Proofing Bread in Cold Weather

As I have noted elsewhere, in the winter I keep the house a little cooler than in the summer.  This slows down the process of dough rising.  I've read in various places that putting the dough in the oven and leaving the light on can help; recently I have decided to try it.

I have a couple of traceable thermometers and put one in with the dough.  It takes a while, but the inside did eventually warm to about 75 degrees.  That's plenty warm enough.  This is how the dough looked after about 12 hours:

Although it rose a lot, I still got good results in the oven:

Interestingly, I have another oven that has a 'bread proofing' setting.  I don't know how hot that gets it but it can't be too much...at any rate, it seems that it's unnecessary.  It's also possible to buy bread proofers, which might work well if time is a factor.  I'm usually looking at a 10-12 hour period, however, since I bake no-knead bread, so just the heat from the incandescent appliance light works well enough.

Moss Moment

There is almost no substance whatsoever to this post.

In the area where the bleeding hearts (planted) and jewel weed plants (volunteer) are, there's also some moss.  It's an area that never gets direct sun.  The winter has been drier than normal, but wet enough for the moss to flourish.  At this point, it's looking pretty lush.

The phone also takes pretty good macro pictures--not as good as my dedicated camera with a macro lens, but it's still not bad.

The bleeding hearts, however, are not looking lush.  As noted previously, they have declined with time and drought conditions, and at this point if I want them to stay I'll have to replant.  The jewel weed, also hit hard by drought a year and a half ago, is starting to bounce back.

Another Seal Failure with a Reusable Canning Lid

As I noted previously, I have had a higher seal failure rate with reusable lids than with single-use lids.  Also as noted, most of the failures have been slow to develop: the lid seals initially, then comes unsealed in storage days or months later. Ball, albeit with an unavoidable conflict of interest, points out that the vacuum strength can deteriorate 50% within a year.  That does match my experience. 

It has happened again.  I am no longer using reusable lids on new canning projects, but do still have some in storage.  A jar of peach preserves put up in July, 2016, was sealed from that time until sometime in the last month or so. I had checked it periodically and it was fine, but now it's not. Alas.

Turkey Red Wheat

I've long been intrigued by Turkey Red wheat.  It was the predominant variety grown in the mid- and southern plains during the dust bowl; seed stock from Russia brought to this country in the late 1800s also contained seeds of the Russian thistle, aka tumbleweed.  It's not common today but both wheat berries and flour are readily available if you look for them.

I got both flour and berries.  I used the flour a year ago and thought it was rather coarsely ground.  Now that I've ground some of my own, I think it's more just that Turkey red has a thicker hull, giving the flour a gritty, almost sandy texture.  It also takes less water to hydrate it than commercial red whole wheat flour (such as King Arthur).

My first loaf was my basic recipe of 2 cups white bread flour, 1 3/4 cups of whole wheat.  It turned out okay.  It didn't have a whole lot of spring to it, but it was certainly decent and had good flavor.

Next I tried a 100% whole wheat loaf, and I went all the way--nothing but whole wheat, water, sourdough starter, and a little salt.  No vital wheat gluten (VWG).  The loaf I got from that mix was definitely a little compact.

Shown below is the blended loaf on the left with the 100% loaf on the right.

 Cutting open the 100% loaf yielded this:

All in all it's okay. It may be harder to get a nice spring when using Turkey Red compared to a modern red wheat, or the results above may just be due to the random variation I see in the loaves I bake.  I'm nothing if not inconsistent.  The second blended loaf turned out like this--very nice:

Here's another 50% loaf (right) versus the 100% loaf (left).  The contrast is starker with this one because the 50% one rose well and had good oven spring.

I might try another 100% loaf with some VWG added in to see what happens, or I may stick with the basic de facto 50/50 combo.  Other things like pancakes and biscuits are probably in the offing, as well.

(Relatively) Low-Carb Apple Crisp

I make a variety of (more or less) crustless pies that are generically referred to as crisps.  The original recipe was peach, which I have since adapted to rhubarb and apple.  When using pre-canned apple pie filling, the recipe is:

1 cup rolled oats
1 cup flour
1/2 cup brown sugar
1 stick of butter
1 quart apple pie filling

Put filling in a 9" x 13" greased dish, then mix the dry ingredients and spread on top.  Cut the butter thinly and place on top.  Bake at 350 for about 35 minutes.

I adapted this to:

1/2 cup rolled oats
1 1/2 cups almond flour
1/2 cup brown Whey Low

...the other ingredients were the same.  After about 32 minutes in the oven, this is what it looked like:

Its appearance is not bad. The subtle grid pattern is from the pats of butter that were on top of the almond flour and oat mix.  Here's a side view.

This ended up being very sweet; overall it had extra sweetener because the pie filling already had some in it.  Taste- and texture-wise, it was completely fine.  For some applications almond flour works very well as a substitute for wheat flour.

Nut-Free Black Walnut Brownies

I know someone who tries to avoid eating nuts because of digestive issues.  While any brownie recipe can be made with or without nuts, brownies without black walnuts are a disappointment.  However, I have found what seems to be a reasonable workaround.

I saw some black walnut oil at Wal-Mart on a shopping trip last spring and decided to get it to see how it tasted.  The label hinted at flavor--some oils are very subtle, with olive oil being the most obvious exception.  It was also fairly pricey.

I put them into this recipe, adapted from tasteofhome.com:

2 1/2 sticks of butter (1 1/4 c), softened but not melted [note this is slightly reduced]

2 2/3 cups sugar

4 eggs

1 tablespoon vanilla extract

2 cups white flour

1 cup cocoa powder

1/2 teaspoon salt

...and I normally add a cup of nuts.  I substituted 3/4 cup black walnut oil and 1 stick of butter for the fat instead of all butter.  And, since I'm an inveterate whole grain lover, I used 1 cup of whole wheat flour and 1 cup of white flour.  I used dark chocolate cocoa powder and Whey Low as the sweetener. The result needs baking longer than the 30 minutes advertised on the site--especially since, I have recently learned, my oven runs about 10 degrees cool (I suppose I should just up the temperature I bake everything at, but I've grown accustomed to it).

The result (apologies for the bad picture below) was more cakey than fudgy, but there was a noticeable black walnut flavor.  Overall, it worked well.

Good Oven Spring with a Whole Wheat Loaf

As I have written before, I sometimes do 100% whole wheat flour loaves.  I usually add vital wheat gluten (VWG) to improve the rise of the dough.  As I have also mentioned, I get better results in the winter--the lower temps inside the house seem to help the dough ferment (though this year I've been finishing the dough rise in the oven with the light on.  I saw a tip online somewhere that doing so would increase the temperature a bit and it does).  Too much rise on the counter translates to less in the oven.

This loaf was baked just before Christmas:

As you can see, it's nicely-shaped and the loaf broke at the top, which 100% whole wheat loaves usually do not. The crumb is still fairly dense (ignore the uneven slicing):

 

Flavor-wise, this is normal red whole wheat bread.  It looks pretty much like the non-VWG loaf I discussed previously...so maybe this isn't so impressive, after all.

It can be done, however, even if I seldom achieve it.  This loaf took a lot of extra water--2 3/4 cups total, for 3 3/4 cups of flour and 1/2 cup of VWG.