[BakerAunt]

Today I'm making a "use up all the vegetables in the house" (chopped red and orange bell pepper, celery, carrots, green onions, mushrooms) soup on the wood stove, using turkey stock, the leftover ground turkey from last night, and some pearl barley.

[BakerAunt]

Italian Cook--maybe there are more small blueberries in a cup when you measure them than large blueberries? I'm giving my best guess as to why it made fewer muffins.

[BakerAunt]

I should mention that adding the oil later makes a bit of a mess, and it does not all seem to be incorporated, in spite of my best efforts. The first time, it was a mistake (forgot to add the oil until late in the process.) I usually pour any oil pooled in the mixing bowl into the bowl in which I will let the dough rise, and turn the dough to get it all covered. Every time, I say to myself, I will not do it this way again, and then I taste the texture and chewiness of the crust, and I do it again because I like the result.

[BakerAunt]

Italian Cook: Were the blueberries smaller than usual?

[BakerAunt]

This morning I baked Gingered Lemon Barley Scones. I worked off of the recipe in the King Arthur Whole Grains Book and a recipe for Ginger Scones from Le Brea bakery that I got out of Bon Appetit. I needed to use up some lemons (done!) and some half and half, which I bought and then could not recall why I had bought it (sigh). They came out pretty well. I need to play around with the recipe a bit. I do like crystalized ginger with lemon, and with two-thirds of the flour being barley flour, there is a nice whole grain taste.

[BakerAunt]

Tonight I am making the KAF Ultra-Thin Crust Pizza. As it is cool in the house, I'm giving it a longer rise than usual in a bowl on the table. I have an old, small round pizza stone that I plan to heat up along with my larger one. I'll try pulling out the small one after my husband's pizza bakes, and see if putting it on the stone and tenting with foil helps keep it warm while mine bakes.

[BakerAunt]

In my case, it just skipped my year, so I assume that there were no fast food developments in it.

I come from a large family, so we only went to McDonalds as a special, occasional treat. However, my family did develop a pizza habit by the time I was a teenager, so that was the fast food that we would do on Christmas Eve (so we could get to church on time) and often on Halloween. It was actually cheaper than buying frozen pizza, since we always added mushrooms and olives anyway. When I was in high school, one pizza parlor gave out discounts if people showed their "I have voted" stub, but at some point that was stopped because someone thought it encouraged people to vote for the wrong reason.

[BakerAunt]

We had another four inches of snow last night, and there is still snow coming down. I pulled the bones from our Christmas turkey out of the refrigerator, and I am making turkey stock on the wood stove.

[BakerAunt]

Neither is mine, Chocomouse. I guess that food was slow the years we were born!

[BakerAunt]

Sorry for the confusion, Blanche. I should have said that it was from the wheat bran jar. The same company sold both wheat germ and wheat bran in a jar. I'll see if I can fix it on the recipe.

[BakerAunt]

My pizza baking experience will likely not be of help to Chocomouse, but since this is a pizza baking thread, I'll put it in for those who are interested.

I do the KAF Ultra-Thin Crust Pizza, with more vegetables than they recommend, which is baked for 15 minutes on a stone at 425F, which gives me a good chewy crust--which is what I like. The combination of durum wheat and semolina appears to be the key, as is waiting to add the olive oil until preliminary mixing is completed; I drizzle it in as the machine kneads. I suspect that if I were to move it directly to the stone after 10 minutes, it would be crispy. My husband likes fewer toppings on his pizza, and I've found that I need to wait and add the cheese on his after 10 minutes, or the cheese will burn.

I remember a thread on the KAF Baking Circle where someone was having trouble with his crust. Cass thought it might need more kneading. I thought it might need a lower speed. The original poster wrote back and said that longer at the lower speed of "2" was the answer.

• This reply was modified 7 years, 2 months ago by BakerAunt.
• This reply was modified 7 years, 2 months ago by BakerAunt.

[BakerAunt]

Sunday was a busy day in the kitchen for me. I baked Christmas Crispbread, the same recipe from Beatrice Ojakangas' The Great Scandinavian Baking Book that I baked on Christmas Eve, but this time, I used 1 cup buttermilk and 1/2 cup of half and half that I need to use up. (The original recipe calls for 1 1/2 cup milk.) We are finishing up the first batch, which have kept very well for three weeks. My husband requested these for our Florida trip.

I also baked a new recipe, "Lemon Walnut [Pecan] Biscotti, from Bon Appetit (April 2005), p 119. The original recipe calls for walnuts, but I have a bounty of pecans to use. I will post an addendum tomorrow after I have a chance to sample them.

I made the dough for a single batch of my Whole Wheat Sourdough Cheese Crackers, which I will bake later this week. I want them for our trip, and I wanted to feed the sourdough starter.

Addendum: The Lemon-Pecan Biscotti are delicious. I think that I did not put in quite enough lemon zest, but there is still a nice lemon flavor with the 3 cups of chopped pecans. It also had an egg glaze and was sprinkled with sugar in the raw, which gives a nice crunch.

• This reply was modified 7 years, 2 months ago by BakerAunt.

[BakerAunt]

Don't give up, Italian Cook! Only a couple of years ago did I find the pizza crust that I like. Only when I was trying to get around my husband's dislike for tomato sauce did I hit upon the idea of using tomato paste. Pizza is an evolving journey.

You might still put your pizza crust on parchment, but after 5 minutes, slide it off the parchment onto the baking sheet.

[BakerAunt]

On Saturday afternoon, I baked a new recipe, "Chai-Spiced Pound Cake," which appeared in one of KAF's fall catalogs. I made two changes to the recipe: I reduced the salt to 3/4 tsp., and I substituted in 1/2 cup whole wheat pastry flour. I baked it in my Bundt Quartet pan, which is a 9 cup pan that makes 4 small cakes. However, these cakes came out particularly small. I reviewed the comments online, and apparently--in spite of the picture in the catalog--it does make a small cake, even when a 9-10 cup Bundt pan is used. KAF recommends making 1 1/2 x the recipe for a taller Bundt. It would have been nice to have had that information included in the recipe. I think that this recipe would likely work well in a 6-cup Bundt pan. It has a wonderful flavor.

Saturday evening, I made Cherry Granola. I have the recipe posted on this site.

[BakerAunt]

Cwcdesign--I should have been more specific in my comments. I was not referring to the recipe developers for the KAF Whole Grain Baking book. I was referring to the current KAF staff developing whole grain recipes on their site. For example, I cannot figure out why they would add vanilla to those barley muffins I made on Monday.

Skeptic7: Baking soda often is used to offset some of the flavor of the buttermilk in quick breads and muffins, in addition to its use to offset the acidity. When I switch to buttermilk, I usually substitute 1/4 tsp. baking soda for a teaspoon of baking powder. As Cass told us, from Bakewise, baking soda has 4x the rising power of baking powder.

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