[skeptic7]

Bread needs a certain amount of salt to toughen the gluten. Without salt the gluten is too expandable and will balloon out and then collapse. I've tried to cut back on salt, and find that 1 tsp/ 4 cups of flour is about as little as I feel comfortable using.

when I used packages of yeast, I always used the whole package. Now my yeast is in a plastic bag, tied shut, in a pint mason jar in the freezer.

[skeptic7]

I did my Cherry Pizza and it was great. I had added one tablespoon of honey to the pizza dough and put it in a cast iron frying pan. By the time I got back to it, it had fully risen so I dropped about a cup of whole milk ricotta cheese by the spoonful on it. I left an area around the rim free. I opened the jar of Morello cherries, found that it had been sweetened lightly and spooned the cherries into a bowl, leaving the liquid behind, drained the cherries again and started dropping them gently on the pizza. I stopped putting cherries on when I had a single layer of cherries. Baked this at 350 degrees for about 20-25 minutes until done.
Its great. It made a great midnight snack and is now making a very good breakfast. Not too sweet.

[skeptic7]

I remember making Date Newtons by hand once. Thats a cute story about Fig Newtons.

[skeptic7]

There is a nice blog post on KAF about using less yeast.
https://www.kingarthurflour.com/blog/2020/04/30/how-to-bake-bread-using-less-yeast

I like monitoring the time it takes the dough to rise in a relatively warm environment vs a cool room. Nice experiments. If it wasn't for the storage, it might be worth while building an incubator just for yeast dough. I like preferments and sponges of various types better -- I don't have to worry about delicate ingredients like eggs or milk spoiling.

[skeptic7]

Its going to be a slightly sweet bread dough, I hope for medium thick pan pizza not as sweet or as rich as a Danish, with ricotta cheese along the edges and the Cherries in the center, with the juices thickened and sweetened to a jammy consistency. I don't want juice to run off the edges. I think I'll put just a bit of cardamon in the cherries just to be wierd.

[skeptic7]

I thought about salty/sour candies and guessed correctly.

[skeptic7]

I miss martial arts and being able to foist extra baked goods on fellow participants. This is especially bad for the more calorie laden baked goods, I can eat breads by myself happily but really feel happier being able to share cookies and cakes and buns with other people. I'm trying to design a cherry pizza with canned Trader Joes cherries and ricotta cheese, but there won't be anyone to help me eat it, and to admire my creativity,

[skeptic7]

I'm thinking of changing some of my recipes around to adding an egg to get extra rise in the bread.

[skeptic7]

My English Muffins turned out well. I should be able to bake all whole wheat bread with the generic whole wheat flour, just being a little more careful with it. It felt as if it didn't rise quite as well as the KAF ww flour.

[skeptic7]

I missed this.

[skeptic7]

I've started a half recipe of English Muffins, using the whole wheat flour I bought from Giants. I wanted to see if I could make a 100% whole wheat bread using generic ww flour. So far this flour is coarser and has more large bran flakes than KAF flour. I threw away any bran flakes that would not pass through the sifter. I've had KAF also appear with more bran than I would like, but not in the last 2 years, and I would call Customer Service to complain when that happened.
Wish me luck.

Also NY Times had an article on focaccia -- it seems some people are decorating their focaccia with bits of vegetables and herbs to make floral pictures before baking. I'd post a link but its behind a firewall.

• This reply was modified 5 years, 6 months ago by skeptic7.

[skeptic7]

BakerAunt; I remember seeing the regular Pain Au Chocolat recipe on the King Arthur Flour site, but it doesn't seem to be there any longer. There is a recipe there but it calls for a Puff Pastry Dough, which I find indistinguishable from Croissant dough. There is a Brioche recipe in "Peter Reinharts's Whole Grain Breads" which I might use for inspiration. Clayton also has a Brioche recipe and a Petit Pain au Chocolat recipe that oddly enough calls for 1 1/2 lbs of brioche dough -- the odd thing is that the brioche dough recipe makes 2 1/2 lbs and 1 lbs of dough.

[skeptic7]

I've made variations of this a couple of times, its featured in the KAF 200 Anniversary Cookbook. Thats an interesting information about the aluminum foil. I wondered why somethings can't be stored in aluminum foil for a long time.

[skeptic7]

I did a basic cheese pizza yesterday with mozzarella and chedder cheese. It was very good.

I was looking for Pain au Chocolat recipes on the Internet today. I remember these as a brioche like bun with a stick of chocolate in the center. Most of the recipes I see are for chocolate croissants, which aren't the same thing.

I don't know if any of you read Anime Fanfiction, but I want to recommend one where the main character finds that he is not a genius baker. His first bread is a dismal flop, and so are the next several attempts. The POV character is a deadly genius ninja from a village that actively trains ninja and sends them on dangerous missions.
https://archiveofourown.org/works/17401478/chapters/40958717

[skeptic7]

Mike;
Your last bread looks like it has measles! What is the purpose of docking the dough? Do you think the flavor or the texture will change by tomorrow? I've notice that on some wheat breads, that breads which seem too soft are stiffer the next day, and crusts soften as they absorb moisture from the inside of the bread.

[Author]

Posts