My niece wanted cupcakes yesterday so we made these, from Dorie’s From my Home to Yours, I think. Standard butter/icing sugar frosting, because it was mainly about the food colouring. Got a picture before the sprinkle explosion. Cupcakes were tasty—batter smelled too chocolatey for us, but cakes weren’t.
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Flying Biscuit Café’s Flying Biscuits by Nathalie Dupree in Atlanta Magazine.
I followed the recipe closely, although used a pastry cutter instead of my fingers. I made a 1/3 batch for four 2.5” x 1/2"tall biscuits (before baking): three from the first-cut, the fourth from scrap. I chilled the unbaked biscuits in the freezer for 5 minutes before baking. My upper oven runs slow, so I upped the temp to 375 degrees. The bake took about 28 minutes to 205 degrees and lightly golden on top, although I doubled the sheet pan at the 20-minute mark as the bottoms were nicely browned at that point.
Pretty much the quintessential biscuit – not overly buttery, and both flaky and crumbly at the same time. If I had spare calories in the bank, I’d be tempted to up both the diameter and the height of the biscuits, as I think this recipe would work to make an impressive big biscuit.
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Wow, NINE bananas! Curious, was that (banana) pretty much the sum of liquid content and maybe sugar as well?
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Question for bakers. I’m making this baguette dough today but I want to use the bread for paninis. So I want it to be taller than you’d usually get from traditional baguette shaping.
Has anyone tried making regular baguette dough but then cooking in a loaf pan? A solid loaf pan, I mean, to force height of the loaf, not the holey-moley perforated sine-wave loaf pans that some folks use for baguettes.
I’ve got a 16x4.5 inch loaf pan that I’m thinking to try making the entire recipe linked above in (recipe is for 4 smallish baguettes).
If anyone’s tried baguettes in loaf pan before (I know, crazy idea, why would one want to?), did it work or was it a total failure, and/or any watch-outs or tips re altering cook temp from recommended?
Many thanks if anyone’s got thoughts on this.
Yes, no further liquid except 2 eggs and a little glug of vanilla. I used 2 cups flour one cup brown sugar and a bit of baking powder, salt and cinnamon, equal parts choc chips and hemp hearts. I buttered and then floured the pan. It got a nice crust. Thanks for reaching out - I’m an infrequent baker but this one was a success, I think the carmelization of the sugar and bananas really worked well.
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You should have no problem baking in a loaf pan. I’ve had pan de mie that was fairly lean compared to a lot of the rich, milky bread that everyone seems to make now. I could swear some of those breads contained no dairy whatsoever.
Chain Baker in his videos where he’s testing different things often bakes simple lean doughs in loaf pans and they bake up just fine.
Looking at Brian’s recipe his hydration is pretty high, though. I’d probably lower it for a more regular crumb and tighter shaping. Standard baguette hydration is usually under 70%.
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Today I’m going to try, key word here is try, to make some beignets for dinner dessert. I know they’re fried and not baked, but does proofing them and keeping them warm in the oven afterwards count for ‘baking’? That is IF I have enough time after prepping the big, extravagent fat Tuesday meal. Another great freezer clearing venture. We’re praying the electricity holds out; we’re in for a doozy winter storm, again. I am a lifetime Girl Scout, so if need be, the box oven and gas grill will be put into use. Fresh snow makes for nice sippy drinks. Pictures may follow. Laissez les bons temps rouler 
! Be safe out there!
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Thanks for comments and suggestions. I’ll check chain baker’s tests of pan breads. I made his biga-based pizza dough Sunday night (I think it was) and it was the best crust my son and I had ever had, bar none.
But maybe I’m calculating Brian’s hydration wrong? I’m getting 70.9% hydration [1] (and I bounced his recipe off of KA’s and they are also very similar, 70.8%). Or is an extra 1-2 percent enough to matter?
Forgive my unfamiliarity; I’ve been baking bread for decades but always just followed the recipes.
I’ve only recently starting to pay attention to hydration level - usually as a way to figure out, given a conflict between stated amount of grams-vs-cups, which way I should follow. (I’m finding nearly always that the gram statement is correct and the mismatch is just a sloppy conversion to cups.)
[1] Or 69.6% if the malt powder counts as flour - not sure how to factor items like a little dab of malt powder or malt flour, I’m guessing they’d count as dry. Gluten, too, for bagel recipes that have you add 20 g gluten?
Edit - oh, yeah, I already mentioned that Chain Baker’s pizza crust above.
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oh wait…there was butter too, a cold stick i cut up and mixed in, that’s all…take care
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A lot of baguettes now are in the 70% range hydration, but classically 65%-68% was considered standard, and for a loaf I would think that percentage would be better for a more regular crumb. Since you’re experimenting though, maybe trying the 70% hydration would be good.
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Thanks again. I’ve made this recipe before (as the 4 individual baguettes, I mean) and it is pretty wet and a bit hard to handle, up until the final shaping by which point it’s smoother and easier to deal with. Maybe I’ll cut 15 g out of the water and try it at 68%.
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Here we go, results from experiment (recap, wanted baguette flavor in a loaf-style bread):
Nearly completely risen:
It just barely breached the top. I’d hoped for a bit higher (so I could score better) but I’m pretty happy with it. I’m glad @Shellybean mentioned Chain Baker’s loaf pan experiments because I also ran into one video where he showed you how to decide how much total dough you need for a given pan. I had blithely assumed Brian Lagerstrom’s recipe for 4 baguette loaves would be enough. I was way off - I made 1.5X his recipe and still, it was just barely enough for this pan. I also did reduce hydration to about 68% and it was a lot easier from a handling standpoint.
Full loaf (16 inches) and as-cut (we ate about half of it):
The dough used a 12-hour preferment sponge and about 3.5 hours total proof/rest time among several steps. Flavor is great! Crumb is nothing like baguette, being much closer knit. But the stuff toasts beautifully, very crispy (almost crunchy) on the surface but still creamy tender inside.
Also made some panini (mentioned on “Dinner?” thread).
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Cream scones with 25% whole wheat flour, brown sugar, oats, walnuts, currants and cinnamon. I whipped the cream, and incorporated honey and vanilla.
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The crumb really does look very creamy. That’s the kind of bread I like for a grilled cheese. While I won’t turn down an enriched sandwich bread grilled cheese, I love the crunch you get from a leaner bread.
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Thank you for sharing your experience with this. Looking great!
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Thanks and welcome. I forgot to mention above that to get the crust more on par with baguette (and less like loaf-pan loaves), I turned it out of the pan around 12 minutes then eggwashed the whole thing quickly and stuck it back in the oven on a sheet pan to finish baking another 18 or so minutes. And I had a big skillet in the bottom steaming water.
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A chocolate pie recipe from KICA that is very simple and even for someone like me who doesn’t like this sort of thing normally, very delicious. I don’t have a 16x4 mold, so I used a smaller one I had and a one of my taller individual tart rings. I still had leftover batter which I baked in a ramekin, so that’s how I know how delicious these are.
They’re basically chocolate soufflé tarts, but the whole eggs are whipped and they use Maria cookies for the crust. I was a bit surprised that Maria cookies are a thing over in Ukraine apparently.
They dust them with cocoa powder, but I think I’m going to opt for some powdered sugar instead.
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gorgeous! and yum!!
sincerely,
a lurking low-carb baker
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