[BakerAunt]

Last year I made a peach cobbler recipe that had cinnamon-swirl biscuits on top. Of course it uses butter, as it is a biscuit dough. It baked at 375 for 25 minutes.

[BakerAunt]

Bev--I hope that all is well with your son.

After lunch on Friday, I tackled our pile of tomatoes. I’m making fresh tomato sauce. I’m trying an experiment and not skinning them, since they worked well in the ratatouille that way, and we are supposed to be eating more skins of vegetables and fruits. My base recipe came from a Cooks Illustrated email (back when they, like KAF sent those out!). I added to heated olive oil some onion, which I sautéed, then added some chopped celery (neither is in the original recipe) and the one clove of garlic I have in the house. After sautéing those vegetables, I added four pounds of tomatoes from our garden that I had cut into chunks. I am happy that I found my Calphalon 10-inch sauce pan when I was rooting around amongst the boxes in the shed last week. It makes it easy to reduce the tomato liquid. I have about 4 cups of sauce. Some of it, I will probably freeze.

Dinner on Friday is stir-fry, made with leftover pork and minimal drippings (deglazed pan with white wine), celery, red bell pepper, halved mushrooms, a large zucchini, chopped. It then gets mixed with buckwheat noodles. Yesterday, we were able to score what will likely be the last of the sweet corn from a local farm, so we bought 12 ears. We had two each last night, but tonight we will limit ourselves to one apiece.

[BakerAunt]

Bernard Clayton's Dark Grains Bread comes out light, in spite of being about 70% whole grain--buckwheat flour, rye flour, wheat germ, whole wheat flour. I had hoped this one would also be light, but clearly, it is not meant to be. I think that the millet is the element that moves it toward heavy.

[BakerAunt]

In my web surfing, I also found this tribute to Bernard Clayton:

http://www.notyourmotherscookbook.com/bernard-clayton-breadmaker-1916-2011/

[BakerAunt]

I found a blog that features this bread:

Multigrain Bread

And, yes, that is exactly what my loaves look like.

I have a feeling this recipe is not worth a repeat.

I'm wondering if slicing a loaf thinly, brushing with butter, and toasting would produce an interesting "hard bread" cracker. I may try that.

If all else fails, we have a "bread hound," who mooches bread off of my husband who is trying to get her to love him....

[BakerAunt]

Unfortunately, I'm on a low-saturated fat diet, and 1 Tbs. of regular cream cheese has 6 grams. I do, however, have plenty of homemade jam, in three flavors, that I made earlier this summer.

The taste will determine if I decide to give it another try. Figuring out how much yeast to use, keeping the dough to two rises (I could kick myself for not just shaping and panning it in spite of the quick first rise), and possibly using different pans might make a difference. Each pan had 663g of dough, and my 8x4 pans usually have unbaked dough of about 860g.I have some 7x3 pans, and they might have worked better.

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

[BakerAunt]

I tried baking Bernard Clayton's Multi-Grain Bread from New Complete Book of Breads (revised and expanded), pp. 2228-231. The sad details can be found in the Adjusting Another Bernard Clayton Bread Recipe thread.

[BakerAunt]

It's the same issue that David Matsumoto discussed in his book, Requiem for a Peach. He had a wonderful peach he grew on his farm in the central valley of California, but market forces nearly drove him to bulldoze the orchard. An essay in the L.A. Times magazine led to rediscovery of his flavorful peaches that do not keep well in cold storage and so were spurned by markets. He did end up keeping the trees, but the book defines the real difficulty farmers face when markets--and the public--demand show over flavor.

[BakerAunt]

I ended up using 6 tsp. of yeast, and perhaps it should have been 4 1/2 or 5 tsp. The very fast rise worried me, so I decided that I would give it a second rise before shaping and the third rise. In the past, I've had breads that had a fast first rise collapse. That may not have been a good decision, but it was what I did. They were rather small in the pan, so I might have been able to use just two 8x4 pans. I ended up with three rather low loaves--certainly not sandwich bread size--which will likely be rather dense. I'll add a post tomorrow about taste and texture.

[BakerAunt]

I have mixed up the dough, and it is rising in a rising bucket where I can keep an eye on its progress.

I decided to substitute 1 cup barley flakes for the barley flour. I know that can work with oats; we shall see how the barley flakes perform. I soaked the oats, barley flakes and millet in 2 cups buttermilk for a bit before I proofed the yeast with 1 Tbs. of honey in 1 cup water. I used 1/2 cup potato flour. It is a very heavy dough. It seemed a bit dry, so I added 1 Tbs. of water. Initially, I had to keep stopping the mixer and move it around. I kneaded it for 8 minutes in my 7-quart Cuisinart stand mixer. I suspect that this dough cannot be over kneaded.

I'll report back when I shape and pan them for the second rise.

[BakerAunt]

Len--thanks for the tip about nonfat Greek yogurt. I like it, so I always have it in the house.

Oh, that apple cake sounds so good, Bev. It's good you have people to help eat it!

[BakerAunt]

I guess that I haven't seen a one pound coffee can in years. I remember they went down to 13 oz. I buy coffee beans and grind them these days.

I am hoping that three 8x4 inch loaf pans will do the trick.

[BakerAunt]

I get particularly irked when a recipe says "a cup of zucchini, or a cup of blueberries or 2 medium bananas." While Clayton's cookbook came out before kitchen scales became widespread in home kitchens, modern recipe writers really should know better.

I'm going to go with 1 cup of water, given all the whole grains and my plan to substitute 2 cups of buttermilk at the start.

The original recipe is baked in three 1 lb. coffee cans, but Clayton casually mentions that there will be leftover dough to put in another loaf pan or brioche dishes. This will be an experiment.

[BakerAunt]

Of course, we all need some fat in our diet. I read that we cannot fully access the nutrients in a salad without the oil in some salad dressing; the key is in not overdoing it.

[BakerAunt]

My husband cooked slices of pork tenderloin tonight. I made a batch of brown rice, so that we could put some of the ratatouille on it.

Actually, any of us can start a question in the discussion section, and we've had some interesting ones in the past. Remember the discussion on kitchen gadgets?

I like the idea of a recipe feature. If once a week is too much, it could always be a monthly feature. King Arthur does a recipe of the month, although I've not been moved to try any of those.

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

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