Monday, December 30, 2024

December Baking & Other Stuff

Wednesday the week before Christmas...was not a good night with work. I told folks either the 8pm change would go smoothly but take about 90 minutes or it would be a shit show. Binary, no in between "works" and "horribly wrong." Was on the phone with support till 3am.

Hit the high test stuff for the Keurig the next morning :)



Guess what time it is!



Mom even called to say it was excellent o_O

https://www.allrecipes.com/recipe/7010/finnish-pulla/https://www.allrecipes.com/recipe/7010/finnish-pulla/

and

https://bakerpedia.com/a-guide-to-properly-heating-milk-in-baked-goods/
and
me

Original recipe (1X) yields 36 servings
2 cups milk
½ cup warm water (110 degrees F/45 degrees C)
1 (.25 ounce) package active dry yeast
1 cup white sugar
4 large eggs, beaten
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon ground cardamom
9 cups all-purpose flour
½ cup butter, melted
1 large egg
1 tablespoon water
2 tablespoons white sugar
1 cup raisins
Almonds
Granulated Sugar



Directions

Warm milk in a small saucepan over medium heat until it bubbles, then remove from heat. Let cool until lukewarm. 
(110° in a water bath/sous vide would be fine; just need to break down the milk a bit so the yeast isn’t inhibited by it)
Stir together warm water and yeast in a large bowl. Let stand until yeast softens and begins to form a creamy foam, about 5 minutes. 
(Guess what…grab it from the water bath)
While milk is warming, take the eggs out and put on the counter to warm up
Put the 1/2 stick of butter in a small mason jar and into the sous vide bath
Put the raisins in a bowl with warm water to plump up; can be tap warm water.
Stir lukewarm milk, sugar, 4 beaten eggs, salt, and cardamom into yeast mixture. Beat in 2 cups flour until combined. Add 3 cups flour and beat until dough is smooth and elastic.
Add melted butter; beat until glossy. Mix in remaining flour until dough is stiff.
Transfer dough to a floured surface, cover with an inverted mixing bowl, and let rest for 15 minutes.
Knead dough until smooth and satiny, then place in a lightly greased mixing bowl and turn dough to coat. Cover with a dish towel; let rise in a warm place until doubled, about 1 hour. Punch down dough; let rise again until almost doubled, about 1 hour.
Turn dough out again onto a floured surface and divide into 3 equal pieces. Divide each piece into thirds. Roll each piece into a 12- to 16-inch strip. Braid 3 strips into a loaf to get 3 large, braided loaves. Lift loaves onto the prepared baking sheets. Cover with a dish towel or plastic wrap and let rise for 20 minutes. 

Can also make into buns instead of a loaf.
Preheat the oven to 400 degrees F (205 degrees C). Grease 2 baking sheets (or parchment paper)
Beat together 1 egg and water in a small bowl. Brush over loaves and sprinkle with sugar.
Bake in the preheated oven until the top is golden brown, 25 to 30 minutes. Check occasionally because the bottoms of loaves can burn quickly.








Also had a bread going; second small one I made this month. Was supposed to be a sourdough, but the sourdough yeast wasn't really thriving so after like 36 hours I rescued the dough with some regular yeast. Bread was still good. I like the new cast iron bread pan! Lets me make smaller loaves than when I do the dutch oven style.














Sunday I did the baking the high was 20°...Monday morning my Fusion was due to go to Sorel's and they had to come jump start it first as it was dead in 0°. Got up to 5° by the time that was all sorted out and I was headed to work.


With the bread I made.


Christmas morning mixed up some cookie dough for the freezer; chocolate chip batch and an oatmeal raisin batch.






Little bit of Xmas light viewing on the way home that night.




Ok, this little bugger came across my Facebook feed -- it's a vacuum sealer for Mason jars for $25. Kind of went crazy using it on the surplus I have since I don't actually bake that much.






