[Mike Nolan]

We had chili with croissants.

[Mike Nolan]

Today's croissants, about 35 grams each.

I used an egg wash, that made them a bit darker, even though I baked them several minutes less than what the recipe calls for.

I did preheat the oven to 450 today, dropping it to 375, I think there was less butter leakage than last night's chocolatines.

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[Mike Nolan]

Digital scales are pretty cheap, the last one I bought, a Zibet, was $25 on Amazon, measures in 1 gram or 1/10 ounce increments and can handle up to 33 pounds, but even a spring scale can be fairly accurate. I also have a smaller $15 scale that measures in 1/10 gram increments that I use for amounts under about 25 grams.

Many people are pretty consistent about how they measure their flour, and after you've made a recipe a couple of times you will probably know how to tweak the amount of flour or liquid. And as I've said quite a few times, one of the best bakers I knew when I was young never measured her ingredients, but she baked nearly every day.

I find weighing ingredients especially helpful when trying out a new recipe, it gives you some hope that you're actually doing what the recipe author intended.

[Mike Nolan]

There was some butter leakage when I baked the chocolatines, don't know if I'd consider it excessive or not. But I may run the pre-heat temperature up a little for the croissants when I do them later today. Reinhart has you pre-heat the oven to 450 then drop it to 375 when you put the dough in. I think I started it at 425 yesterday.

[Mike Nolan]

Macaroni and cheese here, but dessert was wonderful.

[Mike Nolan]

I may have to try a little cinnamon sugar in some, too (in addition to the chocolate, of course.)

I made the chocolate sticks using a mold I bought online, it appears they're a bit larger than the Callebaut ones (which appear to be available in two sizes, ones around 5.6 grams each and ones around 10 grams each, mine are around 11 grams.) But I think the chocolate I used (Callebaut 811) is the same for both sizes.

It's about time to gear up to make chocolate candies for an Advent calendar for our granddaughter, I think each time I make a batch of chocolate I'll pour what's left into the stick mold, I used up about 2/3 of the ones I had today, and these are definitely on the 'make again soon' list.

[Mike Nolan]

I made 16 small chocolatines (5x7.5 cm dough pieces), some with one stick of chocolate in the middle, some with two sticks. I think my chocolate sticks are a little thicker and heavier than the ones they sell to bakeries.

I think I like the singles better than the doubles, but they're both tasty. I think Diane prefers the double-chocolate ones.

Next time I'll make the dough pieces a bit wider (and a little longer, too) so the chocolate doesn't stick out the end and they roll up better, you're supposed to cut the dough to the same width as the chocolate stick (5cm), but the dough kind of shrinks after you cut it and it stuck out the end of most of them. Didn't seem to hurt how they baked, though.

I don't know how well they keep, but they'll probably be gone by tomorrow evening anyway. 🙂

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[Mike Nolan]

I am making a 600g batch of croissant dough using the manual sheeter today.

The challenge still seems to be to find a folding/rolling pattern that produces easily usable final shapes. I would up doing a standard English encapsulation, followed by a 3 fold (letter turn) then a 2 fold then a final 3 fold. That should give me a total of 36 layers in the final dough. But right now I've got dough that's about 3 x 10 and due to be rolled out along its length, and I really don't know if I want one that's 3 x (at least) 30.

I think what I'll probably do is divide the dough into two or more parts during the final rollout, so that I can turn it a couple of times to get it into a rectangle I can work with for cutting.

My hope is to make about a half dozen medium croissants and perhaps a dozen small chocolatines (rolled chocolate croissants).

[Mike Nolan]

We had chili and cinnamon rolls, both from the freezer.

[Mike Nolan]

You wouldn't serve a Queen a pancake that wasn't perfectly round, would you?

[Mike Nolan]

I don't eat a lot of squash (spaghetti squash is one of the few I'll eat), I may not have been aware that a turban squash was even edible, I'm pretty sure my wife has never made one for herself. Having to cut the cap off seems like a waste, especially when they sell them by the pound.

[Mike Nolan]

The biggest challenge might be getting the seeds and strings out without removing a lot of the edible parts of the squash, especially when it's all hot.

[Mike Nolan]

Sounds interesting. It isn't what comes to mind when I read the word 'cannoli' though.

[Mike Nolan]

I think I've now canned as many quarts of tomato juice this year as I did last year, 27. If we don't get an early frost, I figure we could still get two good pickings based on the green tomatoes already on the vines.

[Mike Nolan]

We have roll out shelves in all our lower cabinets and in the full height kitchen pantry. Stuff still gets lost at the back of the shelf, though. We recently threw out several boxes of cereal that expired in 2019. (My wife changed her breakfast pattern after her heart surgery, she used to eat cereal, now she eats cottage cheese with fruit.)

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