cakewalk

I'll echo everyone else, this was a great thread. That olive bread is beautiful. I don't usually get lift like that withy my sourdough, especially if something is added into it. Well, try try again. Thanks.

I agree, I think it needs further definition in order to be accurate and useful. It reminds me of cookbooks that offer recipes for full, beautiful meals "in under ten minutes" and then the list of ingredients includes things like "1 cup diced onion" and "1/2 cup diced celery" without taking into account the time needed to prep those vegetables. Soups are always a good option for less expensive meals, but if you're adding fresh herbs I think your budget has just tipped in the wrong direction. What kind of pantry are you assuming? A recipe that calls for a quart of chicken stock is making an assumption that might be contrary to the purpose of the cookbook.

Tackle a cake. If it doesn't turn out so hot, use it in a trifle. (Then tackle another cake.)

I grate a lot of ginger in the food processor, then I put it in a ziplock bag and flatten it out, and I throw that in the freezer. When I need some grated ginger I just snap off a piece and let it defrost. It's the lazy lady's way of always having ginger around.

If you've never baked a cake before, I suggest you first find a basic cake recipe and bake that. See what happens when you cream butter and sugar together. Then add the eggs, and note what it means to fully incorporate. Whisk your dries together and then slowly add it to the butter/sugar/egg mixture. Add milk or buttermilk or whatever alternately with the flour. Pour it into a pan and bake it. Watch what happens, and tell us. Then come back for lesson #2.

When it gets really hot in New York I fry my eggs on the sidewalk.

Lovely photo. Yes, I think you're on the mark about the over proving.

Hmmm. I think sourdough just doesn't like the confinement of a loaf pan. It wants to be free. I swear it shrank! The pan went into a 450F oven after proofing in the Pullman pan for about four hours, then I lowered it to 425. It proofed beautifully, rose to about 3/4 the height of the pan, looked really good. I keep a cast iron pan in the oven (it's 12 inches, I don't know why I ever bought it because I can't lift it), in which I poured some boiling water for steam. Anyway, the bread itself is good. Nice texture, good crust, crisp but thin, which is what I like in a sandwich bread. The bread has a nice tang to it and good flavor. I shouldn't complain. But what I really wanted was some height. I thought the structure of the pan would offer that, but it seems to have inhibited it. It really was a bit lower in the pan when I took it out than when I put it in. This has happened before. I usually make the Reinhart basic sourdough. Great as a free-form, but it rebels against the pan. I figured I'd give it one more shot with this, but I guess it's back to free form. I like this recipe. I took some photos and if I can figure out how to upload them I'll do so.

Would you bake that loaf in a loaf pan, instead of free-form? I just put together the dough, it's in the fridge until tomorrow. A bit different than yours, I used 250 gr bread flour, then 100 gr coarse semolina, 100 gr white whole wheat, and 50 gr rye flour. I used a bit more water, and a bit more starter than your recipe. Also a combination of white starter and rye starter. The starters are about two years old. No yeast. (I found it amusing that you called your rye starter your "fail safe" and dumped it. I always use a bit of each starter precisely because the rye is my fail safe! And it helps give a better rise to the bread.) My problem with sourdough is I don't bake often enough, I've never worked out a consistent recipe or method. Doesn't stop me, but of course I don't get consistent results. The loaves are always good, and sometimes they're excellent. But when they're excellent, I'm never quite sure why. I suppose the answer is to bake more often. And pay attention. Anyway, loaf pans. I'm thinking of putting this into a large Pullman loaf pan tomorrow. (No lid.) I love the shape. Free form loaves are beautiful, but not always the best for sandwiches. I will do it and see what happens, but I was wondering if there were any suggestions about baking in loaf pans vs. baking free-form. Thanks for starting this thread.

I think the word became popular during prohibition. My guess is that, by extension, it's used to refer to any kind of alcohol that isn't "legit." (I actually never heard it used for the starter liquid before, but if the shoe fits ...)

Very nice, that cross section. Crumb is a bit finer than I would have expected, but I'd be very happy to turn out such a loaf. (And to eat it, of course.) I'm aiming for some baking this weekend, hoping to bring my starters back to life. Love those photos of your starter gone wild!

I'd put up with "a loaf like that"! (Looks a little like my starter when I get lazy and forget to feed it. They can be greedy little things!) What kind of water are you using? If tap water, do you let it sit out overnight so the chlorine dissipates? Do you think this makes a difference? Waiting for more drama ...

Now that is indeed a thing of beauty. Can you elaborate a bit on what you consider the "tell-tale immature look"? By Wednesday evening it looked like this – well bubbly but with that tell-tale immature look. Left it in peace overnight. 04 wed pm small.jpg

Asymmetry doesn't bother me. Lack of design sense, now that bothers me. And I usually think those smears of sauce on the plate are gross. (But if it tastes good, I tend to be more forgiving.)

