[BakerAunt]

On Sunday afternoon I baked Whole Wheat Sourdough Cheese Crackers using the dough I made up last week.

[BakerAunt]

I also knew this answer but did not know the proportions.

[BakerAunt]

I'm about to feed my sourdough starter, then make the dough for sourdough pan pizza, which will be our dinner tonight.

On Saturday, I fed my sourdough starter and made my sourdough pan pizza. I used the tomato sauce I made with the last of the tomatoes from our garden. In addition to cooked ground turkey and sliced mushrooms, I used red bell pepper and green onions from the farmers market. I topped it with cubed low-fat mozzarella and grated Parmesan.

• This reply was modified 6 years, 6 months ago by BakerAunt.

[BakerAunt]

I was able to make a correct educated guess. It is always nice to see a use for what would otherwise be food waste, but it is not something that I would drink.

[BakerAunt]

Our local grocery has a section for produce that is less than perfect. I always check and sometimes find items that I can use. We also like the marked down bananas, especially since when we buy regular (priced too high, IMHO), we have to wait a day or two for them to ripen more.

I use grated orange zest in some of my specialty breads.

[BakerAunt]

I knew the correct answer.

[BakerAunt]

For some reason, my intro in the first post did not come out correctly, so I have fixed it.

I noted some food marketed for backpackers came up--probably freeze dried, as Mike noted.

Like S. Wirth, I was concerned about canned chicken, as I keep it on hand for when we travel or if I need a quick meal. However, as Mike notes, so far, it is not showing up. There is another kind of chicken base, other than the Penzey's, Essenhaus,, that was on the list.

• This reply was modified 6 years, 6 months ago by BakerAunt.
• This reply was modified 6 years, 6 months ago by BakerAunt.

[BakerAunt]

Thursday dinner was chicken thighs roasted on a rack, cut-up potatoes drizzled with olive oil and roasted in a separate pan next to it, a small butternut squash (a new, small variety), cut up, tossed with olive oil and a little maple syrup and roasted in my small countertop oven. We also had microwaved green beans, the last from our garden.

[BakerAunt]

Best wishes Skeptic on the restrictive diet and the colonoscopy.

Speaking of white bread: I was given a hard baguette by someone who did not want it wasted and, as I’m a cook and baker, she decided that I could use it. That was the perfect impetus to try King Arthur’s Holiday Breakfast Strata:

https://www.kingarthurflour.com/recipes/holiday-breakfast-strata-recipe

I put it together on Wednesday evening and baked it Thursday morning to have at lunch. I made a half recipe in an 8x8 inch Pyrex dish. I used just 3 eggs, since I didn’t want to split an egg or use one more. I don’t eat sausage anymore, so I substituted diced ham. I also used 8 oz. of frozen, chopped broccoli rather than fresh. I used less cheese and I used 2%. 1 3/4 of the milk was 2% that the same people gave us, and I wanted to use it up. I added some sliced red bell pepper for the second half of the bake. Because I halved the recipe, after the initial 45-minute bake, I checked it at 25 minutes, and it was done. It got a little brown on the bottom, so I would probably cut the first cooking time down next time as well. It’s a bit bland. I should have realized that would happen when I substituted ham for sausage and used sweet curry powder instead of dried mustard. I will have an additional three lunches from it. Although somewhat higher in saturated fat for my normal lunch, it is excellent in calcium.

• This reply was modified 6 years, 6 months ago by BakerAunt.

[BakerAunt]

I narrowed it down to two, then promptly chose the wrong answer.

[BakerAunt]

Wednesday afternoon consisted of two baking experiments. I took the KAF recipe for Zucchini Chocolate Chip Pecan Bars that I baked in September and we liked. However, I already had 8 oz. of shredded squash that I needed to use, and I did not want to clean the food processor. I am also out of quick oats, and I wasn’t feeling a desire for chocolate. So, I mixed the canola oil and light brown sugar, added the egg, then mixed in the squash. I added 1 ½ cups of 5-grain rolled cereal (Bob’s Red Mill). I deleted the vanilla. I used white whole wheat flour and the rest of the dry ingredients as given, except that I cut the salt to ½ tsp. and added ½ tsp. cinnamon. I also stirred in 60g (about 1/3 cup of cinnamon chips. I baked them for 37 minutes. They came out well with my changes, although a bit chewy from the 5-grains cereal. I've been avoiding the cinnamon chips due to the saturated fat (14g in this half cup), but I have a lot (leftover from before KAF stopped selling them), so I try to use them occasionally, and I wanted that cinnamon flavor in the bars.

My other experiment is a recipe for Three Grain Bread, from Breads, Breads, and More Breads (no. 37) in a Pillsbury recipe booklet from about thirty years ago. It’s another bread that I used to bake all the time, and that was when I kneaded by hand. I recall baking it about six years ago and discussing it with the now defunct KAF Baking Circle. I made some changes in that I increased the medium rye flour and the whole wheat flour to 2 cups each and reduced the bread flour by ½ cup. I reduced the two packages of yeast to 3 ½ tsp. I reduced 2/3 cup honey to 3 Tbs. and 2 Tbs. molasses to 1 tbs. I added 1/3 cup special dry milk. I replaced ¼ cup “shreds of whole bran cereal” with ¼ cup flax meal. I used 2 cups buttermilk in place of the regular milk. The dough was a bit dry with ½ cup water that I used to proof yeast. I added 2 Tbs. Next time I’ll use 1/3 cup water. I also used ½ cup less bread flour. I replaced the 3 Tbs. margarine with 2 Tbs. canola oil. The bread took 90 minutes on the first rise and 1 hour 15 minutes on the second and perhaps should have gone a bit longer. The house was cool, and I forgot until the second rise that I need to put a mat under the dough container since the counters are cold. There was not much oven spring, so the loaves are smaller than expected. We’ll see how they are when I cut into them tomorrow.

[BakerAunt]

I probably owe my correct answer to a commercial jingle.

That's good to know about quinoa and buckwheat--two seeds that we have come to appreciate. Has anyone tried amaranth?

[BakerAunt]

On Tuesday, I also made tomato sauce from the 2 lbs. of tomatoes we picked a few days ago. It’s likely slated for pizza. We did not have a lot of tomatoes this year since we had a late start planting, due to the house construction. The plant I bought—Carbon—had sweet tomatoes, but perhaps because of that they were subject to cracking and in some cases spoiling before they were ready for picking.

Dinner on Tuesday was stir-fry, using the leftover pork and what I deglazed from the pan. I used green onion, celery, carrots, red bell pepper, eggplant, mushrooms, and broccoli (including some from our garden—about the size of a dime). Of course we had soba noodles with it.

[BakerAunt]

I used last night’s leftover squash to make a kind of stir-fry for lunch on Tuesday. I cooked ¼ cup bulgur in water, then mixed it with frozen broccoli, the squash, a little diced ham, and some dried onion. It came out well, so perhaps squash is better when it is a part of a combination rather than going solo. I have enough for an additional day as well.

[BakerAunt]

I was able to work out the correct answer.

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