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Sunday dinner was roasted chicken thighs (with enough for two or three more meals), mashed potatoes, gravy left from Thanksgiving, and the last of the green beans that I froze from our summer garden. We will definitely freeze green beans again if we have a good crop.
We stopped at an orchard on the way back from our trip. We bought Ever Crisp apples for eating by themselves. I had hoped to buy a peck of traditional, small Winesaps, as I did last year for baking, but they were no longer available. We learned it had not been a good year for apples. That Polar Vortex last January did some damage, and there were likely other issues. I was offered tastes of some of the available varieties and settled on York apples. The taste is good, and I was told that they will hold their shape.
So, in answer to the thread question, I'm baking the Cinnamon-Apple Barley Quick Bread recipe that I developed last year from a Bob's Red Mill recipe for a gluten-free Harvest Apple Bread. I plan to sprinkle the top with a red-green sugar mix and some pearl sugar.
I also plan on making up dough for another batch of my Healthier Sourdough Whole Wheat Cheese Crackers. This time I have been helping my husband consume the previous batch, which happens when we travel.
We made a three-day trip to Spring Mill Indiana State Park. One of the highlights of the trip was walking through the restored pioneer village from the early nineteenth century and seeing the old mill, complete with wheel and flume, which can bring water from Hammer cave and power the mill. The structures are not unlocked at this time of year, so we could not go inside any of the buildings, and the mill was not running, but it is fully restored, and they do grind corn there, which the DNR sells at the gift shop in the inn (from the ice cream freezer). I bought a two-pound bag, because I’m a baker, and that is what bakers do! It is medium grind.
On Saturday, I pulled out a recipe that was one of the early breads I baked, and which I had not baked for years. It’s “Danish Sesame Bran Bread,” yet another recipe from a Pillsbury Classics cook booklet, When Less is Best (#60). It calls for a cup of stoneground yellow cornmeal, so I opened the bag. I made a few changes. I replaced the ½ cup bran cereal with ½ cup oat bran. (I’ve learned that wheat bran binds calcium, so that the body does not get the calcium.) Instead of ½ cup low-fat milk and ½ cup plain low-fat yogurt, I used 1 cup buttermilk. I used 4 tsp. yeast (recipe calls for two packets or 4 ½ tsp.). I added 1/3 cup special dry milk for the nutrition. I reduced the molasses from ¼ cup to 3 tbs. and the honey from ¼ cup to 3 Tbs., after considering halving it. I left the salt alone, as it is 2 tsp., and I find 1 tsp. per loaf is usually fine. I used 2 ½ cups bread flour in place of AP flour (2 ½-3 cups), because I recall that with all the wholegrains, the bread sometimes sank a bit. As I always do, I initially mixed the wet ingredients (except for the oil), then added the whole wheat flour and a cup of the bread flour. After mixing, I let it sit for 15 minutes. Then I mixed in the oil, then another cup of bread flour with the salt. At that point, I switched to the kneading spiral. I added an additional ½ cup of bread flour as it kneaded. The first rise was an hour, next to the wood stove. The second was 40 minutes, then baked for 45 minutes to a temperature of 198F. I look forward to cutting into the bread at lunch tomorrow. I'll add a note to this post about taste and texture.
Promised Note: The bread has great taste. It's a firm, slightly chewy bread, which is to be expected with the nearly 2/3 whole grain. It is delicious now and will also shine as toast. It's not too sweet, and although I generally do not care for molasses in breads, it works well with the honey in this one.
Last year we had a discussion about cutting butternut squash. It's probably buried in one of the cooking threads.
I've used a potato peeler (one with a broad horizontal blade) to peel butternut squash, but I halve the squash first, as otherwise they are rather slippery--and that can cause other issues.
