[Mike Nolan]

The Reubens we had last night were so good, we made them again today. One of the two loaves of pumpernickel is gone already. I'm hoping the other will last long enough to be available for ham on Easter.

[Mike Nolan]

Over the years I've given away hundreds of those rolls. I make them smaller than the recipe calls for, 1.5 ounces each. A 6 inch round pan holds 8 of them comfortably, 7 around the outside and one in the middle. I've done them in an 8 inch pan, which holds more like 15 of them, and I did them in a 12 inch pan once, I think it held around 36 of them.

I used to send in a big batch of them to my wife's office (bringing in home baked items was dying off even before the pandemic shut the campus down, the university had banned pot lucks completely), and she seldom had any left at the end of the day. I know several of our neighbors look forward to them every Good Friday. (For some strange reason, I never seem to make these any other time than then.)

Their biggest drawback is that they dry out fairly quickly, like in 2 days. They do freeze well, though.

[Mike Nolan]

Nice crumb.

I've been using the Hot Cross Buns recipe in the King Arthur Whole Grains book for quite a few years, I'll probably make at least two batches of it on Thursday, I may try one using tangzhong to see if I can tell the difference. (The rule of thumb is that you use up to 10% of the total flour and a 5-1 ratio between water and flour in the roux.)

[Mike Nolan]

Part of the reason it is so dark is it had some powdered caramel coloring in it. However, that was the last of my caramel coloring and King Arthur doesn't seem to carry it any more, so I'll have to order it from somewhere else. :sigh:

[Mike Nolan]

I bought a 50 pound bag of clear flour from Stover Company in the Pittsburgh area in 2019 when we were there visiting my son and his family. I think it cost me about $25. It seems to be holding up well in storage. (I put at least a third of it in the freezer.) It was Bay State brand, but Ardent Mills also makes one.

My former neighbor, the head of the local Sysco office, checked with Pillsbury and ConAgra, they only sold clear flour in the east (maybe as far west as Ohio) and in a few places on the west coast, though he could order it by the pallet (40 bags.) It's probably a marketing issue, most of the large mills are in the central US, and the way roller mills work they generate LOTS of clear flour, but if there's no interest in it, it isn't worth packaging and storing it. I believe it is sold in bulk as animal feed.

I've ordered 50 pound bags of flour from Baker's Authority, most recently medium rye, but I also ordered 50 pounds of semolina from them, shipping for a bag that big is sometimes higher than the cost of the flour itself, but even $65 for 50 pounds is still a lot cheaper than King Arthur. If I buy semolina locally it costs me about $2.50 a pound, rye flour is next to impossible to find locally other than Bob's Red Mill, and only one type a dark rye that is a fairly fine texture, if I want medium rye or coarse rye meal, I will either have to buy it online or buy rye berries (also not easy to find at a good price) and grind my own.

If I was a little younger, I might think about trying to open up a store that specialized in bakery products including varietal flours, but I don't know if it would be successful enough and I'm not sure I've got the energy for it any more.

The rye flour came UPS and the box was pretty beat up by the time it got here, but the bag inside was still intact enough the flour hadn't been compromised. I kind of feel sorry for the UPS driver having to lug that thing around, though.

I think the semolina I ordered was prepared at a mill in Wyoming, then shipped to Ohio or Texas before it was shipped to me in Nebraska. Kind of a long trip.

Last spring I bought a small chest freezer when our main freezer needed some repairs, the plan was to use it mainly for storing flours afterwards and that's working out pretty good.

I've been using plastic jars that I buy M&M's in at Sams (62.5 ounce size), they work pretty well for storing 2-3 pounds of flour, but when I bought my rye flour recently I also went out to Sams and bought some 6 quart round Cambro-style containers.

[Mike Nolan]

Report on Jewish Bakery Pumpernickel (Ginsberg pps 93-96):

This is a really good pumpernickel bread, but I did fiddle with the recipe a little. It produced two loaves about 650 grams each from (730 grams pre-baking weight), the loaves are about 10 inches x 5 inches by 2 1/2 inches.

Both of the sponge stages call for coarse rye meal, and the coarse rye meal I have is almost like cracked grain, which I thought might be too coarse to be the only rye in the recipe, so I used coarse rye meal for the first sponge and medium rye meal for the second.

I used first clear flour in the final dough, and I added about a tablespoon of caraway seed.

It uses some caramel color to produce a darker loaf.

I also used an egg wash rather than a cornstarch glaze, because cornstarch glaze always seems to produce a white pasty exterior, and this produced a nice shiny one.

It produces a fairly stiff dough, but it mixes well and it rose decently. I did let the final rise go for about 90 minutes as opposed to the 45 minutes in the recipe. Actual baking time was in the middle of the range in the recipe, by which point the internal temperature was about 206.

It slices easily and has a good internal crumb.

We used this bread for a batch of Reubens, and they were great. It was also pretty good with just little butter on it.

It also passes the toast test with flying colors.

This recipe is a real keeper, I'm sure I'll be making it again--soon!

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[Mike Nolan]

Today's pumpernickel rye bread is out and smells pretty good. We used it for Reubens, and they were great. I'll have a full review posted later tonight, but this recipe is a real keeper.

[Mike Nolan]

My new rye starter is doing something the previous ones didn't, it smells like acetone. That's a symptom of being underfed, according to what I've read. So I'm going to feed it twice a day for a few days.

[Mike Nolan]

I've made brown bread twice, it has a lot of molasses in it, and I think brown sugar as well.

I should try the Ginsberg Boston Brown Bread recipe, the biggest challenge for me is what to steam it in. The last one I think I did in a fluted gelatin mold.

[Mike Nolan]

Lavash pizza here tonight.

[Mike Nolan]

I had a FB account at the company I worked for but maybe used it twice.

My wife was big on Farmville for a while (a Zynga game on FB) but lost interest. She keeps in touch with a few people on FB, including my sister and possibly one of my brothers, but I've never gotten into it and don't care if I ever do.

I do use Instagram a little, which I think is owned by FB these days, but I don't check it very often and seldom post to it.

[Mike Nolan]

Didn't get the fan tan rolls started, but I did get started on another rye bread recipe out of Ginsberg, should be done late tomorrow.

[Mike Nolan]

I'll be making Hot Cross Buns on Thursday, not sure how many batches yet, probably more than last year.

I'm still thinking about doing some variant on fan tan rolls, to see if they tolerate overnight refrigeration or freezing. Not much else happening today, maybe I'll do that.

[Mike Nolan]

We had our second Pfizer shots on Friday, and my wife has a little sore spot at the point of the injection, but not much, I haven't had any noticeable soreness. I thought I might have been having some chills Friday night, but I think I just wasn't under all the usual bedding.

[Mike Nolan]

The advanced search feature has the ability to search specific areas (ie, recipes only) or tye author field, but in the case of something posted by someone else with the original author's name as a reference, that's just a free text search.

I don't think shaboom was ever a member of this site.

I've tried to contact Zen to see if I could get access to her archive, but she hasn't responded to my emails, maybe she's not online these days? Anybody in touch with her?

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