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Happy birthday, Joan, hope you enjoyed your special day.
The latest batch of peanut butter cookies also came out a bit crunchy, though not as dark as the previous batch. I took them out of the oven fully 2 minutes earlier. I wonder if my oven setting was a few degrees higher? (It's a dial, not a digital setting.)
Otherwise, I don't know what I'm doing differently from the first few batches.
I have another batch of peanut butter cookies in. These are a good snack for both of us, because we don't eat half the batch in one sitting.
I did find this Master's thesis:
Challah and Its Performance of American Jewish Identity
from the Mid-19th to Early 21st Century
Gabrielle Adena Hersch
Brandeis University
May 2018I would not be surprised if someone has already written a PhD thesis on challah.
February 26, 2023 at 12:52 pm in reply to: What are you Baking the Week of February 19, 2023? #38560I've always been a bit skeptical of 'the yeast stops working or runs out of sugar' claims.
Some years ago I took a baguette recipe (probably Reinhart's pain de campagne) and I let it rise for an hour, get punched down, rise again, etc. After 6 hours, it was still rising just fine, so I shaped and baked it. It was pretty good, nice crumb.
February 26, 2023 at 12:47 pm in reply to: What are you Baking the Week of February 19, 2023? #38559I wonder if the tradition for large batches of challah comes from the necessity for community ovens?
Some days when I go to slash my loaves they slash beautifully, other days the knife or lame just seems to stick.
Not much you can do in terms of recovery once they're overproofed, my usual sign of that is when they come out flatter than normal. A while back I got distracted by something when I had some loaves in final rise and I completely forgot about them; they went into the oven about an hour late. They started to collapse as I was moving them into the oven and they looked a lot like flatbreads by the time they came out.
There's kind of a narrow window between under-proofed and over-proofed, and unless you can control all the factors, like temperature and humidity, dough won't rise at the same rate every time, so you have to just kind of learn to anticipate when it's ready for the oven.
The finger-poke method is the usual test for final proof, and the type of dough, including hydration level, is a big factor in how it should respond. Bagels don't look or feel the same as challah, for example.
February 25, 2023 at 9:27 pm in reply to: What are you Cooking the Week of February 19, 2023? #38549We had theatre tickets this afternoon (Legally Blonde) and were kind of tired afterwards, so Diane had some soup and I had some leftover spaghetti.
February 25, 2023 at 11:44 am in reply to: What are you Baking the Week of February 19, 2023? #38545They look like they might have been over-proofed a little, but the braiding looks good.
February 24, 2023 at 5:52 pm in reply to: What are you Cooking the Week of February 19, 2023? #38536Could you put something heavy on the lid to hold it down better?
We're having creamed tuna on biscuits tonight.
February 23, 2023 at 5:27 pm in reply to: What are you Cooking the Week of February 19, 2023? #38530As I understand it, meat needs to reach a designated internal temperature to be safe, either a sufficiently high peak temperature or a lower temperature for some period of time. With something like a steak, it is usually assumed that any bacteria will be on the surface, which gets much hotter than the innermost part of the steak, which is why a rare steak is generally considered safe, though restaurants may warn about undercooked food to keep the lawyer happy.
Sous vide cooking works by keeping it at a lower temperature for a longer time. A similar process is used for pasteurized eggs, they get to some specific temperature (around 123 degrees) and have to be held there for something like an hour.
I have a mini crock pot that I use for hot fudge, which needs to be kept at about 110 degrees, or it will separate or scorch.
I found a Lutron plug-in lamp dimmer that allows me to set the crock pot to that temperature. I haven't seen any signs of it damaging the crock pot, but I assume it wouldn't work with one that uses electronics.
February 23, 2023 at 5:24 pm in reply to: What are you Cooking the Week of February 19, 2023? #38529Try this picture, it shows the cord better. I measured it at 4 feet.
February 23, 2023 at 4:40 pm in reply to: What are you Cooking the Week of February 19, 2023? #38525I'm planning to make spaghetti for supper tonight
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