could i use panko, or is panko not fine enough?
Not fine enough…you want it to be undetectable. You could try breaking the panko down a bit or sifting through a very fine sifter…this sounds like it’s getting to be too much work 
. I have dedicated coffee grinder for spices, etc. and I will make a small batch and keep in a ziplock bag as it can also be used to dust interior of crust if you think it necessary.
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Great Hot Tips!
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If as bakers you weigh the water in grams (instead of using cups measurements), what do you use for your standard mass in grams of a cup of water?
I’ve run into a couple of KA recipes recently that seem to use 226 or 227 g/cup. But most others (and my own calculation) say it should be 236.6 g*. Not huge, but almost a 5% difference and if making a very low- or very high-hydration product, I think it could have an effect.
[*] And of course you’ll see some folks rounding the 236.6 up to 240 g/cup.
Alice Medrich’s yogurt tart from Flavor Flours, but with the original crust from Pure Dessert. The yogurt is not as thick as labne, and especially the Greek yogurt I can usually get here, which I find rather loose. If I’d remembered I would have strained it. It tastes great, but it’s definitely a bit looser than when made with labne.
When making her crust here I find that I need to bump the flour to 150 grams rather than the 129 called for and that I typically use. The crust is a bit too greasy otherwise due to the absorption of the flour here. I also like to let it sit once in the tart pan before baking. It helps the crust to sort of set. This crust has always been one of my favorites and with these adjustments it bakes up beautifully, as before I had a bit of a problem getting it to bake up right with the flour here.
And some toasted milk financiers with a formula that I thought was a bit more buttery than I like. They’re just too rich for my liking.
@CCE I go with 227, but honestly most every recipe I follow for bread has either percentages or weight already included. I haven’t found issue with using that conversion., though.
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Baby Baguettes, from Erin Jeanne McDowell’s Savory Baking.
The recipe uses a pre-ferment – I subbed in 50 g. of unfed sourdough for flavor. Otherwise, I followed the recipe exactly for a half-batch of four small baguettes.
Erin’s process offers shortcuts to the making of an institutional baguette. While she can’t save you the anxiety of slashing room-temperature dough, she does offer alternatives to shaping and transfer of the baguettes, which are free-formed and proofed/baked on a sheet pan. No advanced shaping skills, couches or transfer peels required. I found them fun and relatively easy to make, and think her recipe rating of “difficult” here is undeserved. Baked with steam, the results were almost as good as the real deal, with far less of the angst.
Now that I have a visual on these, I’ll bake a full batch next time (tomorrow?) If I had a bigger baking stone, I would bake directly on a stone (using parchment and a pizza peel) and omit the sheet pan.
A side note: having made two out of two successful bakes from this book thus far, I’m encouraged to explore it more.
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After my recent (Betty Crocker) “frosting fail”, Sunshine remembered that her mother used to make frosting from scratch and she loved it. So she called her older sister and the sister said that the mother used Crisco in the frosting. So I did some digging and found a recipe for Crisco frosting. I used the recipe as more of a guide. I started out with some butter flavored Crisco, powdered sugar, cocoa powder and 1/2 teaspoon of milk and utilized my mixer to beat it all together. I stopped various times and had Sunshine taste it, (adding ingredients) until we got what she liked. This mixture needed to be just a touch smoother, but was not bad for a first attempt. I spread our “Crisco” frosting on a Martha Stewart chocolate dump cake and Sunshine was quite happy!!
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I do 240g. Never had a problem.
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I was voluntold to bake for an event for Mom this weekend. Couldn’t possibly decline.
ETA: wow, the bottom of that cake looks REALLY dark here. Bad lighting!
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I was inspired by @Stef_bakes to make the Everything No Knead bread. My cast iron Dutch oven is a bit bigger in diameter so my loaf is flatter, but it is delicious. I always seem to get a hard rather than crisp crust on the bottom with these recipes, but this one was better. Still a bit too crunchy and brown but worth shredding the roof of my mouth over. Now fortified to go shovel myself some snow tunnels to the front and back doors. https://www.kingarthurbaking.com/recipes/no-knead-everything-bread-recipe
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Looks great. Such a good bread. Easy to mix together. Im thinking of making it without the everything bagel sprinkle. Yes, we too got a huge amount of snow in Markham but now it is a nice sunny day.
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Looks great! What size Dutch oven did you use?
I’ve been dying to make Bon Appetit’s brown butter frosting made with toasted milk powder, but I have tons of egg whites, so I was planning on making white cake. I made a 3/4 batch of Stella Parks’ white cake, but while I was making it I decided I wanted to turn it into poppy seed cake. Frosted cakes are just not something I like making in large batches because I can only eat so much of them and I find most people who might buy from me don’t necessarily want frosted cakes either unless they specifically need a special occasion cake. So a 9x13 cake covered in frosting just didn’t appeal to me. Maybe I’ll make an 8x8 cake to try that frosting. And I can use a buttermilk cake or even a chocolate cake rather than a white cake. I added 3/8 cup of poppy seeds to the batter and that made for a nice amount.
Something I wanted to mention is I find it interesting how conservative people like Stella Parks and Kenji are when it comes to salt in book recipes vs online. For example, Kenji’s Peruvian roast chicken on Serious Eats was 4 tsp of kosher salt. In the book he calls for half that amount. There’s other instances, but that’s the one I remember off the top of my head.
Stella meanwhile calls for 2 tsp minimum for all the cakes that were originally published on the site. The lowest is the vanilla cake with 2 tsp. Her coconut cake and brown butter cake both call for more than that.
The vanilla cake has the same ratios as the white cake except that it calls for even more egg and a little more fat. So why less than half the amount of salt?
I upped the salt to 1.5% here, which is 5 grams for the 3/4 batch I made. If I decided to go with 2% salt that would be 6 grams (technically a bit more, but 6 is fine). I also reduced the sugar from 12 oz to 11. I’ve always liked this white cake, but more as a means to use up egg whites than on its own merits. Or when I made the apple cider variation, which is lovely. Well, this is easily my favorite version of this cake. With more salt the flavor is just much better, and I don’t miss the bit of sugar I took out. It makes for such a tasty poppy seed cake that I keep going back for another piece. Very moist and tender, and truly worth making again!
And on the savory side, I made Jamaican beef patties with rough puff. Temps lately are not rough puff friendly, though, so I don’t think I’ll be laminating again for a while.
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That looks like a good amount of poppy seeds! Hate when a recipe only calls for a tablespoon or two. Great looking beef patty too.
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Mine is 11”. Recipe calls for 9-10”. I might use parchment next time to try to keep the bottom crust from getting too dark, and keep it a bit more compact if I double layer.
Thanks! And yeah my favorite poppy seed cake calls for a whole cup of them, so I like a generous amount!
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Strawberry almond oats muffins from here.
I had strawberries needing to be used up and I liked the ingredient list.
They were good, though a little undersweet for me and soft and cakey rather than more dense, which is what I think of muffins as, despite me using almond flour for half the amount of flour listed.
The troops liked them though, which is a big win.
They were beautifully domed just as they came out of the oven, but deflated as they cooled.
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Kentucky butter cake, pomegranate glaze. For an event at mom’s church.
I don’t usually glaze the KBC but I wanted this one to have more visual appeal.
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It is indeed beautiful! And the glaze is so even and symmetric. Mine would have been uneven, more here and less, some drips higher than the other kind of thing.
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I have a big Crueset dutch oven which was too big for bread baking. Then i bought a Staub oval one which just wasnt right. Finally found one that suits me. Its an Amazon Basic 5 quart. Pre seasoned and its $48.00 canadian works great for me.
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