[RiversideLen]

Aaron, I agree with you about the pizza dough. A few years ago I saw an America's Test Kitchen do NY style pizza. The thing they talked about is the long slow rise as well as a minimal amount of yeast. They recommended 24 hour minimum and up to three days. They also used ice cold water in making the dough. I adopted some of those methods to my pizza and it makes a big difference.

Italiancook, I have an online friend in Baltimore who once sent me some fresh crab cakes so I wanted to return the favor, I sent him a deep dish pizza from Lou Malnati's. It was shipped frozen. I have a friend who moved to Arizona and when he gets a taste for Chicago he orders pizzas from Geno's East, again, it ships frozen.

Last night I did a one pan meal, a pork chop, small red potatoes and butternut squash, all on the same pan. I just had to cook broccoli stove top. By the time the pork was done, the potatoes and squash was just right.

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[RiversideLen]

I should set up a doughnut shop, haha!

Italiancook, I don't like to brag, but they were as good as they look.

Aaron, I use a doughnut pan I bought from KAF. It has 6 wells. Amazon has a variety of doughnut pans too, including 9 well pans. My recipe makes 6 doughnuts though.

The thing I like about baked doughnuts is it's a lot less effort and mess, for me anyway, than fried doughnuts.

[RiversideLen]

I use this one (hoping the link works) Chocolate frosting
It's a slight modification of a recipe I found in Prevention magazine. My modifications are I reduced the fat from 3 tablespoons to 2 and I use coffee instead of milk. Prevention's way of doing it is great too. And there have been times I used melted coconut oil as the fat, when I'm looking for that coconut pop.

[RiversideLen]

Let's talk about my doughnuts that I made last week. Some years ago I bought a doughnut pan from KAF and it came with a recipe, so that's the recipe I follow. I like to make them with KAF Whole Wheat Pastry flour and season it with cinnamon and nutmeg. I used to just dust them with confectioners sugar but more recently I have been making chocolate frosting. I find the frosted doughnuts more closely resemble traditional fried ones, plus they are more satisfying. I posted the recipe today.

• This reply was modified 9 years, 4 months ago by RiversideLen.
• This reply was modified 9 years, 4 months ago by RiversideLen.

[RiversideLen]

I made some bread rolls and baked doughnuts. The rolls are 40% WWW and I dusted off my kaiser roll stamp for them. I made chocolate frosting for the doughnuts and topped it off with coconut.

• This reply was modified 9 years, 4 months ago by RiversideLen.
• This reply was modified 9 years, 4 months ago by RiversideLen.

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[RiversideLen]

Yes Italiancook, a strip roast is the piece they would cut strip steaks from if steaks were desired.

[RiversideLen]

On Jan 1, I roasted a strip roast. I followed Cook's Country recommendation and roasted it at 250. I used a probe type thermometer and removed it when it reached 125, then tented it and let it come up to 135, which was my target. Perfection! The internal color was absolutely even throughout with no gray banding at the edge.

Today I wanted to try something a little different for a pizza, so I made a very simple mushroom tapenade. I rolled out the dough very thin, spread the tapenade over it, topped it with a light amount of mozzarella and baked it at 500 for 6 minutes. It was great. I have some tapenade left for tomorrow's pizza.

[RiversideLen]

I'm thinking dried mushrooms would add more depth of flavor than fresh.

[RiversideLen]

I've made veggie stock using celery, parsley, onion and carrots. It's decent, here's a link to recipe.

Veggie Stock

• This reply was modified 9 years, 4 months ago by RiversideLen.

[RiversideLen]

I agree, it sounds like the pans were too small.

[RiversideLen]

If I'm fearing an overflow, I put a half sheet baking pan lined with a sheet of parchment directly under the pan. The parchment can be reused if it doesn't get soiled.

[RiversideLen]

I used shortening, Nutiva, which is a combination of Palm and Coconut oils. The dough was crumbly but came together as I formed the cookies. I made them larger than the recipe calls for so I didn't get anywhere near the claimed 7 dozen. I added a teaspoon of Hazelnut Flavor since this cookie has a hazelnut theme. I'm not sure if my acorn shaping skills are spot on, I think not, but the cookies came out good. Really good flavor with the addition of the hazelnut flavoring. If I didn't have hazelnut flavoring I would definitely add some kind of flavor, vanilla if nothing else. For the fine ground hazelnuts, I used Hazelnut Flour from King Arthur.

In summary, I like these, I will make them again.

• This reply was modified 9 years, 4 months ago by RiversideLen.
• This reply was modified 9 years, 4 months ago by RiversideLen.

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[RiversideLen]

The Stollen is good but I think last years effort turned out better.

[RiversideLen]

Also made some cookies, Acorn Cookies from this site by janiebakes, Noel Nut Balls from Martha Stewart and Oatmeal Raisin cookies. For the Acorn cookies, I added a teaspoon of Hazelnut Flavor that I bought from The Spice House. That really gave it some good flavor, my brother thought it was butterscotch. After he said that I think he may be right, the hazelnut flavor does have butterscotch notes to it. Very nice though. The Noel Nut Balls call for a teaspoon of bourbon, pfft, I give it a tablespoon. The bourbon combines with the honey for a very nice flavor. For the oatmeal cookies, probably my favorite overall, I added a handful of dark and white chocolate chips.

I also made Stollen from Peter Reinhart's The Bread Baker's Apprentice.

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[RiversideLen]

First a made some bread, a small braided loaf, some sandwich buns and raisin cinnamon bread, all made from my oat/wheat recipe.

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