Bragging time. My 16 year old grandson ba
ked this cake(chocolate with peanut butter frosting) all by himself for his brother’s birthday.
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Wow, very impressive!
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I should explain that my grandson got a tarantula for his birthday and all that chocolate zigzagging represents a web.
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Very impressed by this.
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No knead sourdough bread. I left the dough ferment for 16hrs in the fridge. This is such an easy recipe.
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Baking folks: the nominations for Dish of the Quarter are on, and there are 2 baking items nominated so far (Savory Tarts and Quick Breads) if you’d like to participate:
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Real nice . I struggle with bread . Have to check this one out .
Making another batch of tollhouse cookies this weekend. Ive tried another recipe . It was OK . Its tollhouse back of the chocolate chip
bag recipe for me .
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I need some bread to go with tonight’s dinner. I was too lazy (and cheap) to go up to the grocery store, so I made my own.
I think this is called a “Boule”… Whatever it is, we have bread to go with dinner tonight.
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What recipe did you use?
Recently I made fresh herbs/garlic dinner rolls from Food & Wine and they were easy, came out perfectly on first try.
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It’s kind of a made up recipe… (trial and error)
(2) cups of warm water 100 - 105 (F)
(2) tablespoons of sugar (stir to dissolve sugar)
(3) teaspoons of yeast (mix slightly)
Let yeast bloom for about 5 minutes
(4) cups of flour
(3) teaspoons of salt
Mix and start to knead, add more flour if dough feels sticky. Knead about 15 minutes. Cover dough ball with olive oil, place in bowl, cover with plastic wrap, place in warm area of house for 1 hour. Punch dough ball down, knead slightly, re-cover with plastic wrap for 30-40 minutes.
Preheat oven to 450(F), put cast iron dutch oven in the oven to preheat. Remove HOT dutch oven from oven, be very careful not to burn yourself. Sprinkle small amount of corn meal in the bottom of dutch oven add a couple spritzes of water from clean trigger sprayer. Plop dough ball into hot dutch oven (again, be careful), cut slits in dough ball with scissors, spritz with more water (5-6 spritzes), sprinkle on “Everything Bagel” seasoning, (put oven mitts back on) replace dutch oven cover & place in oven (covered for 25 minutes), remove cover, bake another 20 minutes, check temperature with instant read thermometer, pull out at 190 (F). Carefully remove boule from dutch oven. Cut a small slice, slather with butter and enjoy. Invite significant other to taste a slice as well (while its hot), save rest for dinner.
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Wait, what? so you were too lazy (and cheap) to go up to the grocery store, so you spent three hours baking!?
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Someone was just talking about the baked Chex Mix and now I can’t find it!
My favorite is from Brown Eyed Baker: (it’s refusing to come up on my computer so here’s my copy)
3 cups Corn Chex cereal
3 cups Rice Chex cereal
3 cups Wheat Chex cereal
2 cups mixed nuts (I used roasted, unsalted from Trader Joe)
2 cups twisted pretzels
2 cups Goldfish (I used Rocket cheese crackers from Trader Joe)
1¾ sticks butter, melted (Microwave about 33 seconds at a time until butter melts then whisk in following ingredients)
4 Tablespoons Worcestershire sauce (use 6 T?)
2 teaspoons salt
2 teaspoons garlic powder
1 ½ teaspoons onion powder
½ teaspoon cayenne pepper
Dashes of Crystal Hot Sauce
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Preheat oven to 250 degrees F.
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In a large roasting pan, stir together the cereals, pretzels and nuts.
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In a small bowl, whisk together the melted butter, Worcestershire sauce, salt, garlic powder, onion powder and cayenne pepper and hot sauce. Drizzle evenly over the cereal mixture and, using clean hands, toss to combine, making sure that the mixture is evenly moistened.
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Bake for 1 hour, stirring every 15 minutes. Once cool, store in an airtight container at room temperature for up to 2 weeks. (better: 1 hour + 15 minutes)
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I think the only actual work was the kneading, the rest of the time I was relaxing and letting the yeast do the work.
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I felt so empowered when I learned to bake bread.
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I agree… It’s also kind of fun.
