[Mike Nolan]

I think even the one at the top right corner of the photo is edible. Some of the first tray got a little darker than I wanted, too. Every day you learn something else about baking.

Measuring the thickness of very thin and soft things like cracker dough can be challenging. You can't just put them in a micrometer. 🙂

Assuming I understand the settings on my sheeter (and that they're accurate), I had it set on 2mm thickness at the end. They're on parchment so that has to be factored out. A sheet of parchment paper is about 1/500 of an inch thick, so that would make them about 1.95 mm thick, or 0.073 inches, which is a bit thicker than 1/16 of an inch but thinner than 3/32.

I can measure the thickness of the baked crackers using my micrometer, they're mostly between 2.8 and 3.8 mm thick.

[Mike Nolan]

Here's what the second tray looked like, I did them for a total of 9 minutes at 325 using a convection cycle. I did NOT rotate the pan, you can see that the top part (which was to the left side of the oven) is more well-done than the bottom part, though both appear to be fully baked inside.

So it seems the convection cycle in my oven doesn't even baking temperatures out across the entire baking area as much as I would have liked. That's something I've wondered about but never tried to test.

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[Mike Nolan]

5 of 7 jars sealed, I didn't have the band on properly on one jar and it leaked a lot, so there was apple butter on the outside of most of the jars. I carefully washed it off, hopefully I got it all. I might also have processed it in the pressure canner too long or at too high pressure.

It looks like there's apple butter stuck to the underside of the lid:

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[Mike Nolan]

We had macaroni and cheese tonight.

[Mike Nolan]

I baked half of the sourdough cheese crackers today, the first tray on a regular oven setting and the second tray using a convection cycle.

I can taste the cheese now, but they're still missing something. I left the grapeseed oil and salt off this time, but did add a little salt to the dough.

I am getting the mechanics of using the sheet roller worked out for crackers, though. Mostly it just takes some practice, like making laminated dough does.

I'm wondering if I need to let a tray of them rise for a while before baking them.

[Mike Nolan]

This recipe did not call for peeling them, by the time they had cooked for 12 hours the peels were pretty soft and an immersion blender finished the job of disintegrating them.

I also wound up adding around a teaspoon of nutmeg and a teaspoon of allspice to the apple butter, Diane says now it tastes right.

Apple butter is usually made with softer apples than winesap, but I would not use Red Delicious because the peels on those are inedible these days. (And they're not the only over-bred apples with inedible peels, I think Granny Smiths are that way, too.) Golden Delicious is a good cooking apple, but just about any apple that is used for applesauce should work.

I used 5.5 pounds of winesaps and wound up with 7 half-pints of apple butter for the canner.

Here's the recipe I used:

Apple Butter Recipe

And here's the apple scraps jelly recipe that I'll use after processing the rest of the apples, maybe over the weekend.

https://www.thespruceeats.com/apple-scrap-jelly-1327811

[Mike Nolan]

I wound up adding a bunch more cinnamon (probably 2 more TB) and another 1/8 tsp of clove to the apple butter, although I liked it, Diane thought it needed more spice. I'm letting the additional spices cook into the apple butter for an hour or two, then I'll start canning it.

[Mike Nolan]

I'm not sure I adjusted the post-baking weight in that spreadsheet, as I haven't made your recipe yet. 10-15% loss during baking is typical for most breads, though. I just set it at 24 ounces per loaf as a starting point because that's what I often bake for a simple three-strand braided loaf, though 18 ounces is also a good size, and I've made them as small as 9-12 ounces. If I do a two-layer celebration challah, I usually make around 32 ounces of dough.

[Mike Nolan]

Consumer Reports has a report on stand mixers that looks at 39 different models and around two dozen brands, but Anksarsrum isn't one of them Most of them appear to be priced below the KA ones.

You have to buy a login to their site to see the ratings, and I have no idea if the full report was published in the magazine, which we haven't subscribed to for probably 40 years.

If I go ahead with my subscription bread service, I might be looking for a 20 quart spiral mixer that can produce at least 15 pounds of bread dough at a time. I don't think the Anksarsrum and similar mixers can do more than 8-10 pounds of dough at a time (and the videos for a large batch show it climbing up the dough hook), though that'd still be over twice what I can get from my 4.5Q KA.

[Mike Nolan]

I'm making a batch of apple butter using 5.5 pounds of winesap apples in my 6 quart slow cooker.

Smells pretty good already and it's been maybe about an hour, it cooks for at least 10 hours, by which time the peels will have pretty much liquified.

I looked at a number of apple butter recipes, this one seemed pretty simple, core and chop the apples, add brown sugar, white sugar, cinnamon, salt and clove. One of the recipes called for a full teaspoon of ground clove in 6 pounds of apples, this one only called for 1/8 teaspoon.

I also found a recipe for apple scrap jelly that's made from the peels and cores, so I'm saving them in the freezer and will make that after I finish off making things with the winesap apples.

[Mike Nolan]

I was hoping to bake the 2nd batch of sourdough cheese crackers tomorrow afternoon, but I've got something else scheduled so I might not get to them until Tuesday. The apple pie will probably be kicked to then as well. I haven't even made the piecrust yet, and it needs to rest overnight.

[Mike Nolan]

I'm going to be curious to see how it tastes cold, potato-leek soup served cold is very good, AKA vichyssoise. I'll also be interested to see if the flavor improves after a day like chili does.

[Mike Nolan]

As noted in this week's cooking thread, the parsnip soup was a disappointment.

[Mike Nolan]

We might get a frost tonight or tomorrow, so I picked a big bowl of tomatoes today, though I didn't pick everything, so if we don't get that frost I might get another picking in a week or two. I also picked the last of the full-sized spaghetti squashes. There are a couple of littler ones that may never get ripe enough to pick. But I got 4 of them that were in the 35-45 ounce range, and that's not a bad return on a $2 packet of seeds.

But I'm already thinking ahead to next year's garden plans. I probably won't grow the Porter tomatoes, and I might cut back a bit on the Fourth of July, putting in more Italian Heirlooms and Amish Paste. If I can get a better source for First Lady tomatoes, I'll put some of them in, but only 1 of 4 plants produced much fruit this year, and what I thought was a 5th one turned out to be an Italian Heirloom, either I made a (fortuitous) mistake with the seeds or with labeling.

I'll probably do spaghetti squash again, not sure I'll do melons or broccoli. I'm thinking I might order some leek plants from Johnny's and put in a couple rows of them.

The Urban Soil Improvement project will send out a different common plant for everyone to grow in 2024, this year it was zucchini. I actually liked those zucchini, so I might do them again if I can find seeds (the variety is dunja). One plant is probably enough for us, though.

[Mike Nolan]

I can't say I'm surprised, Cooks Illustrated was going downhill for a long time before they dumped Christopher Kimball, and seems more interested in selling things (including site subscriptions) than providing useful information to cooks these days.

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