Basic Baguettes and a Tender Rye Bread

One gift of the pandemic has been baking "with" my urban grandson. We started with matching boxes of King Arthur Baking mixes, working our way through a couple of breads and cinnamon rolls, then scones. He's already an ace with sugar cookies and has his own recipe.

This weekend, he's working from scratch on baguettes -- I gave him a baguette pan, five pounds of bread flour, and a jar of dry yeast, over the holidays. So he's all set! Here's the recipe I provided this morning, and I get the feeling he's going to do this on his own:

Grandma’s Baguette Recipe

One cup warm water, in a large bowl. Sprinkle 2 teaspoons dry yeast over the water. In a separate bowl mix 2 cups bread or regular flour and 2 teaspoons salt. Then add the flour mix to the liquid and stir. Switch to the dough scraper* and and another cup of flour. Work it in with the dough scraper. Now just add a half cup or less flour at a time, folding the dough with the scraper to mix and stretch it, until it feels stretchy and still soft but almost firm. Add a tablespoon of oil to the bowl and roll the dough in it so it and the bowl are oiled. Cover bowl and let dough rise for 1 hour. Put a little oil or spray on your baguette pan. Start the oven heating to 425. Take a cutting board or sheet of wax paper or parchment and put about a quarter cup flour on it. Dump your dough onto this. Use the scraper to divide into loaves (your pan is for 3?).  Roll each one with your hands into a long loaf and place in pan. Put parchment or wax paper loosely over them. Let rise - maybe 20 minutes? - then bake for 20 to 30 minutes until golden.  

For those of you ready to fuss a bit more, two tips will make your loaves more like the French ones: Place a roasting pan of hot water on a lower shelf of the oven to add humidity (I don't want a 12-year-old doing this because of the risk of spilling), and when you're ready to bake, dust a bit of flour onto the tops of your loaves and add diagonal slits, using a very sharp blade.

Earlier this week I baked a rye-and-caraway bread that I really liked, improvising a bit from a recipe that came with the pumpernickel flour I bought from King Arthur Baking. Here we go:

Buttered rye bread with organic eggs ... mmm, my kind of breakfast.

 

Soft Rye Bread With Caraway Seeds

Combine and mix in a large bowl, repeatedly folding with a dough scraper* to knead into a soft, smooth dough:

2 cups pumpernickel flour

4-1/2 cups all-purpose flour

1/2 cup potato flour

1/4 cup brown sugar

1/4 cup caraway seeds

2 teaspoons salt

4 teaspoons dry yeast

3 cups warm water

Add a bit of oil to the bowl and roll the dough in it; cover and let rise 1 hour. Divide into two oval loaves and place them on a greased baking sheet. Let rise 10-15 minutes while you heat the over to 425 degrees. Slash the tops diagonally and bake 20-25 minutes. Try to wait until it's cool to slice it!

(The original recipe included 2 tablespoons of caramel color; I didn't have any, but it would have made the bread look more like a store-bought rye.)

*If you don't have a dough scraper ... well, there's nothing that does the job as well. Here's a link. They are cheap and you'll wonder why you waited so long to get one. Mine has a curved edge, which I like better than the straight one in this link, but it's not being sold by KAB now ... you may find one online if you look for a while.

Jean's Chewy Maple Cookies

Left side, cut with pizza cutter! Right side, recipe working much better.

My good friend Jean shared her recipe yesterday for Chewy Maple Cookies -- yumm! Baking them today, I used the "very strong dark" maple syrup that Goodrich's Maple Farm in Cabot, Vermont, provides for cooks. I also tried substituting whole wheat flour for part of the white flour in the original recipe -- not a success at first, as the whole wheat flour didn't absorb the liquid, and the cookies spread into a sheet of cooked dough on the (parchment-lined) pan. A few quick strokes with the pizza cutter turned things back into snack form, but I still wanted the cookie shape, so with the other half of the dough I raised the amount of flour.

Here's my final "revised" version -- and Jean, thank you very much!

Pre-heat oven to 375 degrees.

Stir together:
1-1/2 (one and one half) cups unbleached flour
1 cup whole wheat flour
2 tsp baking powder
dash salt
1 cup finely chopped walnuts (I put the regular chopped ones in a small plastic bag and run the rolling pin over them a couple of times to make them finer)

In a large bowl, beat with hand mixer:
1/2 cup shortening
1 cup (packed) light brown sugar
1 egg
1/2 cup dark maple syrup (if you can't get dark, use light but add Jean's extra ingredient: 1/2 tsp maple flavoring)

Stir in dry ingredients. Drop dough by generous teaspoonfuls onto parchment-lined or greased cookie sheet. Bake at 375 for 12 minutes. Makes about 4 dozen.

