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My other baking project on Wednesday was pita chips. I used the recipe on the KABC website, which is the same as one that I cut out of one of the KAF catalogues to try. The recipe for the pitas is not hard, although the directions are a little sparse (“mix and knead to form a smooth dough”). I mixed initially with the paddle, holding the oil back until the rest was incorporated, added it and mixed, then used the dough hook for 2 minutes. That worked. Rolling out the balls of dough to 6-inch circles was not difficult, as I used my little wooden rolling pin that came with the ravioli mold (and no, I have never made ravioli with it). I rolled a ball on a small square of parchment paper, with saran on top. To get them off the parchment, it helped to turn them over onto the Silpat mat, peel off the parchment, and then lift them and move them to the hot stone in the oven. I need to work a bit on the drop onto the stone. I did well with the one in the far back corner, but I had some issues dropping the one in the front left corner perfectly flat. Five of the eight have nice puffs, and the others are salvageable.
After the pitas cooled, I cut four of them in half. I used kitchen scissors after starting each with a knife and used the knife at the end if I needed to cut through any of the center. The top parts are thin, and the bottom parts are thick. I decided to bake the chips made from the top ones separately from those I would make with the thicker bottom parts. Each half gets cut into eight wedges. The recipe calls for them to be brushed first with olive oil and sprinkled with salt. However, I used the kitchen scissors to cut them into wedges, then brushed them with olive oil. I did not add any additional salt. (The recipe already has 1 ½ tsp.) I baked on the convection setting, third rack up, but left the temperature the same. I did the thick ones first, with 10 minutes on one side and about six on the other. The thin ones I did for about 5 minutes, then 3 minutes.
I was hoping to use these with humus for a visitor on Friday, but I am not sure they are impressive or good enough. I will try them out tomorrow. I reserved four of the pitas, in part because my husband is excited about trying them for sandwiches, but also because they did not come out as chips as well as I had hoped--and certainly not like the picture from the catalogue.
Wednesday night’s dinner was Turkey-Zucchini Meatloaf with Peach-Dijon Mustard Glaze. I also roasted potato wedges tossed in olive oil with Penzey’s Mural Seasoning. We rounded out the meal with microwaved frozen mixed vegetables.
I may be getting down to the last of the peach jam I made two years ago. Getting good peaches to make more may be an issue. I was able to buy them twice in different years from a vendor who had organic peaches as a sideline to her honey business. The peaches were "ugly" (her words) but delicious, and they made fantastic peach jam. However, the crop often depended on whether there was a freeze (as in 2018) or not. She stopped coming to the market after spring 2019. I miss her peaches and her honey.
On Wednesday morning, I tried adapting the Flapjacks recipe that was in the weekly Smitten Kitchen email. I replaced the ½ cup of butter, which is melted, with 1 Tbs. butter and 3 Tbs. canola oil. That means an 8x8-inch pan would have 10 Tbs. saturated fat instead of 56g. I am not going to use the optional melted chocolate topping. The sugar is still high, with ½ cup light brown and 4 Tbs. Lyle’s Golden Syrup. They baked about 34 minutes. I waited to cut them until cool, and it took some force to push a large knife down to cut them apart, but they did not crumble. We each had a bar for dessert at dinner and agreed that I will bake the recipe again. I like the flavor, which is slightly caramel and probably would be more so with all butter.
Chocomouse--You might want to try these for a crunchy oatmeal bar cookie without add-ins.
I'm also of the no pineapple in carrot cake persuasion (also no cocnout). My recipe came with a Wilton round cake pan. I haven't baked it in a couple of years, probably because I need to avoid that divine cream cheese frosting. The frosting Cwcdesign describes sounds even better.
I have an oven under the stove--it's a 30-inch dual fuel--and I agree that having the oven top available is handy. The oven is lower to the floor with this Wolf oven than my previous Thermador or the old avocado green one that came with this house. I burned myself more on both of those.
Oh, yes. Oven racks, or sometimes the upper edge of the oven tended to be where I would burn my arms or wrists. With the design of my current oven--and I also remove any upper racks I am not using for a given recipe--I have so far been able to avoid doing so.
According to the KABC special dry milk package, 1/4 cup has no saturated fat, so maybe whole milk is not used?
I usually add a bit to my breads, even when I am using buttermilk in order to increase the calcium.
When I'm making yogurt, I use Bob's Red Mill milk powder. I tried the BRM for yogurt, adding it after I heated the milk, and it seemed to affect how well the yogurt set. However, if I mix the BRM milk powder into the milk before I heat it for yogurt, the results are fine. That suggests to me that the Bob's is not heat treated the way the special dry milk is. The Bob's Red Mill can also be reconstituted.
