[BakerAunt]

And then there is Nebraska Kitchen:

Homemade Almonnd Paste by GinaG

The recipe is also posted under Janiebakes, but she attributes it to Gina, so it is the same recipe.

KAF was carrying a new kind of almond paste. I do not know if it is any good, since I still have a can of the other to use up--maybe for Valentine's Day since I did not get that Swedish Coffee Ring made for Christmas, New Years, or Epiphany.

• This reply was modified 7 years, 5 months ago by BakerAunt.
• This reply was modified 7 years, 5 months ago by BakerAunt.

[BakerAunt]

I have spent Wednesday afternoon baking. I baked Cherry Chocolate Chip Oatmeal Cookies, a recipe that first appeared in Bon Appetit in February 1998. The original recipe calls for slivered, toasted almonds, but I used chopped pecans instead, which go nicely with the dried cherries and Ghirardelli dark chocolate chips. I deleted the almond extract and used a 1 rather than a 2 Tbs. cookie dropper, so the recipe yielded just over three dozen. I then baked my Oatmeal and Cinnamon Chip Scone recipe. The last project was to make Ellen's (formerly Moonie) buns as a dozen rolls. No, I did not try braiding them. 🙂

[BakerAunt]

I'll have to check my copies. There are two editions, and I have both. However, it may be a while until I can get to them.

[BakerAunt]

Tuesday evening I baked Whole Wheat Sourdough Cheese Crackers from the dough I made on Sunday evening.

[BakerAunt]

Congratulations on a great find, Skeptic7! I'm eager to hear about the breads you bake with it. If you have a good round loaf recipe--one that does not spread too much--that might be a good one with which to start.

[BakerAunt]

Skeptic7--At the moment, the only yeast bread with baking soda recipe that I can recall is the English Muffin Bread in Bernard Clayton's bread book. In that case, it is kneaded in by hand after the first rise--and oh is that messy and hard to get evenly distributed--but that is what helps to give it the requisite holes.

I may be overdoing the buttermilk in some of my bread recipes. I may experiment by doing just half buttermilk and half water, as you said Laurel's Bread Book recommends.

[BakerAunt]

For those of you wishing to make your own mozzarella:

http://www.seriouseats.com/2015/10/how-to-make-fresh-mozzarella-from-scratch.html

[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.

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