[BakerAunt]

I messed up a soup when the pepper container came open. We did eat it, but we picked out the unground pepper with each bowl we ate.

[BakerAunt]

My wild guess was incorrect.

[BakerAunt]

Oh, this will be fun!

[BakerAunt]

The cherry pizza sounds wonderful, Skeptic.

On Friday, I made the dough for my Whole Wheat Sourdough Cheese Crackers. I'm experimenting in that I mixed the sourdough and the dry ingredients first, then drizzled in the canola oil. The dough is now divided into four flat pieces and will rest in the refrigerator four days before I bake it into crackers.

I also made Skeptic's Pumpkin Biscotti recipe, so that we will have some cookies to go with tea in the afternoon. I used white whole wheat flour.

[BakerAunt]

Dinner tonight was left over roast chicken thighs, microwaved fresh green beans, and freekeh cooked in turkey broth.

[BakerAunt]

I should have reiterated that my starter is a thick liquid, so I usually need more. However, many of the KAF recipes call for a cup of starter, so I had not though too much about it. They do, however, have some that like Ginsberg's recipes call for just a small amount.

[BakerAunt]

That's an interesting recipe, Mike. I always worry about recipes that add the salt to the water before the yeast is added.

I'm also wondering if the sheepherders really carried butter with them.

Also, if you let it rise until it pushes up the lid--that's one strong dough!--how do you then bake with the lid on?

• This reply was modified 5 years, 8 months ago by BakerAunt.

[BakerAunt]

Most laptops these days have a built in camera. My laptop is probably about seven years old, and it has one. We've been able to Skype with my stepchildren, and my husband participated in a dissertation defense via Skype.

I'm not sure how Skype differs from Zoom, with which I'm not familiar.

[BakerAunt]

Thanks for calling our attention to the article, Skeptic.

Most recipes are written for 2 1/4 tsp. yeast simply because that is the content of a yeast packet. The assumption is that most people do not want to open a pack of yeast and have it left open, especially as those little packets cost so much. With such recipes, I always would reduce to 2 tsp. I've since discovered that 1 3/4 tsp. works just as well.

One point the article does not address is the amount of salt. While salt in recipes is partly for taste and, I seem to recall, also for structure (I'm hazy on that), a lot of recipes are designed to deliver that one hour rise for the initial dough and another hour for the shaped loaf. Salt helps control the rise. Reducing the salt allows the yeast to work more effectively. So, if you are reducing salt in recipes, you can usually reduce the yeast as well.

[BakerAunt]

I had no idea and missed it.

Smitten Kitchen has a recipe for homemade Fig Newtons that I had planned to try, but when I had time to bake it, finally, I had to cut out recipes that take a lot of butter. Sigh.

[BakerAunt]

Aaaron,, most breads require about 1 cup of starter. My cracker recipe, since I always double it (might as well, since my husband is a Snack-a-saurus), requires 2 cups. It's also great for pancakes and waffles--and I suspect you make a lot of those when they are on the menu.

I use a glass jar with a silicone or rubber seal and a metal clasp that holds it completely shut. I had started with a small jar, but you need room for the starter to rise and fall. I moved to one that probably has about 3 1/2 cups.

A peculiarity of my starter is that the directions said to feed it by volume not weight. However, I stopped never feeding it the equal amounts of milk and flour that I remove because it increased too much in bulk. These days, if I take out 2 cups, I feed it 1 1/2 cups flour and 1 1/2 cups milk. That keeps about the same amount. However, that is my starter; you will get to know what your starter needs.

I'd say start with the quart mason jar and see how much you use it. You can always divide it, feed it, and keep a second starter in another mason jar on the go if you need it or else get a bigger jar. You might even want to temporarily increase it for a recipe that takes a lot, then go back to a smaller jar.

[BakerAunt]

Joan--I think Chocomouse put her recipe on the site here.

I baked cornbread muffins to go with soup for Thursday's dinner. I used the last of the cornmeal that we bought last December when we went to Spring Mill State Park. It has wonderful flavor. If you ever get a chance to try the flour from a small mill, be sure to do so!

[BakerAunt]

Thursday night's dinner was soup. I had a bean and barley mix (expiration January 2019--hey, these things happen!) and I soaked it in salted water overnight and into the next day. I drained and rinsed them, before putting them in a 4-qt. pot to cook for 90 minutes, covered with about an inch of water. In a separate large pot, I sautéed chopped carrots and chopped celery, then added large sliced mushrooms. (The grocery has had these at a better price than an equal weight of the small ones, and they seem to have a more intense flavor.) I added cooked ground turkey that I froze after we had pizza, and 2 Tbs. Penzey's dried onion that I rehydrated in 1/2 cup water. I then added about 4 cups of the turkey broth and let it simmer a bit. I used 2 tsp. Penzey's Bouquet Garni and 1/4 tsp. fennel, and freshly ground black pepper. I added the cooked bean and barley mix and cooked until the vegetables were done. I added some additional turkey broth to get it to a good soup level. We had it with cornbread.

[BakerAunt]

I usually buy Gold Medal unbleached flour to use for cakes, quick breads, cookies, etc. I find that it works well. I've also bought Pillsbury unbleached flour and have not found a difference between the two. Bob's Red Mill also makes an unbleached flour that I've used.

[BakerAunt]

King Arthur had been offering some blogs for new bakers. I read P.J. Hamel's blog on using the flour you've got, which would be useful for newbies. There is also one on substituting bread flour for AP, which I think someone here asked about.

In reading the comments, I saw someone wanted to know when the website would have flour again. The reply was that they could not ship to individuals right now as there are too many people wanting to order flour and socially distancing in warehouses makes the work slower.

The upshot is that King Arthur is shipping flour out to stores, so we have a better chance of getting it at a grocery store vs. no chance of being able to order it online from KAF at this time.

• This reply was modified 5 years, 8 months ago by BakerAunt.

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