[BakerAunt]

My Bob's Red Mill order arrived yesterday. I think that I was lucky, as I went back to their site last night and whole wheat flour was listed as sold out. If you need one of their flours, it probably pays to monitor the site. I was lucky to get the steel-cut oats and wheat germ as well.

Based on what I'm seeing from the Bon Appetit and Epicurious (aren't they owned by BA?) emails, banana bread, focaccia, and sourdough seem to be leading the online baking. I've not seen much on chocolate chip cookies, but surely they must be in the running for most popular Pandemic bakes.

For cooking, I've seen a lot of cheesy casseroles (comfort food) in Martha Stewart and Real Simple emails. Bon Appetit, of course, is coming out with the usual very strange main dish recipes that always manage to have an odd ingredient or two that is not easily available even in the best of times--unless you work in the BA test kitchen--that will probably convince most millennials NOT even to attempt to cook. I read comics online at Go Comics, and Luann is about to attempt an online stew recipe that had a long list of ingredients, some of which are rather odd, not to mention expensive. She must have gotten it from Bon Appetit.

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

[BakerAunt]

I'm making broth from the frozen remains of the turkey we had for Easter. I'll use some of it to make soup tonight or tomorrow and freeze the rest.

[BakerAunt]

Banana bread has been big since the start of the pandemic, I think because it's considered an easy recipe, and people associate it with the families in which they grew up, so it's comforting. My husband goes through banana so fast that it is rare for me to have any with which to bake. I'd like to bake that buckwheat banana bread again.

Skeptic--will the crust be like a sugar cookie or more of a sweet dough?

[BakerAunt]

Actually, Chocomouse suggested the virtual pizza party, and I agreed with her. Maybe we could coordinate it with Aaron's weekly pizza extravaganza. I've been wanting to make a thin-crust pizza, probably just for me for lunches, as my husband prefers the thick-crust. I can see one with artichoke hearts, mozzarella, some onion, mushrooms, and maybe some sliced black olives. (You can tell that my husband won't be eating this one!)

When we moved from Texas to Indiana, I lost the people at the office and at church for whom I baked. Only about three of the houses on this stretch of road are permanently occupied year round. Other than mailing cookies to my sister and her twin daughters, I've had to wait for my stepchildren to visit, so that I can spoil them with their favorite treats. I miss the social interaction that I had at work and have yet to find some groups here. The community here at Nebraska Kitchen has been my one point of social continuity.

[BakerAunt]

One of the staff members in my department, back when I was working, was from Hawaii, and she would bring a kind of dessert that sounds a lot like this one. I thought about it, and answered correctly.

[BakerAunt]

I've always stirred the clear liquid back in after the starter develops its bubbles. I use it, then feed it. If I let the starter go too long, it can develop more than a little clear liquid on top, and that usually means for me that I will need to feed it a couple of times in succession to get it back to normal. I still used the discard in pancakes, crackers, etc.

Maybe I should consider pouring off the liquid.

I'll see about posting that recipe in the next couple of days, Aaron.

[BakerAunt]

Kimbob--Sometimes it's nice to have an excuse for not knowing someone's name. 🙂

[BakerAunt]

The crispbread looks good, with the same crisp texture as when I've made them before. I'll see what it tastes like tomorrow.

We are nearly out of bread, so I am making another loaf of the Barley Wheat Bread, having let the Zo do the kneading. This time I needed to add 5 Tbs. flour; last time it was four. It may be that this cottage cheese has more liquid than the brand I used in Texas. My husband really likes this bread and that it stays soft.

• This reply was modified 5 years, 9 months ago by BakerAunt.
• This reply was modified 5 years, 8 months ago by BakerAunt.

[BakerAunt]

I love anything buckwheat, Riverside Len.

On Wednesday, I made another batch of yogurt.

[BakerAunt]

Aaron--That explains our experiences in Florida when we visited in late January and early February. Although fresh produce, especially strawberries were being processed, the stuff in the store was as lousy as what we would have gotten back in Indiana. The avocados were from Mexico. There was a citrus outlet that had fresh citrus, but no farmers market nearby.

I remember Westwood having farmers markets when I was a graduate student, or maybe it was after I'd finished my degree. I cam home with the most beautiful flat of strawberries, and they were as delicious as they looked.

Your explanation of the processing leaves me shaking my head at what is done in the name of cost saving and efficiency.

[BakerAunt]

I sympathize, Italian Cook. I actually need to replace my phone so that it works with the new network. My husband replaced his, but I was considering a different model, which he was unsure I should do, so I waited, and then came Covid-19.

My husband's phone takes nice pictures, but he hasn't been able to figure out how to get them from his phone to the computer, which seems to involve unlocking. His elder son was going to visit us this week and get us straightened out technologically--a feat to which my stepson was looking forward. However, with the pandemic, travel is out of the question, particularly as he has asthma. I keep telling my husband that at least one of us should have been tech-savvy.

I do have a camera, so I need to try that program Mike mentioned and see if I can get pictures to Nebraska kitchen. Possibly my husband and I can figure that out between us.

[BakerAunt]

Dang it. I fixed a comma in my post--which was fine and showed up before I did that edit--and now it has disappeared into the spam folder. I didn't use fractions. I avoided paragraphs. The anti-spam filter has it in for me.

[BakerAunt]

We are having a rainy Wednesday, which is good for those trees we had planted last Friday. I decided to make Barley Crispbread again, as the recipe has proved very popular with my husband as well as with me. At least they are large, so they are not scarfed down as fast as the cheese crackers. I have been refining that recipe from the Swedish baking book, which means figuring out what flours to use, reducing the salt, and ignoring directions that do not work in a home kitchen. I do not own a 40x40 cm baking sheet, nor would it fit in my oven. Today, I decided to replace the 100g of wheat flour, preferably stone ground and high in gluten, for which I have been using Bob’s Red Mill bread flour with 50% BRM whole wheat and 50% KAF high-gluten flour, as I want to conserve my bread flour and use up the three bags of high gluten flour that has been sitting on my shelf. Given that my mixer can’t handle this small amount of dough on low speed (and maybe not on any speed), and that trying to knead with the mixer meant 15 minutes of continuously stopping the mixer to re-adjust, which I’m worried may wear out the mechanism, not to mention my patience, I decided to do the 15 minutes of kneading by hand after I initially mixed up the flours and waters and mixed in the melted butter. What could be more low speed than that? As it is a clay-like dough, it was easy to knead. I have not kneaded by hand for a long time, and I’d forgotten how soothing it can be. The dough is now rising. If it comes out well, I may go ahead and post the recipe here at Nebraska Kitchen, since the adaptation I was forced to do, given the lack of explanation about flours and other matters really does make this recipe my own.

• This reply was modified 5 years, 9 months ago by BakerAunt.
• This reply was modified 5 years, 9 months ago by BakerAunt.

[BakerAunt]

I always used a toaster oven to reheat pizza. I've used my regular oven, but with the thick-crust pizza, which already has a relatively browned crust, I found that the oven burned it. Part of that might have been the pan I was using, but we've been reheating the pan pizza in the microwave, which does make for a soggier crust. I might go back and try the toaster oven again, although that means pulling it out of the cabinet, as there is no room for it on the counter. Our kitchen footprint, even with renovation, was too small for additional counter space.

[BakerAunt]

I answered correctly, in part because I assume the seeds play a role in fiber content.

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