recipes

Notes from various recipes

Cinnamon rolls

These came out great! Letting it rise for long enough made the texture really fluffy.

If I could do it again I might add a touch more cinnamon or maybe try a less strong cream cheese than Philadelphia so that the cheese flavor doesn’t overpower the cinnamon flavor. I might also try more flavoring like nutmeg or ginger.

Sheng Jian Bao (ChatGPT-generated)

Ingredients

• 200g flour (1 2/3 cups)
• 10g sugar (2 tsp)
• 3g yeast (1 tsp)
• 2g salt (1/2 tsp)
• 5g vegetable oil (1 tsp)
• 110g water or milk (1/c cup)

Fillings tried

• Cranberry sauce and sweet potato filling (TODO: copy from ChatGPT). This turned out well
• Mushroom and onion. This didn’t turn out well
• Leftover green bean casserole. This turned out great! But I didn’t have the time to freeze it so shaping was difficult
• Leftover turkey, gravy, and mashed potato. This turned out ok but the flavors weren’t very strong

It’s best if you freeze or harden the filling somehow, and the filling should be something with a strong flavor.

Steps

• Bloom, mix, knead, rise until doubled.
• Separate into about 8 equal pieces, then pre-shape into balls
• Shape with a rolling pin into circles. If possible, you want a slight convex/lens shape with thinner edges
• Fold the dumpling wrappers around the filling, let rest a bit (can find videos on Youtube for shaping)
• Heat a little oil in a pan on medium or medium-high. Cook the bottoms for 1-2 min, then add 1/4 cup of water and put a lid on to steam them for 4-5 minutes, then cook without the lid for about a minute to re-crisp the bottoms
• Cool on a cooling rack so that the bottoms don’t lose the crisp

Dinner rolls

These turned out great, though I made some adjustments:

• Didn’t use eggs in the dough or the wash
• Used milk wash
• On the best one, I used a little starter too and had the first rise going overnight to develop flavor and save time

The tangzhong method is okay. One nice thing is that I can use it to melt or soften the butter, which also brings down the paste temperature. But the pot was always a bit annoying to clean because it doesn’t break down in water easily. I think it made the dough a little easier to handle than I’d normally expect though.

Starter experiment

For one week Option A: Fed 10g white flour, 10g water every day. Left at room temp Option B: Fed 10g wheat flour, 6-7g water every day. Left in the fridge

After one week, I baked a small loaf with somf of each White: 60g starter, 170g flour, 110g water, 5g salt Wheat: 60g starter, 170g flour, 121g water, 5g salt

I let them rise for about 7 hours, then gently shaped them and let them proof for about 40 min.

Then I baked the white one at 400 with convection on the bread stone for about 27 min. Then I baked the wheat one the same way.

Notes:

• I couldn’t tell if one tasted more sour than the other.
• The white one rose much more.
• Even though it’s only a small amount of starter I could taste the wheat flour from the wheat starter and that added a lot of flavor.
• Conclusion: The white one was much more active by the time I used it. Both were tasty but in different ways.

Retro:

• I think 60% hydration with wheat flour is a bad combination because wheat soaks more. Something like 80% might be better

Cinnamon roll focaccia

I used the recipe from King Arthur Test Kitchen.

Attempt 1 notes

Worked well

• I let it rise quite a while and it was nice and fluffy
• Baking in the cast iron skillet with a parchment square worked great. It came right out

Didn’t work so well

• The sugar on the very top burned and the burned flavor was noticeacble. I should’ve tented tin foil over it or baked in the full sized oven not convection toaster oven.
• The olive oil flavor seemed to compete with the topping flavor. It tasted a little weird, so I think it’d be better with a more neutral olive oil

Oatmeal raisin cookies

From the NYT recipe.

Attempt 1 at Ken and Lauren’s

Worked well

• Delicious and stayed soft for a while

Didn’t work so well

• I think we had to bake longer, maybe 15 min or so
• The flavor felt a bit simple to me

Attempt 2 at home

• Used nutmeg and cardamom for an interesting flavor profile. I’d suggest cutting the nutmeg a little. Maybe the recipe is designed for very stale nutmeg
• They really flattened, especially in the convection toaster. On the latter batches, I used the full sized oven and that worked better but I had to wait longer for it to heat up. They were still flatter than attempt 1 though.