Maple Pecan Pie

Sugaring season is close to the end around here (northeastern Vermont) -- one local family said today they had made 35 gallons of maple syrup from their home sugarbush and sugarhouse (35 times 40 = 1400 gallons of sap to do that!). They'll be washing out their buckets tomorrow.

And tomorrow I'll be meeting readers and selling my Vermont mysteries at the St. Albans (Vermont) Maple Festival, so I'm getting in the mood for the sweet celebration! Here's my best maple pecan pie recipe; it has some "pauses" in the process, so watch the timing if you're in a rush.

Heat and boil for 1 minutes, then let cool to lukewarm (ideal to place out on a chilly back porch!):
3/4 cup maple syrup
3/4 cup packed light brown sugar
1/2 cup light corn syrup

Make a single-crust pie dough recipe, roll out, and fit into the pan; put it in the freezer for 20 minutes. Meanwhile, pre-heat oven to 350 degrees.

Whip eggs, whisking in the lukewarm syrup mixture, vanilla, and salt and then stirring in the pecans:
3 large eggs
1 tsp vanilla
1/4 tsp salt
1-1/2 (one and one half) cups pecan halves

Fill pie shell with mixture. Bake at 350, placed low in the oven, for 55 minutes. Cool before serving.

Oatmeal Cookies with Dark Chocolate Chips OR with (2018 Update) Rhubarb

Had a request today for this recipe, and it's worth sharing it -- it's based on the back-of-the-box recipe from Quaker Oats, but I've been adapting it to my taste (and cupboard) for the past 35 years. When I learned that "brown sugar" in stores was actually just white sugar with molasses added, I changed the recipe to reflect this -- and not pay the higher price of brown sugar! I've found different kinds of rolled oats ("quick" or 5-minute or health-food-store organic) make different textures of the cookie. Lately I use the health-food-store organic, because it's what I have in the house, but I think the recipe sometimes works better with the 5-minute type -- sort of halfway between the textures of the organic and the "quick." And for the chocolate chips, my own taste now is suited best by the Ghirardelli "60% cocoa" bittersweet chips, not as sweet, but I've made plenty of batches of cookies with Nestle semi-sweet chocolate chips.

You can vary this by adding coarsely chopped walnuts, or dried cranberries (about half a cup of either one), or you can use raisins; if you do raisins and chocolate chips together, it tastes terrific. If you do raisins without chocolate, add a teaspoon of cinnamon to the flour. UPDATE, May 2018: Add 2 cups of finely chopped (but not crushed; a quarter inch is good) fresh rhubarb if you like! But this version needs to be eaten within a day or so, because the rhubarb has so much moisture.

And definitely, you can make the recipe without the chocolate chips, for plain oatmeal cookies. I've tried whole wheat flour in it and find the cookies get too heavy, but it's worth experimenting if that's what you like. And oh yes, ALL flour varies, even from day to day, so if your first pan of cookies all sort of "melt flat" and come out too thin, add another 2 tablespoons of flour to the remaining dough before making the next pan of them.

           Beth's Chocolate Chip Oatmeal Cookies

Preheat the oven to 350º and grease two large cookie sheets. (I now use the insulated cookie sheets; if you don't have them and you are using thin metal, you might try 325º instead and add 2 minutes longer cooking. That's what I used to do. And you can avoid greasing the cookie sheets if you use parchment paper on them.)

Mix together in a large bowl, using a wooden spoon:

3/4 cup vegetable shortening (like Crisco)
1-1/4 (that's one and a quarter) cups sugar
2 eggs
2 Tablespoons molasses
1 teaspoon vanilla

Mix in a small bowl:
1-1/2 cups flour
1 teaspoon baking soda

Dump the flour into the shortening/sugar mix, and mix until mostly blended. Add:

2-1/2 cups rolled oats
6 ounces (half a large pack, or an entire small pack) chocolate chips (and see above for other additions)

Spoon onto the cookie sheets, about a tablespoon of dough per cookie, with an inch and a half between cookies.

Bake for 12 to 15 minutes. Remove from cookie sheets right away and cool on racks. (If you don't have cookie cooling racks, or you're not sure you'll have time or energy to take the cookies off the cookie sheets right away, try using "parchment paper" on your cookie pans, instead of greasing them with shortening. Then you can lift the whole sheet of paper off at once, with all the cookies, and set this to cool on a countertop or table. I try to keep some around, now that I've found out how handy it is.)

That's it! Have fun.