We have a new oven so I’m taking baby steps as this one stays up to temp and doesnt randomly turn off during a cook tome. I made beer bread with old KA self rising flour and new baking powder and a bottle of Stella Artois left from a few summers ago. I melted a stick of margarine and poured it over the batter before baking.
Crunchy on the outside and a nice crumb and flavor.
Next up was a faking recipe with buns from refrigerated tubes of cinnamon buns quartered and dipped in egg, cinnamon and cream bath. Baked in a 9 x12 buttered pan for 35 minutes. I sprinkled chopped nuts directed but would have preferred raisins or dried cranberries.
It made a nice addition to a morning pot luck.
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Sorry it cracked. But then it’s your first one, so at least you got it out of the way.
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Latest sourdough batch. A variation based on the ‘Perfect Loaf’.
Recipe:
• 90% KA bread flour
• 10% whole wheat flour
• 80% water
• 2% salt
• 6% melted butter (unsalted)
• 17% mature liquid levain
Gave the flour and water about an hour autolyse while the levain got up to speed. Mixed in levain and gave it 20 min. Then added salt and melted butter. Stretch and folds for the first 2 hours then bulk til 50% rise.
Bake @ 500F in Dutch oven for 20 min. Lower heat to 450 for 15. Then lid off for only the last 5-10 min (depending on how dark you want your crust)
Adding just that little bit of butter makes the crust crisp and thin and much less thick and chewy. This was the first time tried adding it to my usual procedure.
I’m very pleased with the results.
Thanks to @Shellybean (HO) and @Nemroz (FTC) for mentioning using fat to thin out the crusts.
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Oh the places that loaf will go! Beautiful!
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It has been (thus far) eaten with a few cubes of Beemster XO aged Gouda, some of the ‘Rolling Green’ goat cheese (chives) from the Surfing Goat dairy in Hawaii (yay delicious souvenirs!) and made a damn fine roast beef sandwich with havarti and horseradish.
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Stella Parks’ cheesecake; thanks @Shellybean for the pointer to this recipe. I am pretty sure this is my first cheesecake.
I made this in a 9" springform, lined with foil as the instructions note. A couple of notes:
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Taste and texture were exactly what I was looking for. The graham cracker crust is kind of forgettable; I don’t care enough about it to tinker, except I might use Biscoff cookies next time.
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Had quite a bit of leftover batter, which was annoying. I had planned to make a second cheesecake anyway, so I saved the leftover batter overnight, then made an additional 1/3 recipe and baked the second cake the following day in a much smaller pan (6" I think.)
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Speaking of leftover batter, I wasn’t sure how full to fill the pan, so I probably could’ve gotten a slightly taller cheesecake.
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I followed the multi-step timed baking phases closely, but still overbaked it, which is funny because my oven is so not hot. It got brown fast, and also cracked a little. I don’t actually care about the crack, visually, to be honest.
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I didn’t have the orange flower water so I left it out.
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Damn this was good.
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I am not a cheesecake person but I must compliment your photography and staging. The berry syrup dripping down the slice just so and pooled in front is pretty damned sexy.
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Thank you. I made that berry sauce when berries were in season and it was a great way to put it to use 
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I’m glad it was a success overall. The color is beautiful and the berries look great with it!
For crust you can increase the butter and bake it if you prefer, but for me I prefer other cookies (like Maria) to graham crackers, or a homemade cookie crust. Try the CI recipe’s crust which combines graham crackers with flour if you like. My only issue with it is I thought a little less butter was better. That recipe’s method of baking at high temp at the end might work better for you. But you can also just skip the high temp altogether, too. Low temp bake makes it extremely difficult to have cracks.
I’ve never had leftover batter but my pan might be taller than yours. You can fill it up pretty high without worry. And if you’re really worried you can line with a parchment collar for when it puffs up, as it will sink back down later.
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“increase the butter and bake it”? Do you mean parbake the crust first?
Yes, it can give you a crisper crust if you prefer.
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Two daughters came home from college this weekend. Daughter 2 comes home most weekends and makes herself 10-12 bagels to take back to school (she graciously leaves 3 or 4 here for us). She has a kitchen apartment but the oven temp isn’t very reliable and has no standmixer there, so she prefers to come home for them. I think this may be a repost pic, but representative of what she normally makes.
She also made some banana/cinnamon muffins to share with her grandparents, who are a bit laid up.
And (not baking) she made some gawdawful sounding to me, but (surprise!) turned-out-tasty sweet chocolate hummus made from cannellini beans, cocoa, and maple syrup.
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Those are gorgeous bagels! Do you know what recipe she uses?
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Thanks. I had to dig a bit as she now goes from memory. I started her off on this one (below) several years ago. The author has changed it up some from time to time based on comments, but it’s still pretty close to the original. The things I remember for certain that have changed (that we still stick with the old version on) are using 1 Tbs kosher salt (~ 15 grams) and 1 Tbs malt powder, rather than the now called for 2 tsp each. Mostly it’s because it’s easy to remember as “everything added is 1 Tbs”, I guess.
Because she’s short on time during the school year, she uses the “one-day” method for the most part. In the summer or over Christmas break, she’ll do the overnight method (less yeast, less water). Sometimes we do toppings but most often not.
Generally it turns out really good but sometimes the chew is a bit “bready” rather than the more dense pull you want from a bagel. I don’t know what causes the differences, though, given she does it the same every time. Maybe just differences in proofing temps, as our kitchen has a pretty wide variation? Not sure.
The 1-day version is right about 90 minutes, all in and start to finish.
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A sudden craving struck last night about 6pm for no good reason: Jewish deli sprinkle cookies.
I poked around online, and most of the recipes are pretty similar. I picked this one:
They’re easy enough but the dough is REALLY soft, even after an hour in the fridge. The recipe called for 40g balls, but those would have been the size of big ol’ sugar cookies, which isn’t what I was looking for. These were about 25g and still bigger than what I wanted.
I know to make these authentically Jewish deli style, I should be using margarine, (or shortening, or, for real old school cred, schmaltz) but I only had butter on hand.
They scratch the itch, but at 15 min I think they’re slightly overbaked. They’re also not quite as tender and crumbly as I’d like, though I took pains to mix in the dry into the wet by hand so as to not overbeat. Maybe margarine instead of butter? Also another tsp of vanilla wouldn’t go amiss
If anyone has tips for the kind of thing I’m looking for, advice is welcome.
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Can’t find the recipe I had for these but if I recall, cream cheese was the fat in the ones I made decades ago and they came out perfect; good crumb and texture and the recipe made like 60 small cookies. Hope that helps…
I found one w/ cream cheese, and I’ll certainly give that a try. But it still wouldn’t be what’s used in Jewish bakeries. Jews can’t use lard (obv.) and we wouldn’t want to use beef tallow or butter, since strict kashrut laws mean you can’t have meat and dairy from the same animal in the meal. Shortening or margarine (or, traditionally, chicken fat) was often used for baked goods so they would be ‘all purpose’.
I also wonder if I should be trying to pipe the dough, or use one of those cookie guns, so might get something like this:
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A shot in the dark based upon a pistachio shortbread I make: try working with cold ingredients.
The dough was already chilled over an hour in the fridge. Even cold, 2 cups of flour + 1/4 cup oil is gonna be a SOFT dough, no matter how chilled it is.
@MunchkinRedux you inspired me! This cake was totally fantastic. I did use the crème fraîche glaze and loved it so much!
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