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It's so easy to do, too. It uses just a little egg wash, so unless you're doing a lot of them even one egg will give you lots of egg afterwards to use for something else. I did these and then my wife had her breakfast omelet with the rest, plus a second egg.
Happy Birthday, Cass, think cheesecake even if you can't bake one!
Here's what the poppy seed coating looks like:
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You must be logged in to view attached files.I've tried making an angel food cake a number of times, most of them were edible, none of them were what I would call great.
I used this recipe yesterday: Rosette di pane recipe.
The list of ingredients is missing the water for the biga step (it is mentioned in the text), I added more water because it seemed too dry at first, the final dough was way too soft, so I should probably have left the water out of the second step.
An 18 hour biga gives it a lot of time for enzyme activity, which produced a flavorful bread, though I think it could be improved upon. (A little rye or triticale, maybe?)
I used my steam tube, I suspect it isn't quite as effective as a commercial steam injection oven but it is a lot easier for me to use than just dumping water in a hot pan and trying to avoid getting burned. I think what I need is a somewhat larger cast iron pan, maybe one of the square ones. Lately I've been pre-steaming the oven before putting the dough in, then adding more water to replace the steam that comes out the open door. The crust was a little pale, I may need to double-pan it so that I don't burn the bottoms.
My wife ate two of the rosetta rolls from today's test bake, she likes the crisp crust, and I think with a few more test bakes I may be able to get them to be hollow. I used a different recipe than the one that was originally in Italian in that old BC thread, as I recall those were very good, they had some fat in the dough.
I put them in a micro-perfed bag, that should keep them from getting soggy overnight.
I had one for lunch, a Fairbury all-beef dog, some mustard, sweet relish, some jalapenos (instead of sport peppers) and a pickle spear. And celery salt, of course. It was very good, the closest thing I've had to a Chicago dog in several years. I think I can get sport peppers, but I haven't looked lately, I know I can't get Vienna all-beef dogs or the day-glo green relish here. :sigh: But at least I can make something pretty close to Chicago-style hot dog buns now.
I made four of them to see if they have about the same shelf life as the buns I made them from do.
The first test bake for the rosetta di pane taught me several things, notably that the dough needed to be a lot stiffer. As to the 3 different types of rosetta stamps that my son made for me to test, I'm not sure there was much difference between them, a stiffer dough will be a better test.
Some of the instructions I found online have you final proof the rolls upside down, others do not, so I tried both ways. I don't think this test bake resolved that question, the dough was too soft. (Kaiser rolls are often proofed upside down as well, that's supposed to help preserve the kaiser patterning)
The flavor could stand a boost, too. I may try a different recipe or try adding some rye and/or triticale.
I'm trying an experiment this morning, I took some generic hot dog buns, brushed them with a little egg wash and sprinkled poppy seeds on them, then put them in the oven at 350 for 4 minutes to dry out the egg.
Hopefully, this will make the buns more like Chicago-style hot dog buns.
I'm also making a test batch of rosette di pane today.
We made a quick trip to Pittsburgh this week for our granddaughter's 8th grade graduation, flying instead of driving. I did bring back 3 versions of a rosetta stamp that my son made on his 3D printer, so I'll be making some test bakes with them soon.
As a reminder, facts, like a list of ingredients, cannot be copyrighted.
What is copyrightable with regards to a recipe are the instructions. Even then it is the specific wording that is copyrighted, not the intent.
I find it is useful to know the provenance of a recipe, if only because that often tells you a lot about what went into its creation. Jim Lahey gets a lot of credit for the NY Times no-knead bread recipe, but it appears no-knead recipes had been around for decades. Lahey improved the recipe, clarified the instructions, and popularized the concept, and all of those are worth giving credit for.
The rule of thumb I've always heard is that if you change 3 ingredients in a recipe (different ingredients or significantly different amounts), then it is considered a new recipe. I still find it helpful to know its background, though.
We used a roll-in convection oven for my SFBI pastry course and the instructions they gave us have you do it in a convection oven, but I find it works better if I do just the first half or so on convection mode. I often put a pie shield on top after the changeover to keep the edges from getting too dark.
It took me about a half dozen pies to work out the settings that work best for me. Every oven is just a little different.
Not sure where I read it, but I think you want at least a half inch on the front and back (the back rack usually gives you that) and an inch on each side wall. Having a true circulation fan (with separate air inlets and outlets) would impact that, but I'm pretty sure all the 'convection' fan in my big oven does is blow air across the top. That's probably enough to encourage more circulation providing there are adequate air channels around the pans.
About the only thing I use the convection setting for is for the first 10-15 minutes of pies, then I drop the temp and put it on regular oven mode. I find the time at a higher temp (and with the fan on) gets the crust properly done.
The next time I'm in Pittsburgh I'll probably try to make a trip to Penn Fixtures and Supplies, and I'll see if they still carry a 3/4 sheet pan. I suspect the ones they had were Winware, but it has been several years since I bought one.
I've been looking at flip boards lately, they seem to come in two sizes, 18 inch and 24 inch.
They're good, but so far no 2 batches have come out quite the same, one was too soft in the middle, two were a bit too hard in the middle (the last one about as hard as biscotti), one was probably scorched on the bottom, the first batch was the best so far. I'm going to drop the temperature 25 degrees for the next one.
But if I keep making the ChallaPrince's challah recipe, I'll probably keep making these cookies because he has you use an egg yolk wash on them, and this is a quick way to use up the egg whites.
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