TWD -- Beatrice, I love you!!

After a couple of recent failures, I was ready for a success. When I saw the recipe for the week was a Beatrice Ojakangas bread, I knew I was on solid ground. I am a big Beatrice fan! I own two of her whole grain bread books and use them constantly. I have come to trust Beatrice on every recipe. She has never lead me astray. Three smaller sizes of this same bread are in her book "Whole Grain Breads by Machine or Hand," a book a heartily recommend.

I was really ready to try her Finnish Pulla, since I grew up with Finnish descendants in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan and knew they baked somewhat differently that those of us of German descent. I recognized from reading the recipe that cardamon was going to make this coffee bread distinctive, and I wasn't wrong.



The braid with raisins

Half the dough before adding sugar mixture

The recipe looked like it would make a big ring, so I decided to make two breads. After researching Finnish Pulla on the Internet, I saw that some people added cinnamon and sugar, others raisins. So I did both. To  half of the dough, I added plumped raisins, then braided the dough into one long loaf. Following Beatrice's suggestion, I used the egg wash, almonds and sparkling sugar.


I rolled out the other half of the dough, slattered butter on a 12 by 18 inch rectangle, then rolled up the dough, and cut it into 12 cinnamon rolls. I kept the filling rather tame not wanting to overpower the cardamon. I used a Christmas tree shaped pan, and after baking the rolls, used a simple confectioners' sugar glaze and some Christmas sprinkles to decorate the tree. The tree will go in the freezer for Christmas morning.

The cinnamon roll tree ready for freezing

The baked braid with almonds and sugar

I waited a day before sampling the first pulla, and wish I hadn't. Beatrice is right in that the loaf goes stale rather quickly. But with some butter on the bread and after warming it a wee bit in the toaster, the taste was delicious. I will make this again!



TWD -- The good, the bad and the ugly

As you can see by the headline, I didn't have a great experience with the Gingerbread Baby Cakes. Not owning the appropriate pans (neither the small cake pans nor the 10-inch pan) and, after reading the pre-deadline comments, I decided to try a Bundt pan instead. Big mistake. I will be curious to see if others were successful using a Bundt pan.

First, the good. The gingerbread had a wonderful taste. All those flavors mixed together (the pepper, the espresso, the ginger, the molasses, the chocolate). The combination of all these was nothing short of wonderful.

Next, the bad. The cake tested done after 50 minutes. There wasn't a crumb left on the straw that I inserted in the cake. Just for good measure, I gave the cake another five minutes. After letting the cake cool, I wrapped it in foil and froze it, intending to take it to a dinner party four days later. On the day of the party, I removed the cake from the freezer, gave it plenty of time to thaw, then decided to slice into it, just to make sure all was well.

Alarm bells went off when it took real muscle to slice through the cake. It was hard as a rock in the upper portion of the cake. Soldiering on, I kept sawing away until I got to the bottom third of the cake, and then I felt real disaster striking. The lower part of the cake was squishy and fudgy, a sure sign the cake didn't get done all the way through. I sliced off a piece just so I could taste it, and as mentioned above, the cake tasted wonderful. But, there was no way I could take it to a party. Luckily I had some cookies in the freezer I could thaw.



Notice the undercooked darker portion, noticeable on left

Now, the ugly. The worst part of the disaster was about one-fourth of the cake stuck to the pan, even though I had scrupulously greased and floured it. I was able to stick the piece back on the cake, but the appearance wasn't the best.

There is a happy ending to this story, however. After letting the cake age two days tightly wrapped in foil, the top part of the cake softened considerably and my husband and I will be able to eat it, after cutting off the undercooked bottom portion.



TWD -- Muffing the muffin assignment

A complete disaster. That was my experience with this week's Tuesday's With Dorie assignment baking Buttermilk Crumb Muffins from Baking With Julia. I don't know where I went wrong, so I am curious to read everyone's posts to see how they fared.

It's not that I've never made muffins before. I have been making them for more than 50 years -- all kinds of muffins. So inexperience could not be a factor.



Muffins before baking, some of which were overfilled

I followed the recipe, weighing the ingredients to make sure the proportions were as written. I will admit that on my first go-round, I filled some of the muffin pans about two-thirds full, not half full as the recipe indicated. I used my ice cream scoop to fill the paper-lined muffin pan, something I invariably do when making muffins. I would estimate that my muffin scoop holds about 1/3 cup of batter.

The first pan of muffins not only sunk, but had spread all over the pan. I obviously should have heeded the warning of one-half full. But why did then sink?

Notice the sinking

Before making the second pan of the muffins, I watched the video hoping to see what I might have done wrong. I noted that Marion Cunningham, the baker for that episode with the Baking with Julia PBS series, sprayed her muffin pans instead of using paper liners. But, Marion Cunningham filled her pans about two-thirds full. What gives?

Instead of getting 14 to 16 muffins, I got a total of 20 muffins. And that was after overfilling my muffin cups on the first baking.

