#stressbaking — Public Fediverse posts

Cob loaf. 500g flour, 2tsp ea {yeast, salt, sugar}, 1tbsp olive oil, 1/2 cup powdered milk. 1.25 cups warm water.

Mix warm water, yeast, salt sugar and 1/4 cup flour in a jug. Leave at least 15min. Overnight if you like for a pre-ferment (it’s called a Biga, sort of sourdough-lite). Put flour, milk powder and olive oil in a stand mixer. Add fermented yeast liquid and mix with a dough hook for 10 mins. You might need to add up to 100ml more water to get a slightly sticky dough.

Oil a large bowl and turn out into bowl to rise. The dough will double or more so choose a bigger bowl than that one. Cover with cling film. Leave 1hr at least. Two wouldn’t hurt. An air fryer on 40c will speed up the rise if yours isn’t broken like mine, what the heck does “E3” mean on an Aldi air fryer, anyway?

After rising time, preheat oven to 200C while you turn the dough out onto a floured surface and fold it a few times like you know what you’re doing and as if this will make any difference. Put it in a Dutch oven (a large covered oven dish, I use an aussie cast-iron “camp oven”). If you have two Dutch ovens, go double dutch—double the quantities and make two loaves. (Le crueset enameled iron pots are good for this too). Slash the dough three or four times with a razor or your sharpest knife. You should sharpen that knife more often, eh? Sprinkle it with something. Dukkah, Sesame seeds, herbs, wotevs. I used Nigella seeds here. Leave to re-rise 15-20 min while the oven heats up.

When the oven is hot, cover and bake 20 mins. Remove cover, rotate the pot 180º and bake another 20-30 mins. Look for a hollow sound when you knock the top of the loaf, if it doesn’t look and feel divine, give it another ten.

Remove, allow to cool in pot for as long as you can resist slathering it with butter. #Recipe #StressBaking

#MakeShitMonday, #baking edition!

@mbroome and I have been experimenting with pumpkin-guts scones from one of my favorite cookbooks, [Cooking with Scraps](https://bookshop.org/p/books/cooking-with-scraps-turn-your-peels-cores-rinds-and-stems-into-delicious-meals-lindsay-jean-hard/10353699).

For our first attempt, a couple weeks ago, we used squash guts; @mbroome cut the butter into the flour by hand, which was time-consuming and tedious. But they turned out really well!

Second attempt - we used actual pumpkin guts (much wetter); cut the butter into the flour, and then blended in the cooked pumpkin guts, in our Cuisinart (much faster); and accidentally made pumpkin-guts cookies - not scones. Still delicious, but they spread out instead rather than retaining their shape. Super frustrating... 😣

After consulting with more-experienced baker friends, we regrouped and tried a few tweaks:
~ draining the pumpkin guts on paper towels to reduce the moisture content
~ increasing the flour by about 10%
~ reducing our processing time in the Cuisinart to leave larger chunks of frozen butter
~ making sure the cooked pumpkin guts were fully chilled before blending them in with the dry ingredients
~ blending the pumpkin guts into the flour+butter in our KitchenAid mixer

Aaaand... We over-rotated on the dryness - the initial result was a crumbly mess. 🙄 @mbroome added a few tablespoons of icewater to make the dough come together, remixed it by hand - and at least the resulting scones were well-formed and delicious! 😋

We have one more portion of the guts from that pumpkin, so I'm hoping that backing off the flour to the original weight - but keeping all our other tweaks - does the trick. (Also, we're going back to doing the final blending by hand, rather than in the KitchenAid, since it didn't really improve over hand blending and just made more washing-up. Sometimes that shiny kitchen tool just doesn't add value after all...) Hopefully we'll have time to find out this week!

@cannibal
#StressBaking

#baking in winter at high altitude means that my kitchen is very dry and there is no such thing as "a warm spot" for resting dough. Enter "the frankenbread" - or my DIY proofing setup.

It's a small plate and an electric reptile warming pad / heater stuck to it. I put a trivet over it with my dough and it's just enough heat to warm the dough and nowhere near enough to cook or scorch anything.

Covering the bowl helps retain a bit of heat, but more importantly moisture. Saran wrap or reusable stretch covers with enough of a gap to make sure some gas can escape keeps it from drying out. This also works well with a banneton or anything else that needs a little help in the winter.

Commercial proofing boxes are great if you have the space and budget for them, but this has been my "go to" method for at least ten years now.

#StressBaking #cooking

My first attempt at a sourdough kouign-amann was very tasty.
Still, I will want to practice this more and eat it again.

More about this kind of pastry:
https://derivativedishes.com/kouign-amann/

#sourdough #stressbaking

This morning was stressful, but baking afterwards was SUCH a great decision. (a) I felt so much less stressed by the time I finished, and (b) now the house is smelling AMAZING as a delicious apple cake rises in the oven!

https://iambaker.net/apple-fritter-bread/#wprm-recipe-container-91225

#baking #StressBaking #cake

And if you need cookies, may you have cookies. #StressBaking

I want to make a sourdough starter, but I don’t know if I’m ready for the commitment. #StressBaking