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Joan--don't you love it when it gets slightly cool and soup can be on the menu again?
For lunch on Thursday, I made Vegetable-Lentil-Barley Soup, using the potato water left from cooking the potatoes yesterday for the potato salad. I sautéed chopped onion, chopped celery, chopped red bell pepper, and a bit of garlic before adding about 4 cups of the potato water, 1 cup lentils, 1/4 cup pearl barley, and 1 tsp. Penzey’s Bouquet Garni. Once it had all cooked, I added some freshly ground pepper. It made enough for four or so days more.
I baked Bernard Clayton's Dark Grains Bread again on Monday afternoon. The bread does seem to do better with 4 tsp. of yeast, in spite of the fast rising times. I did cut the salt to 2 1/4 tsp. and I reduced the honey by 1 Tbs. I decided to throw in 1/4 cup of flax meal. I cut the baking time from 50 to 40 minutes, and that worked well. I'll add a note to this post after I slice it tomorrow at lunch. I'm almost ready to post my version of the recipe.
Promised Note: The bread definitely has better texture with the 4 tsp. of yeast. Cutting the salt to 2 and 1/4 tsp. did not hurt it, nor did adding the flax meal. Cutting the baking time by 10 minutes produced a bread without a too-browned top, and one not as dry inside as last time. Next time, I think that I will shorten the first rise. While the dough did not fall, it did more than double, which may be why the second rise only took 25 minutes.
I had three peaches left from yesterday’s jam session, so on Thursday afternoon, I scoured various recipes and settled upon Peach Apricot Crumb Crostata from Ken Haedrich’s The Harvest Baker (p. 277). For the crust, however, I used my buckwheat flour adaptation of Dorie Greenspan’s crust that I used for the galette on Monday. I also substituted peach jam for the apricot jam that is spread over the center of the crust before the peaches are arranged on top (with a bit more put onto the peaches), since I had some left over from canning yesterday, and I do not have apricot jam. Although the recipe called for 1 to 1 1/4 cups of jam, I just used the scant half cup that I had available. I only made half of Haedrich’s streusel recipe (and substituted in 2 Tbs. of whole wheat flour), and I only used half of that reduced amount of streusel on the crostata. (I’ll save the rest for muffins or coffee cake.) We each had a slice for dessert tonight, with a bit of vanilla ice cream. I will certainly bake this recipe again.
Thanks for posting the link to the video, Mike.
In my high school German club, we had an Apfelstrudel social every year. Our teacher and club advisor had a recipe, and we would gather to make the strudels. She would have people stand around the table and work as a group to stretch the strudel dough. We sold it by the slice, except for one strudel that was auctioned off. Frau Hodjera, our instructor, usually managed to be the one to buy it!
I was only able to participate for one year because one had to be in second year German before being allowed into German club, and then in my senior year, Frau Hodjera went on sabbatical. I only peeled apples the first year, so I never got to do the dough stretching--something that I've regretted since my interest in baking increased.