The muffins appeared as if they were only slightly sunken after a 25-minute spell in the 350 degree oven. So I had high hopes. I let the muffins rest about five minutes, then tried to slip them out of the pan as Marion Cunningham did on the video. No such luck. Then I started prodding and prying with a knife -- again no luck. I all but had to get a wide spoon and scoop the muffins out of the pan. You can see by the accompanying pictures, it was NOT A PRETTY SITE.



The disasterour second batch

Then I really got suspicious. I started looking at other muffin recipes and found they didn't have near the same amount of sugar. And, why did I get 20 muffins using a standard muffin pan when the recipe stated I might expect 14? If I had filled the first batch one-half full as directed, I might have gotten 22 muffins out of the recipe. The Blueberry Muffins on the following page make 18 muffins with 1 3/4 cups of flour. And they are to bake for only 18-20 minutes in a 400-degree oven. So, help, follow bakers. WHAT WENT WRONG???? Was it the recipe, or me?

What was left in the pan







TWD--Bagel shaping method a winner

The bagel recipe in Baking with Julia is unlike my favorite Jewish egg bagels, but I was ready to give it a try to see if I might like it as well or even better. Plus, the addition of black pepper was pretty intriguing..

After reading through the recipe, I saw that it used six cups of flower -- yowsah! That's a lot of flour for just 10 bagels. I reasoned the bagels could be the size of small car tires, so I opted to cut the recipe in half, then reduce the size of the bagels, getting a half-dozen out of a half recipe. The step of refrigerating the dough was new to me in making bagels, but I thought it would be worth doing unlike the refrigeration step in the pumpkin bread. I could see no reason for it in that recipe, but thought the cold dough might make shaping the bagels a bit easier.

Risen dough

I made no additions or subtractions to the recipe, and added a teaspoon of black pepper for the half recipe. I allowed it to rise about an hour in my microwave (which I had warmed by heating an inch of water in a glass on high for two minutes). After that proofing, I stuck the dough in the refrig for an overnight rising. Here is what the half recipe looked like after a night in the fridge.

Bagels after shaping and boiling

The book's technique of shaping the bagels was different than my usual method. Normally, I roll about four ounces of dough in a rope, then wrap the dough around my hand with the ends meeting at my palm. I then roll my hand back and forth on the counter, merging the two ends of dough together. I must say I liked the Baking with Julia method much better and thought that it worked very well with the chilled dough. I allowed one piece of dough to warm up, just to see if it was harder to shape and it was. Thus, the step of chilling was worthwhile. The boiling step went well, except for the fact that I mistakenly put one boiled bagel on the towel with the flour -- oh no! It stuck to the towel as if it were glued. After all, flour and water make paste. I opted to use poppy seeds after applying the egg white wash.

The bagels after baking

I chose to bake my bagels five minutes less than the recipe instructed and was I glad I did. Even at that, I thought they were somewhat over baked. The taste? They were good, but very chewy. That night in the fridge probably made the dough all that more glutenous. If you like a very chewy bagel, this is the recipe for you. But, I confess, I couldn't taste the pepper. Frankly, I like Jewish egg bagels better -- less chewy and lighter, making them excellent for sandwiches.

TWD -- My favorite recipe so far

I loved, loved, loved the Pumpkin Cranberry Nut Yeast Bread, this week's Tuesdays with Dorie assignment! I can't say enough good things about it. I had pumpkin in the freezer left over from last year's crop of pie pumpkins, and I thawed it enabling me to use the real McCoy, rather than the canned, processed variety.

After reading the recipe, I decided to skip the refrigeration step. I know, I know, I cheated, but time was of the essence and I needed to be up and gone today and lacked the luxury of waiting around for refrigerated dough to warm and then rise. Plus, I have baked with refrigerated dough before and don't think the extra step adds enough to the final product to make it all worthwhile. It may pay off when making a baguette, but when making a vegetable, fruit bread, I couldn't see the advantage.
I made no changes to the recipe except for substituting dried cranberries (Craisins) for fresh ones. I love Craisins, and I reasoned that fresh cranberries could give the bread too tart a taste.

Baked in 71.2- by 4-inch pans

I opted to bake my loaves in 71/2- by 4-inch pans rather than the three smaller ones. First of all, I don't own those minuscule pans (what's the point?) and I wanted a sizable loaf to take to a Debate Party on Wednesday night (go Obama).



Second rise, 2 hours

Sliced when still warm

My dough did need a bit more water, perhaps an ounce or so, but otherwise the it acted as it should, slapping the sides of the Kitchen Aid bowl like a good loaf of bread should. The dough took a while to rise, due I think to the sugar and the cinnamon in the mixture, but it was well worth the wait. The first rise took 90 minutes, the second rise 120. I couldn't wait to carve into the loaf, and I was ecstatic over its taste, its crumb, its texture. I will definitely make this bread again!

