[Mike Nolan]

I prefer smaller cinnamon rolls, so I can have more than one. 🙂

This is a 15x21 sheet pan (3/4 sized) and most of the rolls weigh between 1.5 and 1.75 ounces. They freeze well. I made this pan in mid-November and there are still 3 or 4 left, so I'll probably make more in the next week. This recipe uses a tangzhong dough and I use a compound butter rather than melted butter and cinnamon sugar, I just find it easier to spread on.

I don't frost them, I've been tempted to put on a light sugar syrup glaze. I did do one batch with some penuche frosting, but in general the frosting just adds carbs but not really much taste (they're plenty sweet), and my wife says it gets in the way of dunking it in chili.

Next time I'll be aiming for a total of 40 (8 rows of 5).

If I was running a bakery, I'd probably have to make them larger for them to sell well, but those dinner plate-sized ones are too big and have WAY too many carbs.

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[Mike Nolan]

Brings to mind the Al Stewart album and song from 1976, which was probably written and recorded in another year of the cat, as one ended in early 1976.

(Google says the title was inspired by his girlfriend's interest in astrology.)

[Mike Nolan]

We had fish and broccoli.

[Mike Nolan]

Shortbread with caramel and chocolate sounds more like Twix than KitKat.

Milk is slightly acetic so I suspect milk powder is also slightly acetic, but I think it is the milk sugar (lactose), fat (if not fat-free) and possibly some milk protein that makes the bread softer.

[Mike Nolan]

The KAF Whole Grains cookbook has a Scottish Shortbread recipe that uses 2 1/2 cups of oatmeal ground up in a food processor plus another 1/2 cup of wheat flour. It is very good, I've used it as a base for several apple desserts, it doesn't quite hold together well enough to be a pie crust (it sinks along the sides) but it makes a pretty good base for an apple crisp or an apple tart.

I've also made it as a bar cookie with some chopped pecans, but you have to cut it quickly as it firms up as it cools.

[Mike Nolan]

My brother continued to smoke after lung cancer surgery, and my wife's stepmother kept on smoking until the day she died of lung/brain cancer. Neither lived to age 70.

For many people it's nearly impossible to quit smoking, there are apparently some genetic factors that impact nicotine addiction. Vaping is apparently almost as hard to quit and might lead to some medical conditions that are worse than those caused by smoking.

What worries me most about the creeping decriminalization of marijuana is that the research is starting to show marijuana smoke has many of the same toxic substances as tobacco smoke, and that doesn't take into effect what THC does to the body and mind over time. (But the long term effects of alcohol use have been known for a long time, and alcohol has been around for millennia.)

[Mike Nolan]

Looking good, Aaron. I wonder if you could switch from bread flour to AP (slightly lower in protein) and leave out the cornstarch?

KidPizza (Cass) would probably recommend you use bleached flour for cookies. I keep some on hand (GM AP) for that purpose, though most of the time I use KAF unbleached AP flour.

I do keep pastry flour on hand for pie crusts, lower protein/gluten content flour has a noticeably impact on the tenderness of the pie crust.

[Mike Nolan]

An ounce is over 28 grams, I think you misread the recipe and it calls for 0.25 ounces of instant dry yeast, which would be around 7 grams or 2 1/4 teaspoons.

Generally, yeast companies tell you to use 25% more active dry yeast than instant dry yeast, but these days there are many baking sites that will tell you to just use the same amount, and the comments on these sites seem to indicate that a 1-1 replacement does not affect how the recipe performs.

There are also sites that will tell you that active dry yeast doesn't need to be proofed, but that advice seems dubious to me.

Peter Reinhart, among others, has often written that many recipes use far more yeast than they really need. This may be a holdover from recipes developed many years ago, both active dry yeast and instant dry yeast have improved over the years and a higher percentage of the yeast stays alive, meaning you need less yeast to get the job done.

Personally, I haven't used active dry yeast for several years, I buy 1 pound packages of Fleischmann's instant dry yeast and keep it in the freezer. It takes me anywhere from 2 to 8 months to use up that much yeast.

I do have some SAF Gold osmotolerant instant dry yeast, and I've been using it a bit more lately, and not just on sweet doughs. For example, I've seen several sites that recommend using osmotolerant yeast for laminated dough, like for croissants. I know several professional bakers who only use osmotolerant yeast these days.

[Mike Nolan]

Fortunately, food budgeting isn't currently an issue for us, either, though our food tastes aren't that expensive anyway. But even the cheaper foods like hotdogs have gone up in price by 25% in the last year.

We just got the preliminary assessment on our house for 2023 and it went up a whopping 54% after several years of nominal changes, though most of our neighbors went up more like 10-25%.

[Mike Nolan]

Acid helps speed up the breakdown of starch into sugars that the yeast can feed from, which is why it helps the bread rise more. It may also suppress the amylose activity, and rye bread is prone to excessive amylose activity, which is what makes the dough gummy.

[Mike Nolan]

I find the lower fat ground beef (85-95%) falls apart more, maybe the stuff you have that's labeled 80% is actually lower in fat. (I don't think there's any penalty for having less fat than what it is labeled at.)

Other factors that could affect it are the cuts it was made from, how finely it was ground, possibly even grass-fed vs grain-fed.

Not sure why freezing it would make that much difference, I suspect that the chubs of ground beef that I prefer to the trays have sometimes been frozen during shipping.

When making a meatloaf, chilling it for an hour or so seems to improve how well it stays together both before and after it has been baked.

[Mike Nolan]

We had some chili from the freezer tonight, and there's enough left for another supper plus a lunch or two.

[Mike Nolan]

The latest USDA egg price survey has large eggs at around $3.60/dozen in the midwest, but I also saw an article today talking about how the bird flu is still ravaging producers.

[Mike Nolan]

Joan, I think you make Brunswick Stew like I make chili, I often wind up with multiple 3-quart containers of it for the fridge and freezer. I use a 12 quart stock pot and it is pretty full at first, though it reduces by an inch or two in the pot as it cooks.

[Mike Nolan]

A lot of dill pickles have garlic in the brine. I've tried the pickle juice idea a few times, we weren't that impressed with it. I think I used the brine from homemade pickles, because the ones I can myself don't have garlic in the brine, nor mustard seed. My mother sometimes put alum in dill pickle brine.

There are some people who are pretty passionate about their sourdough starters, but I tend to agree that rye is one of those subjects where opinions tend to be stronger.

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