Forum Replies Created
-
AuthorPosts
-
We will finish up the turkey-lentil-vegetable soup and the rolls I baked on Friday.
I spent Sunday afternoon in the kitchen. I used my Nordic Ware Quartet Bundt pan to make four Apple, Barley, and Olive Oil small cakes. Two will be wrapped and frozen, and two will be desserts for the next few dinners. The cakes used five of the old-fashioned Winesaps. I have seven left.
I also made the dough for another batch of my Whole Wheat Sourdough Cheese Crackers. I’ll bake those at the end of the week.
Joan--I have a 4-qt. Staub, a 5 1/2 -qt. Le Creuset, a 7 1/4-qt. Le Creuset (all of these are round), and an oval 8-qt Staub. Except for the 4-qt. (a good King Arthur sale), the rest came from Tuesday Morning years ago. I prefer them for all my soups, for cooking beans, and for braising roasts. I can even put them on the wood stove top to cook although now that I have my gas cooktop, I have not done so. I have never tried any of them for bread, although lots of people use them that way, and I replaced the Le Creuset lid knobs with metal ones, in case I ever decide to try it.
The Emile Henry Dutch oven is supposed to work over a flame as well, but I prefer to keep it for bread. I'm planning on trying some round loaves. Some people have reported sticking issues, but given my other ceramic bakers, greasing with Crisco and coating with farina does the trick for me. I won't be heating up the baker and dropping in the dough--too much risk/excitement for me. King Arthur reports that letting it rise in the baker and then baking works just as well. I'll start by following their recipes, then try it with the rustic sourdough.
Some years ago, I bought the Emile Henry ceramic Dutch oven from King Arthur. I had never used it, so I decided that it was time and brought it into the house about a month ago. While sorting through some recipes, I came upon a King Arthur one for Dutch Oven Dinner Rolls that uses this pot, so today I tried out both the recipe and the pot. I made some changes, as the recipe calls for ½ cup of butter. In the dough, I replaced the 4 Tbs. with 3 Tbs. olive oil and an additional tablespoon of buttermilk. I replaced ¾ cup of the water with buttermilk. I do not have non-diastatic malt powder, so I used 2 Tbs. Carnation malted milk. (I know, not the same.) I added 2 Tbs. flax meal and 1 Tbs. special dry milk. I deleted the buttermilk powder and used fresh buttermilk. I reduced the salt to 1 tsp. and the yeast to 1 ¾ tsp. I always proof my active yeast, and I did so in ¼ cup of water with ¼ tsp. honey. I let the bread machine do the kneading. The first rise took an hour. I greased the baking crock with Crisco instead of melting 3 Tbs. of butter in the bottom, and I also sprinkled it liberally with farina. I had some concerns, as the dough seemed a bit dry. After shaping the balls and placing them in the pot, I spritzed them with water. The second rise took 45 minutes (in the front room where the wood stove made it warmer). I spritzed again before baking with the lid on for 15 minutes, then removing it and baking another ten minutes. We had a couple of warm ones with dinner: delicious!
On Thursday, I baked my adaptation of Grandma A’s Ranch Hand Bread. (The recipe is posted here at Nebraska Kitchen, along with a recipe for a scaled down single loaf by Zen.) It makes three 8x4 loaves. I will freeze two. My adaptation includes adding ½ cup flax meal and 1/3 cup special dry milk, replacing 3 cups of the water with buttermilk, using 5 cups whole wheat flour and a mixture of bread and King Arthur AP, reducing the salt, replacing the 3 Tbs. of sugar with honey, and using 4 Tbs. olive oil in place of the butter.
I made another batch of yogurt on Thursday.
I also made soup, using Bob’s Red Mill Vegi soup Mix (a combination of split peas, brown and red lentils, and some barley), most of the chicken broth I made yesterday, and carrots and celery sauteed in olive oil with browned ground turkey. I rehydrated 1 Tbs. dried onion and seasoned with 1 Tbs. of Penzey’s Ozark seasoning and 1 Tbs. tomato paste. We had some soup with the leftover stir-fry for dinner.
Joan--If you can get some flat wood slats, about 1/16-inch thick, maybe about 14 inches long, you can put them on either side as you roll the dough (slats should be under ends of rolling pin), and that will help get the correct thickness throughout. I have a set of "pie wands" that I use for that, but it should be possible to find some thin wood slats of the proper size at either a craft store or maybe a home store.
I'm glad you liked the crackers!
Thanks, Joan!
On Wednesday, I made broth from the chicken I roasted at the start of the week.
Nebraska Kitchen is the place for pizza experimentation!
On Wednesday, I baked another Apple Streusel Topped Pie using 14 of the small Old-Fashioned Winesaps from the dwindling supply in the garage. For the streusel, I replaced 1/3 cup butter with 1 Tbs. butter and 2 ½ Tbs. grapeseed oil.
Dinner on Tuesday was stir-dry with the leftover chicken, soba noodles, celery, carrots, red bell pepper, green onion, mushrooms, broccoli, and the defatted drippings from the when I roasted the chicken.
Those loaves and their scoring look great!
Happy Birthday, Joan! Your birthday dinner sounds delicious!
I forgot to add that I did online pre-registration, and questions were asked and noted by the workers, so there was no need to pick up a pen. My husband did have to fill out paperwork, so he took his own pen.
Ah, raisin bread sounds good, Aaron.
I baked a new recipe on Monday morning for Peanut Butter Cookies. The recipe comes from:
https://www.eatingbirdfood.com/peanut-butter-cookies/
I used honey rather than maple syrup, as I thought the peanut butter would overwhelm the maple syrup flavor. If I were to make it with maple syrup, I would reduce the amount to ¼ cup + 2 Tbs., since maple syrup has more water. However, I do not need the cookies to be vegan, so I’m unlikely to use maple syrup. The creamy peanut butter I used (Santa Cruz) has just salt added, so I did not sprinkle any salt on top. I used my Zeroll #30 scoop which made 16 cookies. I baked on the third rack up and switched the tray around halfway through the baking time. We each had a cookie at lunch, and they are dense but delicious—substantial enough that we each found a single cookie satisfying, although they are small, which is good as each is 1 g saturated fat from the peanut butter. I also think that molasses would work well in place of the honey.
These would be good little energy cookies to take when traveling. Each has 6 g protein and 31.5 mg calcium and 165 mg potassium.
I treated myself a couple of years ago to the Zatoba, which is the wooden handled holder with screws to hold the razor blade that King Arthur was selling.
I agree with Mike that the dough often seems to be the issue on any given day. I am also a timid slasher and am trying to be more of an aggressive one.
I've been using the top of my long cake/cupcake holder to cover longer loaves while they rise. I never had much luck with saran, as it would stick to the dough and deflate it, although I did try spraying the saran to prevent it, and that helped.
-
AuthorPosts
