BakerAunt

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  • in reply to: What are You Cooking the Week of August 13, 2017? #8573
    BakerAunt
    Participant

      Dinner on Wednesday evening was what my mother and her mother called turkey hash, because it was a way to use up leftover turkey. I used the drippings from the chicken my husband roasted earlier this week, skimmed off the fat, then cooked some cut up small red potatoes and small carrots in it until tender. I added the rest of the cut up chicken, then steamed broccoli in the microwave to go with it. It was a good quick meal that I could fit in while watching dough rise for bread, and it used up leftovers.

      in reply to: What are You Baking the Week of August 13, 2017? #8572
      BakerAunt
      Participant

        The last of that giant loaf of Clonmel Kitchen Double Crusty Bread that I baked last week was eaten today at lunch. My husband was impressed that the bread had not gotten moldy and that it still had great taste. I decided that I would bake it again on Wednesday. This time, I added an extra tablespoon of buttermilk (substituted in 1 cup buttermilk and added a tablespoon more) and used 2 Tbs. of oil, rather than 5 tsp. (That is laziness on my part so that I only have to measure out twice instead of five times.) I substituted in a cup of regular whole wheat, mixed with white whole wheat flour (so I would not have to open another bag of whole wheat flour), and I used a cup of the Irish Whole Meal flour. As I did last time, I added 1/4 cup of flax meal, reduced the salt to 2 3/4 tsp., and deleted the vinegar, since I used the buttermilk. I used up my regular yeast (last 1 tsp. in the container) and used 2 tsp. of the gold yeast. I held back a bit of the flour, but I ended up needing it, and an additional tablespoon. (Humidity is high here today.)

        The first rise was about 45 minutes. I decided to try baking the dough in my French bread pan, which accommodates two loaves, each using about 3 cups of flour. The second rise was a little less than 40 minutes, but I slashed the loaves after 30 minutes. I baked the usual 40 minutes, but I spritzed them when they went into the oven, and I spritzed them again after five minutes, then after another 5 minutes. When I checked at 40 minutes, one tested at 197F, so out they came. The loaves look and smell great. I look forward to sampling them tomorrow!

        in reply to: What are You Baking the Week of August 13, 2017? #8571
        BakerAunt
        Participant

          Mike--What recipe do you use for puff pastry?

          I cannot roll dough evenly without my pie wands. I was delighted to find that I had packed them with my stand mixer. I'm still looking for those two packages of dates....

          in reply to: What are You Baking the Week of August 13, 2017? #8562
          BakerAunt
          Participant

            Thanks for your comments, Mike. KAF has promoted the blitz pastry as an easy alternative, but the result was anything but easy when I tried to work with it. The taste of the so-called turnovers (maybe four of the sixteen actually look like turnovers) is excellent. I've been eating the blob ones--someone has to destroy the evidence 🙂 --and the taste is also excellent. If I try this blitz pastry again, I'll only make a half recipe and leave the butter in larger chunks than I did. The recipe says, "about the size of a thumbnail," but that is a two-dimensional rather than a three-dimensional description. I also think it would be helpful if the recipe specified the thickness to which the dough is to be rolled out. I could then use my pie wands so it would be even. If I make the blitz pastry again, I would also note that figure.

            • This reply was modified 7 years, 8 months ago by BakerAunt.
            in reply to: What are You Cooking the Week of August 13, 2017? #8561
            BakerAunt
            Participant

              We usually get tomatoes from a couple we know here, but this year their tomatoes are covered in brown splotches. Other home gardeners are having similar issues. I did get a couple of nice ones at the farmer's market.

              in reply to: What are You Baking the Week of August 13, 2017? #8553
              BakerAunt
              Participant

                Today I tried a new recipe: Peach and Ginger Turnovers, from KAF's Whole Grain Baking (pp513-514). It did not go well.

                The recipe uses a "blitz puff pastry" dough using whole wheat pastry flour and bread flour. This technique is somewhat new for me, so perhaps I just did not do it right. However, I think this is pastry recipe is similar to the KAF blueberry turnover recipe I tried a few years back with similar frustration. I threw the KAF recipe over for Ken Haedrich's blueberry hand-pie cruss. (Thank you to Dachshundlady for bringing Ken's recipe to our attention on the Baking Circle.) His hand-pie crust is a lot easier and gives nicer results. If I get more peaches, I'll try this filling with his pastry recipe.

                The peach and ginger filling is wonderful, although I do think that the recipe should tell you to make it the day before and refrigerate it, as that improves its texture and makes it easier to enclose in the dough. As for the blitz puff pastry, if I am ever crazy enough to try it again, I would cut the dough into four pieces before refrigerating it. That way, the baker only has to roll out an 8x8-inch piece each time and cut it into four squares, then fill the turnovers and seal closed. The cookbook specifies rolling it into a 16x16-inch square, and as I was doing so, I realized that my parchment (used Reynolds) has a maximum width of 15inches. (Oh, why did I trust KAF?! Well, because usually their recipes work.) Rolling out that much dough at once also makes it more likely that it will be overworked. The directions should have taken that into consideration.

