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The forecast keeps getting more extreme. Now they're calling for 86 tomorrow but a high of 38 next Sunday and a low of 24!
Going to Maine for a Reuben is like going to North Dakota for a lobster roll. 🙂
I think my bagel dough was a little too dry, when I used the 'roll around your hand' method they didn't all seal together, one or two of them sort of came apart, one looked like a bagel schnecken.
I'll probably increase the water next time around.
I made a batch of bagel dough (Hamelman's recipe) this evening, it will sit overnight in the fridge, in the morning I'll let it warm up a little, then shape, boil and bake the bagels.
I figure I'm doing good if I can get 3 years from a laptop, but I do use it for 6 or more hours most days.
I do let the cracker dough warm up a little, usually a half hour or so, before running it through the sheeter. With laminated doughs, it's more like do a turn, rest dough in fridge for 15 minutes, do another turn, etc. You don't want the butter to get too firm, or it will shatter, or too soft, in which case it soaks into the dough.
I haven't tried it yet, but I think I could be working on 3 trays of laminated dough simultaneously, in stages, 2 in the fridge and 1 on the sheeter. I don't have a reason to make that much dough at one time right now.
I'm getting ready to build up the wheat starter to make another batch of crackers, but I've got quite a few of them left to eat first. I think the next batch will be made with the durum flour, because it is a finely ground whole grain flour. It ought to have good extensibility from the durum wheat.
I'm thinking I might add either more salt or more cheese powder if not both. I was also wondering if I could dissolve some salt in water and brush it on either instead of the oil or in addition to it. (Salt will not easily dissolve in oil, heating it or adding a surfactant is possible but not always reliable.)
I wish these crackers were a little less dense, but am not sure how to do that without messing up the recipe. I suppose I could add some commercial yeast, or possibly a little baking powder.
I've been in the mood for fried chicken for a few days, so we ordered from Lee's, Lincoln's oldest restaurant. Their onion straws were pretty good too.
I also ordered a piece of sour cream apple pie, it was a bit of a disappointment, so I took Diane to another restaurant and she got a piece of their sour cream raisin pie, which is really good and something I've not come close to duplicating.
I froze about 6 pounds of tomatoes from the garden, some cored and peeled for things like soup, some just blanched for things like stock.
I will probably get a few tomatoes every day or two but I think the bulk of the picking is done, and the two week forecast says we'll dip below freezing next weekend.
I baked off the other two trays of sourdough cheese crackers from the dough I made several days ago.
I used my micrometer to measure the dough as best I could, it appears that both the 5mm and 2mm settings on the sheeter are fairly accurate.
I also tried an experiment to see if letting the dough sit for an hour after final shaping made any difference in the thickness after baking. The answer is no, I measured about a dozen crackers from both batches, nearly all of them were 3.4mm thick.
I used my docker on this batch and I also brushed them with grapeseed oil.
The wine teacher told Diane the parsnip-apple-coriander-cumin soup was very good both cold and warm.
There aren't a lot of soups that work as cold soups, but there are a few. There are some soups that work as cold soups but not as hot ones, for example, aspics, since the gelling is important to what makes it an aspic and that requires it be cold.
Soups with proteins in them generally don't work as cold soups, I think because the fats in them have an odd mouth feel when cold.
I've never tried a cold melon soup, but recipes for those seem to show up every summer.
The sourdough cheese crackers that I baked this week are OK, I still think I need to use a finer ground whole wheat flour. I could taste the cheese more, but I think they could be even cheesier. I can't say I could tell there was rye flour in the dough but there wasn't a lot of it, maybe 10%.
I didn't brush any oil on the top or sprinkle on salt, though I did add some salt to the dough and there's some salt in the cheese as well. They still seemed a bit bland, maybe more salt is needed.
I might try the Azure Standard durum flour in a batch, it's whole wheat but very finely ground. It'd be nice to have a way to use it up, too, we've decided it doesn't work in pasta or in semolina bread.
Bakeraunt, do you let your crackers rise after rollout before baking them? I think they rose some during baking but still seemed a bit dense.
I'm sending a cup of the parsnip-apple-coriander-cumin soup in with Diane for the wine teacher to try.
I have to say that it is better several days old and cold that it was the day I made it. The spices have mellowed and the parsnip-apple combination is the dominant flavor profile. I could actually see serving this as a cold soup appetizer now, at the right type of dinner party, possibly using less coriander and/or cumin.
I stopped being annoyed with King Arthur after I realized I could find most of what they sell online, including many of their branded items, sometimes at a cheaper price and/or with free delivery and no minimum order size.
We had eye of round roast with mashed potatoes, gravy, and a salad.
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