TWD -- A recipe in my comfort zone

Finally: A recipe I could feel confident about. The whole wheat bread recipe, this week's Tuesday's With Dorie challenge from the book, "Baking with Julia," was right up my alley. As a self-confessed "bread head" who has not purchased a loaf of bread in 11 years and has experimented with almost every bread recipe known to man in that time period, I recognized the whole wheat recipe as the de riguer recipe now making the rounds in cookbooks, magazines and Internet recipes. This standard formula of approximately half white flour and half whole wheat with honey used as sweetener is the homecoming queen of all whole wheat recipes.

Sourdough starter crock

Since I bake mostly sourdough bread, I decided to convert the Baking with Julia recipe using some sourdough starter in the formula. Sourdough bread stays fresh longer than other breads, and the use of natural yeast cuts back the need for store-bought yeast.

My sourdough starter, now eight years old, is fed with equal portions of water and flour measured by weight, not volume. In other words, I feed it weekly with four ounces of water and four onces of flour. Thus, to convert a standard recipe to a sourdough recipe, I need to subtract equal amounts of flour and water from the original recipe. In the case of the Baking with Julia whole wheat loaf, I first cut the recipe in half to make only one loaf not two, then added six ounces of sourdough starter. This meant that I needed three ounces less of both flour and water.

Microwsve as proofing box

After mixing and kneading the dough with my stand mixer, I used by microwave oven as a proofing box. I heated about an inch of water in a microwave safe glass for two minutes on high. Then, leaving the glass in the microwave for moisture, I added the bowl of bread dough, shut the door, and allowed the dough to rise for 90 minutes. I used the same technique to let the dough rise in the pan for 60 minutes.

The finished loaf

The bread turned out lovely, and I felt I gained the advantage of adding more chew (sourdough starter acts much like a poolish or biga providing more chew to the crumb) and I was able to cut back on the yeast by about half. Otherwise, I followed the recipe exactly.

TWD -- Nervous Nelly over Nectarines

I'll confess. I was more than a bit nervous about making Nectarine Upside Down Chiffon Cake for this week's Tuesdays with Dorie assignment.  After viewing the schedule and seeing that a cake was due the day after Labor Day, I volunteered to bring the dessert to a Labor Day gathering.

Then I read the comments -- those helpful suggestions from bakers who had gotten a jump on the assignment, had made the cake and were describing their experiences. That's when the worry set in. I saw the word "sinking" in several comments, and thought, "If there's any chance of a cake sinking, it will happen to me." I have been known to have cake-mix cakes sink. However, after doing a test on my oven temperature about three weeks ago, I discovered that the thermostat was off by 15 degrees. After adjusting it upward, I was having better luck baking other desserts -- but a cake, and a chiffon cake at that?

Here was my quandary. I was obligated now to take a dessert, but what if the cake sank so badly it wasn't edible. And, during my period of obsessing (should I bake something else as backup?) I got out the ruler and measured my springform pan. It wasn't a 10-inch pan, but a 9-inch pan. The bakers' comments had addressed that issue. Use less batter. But how much less? I concluded I needed nine-tenths the amount of everything mentioned in the recipe. I got out my calculator and scale and decided to proceed, but plugging in enough time to make a fruit cobbler if things went really wrong.

Oh, I forgot to mention. During my obsessing phase, I watched the video (as suggested in the comments suggestion) not once but twice. The lovely baker in the video made the cake look so easy. It appeared that nothing could go wrong. Then I "googled" Nectarine Upside Down Chiffon Cake and saw where Tish Boyle had baked it on Julia's 100th birthday on August 15 and hers looked delicious in the photo on her blog. But, then again, I'm nowhere near Tish Boyle's league, so I began preparing raspberry cobbler ingredients as I had now worried myself into believing, MY CAKE WILL SINK!

So, to make a long story short, the cake did sink. I watched it sink through the window in the oven door. Everything was going smoothly until about 35 minutes into the baking time, and I then it began to sink before my very eyes. By the time 45 minutes were up, the crater in the middle looked like the Grand Canyon (that is a bit of an exaggeration and the picture makes it look less sunken than it really was), but remember I'm obsessing and tempus is fugiting.

The 25 minutes before I could turn it out on a plate were the longest 25 minutes in my life. Should I start the cobbler NOW, or should I hope in the upside down state it wouldn't look half bad. And some of the comments said even though their cakes sunk, they were still good. So, I held off starting the cobbler and watched the clock slowly tick away.

Turning it out was pretty easy. I did not use parchment paper as some in the comments section suggested.  I found I didn't need it. Once the cake was on the plate it didn't look half bad. Would it sink more as it cooled? Should I start the cobbler, or hold out another hour. I held out. It sank no further and I reasoned that if I said not a word at the Labor Day gathering to the effect, "Sorry, but my cake sunk a bit" people just might assume it was meant to be concave in the middle. After all, would anyone there have ever tasted Nectarine Upside Down Chiffon Cake before? I rather doubted it.

This story has a happy ending. I took the cake first to the Labor Day dinner and everyone loved it. Then I took the rest of the cake to the bakery where I volunteer, and there were just enough  left so all 10 volunteers could try it. Again, it got rave reviews. Although the cake was a hit, I would still like to know: Why did it sink? If anyone has the answer, I'd love to hear from you. I'd really like to make this cake again!