[Mike Nolan]

I hope this bread tastes as interesting as it smells while baking, I'm getting an odor now that is almost fruity sweet.

[Mike Nolan]

Supper tonight is chili.

[Mike Nolan]

I did wind up doing the final kneading of the Westphalian pumpernickel dough in two parts, there was really a noticeable change in the dough's appearance and feel after 20 minutes of kneading with a paddle. (That's supposed to break up the coarse meal a bit.)

Ginsberg calls it a 'glutinous mass' and that's a pretty apt description.

It is in the oven, 40 minutes at 300 and then 24 hours at 220. Will it be a brick at that point? Some of the posts on this recipe at freshloaf are not very encouraging, but my dough seems to be consistent with his descriptions so far, though I did wind up adding extra water to the scald yesterday.

Update: It's been in the oven for about 3 1/2 hours, and I'm starting to get some interesting aromas from the kitchen, probably from the amylase activity and the Maillard reaction. I'm not sure if I would have associated the smell with rye bread if I didn't know what I was making.

[Mike Nolan]

I found a short video (18 seconds) that might be the spoof Aaron was referring to.

I'm about to go see what happens when I try to do the final dough stage of the Westphalian pumpernickel. (I've been involved in an issue for a client for most of the last 12 hours, I was up until 4 AM working on it.)

[Mike Nolan]

The scald looks really dry to me, and that's the only water in the dough, tomorrow I add more rye flour and salt. There's no yeast in this recipe, but it is supposed to be really dense, and sliced as thin as you can.

I made it with freshly ground rye berries using the coarsest setting I can get from my Nutrimill. It may not be as coarse as the recipe assumes, and that's why it still looks so dry to me, even though I added more water than the recipe called for.

I will not be surprised if I have to add more water tomorrow to get it to come together. Ginsberg says it should be a 'glutinous mass'.

[Mike Nolan]

If anything, the third rack should be hotter than the middle one, because heat rises. I know when I made my last batch of peanut butter cookies, I had 3 that didn't fit on the big sheet pan, so I baked them on the top shelf and they were done 3-4 minutes earlier.

2 minutes with a hand mixer is probably 3-4 minutes by hand. Maybe more mixing causes more of the baking soda to produce gas before it goes in the oven, reducing the amount of rise during baking?

I've not made a lot of oil cakes, though Texas Chocolate Sheet Cake, which uses butter, probably qualifies. I generally don't fill a baking pan more than 2/3 full of cake batter. (Or I put a jelly roll pan underneath it to catch spills, it's far easier to clean a pan than to clean the bottom of the oven.)

[Mike Nolan]

I think I'm going to make a small potatoes au gratin to go with tonight's ham and pineapple. I know what my wife will say: carbs, more carbs, and even more carbs!

[Mike Nolan]

I am starting on the Ginsberg Westphalian Pumpernickel recipe, using freshly ground coarse rye meal. Today I make the scald, tomorrow it goes in the oven for 24 hours, then it gets wrapped to age until Saturday.

[Mike Nolan]

I'm always happy to hear from Cass, directly or indirectly, and I can't fault Cass's chemical thoughts and recommendations, but they don't really explain why didn't overflow last time but did this time, unless I'm missing the significance of the changes you made since then.

[Mike Nolan]

I made a 10x10 Texas Chocolate Sheet Cake, a half-recipe of batter and a full recipe of frosting. 🙂

[Mike Nolan]

We're having ham steak tonight.

[Mike Nolan]

Maybe you mis-measured something? How full was the pan? Did the batter seem different?

[Mike Nolan]

Today's rolls came out a little strange, I used osmotolerant yeast, but I think maybe it's too old, because the bulk rise wasn't as high as I usually get and the final rise was REALLY slow, normally they go in the oven at about 45 minutes, today it was more like 90-120 minutes.

Because they sat so long in final rise, some of the sugar in the filling turned into a liquid (probably exposure to the water in the dough and butter) and leaked out the bottom. I took them off the parchment quickly and put them on two platters, even then some of them were already sticking.

They still taste pretty good, though. The bottom is almost crunchy and has a butterscotch flavor, not surprising since the filling has brown sugar and butter. The stuff that was left in the pan hardened quickly and can be peeled off the parchment. It is very tasty.

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[Mike Nolan]

I've got cinnamon rolls rising, I made them bigger than the last few batches because I was experimenting with some techniques to try to keep the rolled up dough more uniform in diameter so the rolls are about the same weight, and then marked them for 2 inch thicknesses like a batch I made last fall, I've been doing 1 or 1 1/2 inches recently. By the time I realized that, I was over half way done cutting.

I wound up with 18 rolls instead of the planned 35.

[Mike Nolan]

I do have the chili on, but it's for tomorrow, tonight we'll probably have more of the chicken salad I made yesterday.

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