ptw1953
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Posts posted by ptw1953
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I am wishing to purchase some black cocao butter, but it is scarcer than hobby-horse sh*te here in the UK. I do have some cocao butter, and some black fat-soluble powder. Tips and tricks for the making of black cocao butter at home would be most welcome...
ptw1953
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16 hours ago, Ann_T said:
@ptw1953, I would love to try these. Would you please share the recipe.
@Ann_T with pleasure.
To make circa 8 Scottish crumpets:
2 tablespoons of caster sugar (superfine in Canada/USA?)
1 large egg, at room temperature
170g of full cream milk
140g of plain flour (all-purpose flour in Canada/USA)
5g of fine salt
4.5g cream of tartar
2.5g bakig soda
In a large bowl, whisk the sugar and egg until thickened and pale in colour. Then stir in the milk.
Add the flour, salt, cream of tartar, and baking soda. Blend until a smooth batter. Then let sit for 5 minutes.
To cook the crumpets, I heat a 6" (bottom diameter) seasoned steel frying pan for 4 minutes on a medium-high heat on my induction hob. I then rub it with an oiled piece of kitchen roll. Then I ladle circa 40g of the batter into the frying pan and, using the base of the ladle, swirl the batter around unitil the base of the pan is fully covered. I cook for 1 minute, then turn over and cook for a further minute. remove to a wire rack, and repeat as necessary.
They are especiall delicious just warm, and slathered with butter and apricot jam...
Enjoy!
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My kind neighbour lells me that she can smell when I am baking bread, as the extractor fan in my kitchen disperses the smell to her garden. Could I use this 1.5 kilo of plain flour (is that all-purpose flour in north america?) that she bought in Sainsburys? Toot sweet I accepted it, and she wouldn't accept any payment.
So, this is my breakfast for the forseeable future, and I have enough flour to make another 40 of these Scottish crumpets. Not the best I have ever made, but still a godsend from my kindly neighbour...
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3 minutes ago, Ann_T said:
@ptw1953, all your breads look great and that pizza crust is amazing.
Today's bake.
I fed my starter last night and then tossed the discard into a 1000gs of flour, 760g of water and a finger pinch of yeast.I didn't bother making a preferment (Biga) because I wanted to bake first thing in the morning. I wanted a slow overnight rise.
After I finished the last stretch and fold at 10PM I put the lid on the container and left the dough on the counter overnight. It had almost tripled by 5 AM.
Baked six baguettes and some baby buns.This morning I made a 500g batch of dough at 80% that is destined for two pizzas tonight.
Many thanks Ann; but in truth, a blind man could see that compared to your breads, mine are only ok. I don't know how you do it, but attempting to emulate is my continuing goal...
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My son texted me, saying that my grandsons were asking if Papa would make some bread for them. Emotional blackmail is bad, but surely works. My difficulty is that I have no T65 flour left, and only 3 kilos of '00' flour to work with (flour is still as scarce as hobby-horse sh*te here in Edinburgh's shops; and it's worse on-line).
I worked out the amounts of flour required for a pizza, a boule and a pain de mie, then proceeded to bake. I am now bereft of flour, for the near future at least, having only enough left for feeding my sourdough starter for 2 weeks maximum. I do have an alert placed for some T65 and more '00', but do not know when the internet supplier will have both back in stock. My son took the photo of the boule crumb he is to photography, what jack the ripper was to walking the streets late at night.
C'est la vie...
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16 hours ago, ElsieD said:
In April I posted about the lid blowing off my 13" USA pain de mie pan. After a bit of back and forth with them, they were going to send me a shipping label so I could ship the pan to them, they would fix the pan and return it. As they did not mention who paid for the shipping I asked them that question. I figured if I had to pay for the shipping costs I would not bother. I got an answer back today. They stated that FOR THEIR CANADIAN CUSTOMERS, CANADIANS HAVE TO PAY SHIPPING COSTS. Gee, aren't we special! However,they have decided to send me a new pan instead and I can keep the old one. With what's going on, don't know when I will actually get it, but I have to say I'm pleased with their response. The one I have is perfectly usable, without the lid.
This is good news @ElsieD
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Sourdough Boule, for the Wild Garlic veloute I am in the process of making...
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16 minutes ago, Kim Shook said:
After the 1st rising of my brioche:
After pushing it down.
