East Bay SOUR CHERRY ALERT ! By way of follow up to the July baking discussion, Monterey Market in Berkeley had sour cherries for $8.99 a pound today!
5 Likes
As little as possible. The A/C runs 24 hours a day.
1 Like
Thank you! Scored some, which will probably be pitted and frozen in the immediate, but will likely become the filling for a small pie. My mother (a native New Yorker who’s now spent most of her life in the Bay Area) will be thrilled.
5 Likes
ATK’s blueberry cornbread (apologies in advance for the paywall - we recently have re-joined).
While I would call this more a corn-cake than a corn-bread, it was delicious! I made a half-recipe in a 6” loose-bottom pan. It domed over the rim, but no mushrooming or spilling. Will make again.
12 Likes
oh, the reviews of this are glowing. i’m in.
I dusted the blueberries with a teaspoon of the flour mixture before folding in, and saved just a few berries to sprinkle on top. Otherwise, by the book. It was terrific.
1 Like
No, I’m not a big fan of English muffins - vastly prefer regular toast. But other family members love them, so when they are going to be around I would.
Blueberry brunch cake adapted from several sources. This is a very thick batter which has you make a slight depression in the center to raise the edge up to a 1/4”. The berries are then distributed in the center, this originally had poppyseeds in the batter for crunch, not a big fan, so added almonds around the edge instead.
NYT , RLB, Pissbury bake-off winner 1990, the NYT and Pillsbury call for the baking soda at 1/2 t, RLB at 1/4t , I compromised and left an inquiry at RLB.
For the berries, I used blueberries, a few halved cherries and raspberries.
The cake is properly called “Blueberry Poppyseed Brunch Cake”, RLB recommends waiting a day to eat the cake, I’ll be cutting into when it cools. The bottom of the cake is as brown as the sides, RLB measured 210* internal, I did the same as many NYT comments complained about “soggy bottom”…oh the horror!
ETA 6X2” LB pan
13 Likes
Not really baking per se but I’ve used this KA gluten free pizza dough mix 3 or 4 times now for my daughter and once when a gluten free sister was visiting. Finally remembered to take a photo.
My sister and daughter both say it’s the best they’ve ever had. She decided on margherita style pizza
9 Likes
Thanks for posting. I purchased some of the KF GF pizza flour to try it out (I’d heard good things about it). I haven’t gotten to it yet, but your results look terrific.
1 Like
I made them too thin. Next time I’ll do better.
Thanks. It’s weird to work with because hydration level is very high but it sets up ok in the end. Still pretty wet when you form so you can’t toss it, you just put it on parchment and sort of spread it into a round as best you can, and try to leave a bit thicker on the perimeter.
I might try rolling between two parchments next time (top one oiled) the roll the perimeter to thicken and see how that goes.
1 Like
This morning I toasted some slices of the leftover blueberry cornbread on a very lightly greased griddle - excellent!
2 Likes
I’ve always used Michael Ruhlman’s English muffin recipe.
It doesn’t require rolling.
I don’t use oil in the pan. I put a handful of cornmeal in the pan. I use fresh cornmeal for each batch.
I use egg molds to shape them.
At one point the recipe was removed from ruhlman.com. I emailed asking that he repost it. He apologized for taking it down, emailed me the recipe so I wouldn’t have to wait for it to be reposted and reposted it.
5 Likes
This looks incredible. @truman, have you seen this?
1 Like
I realize this is generally unclear and also has a typo contributing. What I meant was, once I get the dough generally rolled out to desired diameter, then I would roll up or fold in the edges to make them thicker.
@LulusMom1 - Thanks! My sister took her first piece and just sat there squishing the puffy edge between finger and thumb, watching it spring back into shape just like regular flour dough. She was so fascinated by it that she had me take a short video of it to send to her husband with the label, “I can’t believe this is gluten free!”.
4 Likes
His looks like a good recipe, as I don’t find English muffins that can be easily shaped either by rolling out and cutting, or by rounding by hand produce the correct texture, which requires a very wet dough that borders on batter. This is why I like Peter Reinhart’s version in Artisan Breads Every Day and Stella Parks’ Bravetart recipe (her SE one is very good as well, but the amount of honey she calls for is a lot and very noticeable— reduced the muffins taste great). Stella’s are rustic blobs that I prefer to use a scoop for and plopping them on cornmeal. Reinhart’s are basically batter that gets cooked in rings.
King Arthur has this recipe with a wet dough and you can really see a difference in the crumb between it and some of their other recipes for English muffins which have a stiff enough dough to shape:
3 Likes
I hadn’t, thanks for tagging me!
@CCE is this the product you used? https://shop.kingarthurbaking.com/items/gluten-free-bread-and-pizza-mix
I haven’t tried it but the Bob’s GF pizza crust mix… well, let’s just say I would have rather eaten the packaging. I’ve been trying to find a reliable recipe and it’s HARD.
2 Likes
Hi Mara. The one you posted differs, it is primarily rice flour then tapioca and tater starches.
Here below is the one I’ve been using - also if you didn’t see my comments above about working with it you may want to check that, too.
The main ingredient is “Gluten Free Wheat Starch” which they state has been processed to meet FDA requirements for GF food. My sister had some concern about that (despite knowing that my more-sensitive daughter had eaten it with no problem). Still, if it is a concern you might try a half-recipe (single ~ 10-inch pie) and maybe only eat one slice as a test.
Full ingredients listed below in case you are sensitive to any of them.
The nice thing about this one vs the one you posted (besides it’s out of stock) is the Bread/Pizza mix says it only makes 2 pies whereas this one should get me a (scant) 8 pies, with the price differential being $8 vs $13
Full ingredients:
GF wheat starch, corn starch, sorghum flour, cellulose/psyllium fiber blend, inactive yeast (I believe this is only for a more yeasty flavor, you do add yeast when mixing as well), and xanthan gum.
Another KA GF product that I’ve had some middling success with in pizza is their GF Bread Flour. I need to play around with it a bit more to get it just right. But when I found the direct pizza dough product I quit trying, given they are the same price at my local grocery. Still, if you can’t find the pizza product, the bread flour can be used. This one also relies heavily on that GF wheat starch, adds some pea protein and has more of the c/p fiber blend than sorghum flour. They say it’s a direct drop-in for bread recipes, except that you need to bump the hydration by 60-90 grams water per 120 g flour used. Oh, and it seems to rise a lot faster than regular bread flour.
Edit to add:
We tried Bob’s first GF “1-for-1” and it was horrid. Number 1 ingredient was garbanzo flour, which should have tipped me off that it wasn’t suited for anything but biscuits (because the baking powder helps mask the flavor). I’ve had a more recent Bob’s that was okay, but we used it up and I stupidly forgot to write down which one it was before I threw away the bag.
Still, I’m really happy with the KA stuff. We’ve got yet a third bag, their “measure for measure” which is intended for sweets (not yeasted products) and my daughter made a really lovely white cake with it. I couldn’t even tell it was GF. This product is different than their GF “AP” flour but I’m not positive of the details. I don’t know if we’ve ever used the GF AP or not.
1 Like
