A few commenters expressed interest in my flour mill, on my panettone post, so I decided to write up my process for making my regular (every other) weekend rye sourdough. I get my whole rye berries and wheat berries from Oak Manor Farms. They claim to be “Canada’s original organic flour mill.” All I know is that I can get 10kg of hard wheat berries there, for a little over $20. It may not be as cheap as flour, but it’s fresh and local (which are both far more important to me than organic, personally). It also makes beautiful bread.
To me, a gingersnap is dark in colour, molasses-y, gingery, and coated in sugar. One of my baking buddies posted a picture of this week’s assignment a few days early, and I was surprised to see something very… pale. Not that there’s anything wrong with pale – I’m married to a ‘ginger,’ after all – it was just unexpected. Apparently, in the UK, a gingersnap is made with melted butter & golden syrup, and caster sugar or golden baker’s sugar? No molasses, no brown sugar. Since I had no idea what either caster sugar or golden baker’s sugar were, I poked around both the regular baking aisle, plus the organic section (where I normally find another Rose favourite, muscovado sugar), and did a little Google search right there in the grocery store, and settled on this:
Golden cane sugar
It looked a little coarse, compared to what was described on the Interwebs, but I figured I could always grind finer it in my food processor… which I did, but it didn’t really get all that fine, and, while I have nothing to compare it to, I think it turned out just “fine” anyway. 😉
There was a lot of angst in our baking group about this week’s recipe from The Baking Bible. I’ve been baking bread at least every other week for the last couple of years, so bread honestly doesn’t scare me. In my adult life, I think I’ve only had a real disaster once with bread, when I left the yeast out. Did that a few times with my parents’ bread machine as a kid, too. This one’s a special sort of bread – lots of butter, lots of egg yolks, and candied/dried fruit. In my post this week, alongside the pictures for the panettone, you’ll see a few process pictures of my rye sourdough, which I was working on at the same time.
Last weekend, when I tallied up the sweets in the house, I made a decision about this week’s recipe from The Baking Bible bake-through. I eat lunch with some of my favourite people that I work, every Thursday. It started as a summer BBQ thing, many years ago, since we’re fortunate enough to have a patio and a grill available for employee use. In the summer months, we pay in a certain amount a month, and someone picks up food for the grill and gets reimbursed from the pool. A couple of years ago, we decided to try a potluck version in the winter – we rotate through main course slow cooker meals, and try to keep it relatively equitable. This week, my contribution was going to be dessert.
Me: Yeah, if you don’t give me good feedback, you won’t get quoted on my blog.
Matt: I don’t want to be quoted on your blog. It’s good.
[Me, in my head: Too bad, Matt!]
Doug followed this up with gesturing to the pie with his fork, and saying something along the lines of: Normally, I mean, other than something like lemon meringue pie, the filling just all spills out, and the top collapses. This is actually full of fruit. It’s a nice consistency.
On Saturday morning, I looked at my counter, where you can find: a tin of holiday treats and a bag of chocolates from my friends, a tin of Chocolate Chip Cookies (from The Baking Bible), not one, but TWO gingerbread houses, leftover candy from decorating gingerbread houses, and two boxes of handmade truffles. In the freezer, there are still two pieces of frozen pecan pie, and the fridge had a couple of pieces of fruitcake and a couple of pieces of cheesecake. So, what’s a girl to do, when she’s participating in a bake-through with friends from all over the world? Bake anyway, and plan on taking the bulk of it to work. So, that’s what I did/will do tomorrow.
I’ve previously mentioned my friend/coworker, Gilad, who won the charity auction, where I offered up one of the Baking Bible bake-along desserts each month. It may have occurred to you that, for the final auction to reach $600, there had to be at least one other coworker bidding against him. That someone was Doug – who is known in some circles as the perpetual winner of the New Dundee Women’s Institute pie of the month auction, and I’m pretty sure he had planned on winning this one, too. This past weekend, we had Doug & his wife over for dinner (meatloaf in a cheddar cheese crust, inspired by the recipe in the Pastry Bible), and as a local authority on pies, he offered his feedback on the frozen pecan tart. 😉 Read on, to see what he had to say. Continue reading “Frozen Pecan Tart”→
On Saturday afternoon, when I pulled the first batch of this week’s Baking Bible recipe out of the oven, I thought, “That can’t be right.” While the first batch cooled, so that I could shape the next batch, out of habit, I grabbed my phone to browse Facebook, while I waited. Oh, look! Somebody’s posted in the “Rose’s Alpha Bakers” FB group. I tap it, read the post, and think, “Huh, at least I’m not alone!” The cookies, according to the recipe, are supposed to be light, crisp, and airy. Mine were… crisp, flat, and full of holes.
It turns out I’m bad at remembering to post, until I go to get myself a snack and think “Oh, right, I’m supposed to blog about these.” I don’t remember what I thought about these cookies the first time around, but I do remember baking them as part of testing recipes for The Baking Bible. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if the Lekvar (apricot puree, more or less) that I have in the fridge is from when I was testing recipes. This week, the “alpha” bakers were working on The Ischler. Apparently, this is a cookie that is normally dipped in chocolate, but Rose’s take has an equal amount of chocolate in every bite. You can find the recipe on the blog that Rose has linked to, here.
I decided to make mine star-shaped, for more Christmassyness (yes, that’s a word, now).
Dried fruitcake? No, dried fruit… cake. I don’t typically like fruitcake. I like dried fruit, though! Actually, one of the two cakes that I made this weekend is going out to my friend and co-worker, Gilad, who donated a significant sum of money to the PTC Movember team in support of men’s health programs, in exchange for one surprise dessert a month, selected & baked by yours truly, from The Baking Bible. I chose this one for Gilad this month, because I happen to know he has a taste for cranberries, apricots, and apples, and isn’t a big fan of things that are super-sweet or covered in frosting, so this seemed like a good choice.
I’m back on the bake-along bandwagon! This time around, Rose’s ‘Alpha’ Bakers are starting off with a bang – we’re baking Kouigns Amann, which are the recipe that made the cover of The Baking Bible. These are a laminated pastry, which means they’re made with thin layers of dough and fat – in this case, bread dough and butter. Think croissant, but with some sugar in the mix. In other words, they’re delicious. I made these once before, as part of the group that helped test some of the recipes, but I couldn’t blog about them at that time, under a strict non-disclosure agreement!
Oh, and I apologize for the lousy pictures in this post. I think it’s going to take me a bit to get back into the swing of things with the bake-along blogging. I did my photography today with my phone’s camera, which is usually pretty decent, but I wasn’t paying enough attention and ended up with several blurry shots. Continue reading “Kouigns Amann”→
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