What do your meals look like (show me pictures)....

Blueberry, Canadian bacon, cheddar cheese with bbq sauce thin crust 7” pizza

mjbnj0001 wrote: »

When I first starting baking around 6-7 years ago, I tried a variety of methods. And got a variety of results. Then I stumbled onto the "artisanbreadwithstev" ..
Snip...

The mod I made for this batch was to add several rounded tablespoons of dried onion flakes into the dry mix, and upped the water a bit (2oz, for their hydration). I also rescaled the indgredients to yield 10 rolls rather than 6 (which exhausted my bread flour supply until I get to the store later today).

Big Snip...

Yeast is all around us - that's the basis of traditional sourdough,
I go directly to the millers for my flour when I can. It's fresher. I typically stick with King Arthur.

https://www.kingarthurbaking.com/

My next evolution will be to start milling my own flour after September. I have the mill, and I have the wheat, but my docket is pretty full until then to include something new.

Wow, ty for all the info... will check it out... so adding 'explore yeast' to my adventures, lol

I think milling your own would be awesome. I have not noticed King Arthur, instead Bobs Red Mill is carried. Believe he picked up used granite wheels when he started in the 70s.

I browse all the variety, and wonder hmmm... i have a hard time comprehending how nut flours would work as a flour. When i tried some breadmaking with whole wheat and not a success, too dense, and realized I was clueless to adapt... Experiment ended there. I was surprised the focaccia discussion captured my attention.

Q - back to pickling, what kind of vinegars do you prefer? I tend to use unseasoned rice whenever recipe calls for vinegar.

Adventurista wrote: »

Q - back to pickling, what kind of vinegars do you prefer? I tend to use unseasoned rice whenever recipe calls for vinegar.

OOPS - Edited for reciope amount quoted. Not allowed to edit original post by MFP.

f. Vinegars: I use apple cider vinegar and red wine vinegar, mostly, in irregular alternation. This batch was red wine vinegar. Using ACV gives a slightly sweeter result IMHO. I typically don't use a vinegar with the "mother" in it, I prefer clarified. I've used plain white distilled too; it's OK/functional, but my favorite is ACV. I haven't tried rice or other vinegars, I keep them more for special uses. The batch I posted about the other day used 2C vinegar, 2C water to brine 2 large onions, so you need a good supply - then I used more vinegar to volume-up and make a chicken marinade from the leftover onion brine.

Hope this all helps. Good luck!

Fake air fryer KFC with the Chicago Tribune recipe. Thai pomelo salad, braised bok choi and brown rice.

@mjbnj0001 ~ the storyteller in me imagines it's tracking. Whatever the impetus, appreciated. Will kick up feet and watch.

Picked up jar Red Star, best price, good thru 2025, so next step focaccia attempt in a round stainless deep casserole/roaster for proofing.

Q - do i need to move to lower rectangular/square form for the baking or will it work from the round, similar to dutch oven.

Adventurista wrote: »

@mjbnj0001 ~ the storyteller in me imagines it's tracking. Whatever the impetus, appreciated. Will kick up feet and watch.

Picked up jar Red Star, best price, good thru 2025, so next step focaccia attempt in a round stainless deep casserole/roaster for proofing.

Q - do i need to move to lower rectangular/square form for the baking or will it work from the round, similar to dutch oven.

that is an interesting question. being often accused of being square myself, i follow convention and use a standard rectangular sheet pan, lol.

i have made several types of shaped breads - the cousin-to-focaccia, fougasse - being one, so i dont think it matters. i could be wrong, but like pizza crust, being flat in uniform thickness of varying shapes doesn't seem to impact the result - as long as there are no acute projections or fingers that have smaller mass than the main body and would fully cook way faster and potentially toast or burn. i have made loaf bread in both and open cast iron skillet and covered dutch oven ok ( as opposed to rolls and buns and such). as far as i know, the resulting circular, ovoid loaves are termed "boule" loaves. i tend to think if you do attempt to bake focaccia in a dutch oven, the dough should remain shallow and the lid remain off. good luck.

mjbnj0001 wrote: »

@Adventurista

...

e. My initial whole wheat experiments were the same - I produced bricks, not bread, LOL. So my "whole wheat" breads now generally vary from 25-70% whole wheat, depending on my mood and intent. My "lite whole wheat" that I posted recently was 30%, I've been doing this for a while as my wife prefers it to the denser. I have even added gluten (available as "vital wheat gluten" powder from various sources) to see if that helps (King Arthur whole wheat actually has a good portion of gluten in it, so it's another factor that impacts final results). Mixed results with adding gluten (lots of variables to balance, and I've not been a perfect scientist in conducting my experiments - I too impatient here at home, rather than at work in a lab LOL - time, temp, composition, process, etc.). I've been watching videos from a couple of home millers, where whole wheat is the raw material they produce from milling by definition. "Whole wheat" from commercial sources is a re-mix of the bran and stuff into their preferred target, white flour, not a once-thru milling. So we'll see. Life is for learning.

...

