Mike Nolan
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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.
The general rule of thumb on eggs is that 15% of the weight is the shell.
Yes, I roll them out on the parchment, that way when I'm done I just move the whole thing onto a half size sheet pan for baking. You do need a little flour under the dough so it doesn't buckle as it gets thinner, but that's true when you roll stuff out just using the platform.
I use a straightedge tool (like the kind used for painting or wallpapering that are reinforced so they don't bend, see link below) and just press it down firmly into the dough. I start by trimming the edges into a rectangle (the trim gets added to the dough for the next tray), then just work my way across. They aren't quite the same size, but pretty close.
https://www.lowes.com/pd/Warner-12-in-Plastic-Paint-Guide/1000024777
When I took my chocolate course, that's what they were using as a straightedge. So now I have them in two sizes.
The package size is another field I'm playing with, it is intended for things that are packaged in multiples, like a dozen cookies or rolls, so I can see the package ingredient cost. For breads it would usually be a 1.
A half inch, as recommended.
My wife loves apple butter, most of the time I find it too heavily spiced. I think the batch I just made might be just enough milder for me to enjoy it.
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