I'm hoping this is a good sign.
It is having it's second rising in the proofing room (that would be the half bath off of my kitchen with the space heater turned to 72F - 😁).
To me, these mages are so rich and, almost, spoonable. This brioche is going to be premiere, for sure...
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8 hours ago, ElsieD said:
@ptw1953 I made your recipe yesterday. All was going well except that after 10 minutes in the oven, the lid blew off my Pullman pan. I left it where it was, resting on top of the loaf to see what would happen. At the end of 30 minutes, I went to pull it out but noticed it was a little pale so left it in the oven for another few minutes. As you can see, the lid affected the shape of the load as the dough was pretty even when it went in. The bread is delicious, and I'll make it again. It looked like a .ot of yeast to me, though. It is 17 gm. Of active dry yeast? Thanks again for the recipe.
Oh that is a pity @ElsieD. I do think that there is an issue with your Pullman Pan. It seems to me, wearing my Engineer's hat, that the curved/ sliding areas of the Pan lid have not been formed correctly at the factory. I would try the suggestion given by @lindag. The lid surely should be able to take the amounts of bread and yeast in the recipe. 17g of Dried Active Yeast is what I use in the recipe, and it works very well for me.
Usually, when the 30 minutes are up, I take ot the oven, remove the lid and check the colouring of the bread. Mostly I have to give it an extra 3 minutes to get the colour up a bit, but these last two times, the bread has been fine after 30 minutes. I apologise for missing that out of the recipe I posted.
Your loaf shape (other than the top), and crumb, look great. I think that, with a little tweaking on your Pan lid, you will be constantly producing superb Pain de Mie....
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@ElsieD I am more than happy to share my recipe. It is an amalgam of various Pain de Mie recipes I have attempted over the years.
I use a 13" Pullman Pan with a lid to bake the bread in, but have used a 10" pan with a lid, and just reduced all the ingredients by one third: It came out well.
Pre-heat your oven to 250c (mine is fan-assisted, so that is probably 270c in a non fan-assisted oven, I think)
Ingredients:
15g Unsalted butter, cut into small cubes
30g Fresh yeast (as fresh yeast is extremely scarce here at the moment, I now use 17g of Dried Active Yeast)
750g Strong white flour
15g Salt
75ml Full-fat milk
450ml Water, boiled and cooled to 99F/37c
If using the fresh yeast, rub it and the butter into the flour. Then add to your mixer bowl, with the salt, water and milk. Mix at speed 2 for 5 minutes, until the dough comes away from the sides of the bowl.
If using the Dried Active Yeast, add 50ml of the water to it, and leave for 5 minutes until frothy. Rub the butter into the flour, then add to the mixer bowl with the remaining water, milk and salt. Mix at speed 2 for 5 minutes, until the dough comes away from the sides of the bowl.
Empty the dough into a proving bowl, cover with cling-film, and leave to prove until doubled in size. (this takes only 1 hour in my kitchen, at the moment)
Once proved to your satisfaction, knock back, shape to fit the Pullman Pan on a lightly floured surface (I don't stretch or fold, or whatever; I just lift the mass into the Pan, and push down to have an even surface of dough in the Pan). Cover with the lid, and check every 5 minutes or so, to see the extent of the rise. (I let it rise to about 10mm from the lid, then I set my timer for 10 minutes. Once the 10 minutes is up, I reduce the oven temperature to 220c, and put in the Pan. Cook for 30 minutes. Once the 30 minutes are up, remove from the oven, decamp the gorgeous loaf from the Pan, and take lots of crappy photos (well, that's what I do).
Enjoy ElsieD...
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Well, my daughter-in-law came down with my grandsons, and took the bread away. Was good to see the boys, even at a distance. She needs a new knife. It looks as though she cut the loaf with a blunt chainsaw...
The crumb:
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What's App message last evening from my daughter-in-law; 'Can you make us a loaf of bread please. We have no flour, and there's none in Sainsburys.'
Up at 6am, breakfast, then began mixing the dough for a Pain de Mie. finished baking it at 9am. Cooling down as I type, and I'm willing to bet that no one will pick it up until later today...
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Sourdough pizza. Work needed on the shaping, and the topping (home-made passata, spicy chorizo, spring onions, mozzarella and basil). We enjoyed eating it immensely...