Hot bread tastes so good when it first comes out the oven. I let some butter soften a bit (prior to baking the bread), so when the bread is done, Sunshine and I can enjoy hot bread and butter.
At my local grocery store, a boule like the one I baked would probably be $5.00. Even the “day old” reduced bread is now $2-$3. I’m sure I made mine for less than 50 cents (including the electricity to bake it).
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Cake d‘Alsace from Aleksandra Krapanzano‘s Gateau, and as found on-line at Saveur here.
Today‘s version included a home-smoked cheddar, gruyere, crispy fried garden shallots, and even crispier bacon. I made a half recipe for two 5x3“ mini-loaves. When cool, I will pop these into the freezer, and then take at least one of them along with us for sustenance on a planned road trip closer to the holidays.
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I baked a whole lot of empanadas. I wanted to use a dough that wouldn’t be too rich because it’s very costly and also because very rich doughs aren’t great in empanadas imo. American and European recipes tend to go overly rich, but when you look at a lot of Latin American recipes the dough just isn’t that over the top.
I decided to try out Maricel Presilla’s dough from her big-bellied empanadas in Gran Cocina Latina and it’s mostly a very good dough, but a dough made with lard has trouble browning, particularly at her prescribed temperature of 375. To get some browning I had to go up to 450 and brush with a mixture of yolks and cream rather than just typical egg wash. Chilean empanadas are baked at similarly high temps and they are primarily made with lard, too.
I also tried out the dough from the Matilde’s empanadas recipe. This dough I just didn’t care for, though it’s certainly in line with Argentine empanadas. It’s very lean overall and meant to be rolled very thin as result. I like the pastry to factor in more when it comes to baked empanadas. It doesn’t taste bad really, but it’s cracker-like and I couldn’t help thinking it’s better suited to frying and there’s a good chance that in the establishment where these empanadas are made this dough is used for frying as well.
One thing I took away from it though is the milk powder called for. I wondered about it, but it was easy enough to figure out its purpose once I baked some of this dough. Being that it contains cornstarch, no sugar, and little fat, it also has little to help it brown, but thanks to milk powder, it browns very well.
Presilla’s dough needs the addition of milk powder. I think that would make it perfect. This dough has a bit over 20% fat and it’s all lard (or suet). So it’s fairly economical compared to some other doughs I make. I could use half the amount of lard and substitute with butter, too, but I have all butter doughs that might instead benefit from some lard to bring cost down.
One annoyance is the use of cups and Presilla providing no clue as to how much a cup of flour weighs in these recipes, particularly calling for multiple types of flour in these recipes that are only available in certain countries, so one has no reference. And if you look through recipes where she provides weights they’re all over the place. Her cups can be 4.5 oz, 4.75, 5, 5.5 oz based on the recipe. I picked a weight that seemed reasonable given the weight of lard.
Oh, and the liquid measurement is very annoying. Two eggs, plus a lot of water mixed, then added as needed. I calculated 30% liquid, which is what you would want in pie dough, which ends up at around 250 g. So two eggs would only require 150 additional grams of water. I did this the second time I made this dough and it was just right. The first time I basically wasted an egg because I mixed the eggs with her full amount of water and didn’t need all that liquid.
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Do none of these use egg wash or milk wash for browning?
When I made fatayer/sfiha a while back, I liked Ottolenghi’s dough recipe, though it resulted in a slightly puffier dough than the fatayer I was trying to copy. Samosa dough is unyeasted and might be an interesting comparison; flaky when fried.
They all use egg wash, but I had to switch to yolks and cream and increase the temperature significantly because lard does not brown like butter. Frankly Presilla has low temperatures for all empanadas, including Chilean empanadas de pino, which I’ve always baked and seen baked over 400°.
Fried empanadas are very cheap to produce since most people buy the discs and even making your own requires a simple dough with very little fat. Baked empanadas with their richer dough are hard to keep at a comparable price.
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Try a dough using white wine, olive oil, and milk. This will make 24:
3 1/2 cups flour
1/2 Tablespoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 cup milk
1/4 cup dry white wine
1/4 cup olive oil
1 egg
For gluten free sub a mix of 1/2 chebe cheese bread mix plus 1/2 gf flour mix for the flour.
Fill, Brush with egg/milk wash and bake at 350-375F.
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