The Messy Baker

By popular request, I’ve included the recipe here. 

Now, pie crust is pretty basic, this recipe is from Moosewood Desserts but they are all pretty much the same, the main difference is whether they call for shortening or butter.

For the filling, I didn’t use a recipe, but I did combine 3 cups plus a bunch of frozen cranberries, less than a half cup of flour, one cup of sugar, a bunch a cinnamon and a little nutmeg.  For the filling I will say that I should have let the cranberries thaw before making. As it was, the sugar mixture all fell to the bottom rather than coating the cranberries. The result was a sour on top, sweet on bottom pie. Which is not all bad.

For the crust, I decided to quadruple the recipe. I wanted to make two double crust pies. I started with flour and butter in the mixing bowl. I was unsure if I had enough butter, the mixture didn’t look all that buttery to me, but it seemed to work out just fine. 

I should have added the sugar and salt with the flour before adding the butter but I forgot. I made sure to mix a good while after adding those things so they wouldn’t get too clumped in one area. 

Next was the ice water, which I added while mixing, until it looked like the dough was sticking together well enough. I preheated the oven, rolled out some crust and put the remainder in the fridge to save for the next pie.

I thought I’d save a pan by reusing the pan a roommate had just used for breakfast to catch the cranberry drippings but it turned out to have butter on it and just produced a bunch of smoke.

All in all, the pie had the aforementioned sweet and sour issue, I also think I may have overworked the crust a tad, it was the the flakiest I’ve made. 

I wish I were a dedicated enough baker to have home-made bread on a regular basis. Alas, I have a job and other priorities. I chose this recipe from my favorite baking cookbook, A Passion for Baking. This is called Greek Restaurant Whole Wheat Bread.

The thing that I don’t really get about this cookbook is how it always calls for 8-10 minutes of kneading with a stand mixer. Before I had a stand mixer (a very sweet gift from my ex boyfriend before he took on the prefix)  I’d just disregard the mixing time and hand-knead until it felt right. However, the mixer makes it tougher to feel.

Therefore I’m experiencing a learning curve associated with making bread using a stand mixer. The last few things I’ve made have come out rock hard. Now I haven’t sorted out if it was the proofing or the kneading but something was wrong. 

Here is what I did this time: I mixed the wet ingredients, including the white flour and most of the whole wheat flour by hand.  I may not have put enough honey in because I hate measuring honey, it is way too sticky and I didn’t completely empty the tablespoon before refilling it. Recognizing the error, I dumped a bit more in afterwards so it might be about right.

Then I turned on the stand mixer. After a few minutes (I didn’t measure how many) it felt too sticky. I added one more half cup of whole wheat flour and just dumped it in while the mixer was running on speed one.  This caused some flour poofing, but what are you going to do.  

The mixer also makes me nervous because it takes a little while for ingredients to mix while using the bread hook. Nevertheless, I was patient this time (distracted by laundry) so I let the flour mix into the dough mass which eventually it did. After another little bit  I checked and the dough seemed dry enough. I decided to stop it there since I didn’t want it to become over kneaded and tough as I’m afraid could have happened in the past.

Now, addressing the proofing problem. I live in Chicago, IL where the weather is often cold. Since our indoor temperature average 65-70 degrees F in the winter, it is likely that it was too cold in my kitchen for the bread to rise.  This time I decided to turn on the oven to 300, which is as low as it will go. Once preheated, I cracked the door and turned it off. I was hoping that by the time the bread was ready to go in the temperature would have lowered below yeast killing levels. 

It worked! The bread rose nicely both during the initial and final proofing phases.  As for the disproportionately size loaves you will notice in the photos, I don’t think that I separated them equally. A more perfectionist baker might use a scale.

On final taste? It is good, small crumb (which I think is normal for this type of bread) a nice crust (achieved from starting the baking at 375 and lowering it to 350 after 15 minutes) One criticism is perhaps it is a tad dry. Could be normal for whole wheat but regardless, I wouldn’t recommend eating it without butter. Or cream cheese which is what I intend to do.