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I Haven't posted, nor baked, for circa 6 weeks, but it felt so good to produce a bog-standard boule today.
We ate half of it, with carrot and coriander soup I made earlier this morning...
Lockdown be damned!
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@@shain & @Okanagancook I thank you both for your posts. Your advice is taken on board. I will make a pizza next Saturday night, and am now looking forward to spring, when my individual puff-pastry rhubarb tarts will be cooked on the steel...yum, yum! (I will make fresh-ginger ice cream to go with the rhubarb tarts. A match made in heaven...)
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The Pizza (or bread) steel that my son ordered for me as a Christmas present from Denmark, finally arrived on the 4th of this month. Better late than never I suppose. I spent a few hours seasoning it, then baked this boule on it. The rise was/is good. I am excited to have it for other breads/pastries/pizzas that I will be making.
The Pain de Mie (for Croque Monsuier tonight) wasn't baked on the steel, as I feel it may be a tad too hot for loaves that are baked in a Pullman pan/dutch oven. Any advice/info on this would be received gratefully...
Philip
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A boule for my wife and I to eat, with the winter veg soup I made last Sunday morning...
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20 minutes ago, andiesenji said:
It is possible to get a finer flour using a blender - with caution. I have done it with coarse "wholemeal" wheat flour from England.
you have to have the empty blender running and pour a stream of the flour, no more than a cup at a time into the jar and stop immediately.
Pour out the flour and check it, it should be almost all very fine. Repeat until you have processed all the flour you need.
Sift the result and if there is still a significant amount of coarse meal, put that through the blender routine. Just one repeat, otherwise it can get a burnt flavor.
Ive also done this with barley meal and with a couple of the "ancient grains" flours that in the early days tended to be a bit coarser than I liked.
Thank you @andiesenji for this information...
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6 hours ago, Jim D. said:
Did you intend to link to a source for the tape?
Oh damn, I thought I had:
https://smile.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B01IIAI9DI/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o06_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1
https://smile.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B00JJH1FL8/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o07_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1
I'm sure they can be sourced worldwide, and maybe this one as well:
https://smile.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B00VTDYTR2/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o05_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1
Philip
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2 hours ago, liderbug said:
(as a nubie) there was an earlier post about not being able to get tape to stick to a mold. What if you were to coat the underside of the mask with a very thin layer of coco butter, warm and apply. Then if it sticks too well hit it with a heat gun just enough to peel it loose.
I use this tape; never had a fail, nor needed a heat gun!
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35 minutes ago, cslas said:
@Kerry Beal so glad I know this before I do another set of molds tonight! Also, I scored a Mol d'art on Ebay yesterday so there might be an EZTemper in my future once I save up
Save up with indecent haste, for you will have no regrets. None at all. I have acquired many things in my long life, but the EZTemper is, for me, one of my best ever purchases. It will be passed down to one of my grandsons/granddaughters when the grim reaper comes a callin' for me. For sure...
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Pain de Mie for my eldest grandson's lunch sandwiches at school - he doesn't like to eat the school dinners. Daft boy!
My wife and I walked up with it to his home, and there were two first for us;
(1) eldest grandson (5 years old) read us a book for the first time, and
(2) youngest grandson (1year old) walked for 14 steps for the first time.
Two very proud grandparents...
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Hello to everyone,
I hope all is well with you.
It has been some 3 weeks since last I baked bread, and yesterday proved to me that if you don't practice regularly, you never improve. I baked two boules for my son and his family, promising my grandsons that I would carve diamonds in the crust.
Carving-wise, this was a disaster of a day. Thankfully, my son was unable to collect the boules, so my wife and I ate some with a porcini and potato soup I had prepared, and I sliced the remainder and froze them for eating on another day.
My son sent me a text at 7am, telling me that he and my eldest grandson would be visiting me at circa mid-day to collect the boules. I let him know of my carving disaster, and that I had sliced and frozen the loaves, but I'd make another for mid-day. Couldn't bring myself attempt carving diamonds again, so did the usual Saltire instead.
My grandson was not impressed at all...
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I hadn't prepared myself, mentally, for the cutting of diamonds on the crust, so did only 4 slashes...
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The Bread Topic (2016–)
in Pastry & Baking
Posted
I haven't been on the site for some time, but wish to say Happy New Year to all.
I see that Ann_T is still making me hungry...