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I made stir-fry on Tuesday, using farro cooked in chicken/turkey broth from the freezer, leftover roast chicken and carrots, celery, red bell pepper, and sliced mushrooms. I deliberately make the proportion of vegetables higher to that of the grains.
I was looking up a recipe in the first edition of Bernard Clayton, Jr.'s The Complete Book of Breads (a recipe that is not in the second edition), when I came across a quick bread recipe: "Orange Oatmeal Bread" (pp. 247-248). As I have some lovely Cara Cara oranges, I decided to bake the recipe on Monday. I made a few changes in that I used half barley flour and replaced the 2 Tbs. melted butter with avocado oil. I added 2 Tbs. BRM milk powder. I reduced the baking powder from 4 ½ tsp. to 4 tsp., as I use the baking powder that King Arthur sells, and I find that it tends to be a bit stronger than what I used to buy at the store. I chose the option of baking it in three small loaf pans rather than a 9x5. The loaves were done in 40 minutes and possibly could have baked a few minutes less. They are flat on top, which is probably due to the combination of my using half barley flour and reducing the baking powder.
I'll slice one for tea time tomorrow and report on taste and texture.
That recipe sounds great Navlys. I'm so sorry that you got Covid. Let's hope the other 40 people will not get it. Get well soon.
For dinner on Monday, I cooked some bulgur in chicken broth and mixed it with the rest of the rice and mushrooms, along with some cooked frozen peas, and we had it with more of the chicken that I roasted yesterday.
Mike--it probably depends on the cracker recipe. The Whole Wheat Sourdough crackers are not tough. I do not use yeast in that recipe and roll it 1/16 inch thick.
My Rye Barley Crispbread do have yeast but lots of rye and barley, as well as some bread flour. These rise slightly, although I use a Swedish rolling pin to indent them. They have an egg wash on top and seeds. I roll the dough as thin as I can get it.
My other cracker recipe uses the King Arthur Italian Style flour, and it is mostly the KABC recipe. These crackers have yeast as well. I roll them about 1/16th inch. These crackers sit in the cooling oven overnight to get their crisp.
I have a flatbread recipe that makes a thin, cracker-like crust. I'm thinking of trying it as crackers.
On Saturday evening, I made dough for a vegan Cinnamon Roll recipe, shaped the rolls, then refrigerated them overnight and baked them Sunday Morning. The base recipe comes from a blog, Love & Lemons:
https://www.loveandlemons.com/cinnamon-rolls/
My problem with most vegan recipes trying to imitate non-vegan recipes, and this one is no exception, is that the nutritional content is usually low. I tried to fix that by using a bit more than half whole wheat flour for that much AP, reducing the cane sugar from 1/3 cup to ¼ cup, replacing the almond milk with oat milk (increasing it by ¼ cup and reducing water by that much), cutting the salt by 25%, and replacing the 1/3 cup melted coconut oil with 3 Tbs. avocado oil. For the filling, I kept the ½ cup brown sugar but reduced the cinnamon from 1 ½ Tbs. to 1 Tbs.
For the glaze, I reduced the powdered sugar from 1 ¼ cup to ¾ cup, used oat milk in place of almond milk. (I used the oat milk because I did not find a healthy almond milk in any of the stores here. The oat milk at least had a good calcium content and fewer additives. The brand I used was Oatly.) I reduced the vanilla from 1//2 to ¼ tsp.
Essentially, I re-wrote the recipe. The resulting small, dozen sweet rolls, which made an 8x11 dish, are ok but will never live up to my recipe that uses buttermilk and eggs. My thought is that the blog recipe tries to make up for a not very good bread base with a ridiculous amount of glaze and strong cinnamon. Of course, replacing that coconut oil may have contributed to the bread base being underwhelming.
I might try the recipe again with white whole wheat rather than regular whole wheat. However, I will keep searching for a better recipe. At last year's family reunion, my husband's brother, who is vegan, was disappointed that the cinnamon rolls (made from an aunt's recipe that everyone loves) were not vegan, so I would like to find a recipe that would taste great AND has nutritional value that I could bake for him, along with the regular rolls for the rest of us.
Thanks for doing this experiment with the sheeter, Mike. The pictures are great. I'm impressed with the crackers--and thinking how many different varieties I could make if I had a sheeter to reduce the drudgery of rolling them out. The sheeter would certainly be great for that. I am baking the cheese crackers almost every two weeks, and my husband goes through them fast. In keeping him supplied, I do not get to bake some of my other cracker recipes.
I usually roll my whole wheat sourdough cheese crackers 1/16th inch thick, using my set of guides. This recipe has no yeast, just the sourdough, so rise is not an issue.
Coincidentally, on Sunday, I also baked my Whole Wheat Sourdough Cheese Crackers (aka Baker Aunt's Crackers) from dough I made last week.
I made yogurt on Sunday.
For Sunday dinner, I roasted a 3 lb. chicken that I found marked down to 99 cents per pound at the grocery store yesterday. We still have lots of the brown rice with mushrooms left over from Wednesday's and Friday's meal, along with a single chicken thigh, so we will have that with the small chicken, along with a yet to be determined vegetable.
We ran out of bread, so on Saturday, I baked three loaves of my adaptation of Grandma A's Ranch Hand Bread. My changes are substituting a lot of whole wheat flour, using part bread flour and King Arthur AP, adding flax meal and special dry milk, replacing most of the milk with buttermilk, and using 4 Tbs. olive oil rather than butter. We will start slicing one loaf tomorrow, and the other two will go into the freezer.
Lovely Challah, Aaron!
Mike has started a trend!
I haven't any ideas on how to cut chocolate so that it does not break up, Aaron, so I'll wait and see what others say.
I baked the King Arthur Favorite Fudge Birthday Cake on Thursday for my husband's birthday on Friday. I used olive oil for 2/3 of the oil (other third was canola), and instead of King Arthur flour and cornstarch, I used Gold Medal AP flour for both. The result is a lovely, tender cake.
My husband and I discussed the glaze. While the KABC version is wonderful, it is also quite heavy on saturated fat, and there are only two of us to eat the cake. I gave him the option of a half-recipe (6-inch) cake or the glaze I used on the Valentine's cake. He chose the latter, so I increased it by a third, so that I would have enough for the center and top of the cake (no split layers). I also used buttermilk rather than regular milk. It went very well with this cake, so I will do it again. Indeed, I think that the original frosting to some extent overwhelms the cake, so that it does not get as much appreciation.
The ingredients were 2 cups of powdered sugar, which I then sifted into the bowl. 5 Tbs. + 1 tsp. double dark cocoa powder (also measured then sifted), 4 Tbs. buttermilk, and 2 tsp. of vanilla. I beat well with a hand mixer.
My only concern is that the new frosting tastes a bit strongly of the powdered sugar to me (my husband does not notice it), so I need to figure out how to neutralize that and get more of the chocolate flavor to the fore. Any ideas?
For those of you thinking about cooking a traditional St. Patrick's Day meal:
One of my best friends visited us for an overnight on Wednesday, so I made Tarragon Chicken with Mushrooms and Brown and Wild Rice. We also had microwaved fresh broccoli. The dinner was excellent, but I was unwell afterwards. Neither my husband nor my friend had any issues, so it was not food poisoning. I make this recipe only about twice a year or so, in part because the chicken thighs cook atop the rice, and I usually roast chicken on racks so that the fat drips off and can be discarded. I'm wondering if that was the issue for me this time, although it has not been a problem in the past.
That chicken pot pie looked delicious, Mike.
I learned last year that we have a local maple syrup producer who showed up at the farmers' market again last week. With our on and off weather, they are having a prolific season.
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