Chocomouse--my husband plants with his trusty shovel. He planted a little more than a hundred red pine, a little more than 100 burr oak. He planted 7 black spruce, 4 white fir. He bought these which are between 2 and 4 years old.
Then there are the ones he is growing to plant: 6 sugar maples, 5 jack pine.
He has started a lot of tamarack and grey birch. These are from seeds, so they have a way to go if they make it. He has them in containers on the sun porch. He figured out in the winter how to open a window and put a frame over it with plastic to keep the cold out and let the sun in during times when the sun shines. (You may recall that the new enclosed porch windows block the heat, so that is how he gets around it.)
Some of the trees are replacements for ones that the drought killed last year, and some are replacements for the ones the deer (so cute and so destructive) got.
Wow! That was quite the class! I'm impressed with the variety of challah braiding that you did, and your breads are impressive.
I've done a 5-strand braid for my version of the KAF Pumpkin Ginger Bread, but that is as complicated as I have tried.
I made clam chowder for my lunch on Sunday, and for the next couple of days, using the recipe from my old Betty Crocker cookbook. I put in extra potato, and I also add ½ tsp. celery seed, a tip from my college roommate.
Sunday night dinner (it is in the oven) is Pork Loin Roast with Barley, Butternut Squash, and Kale, a recipe that I adapted from a Cooks Illustrated one that did not work that well. I am using the last butternut squash I had from the autumn farmers’ market; it stayed fresh in the cold apartment over our garage. I really like this one-pot recipe on a cool (50s) rainy day—the way it is supposed to be in northern Indiana in the spring. The rain is always welcomed, especially since my husband is well on his way to planting an additional 250 trees.
We ate the last of the rye bread on Sunday, and as I had planned a dinner that requires the oven, I decided to bake a single loaf that I could do in the morning and early afternoon. I had bought some Six-Grain Blend from KABC, so I decided to try the recipe on the bag. I read the reviews on the website before starting. I made a few changes in that I used 2 cups of white whole wheat flour and substituted Bob’s Red Mill Artisan bread flour for the remaining 1 cup of AP. I replaced 1 Tbs. vital wheat gluten with 1 Tbs. First Clear flour, and I added 2 Tbs. special dry milk. I replaced 1 cup of the water with buttermilk and soaked the grains in it before starting. I replaced the sugar with 2 Tbs. maple syrup (and cleaned out an empty jar with the water in which I proofed the yeast). I used canola oil. I found that I needed about ¼ cup more water, perhaps because the grains absorb the buttermilk but also because I used more wholegrain flour. I mixed in the bread machine. The dough rose both times in about an hour. I baked for 35 minutes, then needed about 3 minutes more. It looks nice and smells delicious. We will cut into it tomorrow at lunch.
Interesting video. I would not have thought to put the ice cubes in the pan with the breads. I'm still not willing to try dropping a loaf into a hot pan. I do want to try a loaf in my ceramic Dutch oven which does not need the pre-heating.
Chocomouse--the low amount of gluten in the the Italian-style is supposed to make it easier to roll out the dough so that it does not fight back, I would guess that the pizza flour KABC sells has a little more gluten in it, since it uses some hard red wheat? I have never bought either flour, but since my sister gifted me the Italian-Style, I wanted to find a way to use it. At the KABC site I found a recipe for bread sticks that uses it, and the bag has a focaccia recipe.
I'm wondering if the cracker recipe was originally developed with a different kind of flour--which would explain the odd inclusion of the dough relaxer, which should not be needed (and indeed is not needed) with such a low gluten flour. It's puzzling, since PJ apparently uses the Italian-Style in her blog for the crackers. However, my dough looked nothing like the pictures of hers. I wonder if the recipe originally used that mellow pastry blend--which I never tried.
I talked to the KABC Baker's Hot Line about the recipe. She suggested reducing the water to 2 Tbs., which I already planned to do next time I bake these, but she too thought it odd that the dough had been so goopy. She said that she would send it in for a re-test. She did not think that there had been a flour mix-up.
The crackers are still in the pan in the still warm oven and have crisped nicely. I tried a couple warm ones, and these crackers are good--think superior Saltines--and I will definitely make them again, especially as I have the Italian-Style flour to use. I did not put any topping on them, but they are good plain and would also be nice with a topping. (I would put the topping on, and press it into the the crackers BEFORE cutting into squares.) My husband keeps opening the oven and sneaking some. It made about 48 2-inch crackers. I plan to try these with some quick guacamole tomorrow.
Now I need to look at the pita chip recipe.
Some of the best meals are born of necessity, Navlys!
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