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Tag Archives: baking

I make! Pane bianco

King Arthur Flour (KAF) announced a bakealong recently.  I decided to participate.  I think I might just like xalongs.  I mean, I participated in the paintalong not long ago.

Anyway, KAF’s bakealong is a monthly challenge.  August’s challenge was a pane bianco.  The name of which is kind of confusing to me.  I mean, that’s just “white bread” in Italian.  And yes…it is a white bread.  But it’s stuffed?  I mean, if I saw “white bread” in English, I think of…Wonder Bread or something.  At least, I think of a white, sliced loaf bread.  I definitely don’t think about a stuffed bread.

BUT ANYHOW, it was an interesting recipe to try, it smelled and tasted delicious, and it’s pretty.  That last part isn’t a huge seller.  I mean, I don’t mind eating ugly food if it tastes good.  It’s more of a bonus.

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I made my pane bianco with AP flour.  I think I’m out of bread flour.  Pretty sure.  I didn’t actually check.  But I do have that 25lb bag of AP flour handy.  So that’s what I tend to reach for first.  KAF recommends that you reduce the water to 1/4c if you use AP flour and I followed their recommendation.

I also subbed the instant yeast for active dry, also because I have a jar of that handy.  I generally use a 1:1.8 (active dry:instant) ratio when subbing active dry for instant.  And of course, I highly recommend that you proof your active dry yeast first.  To do that, I made sure that my water and milk were at about 110-115degF before dumping in the yeast.  I generally heat my liquid to the upper range for dry active yeast because I store my active dry yeast either in the fridge or freezer, also I threw in maybe half a teaspoon of sugar to help the yeast along.   All of that tends to lower the temperature of the liquid a bit.

As for the stuffing, I probably ended up doubling the garlic (I really like garlic) and I used a mix of shredded mozz and freshly grated parm along with the sun-dried tomatoes and basil.

I think next time, I might do a mix of tomatoes and choke hearts.  I think that might be really good.  I think I’d also like to try it with bread flour some time as well.  With AP flour, my bread ended up being very light and tender.  It’s good.  But I’d like to see if I get a noticeable texture difference using a flour with higher gluten content.

 

I make! Ugly blueberry lemon cake edition

Remember this from last week?

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I made it a few weeks ago when I had a lot of lemons to get rid of (stupid tree) and a bunch of blueberries I didn’t use from when I had family visiting.  Turns out, I also had a block of cream cheese sitting in the fridge during that time.  So I made a blueberry lemon layer cake.  Also because I saw one online and figured it was a good way to get rid of some lemons and blueberries.

I mostly followed the recipe from Sally’s Baking Addiction.  She calls it a lemon blueberry layer cake.  It is indeed a layer cake.  But I say blueberry lemon.  Maybe because I feel that it’s more orderly that way.

The changes I made were to use powdered buttermilk (of course, and use milk in place of water when reconstituting), cream the lemon zest in with the butter and sugar, add the ingredients to the butter mixture in a dry/wet/dry/wet/dry order, and bake in two 9″ pans.  Bake time ended up being about 24min.

In the frosting, I used slightly less sugar than called for (I don’t really like sickeningly sweet frosting), milk instead of heavy cream (just add milk slowly and beat in until you have the consistency you want), and the zest of one lemon.

I decided to go for a four layer cake, which meant that I sliced each cake in half.  I also decided not to frost the sides and leave them bare.  I don’t really have a problem with this look.  I just think I didn’t do it well and the cake looks ugly.  Oh well.

I was told that the cake tasted really good (I didn’t have any) and everyone was surprised by the pairing of lemons and blueberries in a layer cake.  Um…I didn’t think it was that unique.  Although, I suppose normally you would find that more in a pound cake instead of a layer cake.

Which brings me to the point of: I don’t really like making layer cakes.  This cake just reminded me again that I don’t.  I always think I’ll like doing it…but layer cakes don’t look good or special unless you actually take the time to assemble nicely and decorate well.  I enjoy the baking process (and eating process) and not so much the assembly and not really the decorating at all.  I probably won’t be making another layer cake any time soon.

Until I forget that I don’t like making them again and take on another layer cake project.