Blog posts

A quick post to celebrate the arrival of Autumn and the passing of yet another summer. This one is a variation of my November 2019 post, bread baked then to welcome the arrival of  that year's CSA organic grain harvest share. Now, as then, feeling very blessed and appreciative, especially in these turbulent times, for yet another harvest. 

The can of pumpkin purée that I bought was huge, the grocery stores here only seem to carry a very large size can of it.  So having a ton left I decided I’d see what it does to bread.  I treated it similarly to how I’d treat adding mashed potatoes.  Given how mild pumpkin flavour is, I cooked the purée down a bit to bring out the flavour.  Because I wanted a savory bread and not something that would be sweet, I didn’t add spices to this.  I’m quite pleased with how it baked up.

I invented this cookie dough formula myself! 

Pumpkin, cottage cheese,  Almond flour cookies 

Ingredients:

Dough

3/4 stick unsweetened butter(softened)

1 cup Monk fruit sugar 

1 cup whole milk cottage cheese ( blended until smooth)

1/2 cup (122 g) pure pumpkin puree 

2 TBs pumpkin spice 

1 tsp vanilla extract 

3 LG. Eggs

1 1/4 cup extra fancy semolina (150 g)

1 1/4 cup Almond flour ( 159 g)

1 tsp baking powder 

Pinch salt

Icing

Awhile back I was given some starter and made, among other things, a couple pan loaves. They were fine. Yippee posted a link to Susan's easy sourdough loaf recipes here, (recipe here), and I thought I'd try the 63% hydration. First attempt turned out pretty well. I didn't have a razor blade and couldn't drag a knife across the dough because it was inside a bowl, so the slashes aren't deep enough. The dough came out quite wet for 63%.

I found this recipe in the Globe and Mail.  I’ve never been a huge fan of cheesecake, it always seems like a nothingburger to me.  I was hoping that the pumpkin might make it more interesting.  I think this cheesecake would benefit from spices myself.  This is a Basque style cheesecake in that it has a caramelized top, however, it has a cookie crust as a base which Basque cheesecakes don’t usually from what I understand. 

These turned out well. My wife ate them without complaining. 214 cal. 18 g Protein.

It makes a gooey mess of the blade and an awful lot of raisins on the counter.

I made raisin bread in my old Oster 5838-33, just because Yippee has been doing a fair bit of basic Zo baking this week. This machine--at one time, I had three--consistently turns out nice bread. Recipe came from chatbot, with request for 1-1/2lb loaf and all-milk. Recipe was nothing special. Top crust setting was medium. 

I'mI am within 100 g of two perfectly squared loaves.

After a break of 3 weeks, I reactivated my Lievito Madre with 3 warm refreshments (27ºC). As a test, I wanted to bake a bread with Ruchmehl. By mistake, however, I used wholewheat. The packages look very similar. When I noticed it, it was almost too late. Spontaneously I decided to use 80% wholewheat and 20% white flour. During mixing I had the impression, that the dough / gluten structure was (surprisingly) pretty strong and I decided to bump up the hydration. Started with 75% and ended at (almost) 90%. Maybe a bit too optimistic ;) At least when it comes to my bench skills.

The other day, I baked a white loaf in my Zojirushi—the crust browned beautifully on three sides, though the top stayed a bit pale, which was expected. I loved just tossing it in and letting the machine do its thing. That got me thinking: why not try my everyday whole rye in it? So I did—and wow, the results are surprisingly good!