Hope this all helps. Good luck!

error: should have read something like, "... I have even occasionally added gluten ..." It's not a regular thing with me, and I got irregular results anyway.

acpgee wrote: »

@mjbnj0001
Any tips on how to get a crisp bottom crust with silicon? I am unhappy with poor bottom browning when I use silicon mats for baking and have relegated mine for praline making. For focaccia I was even dissatisfied with browning on the bottom when I lined my old stainless steel tin with silicon parchment. I like the focaccia to taste almost fried in olive oil on the bottom.

Many of my breads doughs have a bit higher hydration than other doughs, so keep that in mind.

Dough at room temp. Oven preheated thoroughly. And a baking stone, also preheated.

I speak from supposition on stones, as one has been on my Christmas list for a couple of years now. The big decision is what type of material should the stone be made of (metal, ceramic/tile; actual stone).

In the meantime, I have tried a couple of hacks. One was parchment paper supporting the bread dough for long rolls on a raised rack sitting in a sheet pan for improved air flow. "Meh" results, and I feared for ignition in a repeat as the paper scorched moreso than when used as a pan liner.

In this new house, my oven has an optional convection feature, and I have tried this in baking to see if the flowing air does the trick in various experiments. OK results, but not distinctive enough to make a default practice of it. For loaf breads, in a loaf pan, doesn't seem to make even that much difference. If you use convection, you have to adjust your timings too.

In some of my bakes, mostly rolls/buns and flatter/braided breads, I get a better bottom when I emulate a baking stone via an inverted sheet pan as a base for my actual sheet pan. Also needs preheat. Here's a picture of the setup I used for the onion rolls/buns bake last week (the ones pictured above with the silicon mat). The dish in the bottom has water in to generate steam during the bake for better overall (top or open/exposed) crust - supposedly a traditional French baker's trick for baguettes. When I think of it, an experiment I have in mind is to use ONLY the inverted sheet pan to support my loaf pans rather than have a 2nd layer of metal from the 2nd pan. The conductivity is so high for these metals that I'm not sure it makes a difference, but who knows?

Since I've been tinkering with process for my "hybrid sourdough" approach and in advance of starting to mill my own wheat later this year, I've been getting more methodical and documentarian when I cook, so I am accumulating more process photos like this. Anyway, this inverted sheet pan trick is something I learned about from a forgotton pre-pandemic source as I began baking. The rolls were in for 15 minutes at 450F, so crisp bottoms weren't the goal - but they were well-cooked.

For my normal loaves, metal loaf pans sitting in a rightside-up sheet pan, produce a well-baked, but not crispy crust. I have coated steel, coated aluminium and Al foil loaf pans. They all produce essentially equal results as far as crust in the enclosed portion of the loaf; the loaftops get a nice crust as per my other preps. I may be switching away from all aluminium cookware.

I have a couple of times, in my cast-iron skillet early bakes, pre-heated the skillet before transferring the 2nd-rise risen dough into it for baking. This squished the resultant loaf a bit through being handled, even if the transfer operation was delicate. But I got a crustier crust. Just using the room-temp pan which was the dough recepticle for the 2nd rise got an improved crustal finish, but not what you'd get from a proper bakery. Hot baking stone = good crust seems to be the key takeaway from all this experimenting.

Since moving into this new house, I've been batch-baking several loaves at a time and freezing the excess over one, so, with only two of us here, I'm only baking a couple of times a month. Progress and experiments take time and repitition, so it's going to be a while before I can demonstrate a consistent result.

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@acpgee : "... I like the focaccia to taste almost fried in olive oil on the bottom. ..." - look into "Detroit-style pizza" YT videos. They're a good dish in and of themselves, differing from "conventional" pizzas, but the process and the pans they use encourage the fried-oil effect around the edges and crust bottom.

To all,
I guess some of my recent postings have been trending into the semi-technical rather than just "what do your meals look like?" ... but this is the "Recipes" board after all. Not to worry, I won't always be this down-in-the-weeds ...

@mjbnj0001
I had heard that those American deep dish pizza's were descendents of sfinzione, a Sicilian streetfood pizza. I ate a piece at a market one holiday once.
https://ouritaliantable.com/sfincione-sicilian-pizza/

acpgee wrote: »

@mjbnj0001
I had heard that those American deep dish pizza's were descendents of sfinzione, a Sicilian streetfood pizza. I ate a piece at a market one holiday once.
https://ouritaliantable.com/sfincione-sicilian-pizza/

This is a new one to me, thanks. I grew up knowing that "pizza" as we know it didn't come from Italy in our accustomed typical format, but didn't know this. We (in the suburban NYC area of NJ I grew up in, in the 60s and 70s) had "regular" pizza and "Sicilian pizza" (which was a thick bready crust - effectively this sfincione, even to the rectangular shape); the "Serious Eats" article you linked to in your 2nd post makes humorous reference to "Sicilian" type, LOL. "Deep dish" I didn't encounter until I was an adult. Bread, sauce, cheese, and maybe some toppings - "perfect delicious food" - and a contributory reason I needed to seek out MFP, LOL. Since the pandemic, I've made a percentage of our pizza, which is yet another driver to finally get a baking stone. Now that I think of it, maybe cooking pizza is the source of the inspirational hint I encountered about the inverted sheet pan emulating a stone. Could be.

Anyway, "grazie!" and "buon appetito!"