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Very impressive, Mike!
My husband is growing lettuce in a long planter on the porch. This time he is using soil from the store rather than the sandy soil from one of the woodland properties, and that seems to make a difference. The grow lights seem to be working well for the lettuce.
I plan more cookie baking this week, but today was about bread.
I was looking through my pile of untried recipes and came across "Mixed Grains Bread," which Martha Rose Shulman contributed to Zester, a newsletter and recipe site that went out of existence some years ago. In the headnote, she said that it was her signature bread when she began cooking in the '70s and was still a family favorite.
We were out of bread, except for a loaf of Challah in the freezer, so on Sunday, I decided to try baking this bread. As an added advantage, it called for quinoa flour or millet flour, and I have some millet flour taking up freezer space. I made a few changes. I used just 200g of water and replaced the other 475 g with buttermilk. I used bread flour rather than unbleached white flour, since the bread is mostly wholegrain. I reduced the salt from 20g to 15g. Her instructions were for kneading by hand, but I used my stand mixer. It is a heavy dough, but my Cuisinart 7-qt. mixer has the power to handle it. I added the salt with the final flour addition. The bread had a biga stage, and it also had two risings before it is panned for the final rise. I left off the light sesame seed topping in deference to my husband, but I had some egg wash left from two projects late last week, so I did the two egg washes. It baked in 50 minutes. The 9x5 loaves had good oven spring and have a rustic look. I look forward to slicing one tomorrow, at which time I will report on taste and texture.
Note: I tried to find a link to the recipe, but since I printed it eleven years ago, and Zester is no longer a site, I could not find it online anywhere. (This might be a job for the Way Back Machine.) If anyone is interested, I can post the recipe here, with my re-worked instructions to use a stand mixer.
December 11, 2022 at 5:05 pm in reply to: What are you Cooking the Week of December 11, 2022? #37340I made my regular batch of yogurt on Sunday.
I'm glad to hear that your husband is doing better, Joan.
I have a great recipe for a spaghetti squash "lasagna," but it does not agree with my husband's digestive system, mostly due to the tomato sauce. I decided on Saturday to see if I could create a milk-based sauce and make a spaghetti squash-turkey-mushroom "lasagna." I did a mash-up of my first recipe with the Turkey, Spinach, and Mushroom Lasagna recipe I have made twice this fall--omitting the ricotta cheese and adding some minced parsley. For the spices, I used 1 tsp. dried sage, 1 tsp. dehydrated onion, and some freshly ground pepper. We liked the taste and texture, so I will make it again. Spaghetti squash were plentiful at the farmers' market this autumn.
I'm a Kenji Alt-Lopez fan. While I have heard of Alton Brown, I've not watched his shows and have not made any of his recipes.
I'm with Skeptic when it comes to keeping the textures separate and allowing them to play off of each other that way.
I improvised a chili for lunch on Friday. After sauteing onion, turnip greens, and minced garlic in olive oil, I added a can of tomatoes with Hatch chilis and 15 oz. of cooked black beans from my freezer. It needed more flavor, so I added 1 tsp. Penzey's Arizona seasoning, 1 Tbs. tomato paste, and ½ tsp. each sugar and cider vinegar. I have enough for two more lunches.
I made stir-fry for Thursday's dinner using the leftover boneless pork chops from last night, soba noodles, carrots, celery, green onion, mushrooms, broccoli, a bit of green bell pepper, and the deglazing from cooking the pork.
I finally found time on Thursday to bake my Rye and Barley Crispbread.
Joan--sorry to hear that your husband is still not feeling well. I'm sure that the chocolate was welcomed medicine!
As I had two egg yolks leftover from yesterday, on Wednesday I decided to bake the Challah recipe that Cass gave me back on the Baking Circle. As he told me I could do back then, I used four egg yolks and one whole egg in the bread. I made one change in that I substituted 25% white whole wheat for that much bread flour. I made it as two loaves, one to start eating tomorrow and one to freeze. One loaf came out fatter and higher than the other. I think that I stretched out the dough too much while I was braiding, but both loaves look great.
Now I have two more egg whites to use in a recipe.
BTW, the Zimtsterne received great reviews from my husband. I like them too. The cookies have a slightly chewy texture and the almond and cinnamon work well, although I will cut the vanilla in the glaze back by half next time. I also need to look and see if I have a smaller star cookie cutter, as a single cookie is quite filling.
When I lived in Texas, there was a cupcake place that used batter left over from their upscale cakes. They would put out a Yes flag when they had cupcakes available and a No flag when they sold out. The flavors would change based on the cakes. I once bought a box of four as a treat for the family. The cupcakes had the lovely density of sturdy cakes, and yes, frosting swirled up over an inch. They also did mini cupcakes.
I looked at the Washington Post's Christmas Cookie feature this past Sunday. As expected, nine of the ten require lots of butter, although these were not cookies that I would have baked even when I was eating lots of butter. There was, however, a recipe for jam thumbprint cookies that used almond flour and no butter that I might try.
I'm a traditionalist when it comes to Christmas cookies, so I miss the sugar cookies and the shortbread particularly this time of year. I will still bake a half recipe of the Pfeffernusse, since those cookies use just half the butter of most cookie recipes.
My new Christmas cookies are the Spiced Rye Ginger Cookies from King Arthur, as well as the cranberry-pistachio biscotti I discovered last year. I'm hoping the German Cinnamon Stars I baked yesterday will earn a place in the rotation. That dough might work for other simple shapes as well.
I found an internet article on my homepage that had ten recipes for German cookies. I looked through them and the Zimtsterne (Cinnamon Stars) did not call for butter but relies on finely ground almonds. So, on Tuesday, I baked the recipe, using Bob's Red Mill almond flour I had in the freezer. My star cutter must have been twice the size of hers, as I only got 14 stars and one smaller circle rather than 36. The recipe called for a meringue glaze, but I did not want to mess with it, so I used a half recipe for a Clear Cookie Glaze that was among my "to try" recipes. I substitute vanilla for the almond or orange extract. I probably could have made just a quarter recipe. I stuck the remaining glaze in a bowl in the refrigerator. I might try warming it up to see if I can use it on something else. The cookies were to bake 8 minutes, but given the size of mine, I let them bake for 15. I will sample one tomorrow.
Thanks for posting the link, Mike. The story does not contain enough information or pictures for readers to judge the merits of the case, but if the recipes were stolen, that would be infringement.
It sounds like cookie businesses are the new cupcake business. Remember all those cupcakes with high swirls of frosting--so high that they were difficult to eat?
For dinner on Monday, I made Lima Beans with Ham, Brown Rice, and Kale (also celery, the last of the red bell peppers, dehydrated onion, and sage). I made yogurt on Monday as well.
For dinner on Sunday, we had Salmon and Couscous with Greek Seasoning, along with a salad featuring lettuce from the farmers' market and cherry tomatoes from our potted plant on the porch. The plant has two more green tomatoes and recently developed a flower. My husband had cut back most of it, but he is waiting to see what the flower does. We used homemade Ranch dressing that uses the Penzey's blend.
On Sunday, I baked my Whole Wheat Sourdough Cheese Crackers from dough I made last week.
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