[BakerAunt]

Here's the Rye Crisps recipe:

Rye Crisps

I'll get the sourdough one posted this weekend.

[BakerAunt]

For Friday dinner, I made salmon patties, a recipe based on one I saw in an internet health story a few years back. They went perfectly with the Clonmel Kitchen Double Crusty Bread.

[BakerAunt]

I will post my variation on the KAF recipe Sourdough Cracker recipe. I don't recall if I posted my variation on the rye crackers in the KAF 200th Anniversary Baking Book. I'll have to look.

I find that some of the KAF cracker recipes are over complicated. Instead of rolling all the dough out, as some of the recipes state, I've found that dividing it and working with a smaller amount at a time is easier. As for moving the crackers individually to a cookie sheet--it's not going to happen. I cut them on the parchment, slide the whole sheet onto the cookie sheet and bake.

Mrs. Cindy advocated using a pasta machine to get nicely thin crackers, but I don't have one, so I've not tried it.

If you think that the ingredients in store-bought bread are scary, try reading the ingredients in store-bought crackers!

[BakerAunt]

I've also made the Austrian Malt bread, and I agree that the malt is not in the forefront of flavors. When I want a malty bread, I make my version of the Grape Nuts bread.

[BakerAunt]

Friday morning I tried a new recipe, "Peach Oatmeal Bread," from KAF's Whole Grain Baking, p. 57, since I had the rest of the peaches to use up, and I feel that I have not used this baking book enough, although I've probably baked more of its recipes than from my other KAF baking books. I followed the recipe except that I substituted in buttermilk and adjusted the baking powder and baking soda accordingly. I also reduced the salt from 1/2 to 1/4 tsp., since I had increased the baking soda by 1/4 tsp. Instead of using a 9x5-inch loaf pan, I used two 7 1/4 x3 1/2 loaf pans. (I found them years ago and bought them for an apple-cheese bread recipe I have.) The breads are now cooling on a rack. One I will freeze, and the other will be for desserts and tea/coffee time the rest of the week.

[BakerAunt]

Rascals--I put the whole recipe into that pan. It baked a humungous loaf that was a little more dense than usual. I tried the recipe again the next week, and I made two loaves in my French bread pan. Those loaves are lighter in texture.

[BakerAunt]

Tonight I made a double batch of dough for my Sourdough Cheese Crackers. (There is no such thing as "discard" sourdough in my kitchen.) I'll let it refrigerate for a few days, then bake it.

[BakerAunt]

Our first phase of remodeling on the house took longer than expected, so I'm anticipating this one will as well, especially since we also plan to have the front bedroom extended over the front of the house, and will be taking part of the downstairs bedroom closet for the kitchen. The front part of the house is original, built in 1907, but it had some not great 1960s remodeling decisions (in one case a major structural one, and there were also electrical issues). We did a first phase of remodeling almost four years ago. The back part of the house was added on in the 1960s at the same time as the remodeling, and it had more issues than the 1907 part.

I may start a thread on kitchen remodeling thoughts. I do not have it pinned down yet.

• This reply was modified 7 years, 11 months ago by BakerAunt.

[BakerAunt]

Thanks for the recipe recommendations, Mike. I will try puff pastry--but not until the kitchen has been remodeled. Right now, it is challenging, because we have not organized from our move, since we know that everything is going to be moved out. We do not have a start date yet, since our contractor is tied up right now on another project.

I have a beautiful maple rolling pin with handles that I bought years ago from Williams-Sonoma. However, I only use it for rolling out sweet roll dough. I stopped using it for bread because I think it was contributing to the blow-outs in the loaves. I now pat the bread out with my hands and shape it. I have a Joseph Joseph rolling pin where rings are screwed in on either end for the width. It's a Canadian company, so the rings are in metric with approximate English measurements. There is no 1/8th, I seem to recall. It works well for rolling out cookie dough. Otherwise I use the long straight rolling pin without handles or any tapering that came with my dobard (sp?) that I bought from KAF years ago. I use the pin all the time, but I find adjusting the board for different heights is not worth the effort, as it is too small for most of the doughs I want to roll out. I use that straight pin with a set of pastry wands that I bought from an independent place after it was mentioned on RLB's blog. I love them for rolling out crackers and pie crust.

[BakerAunt]

For breakfast on Thursday, I baked the Basic Muffin recipe from the KAF website. I had done a search for berry muffins in their recipes, and this one came up. I used the variation that is 1 1/4 cups whole wheat pastry flour and 1 cup oats. I reduced the sugar from 1/2 to 1/3 cup. (One-third cup for me is a muffin; 1/2 cup or more verges toward cupcake.) I used buttermilk instead of regular milk, so I reduced the baking powder to 2 tsp. and added 1/4 tsp. baking soda. I used the scant 1/4 cup of blackberries from the bushes on our terrace (we got here too late for the major crop) and diced three leftover strawberries. I made the recipe as six large muffins, so I baked them for 18 minutes. They are very good, and the berries did not sink (mixed them in with the dry ingredients), so I will use this recipe for non-blueberry muffins.

[BakerAunt]

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.

[BakerAunt]

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!

[BakerAunt]

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....

[BakerAunt]

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, 11 months ago by BakerAunt.

[BakerAunt]

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.

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