sheet pans, based on past experience. I have a medium-sized one that I bought on our first vacation in Florida, and it goes with us whenever we travel and plan to cook. It has also turned out to be very useful here at home.
Hurrah! Joan's pictures are back. Your bread looks yummy. Your little doggy is clearly interested in the meal!
For lunch today, I cooked a batch of black beans, then made Black Bean and Pumpkin soup. I adapted this recipe from Smitten Kitchen, and Deb adapted it from Gourmet. I like to make it every year, and it lasts me for over a week unless I freeze some of it. This time, instead of using the food processor to puree the black beans and diced tomatoes, I put them in my deepest metal bowl, along with some of the black bean broth, and used my stick blender. That worked well, and I did not have a food processor to clean!
We repeated last night's dinner except that we had microwaved frozen peas as the vegetable.
A few thoughts for CWCdesign:
After I started using a stand mixer, nearly fifteen years ago, I started having more blowouts of my loaves than when I kneaded by hand. At the time, when it came to shaping the loaf, I was rolling out the dough to a rectangle with a heavy rolling pin, then rolling it up and tucking the ends in before I put it into the loaf pan. I now shape the loaves differently, and it seems to make a difference. I form each loaf into a rough oval, cover them, and let them rest for 5 minutes. To shape, I turn the oval over, so that the smooth side is down, flatten with my hands a bit to make the correct size of rectangle for the pan, then fold in each side to meet in the center, fold in each end, then fold in the long sides, and roll with my hands to make a cylinder that fits into the pan without pushing out at the ends. That has stopped any major blowouts for regular loaf pans.
In looking at your pictures, I've always considered the marks along the side as oven spring rather than blowouts. That said, some of my loaves have more pronounced marks on one side, which I think may be due to air flow in my oven.
For Sunday dinner, I roasted chicken thighs rubbed with olive oil and sprinkled with Penzey's Justice seasoning. I roasted potato chunks tossed in olive oil separately in the small convection oven at 400 F for 50 minutes, and they came out well. We also had microwaved frozen mixed vegetables. Dessert was Butternut Squash Cake with Maple Glaze, which is delicious! We had temperatures in the teens for a high today, and we are having yet more snow.
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