[Mike Nolan]

I can't answer your question because I don't know the total amount of dough. If the preferment makes up 50% of the total dough that's a somewhat higher net hydration than if it makes up 25%.

If you want to use a biga or poolish with a formula that doesn't already have one, just subtract those ingredients (flour, water, yeast, etc.) from the total. There's no firm rule on how much of the total flour needs to be in the preferment, I've seen recipes as low as 5% and ones as high as 50%.

For example, suppose you have a poolish that is 75% hydrated. You want to add 150 grams of the poolish to your recipe.

The formula for the poolish is:

Flour: 100%
Water: 75%

Total: 175%

So, your scaling factor is 150/175 or 0.857

So you've got 85.7 grams of flour and 64.3 grams of water in the poolish. Subtract those from the rest of formula.

Yeah, I'm ignoring the yeast here, but you could add it and change the total. It'll change the amount of flour and water by just a few grams. (If there's 3% yeast in the poolish the flour becomes 84.3 grams and the water becomes 63.2 grams.)

If you're dealing with a sourdough starter, the yeast percentage is essentially an unknown. Most multi-stage Guild recipes seem to just ignore the amount of yeast in the starter.

I've got an outline for a post dealing with altering the stages of multi-stage formulas separately (to vary the amount of water in the preferment, for example, or to use an existing starter with a known hydration level.)

The challenge is to come up with examples that don't make the math seem more complicated. I also try to make my examples ones that someone could actually bake.

Spreadsheets or similar tools specifically designed for bakers are really helpful and most bakeries use them. (One of the more popular ones just went out of business, though.)

[Mike Nolan]

I made a big pan of chicken, mushrooms and rice casserole, this will be supper tonight, lunch for most of the week and some may even go in the freezer.

[Mike Nolan]

If you research 'how to get a shiny top on brownies', you'll find at least two general recommendations. One has to do with thoroughly mixing the sugar and the melted butter, the other has to do with mixing the sugar and the egg (white), the theory there being that the shiny surface is essentially a thin layer of meringue.

There are other theories, as well, such as King Arthur's recommendation to use chocolate chips.

Yet another theory I've seen over the years says to let the batter sit in the pan for a few minutes before popping it into the oven, I guess this one has to do with allowing oils to rise to the surface.

[Mike Nolan]

I find if you make a compound butter with the sugar (brown or white) and cinnamon, it is easier to spread on evenly and won't fall out as you roll the dough up and bake it.

I saw a post on my iPhone the other day that started out extolling the dental floss method for cutting cinnamon rolls but then suggested cutting the dough up into strips after spreading on the filling, then rolling each one up separately. I've done that a few times, it works well.

[Mike Nolan]

We had a water/ice dispenser in the freezer for about 20 years (I actually won a side-by-size refrigerator/freezer in a drawing in around 1975), but these days we have a standalone icemaker that holds 20 pounds of ice. (We used to have two of them, one in the kitchen and one in the basement, but after replacing the icemaker downstairs twice, we decided it wasn't worth replacing a third time. They make a less expensive icemaker that is more like the one in most freezers, making half-moon 'cubes', but I don't know if we'd get enough usage out of even that.)

[Mike Nolan]

My wife wants to know when I'm going to make croissant dough again, she really liked the chocolatines I made.

[Mike Nolan]

We had takeout chicken tonight, which complicates my dinner plans for the weekend, as I'm planning to make baked chicken, rice and mushroom casserole. But chicken several days in a row gets repetitive.

[Mike Nolan]

Having frozen apple pie filling is a big plus, you just get it out a day or two ahead of time to thaw, but I have to get pre-made pie crusts out then, too.

I'm currently out of frozen pie crusts, not sure when I'll do another batch of them, possibly before Thanksgiving, though that's going to be relatively quiet this year, at least compared to Christmas when our son and family will be here.

We're running low on cinnamon rolls and I may do another batch of turnovers, too. The apple galette I made with the portion of the apple pie filling that I didn't use up on the turnovers was a big hit, I might do that instead of a double-crust pie again.

[Mike Nolan]

The vegetable garden has been cleaned out sufficiently for the winter. In the spring I'll move the cages, pull up the ground cloth, till in some peat for fertilizer and probably more gypsum and then put things back together again before planting.

I also started a new set of Aerogardens today, 9 leaf lettuce, 12 head lettuce (pelletized) and 3 pea pods.

Thinking ahead to 2023, I may do about the same mix of tomatoes as this year, will likely do white eggplant again, but maybe not the purple ones, not very good yield from them. If I do melon they'll likely be Athena or Kandy, we like those better. I might do a spaghetti squash, that's not something I've grown before.

[Mike Nolan]

Baker's math formulas can be intimidating. Here's a post on that issue with some examples of how to convert a recipe in baker's math format into a list of ingredients in units you can measure:

https://mynebraskakitchen.com/wordpress/using-bakers-math/

[Mike Nolan]

Here's the post with the link to the Portuguese bread recipe

https://mynebraskakitchen.com/wordpress/forums/topic/what-are-you-baking-the-week-of-november-14-2021/#post-32028

Here's the post with Cass's recommendations:
https://mynebraskakitchen.com/wordpress/forums/topic/what-are-you-baking-the-week-of-november-14-2021/page/2/#post-32092

Note that this recipe is for a single loaf, not individual rolls.

[Mike Nolan]

Is this the sort of roll you're looking for:

https://leitesculinaria.com/282693/recipes-papo-secos-portuguese-rolls.html

This recipe reminds me of the Pao Frances link I posted earlier today, the dough recipe seems fairly standard (and this recipe and the one I posted earlier are quite similar to each other), the way it is shaped and risen appears to be key.

As someone who firmly believes that shape is the aspect of bread that gets the least attention with regards to its impact on taste, I'm always interested in a new form or shape.

[Mike Nolan]

We had left over meat loaf, and the small slice left will be my wife's lunch tomorrow.

[Mike Nolan]

Never heard of soft pretzels as a topping on a casserole before, sounds intriguing. Do you boil them in an alkali solution?

[Mike Nolan]

If the icing used black dye, I'm not surprised it got everywhere.

[Author]

Posts