BakerAunt
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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.
To go with leftover boneless pork for Monday dinner, I roasted an Acorn Squash, using part of a recipe from Food and Wine: https://www.foodandwine.com/recipes/healthy-chicken-and-roasted-acorn-squash It was ok, but it didn’t wow either my husband nor me. I’m trying to find more squash recipes to take advantage of the autumn harvest and the nutritional value of squash. We also had bulgur cooked in turkey/chicken broth and microwaved broccoli.
Beginning Friday night, we have had fall weather for the first time. No 70s for us in northern Indiana! It has been nice to use our wood stove again. We missed it when we were living in the apt. last year during our renovation.
On Monday, I baked another batch of my adaptation of Ken Haedrich’s Whole Wheat and Oatmeal Zucchini Bread. This time, I used my four-well Nordic Ware Bundt loaf pan. It’s older, so it has the darker finish. I reduced the baking temperature to 325F. I baked them 10 minutes longer, as these are larger loaves. They turned out very well. I plan to freeze these four.
I also baked my seeded crispbread. This time, I put the baking shelf up one notch, which seems to work better for crackers and cookies than the one below it that I use for breads.
For dinner on Saturday, my husband cooked some boneless pork in a skillet on the stove. I roasted some cut-up sweet potatoes from the farmers market a couple of weeks ago, drizzling them with maple syrup halfway through. Next time I will cut the roasting time, since the sweet potatoes from the farmers market are more tender than what I find in the stores. We microwaved fresh broccoli as well. We ate dinner by candlelight on our enclosed porch while watching the moon rise. In the adjacent front room, we have a fire in the wood stove. Today is its first use of the season, a sign that fall has now arrived.
On Friday, I pulled out a recipe for “Nutty Oat Wheat Bread” that came from Simply from Scratch” (#20), a Pillsbury recipe booklet from over thirty years ago. It was one of my early forays into wholegrain baking, but I had not baked it in years. I made a few changes in that I reduced 2 packets of yeast to 3 ½ tsp. and reduced the salt from 1 Tbs. to 2 tsp. I replaced 1/3 cup margarine with 3 ½ Tbs. canola oil. I halved the honey from ½ to ¼ cup. As usual, I added 1/3 cup special dry milk and ¼ cup flax meal. I used a cup of sunflower seeds instead of nuts. I also replaced AP flour with bread flour, since the bread is heavy on whole grains. The recipe made two high-rising 9x5-inch loaves. I tried a different shaping method and had a blow-out one side of each loaf. I’ll go back to my other method, even though it occasionally gives me a hole in the interior. The loaves smell wonderful.
Note: The bread has a wonderful taste and light texture. I gave the second loaf to a friend and her family. My friend is recovering from a leg/knee injury.
On Thursday evening, I baked my adaptation of Ken Haedrich’s Whole-Wheat and Oatmeal Zucchini Bread. The squash I’m using isn’t a Zucchini. I don’t know its name. It has a very long, curved neck, then a bulb at the bottom where the seeds are. I get them at the farmers’ market from an organic farmer who likes to do unusual produce in addition to the standards. I was looking through a Martha Stewart Living magazine earlier this week, and I think it’s the squash she uses to make it look like snakes are coming out of pumpkins. I’ve been using these since August in this recipe, and it works well since this squash is not as watery as regular zucchini. I’ve been reducing the oil by ¼ cup and replacing it with an equal amount of buttermilk which I also substitute for the regular milk in the recipe, and I add flax meal and milk powder. I don’t bother with the citrus zest. I find the bread a bit too sweet, so this time, I’ve reduced the granulated sugar by 25% but left the light brown sugar alone. I also forgot to add the vanilla, which I usually halve.
We had it for dessert on Friday, and the bread is very good without that ¼ cup granulated sugar. I will leave it out in the future. We didn’t miss the vanilla, so it could be optional.
