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After the morning muffins, I settled down for an afternoon of baking. We had found lovely strawberries on sale at Aldi's yesterday, so that means strawberry shortcakes for dessert again. Instead of a pound cake this time, I used the cake part of a KAF recipe titled Lemon Custard Cake that is designed for an 8-inch Maryann-style pan.
https://www.kingarthurflour.com/recipes/lemon-custard-cake-recipe
I made it in my Chicago Metallic Pie Bowl pans. I have two, and there are four wells per pan, with each well like an individual Maryann pan. Here's what they look like. Mine were a T.J. Maxx splurge, and I've used them in this recipe before.
I made a few changes to the recipe. I do not have or use the Cake Enhancer that KAF sells, so I left it out. I also left out the lemon oil and/or zest and used 1/4 tsp. strawberry extract instead. I've baked these before for shortcake, but they always seemed a bit dense to me. I wondered if I could get a more tender cake if I used Bob's Red Mill unbleached, extra-fine cake flour. I substituted it in by weight, as it is denser than the KAF flour. Of course, I used my new best friend--the grease-- for the pans, and it worked great. I baked them for 20 minutes at 325F. The little cakes have a nice tender texture but still hold up well to having sliced, sugared strawberries spooned into the middle and down the sides. I will bake this recipe with these changes again.
I also baked a loaf of the Buttermilk Grape Nuts bread, as we are almost out of bread.
I'll end the evening by feeding my sourdough starter and making up the dough for my Whole Wheat Sourdough Cheese Crackers. I've promised my younger stepson back in Texas a care package.
I've used it for nearly two months after the sell-by date. As long as it smells ok, I think it is fine for baking. I probably wouldn't use it for salad dressing.
You can freeze buttermilk, and I've done so. It will separate when it thaws, so you have to whisk it back together.
I note that even with the rye starters, Ginsberg's recipes usually have a sponge stage that is "overnight" or 10-12 hours.
He says that refreshing his starter once or twice a week "strikes a happy medium--as long as I make sure to build my sponges on cultures that have never gone more than 36 hours since their last feeding" (37).
Stanley Ginsberg has a rye starter recipe in The Rye Baker.
Bernard Clayton has one in his revised New Complete Book of Breads that uses onions. It also makes 8 cups, at which point I figured that I would not be baking that nice wholegrain bread with Buckwheat recipe, since it requires that starter.
Jeffrey Hamelman has a rye bread recipe on the KAF site that uses some sourdough starter added to rye flour that is allowed to sit overnight before being used to bake rye bread. I've tried the recipe once, with modest success, but I think that I didn't get my timing right, and the house temperature was not what I needed. If you have a regular sourdough starter, that might be a way to short-cut without devoting yourself to a rye starter.
Here is the link:
https://www.kingarthurflour.com/recipes/jeffreys-sourdough-rye-bread-recipeI need to try this recipe again. I was using the ceramic bread bowl to bake it and had some issues. I also ended up calling KAF to find what temperature the bread should be, and they breezily told me that Jeffrey never uses a thermometer. I later found the recipe in The Baking Sheet (Summer 2000), pp. 23-24, and it states that it should be baked to 190F-205F.
Impressive Skeptic7!
I wish that Cass could comment here. You mentioned that the oil version separates from the bun, unlike the butter version. Cass told me, in connection with a yeast bread, that oil should not be treated in baking as if it were a liquid like water. Perhaps in this non-yeast cross of yours, the butter, which does have water content, works better because of that?