Me too, when I was sick my mother always made me toast with jam and a cup of tea. But it was always Lipton, so the aversion is only to Lipton. I can't even stand the smell of it. But a few weeks ago when I was very under the weather I went home and took a nap, and when I got up what did I have? Toast with jam and a cup of tea. (But not Lipton.)

I don't have a particular brand of floured pan stray. I've used Pam, Baker's Joy, several others that I can't think of right now. For most cakes (loaves or square pans) I first line with foil and then spray the foil. (Then I wrap the cake in the same foil.) This eliminates the issue of pans turning sticky and black. But I use it directly on the pan for "fancy" bundt pans, and I love it because the whole cake actually comes out with none of it stuck on the pan. I usually spray several spots on the pan (rather than try to cover the whole pan) and then use a brush to smooth it out. Clogged nozzles are a nuisance, but I started wiping the nozzle after each use and that works. Don't know about the propellant issue. I always thought when the propellant stopped, the can was empty, no? I like floured spray because of the convenience, but mostly because of how well it works on bundt pans that have designs. Nothing sticks. When I would butter/flour the pan it was always a gamble.

Are you mixing in the baking pan? They're quite shallow, so it's possible that the pan doesn't offer enough depth to mix the ingredients properly. You can troubleshoot and see if it comes out differently if you mix everything in a bowl and then scrape into the pan. I also don't use parchment, I use floured pan spray (which I think is right up there with the microplane as one of the best inventions since the wheel). Or you can line the pan with foil and then spray the foil, which also makes it easy to take out of the pan.

Not a dessert, but if you like to bake bread there's St. Lucia Buns, which are heavily saffron-flavored. I've made the recipe below, I thought they were great. http://www.joepastry.com/2012/making-swedish-saffron-rolls-lussekatter/

Not sure, but it sounds like it might be a mixing problem. It reminded me of the first time I ever made a genoise. I didn't mix well enough, and the melted butter (there wasn't even a lot of it) did not combine with the flour and remaining ingredients, it just pooled onto the bottom of the pan. Your problem sounds similar. BTW -- The Food 52 post is interesting. Two of the reasons I thought Kerry's recipe was better than the Joy of Cooking recipe were: it had twice the amount of vanilla, and twice the amount of salt. I thought those two things did a lot more than the browned butter.

Agree with most of what is said above. But it does look like a good opportunity for the chefs, lets them spread their wings a bit. Not the intended goal of the enterprise, but it's there.

The two Lindy's recipes above are each a bit different. Every time I see recipes for an "original" NY cheesecake I think of the old joke about someone's mother always serving leftovers, the original recipe was never found. In any case, both recipes look like they'll turn out an extremely dense and delicious cheesecake. Note that it has a crust, and not a graham cracker crust but "real" one, so who knows what's original? Much as I love Joe Pastry, I disagree with him on this one. Edited to make things even more confusing: another recipe for a "NY Cheesecake" (which happens to look very good, but then she is an excellent baker) http://www.gbakes.com/

I'm not a big cheesecake fan, but one of the main differences between NY cheesecakes and "everything else" is the denseness. NY cheesecakes tend to be very dense, rather than light and fluffy. Classic crust is a graham cracker crust. Cornstarch in the filling and a sponge cake base sound completely wrong to me for a NY cheesecake. Unfortunately I can't give you details. But if you learn more, please share.

Well, I ended up making two batches of blondies, one from Joy of Cooking and the other using Kerry Beal's recipe. So we've got Blonde on Blonde here (with all due apologies to B.D.) Briefly: I have the 1996 edition of Joy of Cooking. It happens to be the one that many people hate. They say it's pretentious and that it no longer reflects the basic "homespun" goodness that Joy of Cooking was all about. Apparently there was a lot of input from professional "name" chefs for this edition. I had never seen the previous editions of Joy, so I had nothing to compare this one to. I generally like it a lot, not just for its recipes, it's also a very good reference. Anyway, their blondies recipe seems to be a perfect example of what people were complaining about. They brown the butter. There's brown sugar, some white sugar, and some corn syrup. A bit of baking powder but also some baking soda, an extra egg yolk, etc. It's a somewhat fussy recipe for blondies. Not as sweet as I expected it to be, I did like the texture, the color was on the darkish side, but in truth nothing to write home about in terms of flavor. BTW, their recipe for brownies is totally the opposite, but it's the same recipe that has appeared in all editions of the book, and it's a great recipe (as long as you use good chocolate). Kerry's recipe is basic and straightforward, a little on the sweet side but not too much, paler in color than the Joy recipe (blonde; they were blonde!) and much more flavorful than the Joy recipe. Next time I would bake it a bit more, the texture is a little "loose" for my taste, but I really liked these. The texture is just a matter of preference. Thank you Kerry Beal! And I'm sure my co-workers will thank you tomorrow. And P.S. -- I would never put chocolate chips in these. One more thing: I didn't have pecans, just walnuts, so I used those. They were fine, but I think pecans would be much better.