[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, 3 months ago by BakerAunt.
• This reply was modified 7 years, 3 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, 3 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.

[BakerAunt]

Luvpyrpom--I have found that Antilope's Vienna bread does seem to work better with somewhat less flour, but then I substitute in some whole wheat flour. In fact, I have played around with that recipe so much that I can not actually recall what the original is like. I think that BevM has baked it, so maybe she will have some thoughts on it.

[BakerAunt]

Italiancook--I don't heat the buttermilk (it separates if you do), and I have not had any problems. It will get warmed up enough from the mixer or the bread machine. I do use active yeast, so if a recipe calls for all milk, I use 1/4 of the liquid as water to proof the yeast and use buttermilk for the rest. (I use active dry yeast, and I'm always more comfortable seeing it foam.) I do not primarily taste the buttermilk.

[BakerAunt]

Skeptic7--Ah! I almost always add buttermilk to my breads, particularly those that are whole grain. I started using buttermilk a lot after S. Wirth told us that it helps the keeping qualities of baked goods. That's interesting that it also mellows the flavor.

[BakerAunt]

For Friday dinner, I made my Rosemary Maple-Glazed Chicken with cut up sweet potatoes on a sheet pan. Peas from the freezer were the side dish.

[BakerAunt]

Blanche: For oat flour, measure out the same amount of rolled oats, then run them through the food processor. It will give you the same amount of oat flour. Thus 1 cup oat flour = 1 cup rolled oats. Make it as you need it, as oat flour can go bad more easily than rolled oats.

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