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On Friday afternoon, I baked the KAF recipe, Cinnamon-Apple Flatbread, a new recipe for me, using my sourdough starter. I made some changes. For the bread, I reduced the yeast from 2 tsp. to 1 ¼ tsp., and that was plenty. I reduced the salt from 1 ½ tsp. to 1 tsp. I substituted 2 cups of white whole wheat flour (I use the Bob’s Red Mill Ivory) for that much regular flour, and I added 2 Tbs. flax meal. I used Winesaps and Jonathans for the filling/topping. I used all the juices, rather than only ¼ cup, but I did reduce it down a bit. (Time constraints prevented my doing it longer.) I do not buy the KAF Baker’s Cinnamon filling, so I made my own, using 3 Tbs. sugar, 2 tsp. cinnamon, AND 2 Tbs. regular Clearjel. My husband and I had a slice, warm from the oven, with some frozen vanilla yogurt on the side. Delicious.
Note: The Clearjel that I added is of upmost importance. A couple of years ago, I made pecan sticky buns from a KAF recipe and just used brown sugar and cinnamon, as I see no need to buy KAF’s Cinnamon Filling. Well, the resulting syrup boiled up in the pans and out of them. When I discussed it on this site (or was it still the Baking Circle?), and we were all trying to figure it out, S. Wirth astutely observed that Clearjel is an ingredient in the KAF Cinnamon Filling. When I read the comments on the flatbread, a couple of people mentioned having had a similar issue, so, I mixed it into the cinnamon sugar, before mixing it with the liquid in which the apples had cooked. Perfect! And once again, S. Wirth saves the day!
I also made up a single batch of dough for Lower-Fat Whole Wheat Sourdough Ranch Crackers. It’s an experiment to see if I can create another cracker flavor that I like. I’ll bake those next week.
The recipe I submitted is for a single batch, but I always double it. Recently, I had to reduce saturated fat in my diet. I found that with a double recipe of these crackers, I can substitute 1/3 cup of canola oil for the butter. To improve taste, I also add 2 Tbs. special dried milk with the flours.
In addition to being lower in saturated fat, and tasting good, the oil version rolls out much more easily and more quickly than the butter version.
I saw that Kitchen Aid is now making ranges in "misty blue."
I'm not interested, as I've settled on a Thermador (please, please let the contractor be ready to start soon), but I wonder if "misty blue," will end up going the way of avocado and almond appliances.
I'd actually prefer a white stove. Sigh.
I have a lot of oat bran, as I got a little enthusiastic last year when ordering from Bob's Red Mill. It's the one ingredient into which I've not made much of an inroad. On Tuesday morning, after looking for recipes yesterday afternoon, I baked “Apple-Oat Bran Muffins,” a recipe by Linda Greider, published by The Washington Post (Oct. 12, 1988), back when oat bran was supposed to be the miracle additive.
As Ms. Greider points out in her accompanying article, a high proportion of oat bran usually resulted in dry baked goods, once they cooled. That’s why I’ve not baked, for a long time, an apple-date oat bran recipe that I have. She says in her article that oat bran is coarse, so it should be ground in the food processor before using. (I've seen other articles that recommend soaking it in some of the liquid for about 10 minutes before proceeding.) She also uses either chopped apple or a mashed banana to retain moisture. With one cup of oat bran and 1/4 cup whole wheat as the flours, that fruit is necessary, although she says an extra quarter cup of buttermilk can replace it.
I thought it would be nice to have a small muffin with my oatmeal, so I baked the recipe this morning, using an overripe banana. My only change was to use a whole egg, rather than an egg white plus a tablespoon of oil. (As I said, it’s a recipe from the 1980s when the prevailing dietary view was that eggs are bad for you.) It only uses 2 Tbs. brown sugar, but it also uses 2 Tbs. jam, and I used my homemade strawberry, lower sugar jam. I added 1/3 cup chopped walnuts. I ended up with 9 rather than 8 muffins, and I actually got more rise than the recipe indicated I would. My husband and I both had one after our oatmeal this morning, and they are good without butter. Now we need to see if they are still good at room temperature.
Note: They are good at room temperature. As a bonus, they have 44 mg calcium per muffin.
Thank you for bringing up these recipes, S. Wirth. There is also an oil crust in the KAF 200th Anniversary Baking Book. I'll have to decide which crust to try. It looks like I may get some apples after all! There is a U-Pick orchard about a 45 minute drive from here, and we plan to go next week. They have a variety of apples, among them Jonathans and Winesaps!
On Saturday afternoon, I baked Black Forest Brownies from Jenny Jones’ blog, as I fortuitously had a can of dark cherries in juice in the pantry. I made some slight changes: added 1 Tbs. flax meal, deleted the tablespoon of sugar, and used non-fat Chobani Greek yogurt, which is what I have in the house. (I’m hoping the flax meal will help, since the recipe says 2% Greek yogurt.) I baked in a parchment-lined pan. I used 30 grams of semi-sweet chocolate chips, which is less than the ¼ cup in the recipe. I calculated the saturated fat in my version at 19g per 9x9-inch pan. I cut the brownies into twelve servings, which means each has 1.58 g. saturated-fat and served them with a bit of frozen low-fat yogurt. These are pretty good. If I make them again, I would add ½ tsp. of espresso powder.