                My dough stuck, in spite of flouring the parchment. I ended up cutting the parchment in half, and putting each half onto a cookie sheet (I did not have a cookie sheet wide enough to handle a 16-inch square) and putting it back in the refrigerator to let it chill again before shaping, and it was still hard to handle. I did get some triangles, but I got more blobs and a lot of spilled filling. It was so frustrating that if I'd not used such expensive ingredients, I might have just thrown it all away. I ended up baking it in two batches. At least the taste is good but very few are the nice little turnover triangles, and most are blobs of various shapes.

                • This reply was modified 7 years, 8 months ago by BakerAunt.
                • This reply was modified 7 years, 8 months ago by BakerAunt. Reason: corrected error
                in reply to: What are You Baking the Week of August 13, 2017? #8549
                BakerAunt
                Participant

                  How much yeast did the recipe require? It may have used more yeast to counter the amount of sugar. When you reduced the sugar, the yeast could go about its work more quickly. You might be able to reduce the yeast a bit, since you reduced the sugar by over half.

                  Like you, I would find that much sugar in a loaf too much, unless it was raisin-cinnamon bread, but I think that Amish bread does tend toward the sweet.

                  in reply to: What are You Baking the Week of August 13, 2017? #8545
                  BakerAunt
                  Participant

                    I think that 190-195F is the usual temperature for non-wholegrain breads, but it has been a long time since I baked a plain, white loaf. The bread may firm up as it cools, since a cooling loaf continues to "bake" out of the oven.

                    Wonky has an Amish bread recipe somewhere on this site that might be useful for comparison.

                    in reply to: Mary Berry\‘s Latest #8544
                    BakerAunt
                    Participant

                      I do not buy self-rising flour, since I have plenty of other flours around, and it is easy to add my own baking powder and salt. I'm also unsure that I would use self-rising flour fast enough before the baking powder in it expired.

                      I did come across a couple of recipes I want to try in some of the Bon Appetit issues that I am going through that call for self-rising flour. I checked the internet to see how to substitute. All sites I checked say 1 cup of AP plus 1 1/2 tsp. baking powder, but they differ on salt, with some saying 1/2 tsp per cup, and some 1/4 tsp.

                      I will use the lower amount of salt.

                      in reply to: Half and Half, Whipping Cream, and Heavy Whipping Cream #8543
                      BakerAunt
                      Participant

                        I just got off the phone with a consumer representative from Dean's. He said that without the product code, he could not tell me, since there were two different batches, but that it would be either 36% and 40%. He said that if I ever wanted to call when I buy it again, they can tell me if I give them the product code.

                        It sounds like perhaps it varies somewhat, and perhaps that is why they do not list it? Given the other brand that I mentioned above, perhaps 36% is the minimum for heavy whipping cream?

                        I'll be interested in what Mike learns from Land of Lakes. This discussion about heavy cream has been eye-opening for me.

                        in reply to: Half and Half, Whipping Cream, and Heavy Whipping Cream #8532
                        BakerAunt
                        Participant

                          Dean's sent me an email asking me to call to discuss my question, so I will do so tomorrow. In the meantime, I bought another small carton of heavy whipping cream at the local grocery. This one is C.F. Burger Creamery. Near the top of the carton it states: Min. 36% milkfat.

                          I'll report back tomorrow on what I learn from Dean's.

                          in reply to: Cutting a bagel into a Mobius strip #8531
                          BakerAunt
                          Participant

                            I sent that link to a friend who is a math professor. She loved it.

                            in reply to: What are You Baking the Week of August 6, 2017? #8516
                            BakerAunt
                            Participant

                              I initially put this post in the cooking section. I deleted it there and have put it in the correct category.

                              On Friday, I tried another new recipe, “Triple Chocolate Biscotti,” which was submitted by Mary Tripoli of Kirksville, New York to the “Too Busy to Cook?” feature of Bon Appetit (April 2001), p. 156. I followed the recipe, except that I added 1/2 tsp. espresso powder. I used Ghirardelli unsweetened cocoa and Gold Medal flour. I followed the KAF guidelines of letting the two baked logs cool for 25 minutes out of the oven, spraying with water, then slicing the logs five minutes later. I also stand the biscotti on edge in the oven to do the second bake, which was 12 minutes. (My husband does not like them too dry.) I liked the taste of warm ones with milk. The logs were flatter than some biscotti I have made, and the accompanying picture suggests that they should have been a bit higher and less wide–although with food stylists, who knows? It is called triple chocolate because it uses cocoa, semisweet-chocolate chips, and white chocolate chips. (Note: it is not identical to the triple chocolate biscotti recipe posted in the Nebraska Kitchen recipes.)

                              in reply to: What are You Cooking the Week of August 6, 2017? #8514
                              BakerAunt
                              Participant

                                Sorry, I should have put it in baking, so I deleted it here.

                                • This reply was modified 7 years, 8 months ago by BakerAunt.
                                in reply to: What are You Cooking the Week of August 6, 2017? #8506
                                BakerAunt
                                Participant

                                  We had leftovers tonight, but I did saute some zucchini and mushrooms in butter and olive oil to go with them.

                                Viewing 15 posts - 7,066 through 7,080 (of 7,799 total)