Freezing my half of a pulla loaf (gave mom, Pat, and Pam the others) while I finish eating the buns.







Few garage pics...

Mostly been in the house, but we've had a warm spell so I'm back out in the garage (which became a bit of a mess as I moved stuff from the house to the garage to be sorted later).
Did by a pretty good scan tool for the cars; have a sensor in the Jeep to replace probably on New Year's Day so I'll have a good excuse to play with it then.



My battery jump box seems to only hold a charge about 2 months; it seems to be defective 'cause my boss grabbed his out of his truck which he hadn't charged in a year and it was 100%. Anyway until I decide to replace it I marked when it was last charged so I can remember to top it off regularly.


Sunday finally got the RF inner fender liner reinstalled in the Jeep; been off since September but as we get into snow season more important to get it back on.

By the time I finished that I was have a major arthritis flare up so I retreated to bed to let the Advil do it's magic.



The condensation in the garage (colder garage, big temp increase) wasn't bad on Sunday. Took Monday mostly off and holy hell it was bad. It is supposed to be sort of warm for the next couple days (through January 1st) so I'm hoping the temp stabilizing + running fans help dry stuff off.


Installed a couple pull-out trays on the workbench my dad built me many years ago, but with so much condensation I really didn't want to deal with more organizing work :(



Sunday, December 15, 2024

Thanksgiving & December Picture Dump

Thanksgiving, some photos Wayne took and shared with me:






These shirts all pre-date Covid; I don't know if fashions changed or supply chain changed but I've been wearing this style of knitted polo for 20 years and since Covid I can't find them anymore...I already had retired a bunch from wearing to the office but these were still hanging on.

I did finally find some nice (but much plainer) polos so I bought a bunch of those and these are going in my rag pile.



Well that didn't turn out quite as anticipated...it was too close to the ends to screw in so I tried zip-tieing and it rotated backwards. I'll have to put a piece of wood or something to keep it straight.



Bunch of old change I had in the garage that was dirty as shit...cleaning in vinegar.



So improvising something to vacuum the cobwebs from the ceiling -- the plastic pipes couldn't support themselves but luckily I had a metal vacuum tube I could duct-tape to make things work.

Have been catching up on a lot of house work now that the garage is colder :D



Put new rechargeable batteries in the candle in the mantle tin lantern.





Thought I heard the mini-split running more than expected...it was one of those nights you think you loaded the woodstove to take off and you didn't. This isn't what you want to see in the morning!



Kind of hard to see, but they put up a Snoopy dog house to cover the town pump for Xmas!





12/3 -- finally got the hand truck and lift table out of the basement!



12/5 -- we had a 10% chance of less than 1" of snow total...we got 4" with 1/4" snow flakes at the height of it!



At Thanksgiving Pat mentioned pork stuffing which got me craving pork with stuffing. Just some ground sausage with Stovetop stuffing (but it was good!)



Finally retired the phone case that was falling apart, got just a plain black one -- and after years of having brightly colored ones I'm finding I'm losing my phone in the house often :D



Got a power strip for next to the recliner -- it clamps on quite securely.



And we had like 2-1/2" of rain on 12/11 (thank you climate change for our new feast-or-famine pattern), and apparently the Amazon guy had a hard time seeing the end of the driveway :/



Saturday 12/14 -- during the week got the Xmas lights up for the first time since the renovations during the week.





Dunno why, I was cold A.F. today -- took a kind of half nap around 2:30, was up by 4 and even though the main house was 71 I put on a light sweater until it got up to like 78.



Trying some sourdough -- I got these small little bread pans, to make smaller breads than I usually do. Dough is a bit wet, but I'm sure I'll be kneading it at least once more so we'll see how this rises first.





I need to buy a new dryer (control board died and it's not worth spending several hundred on one of the few "rebuilt" ones that pop up); but certainly when the woodstove is going the drying tree works very well. I'll probably just buy a nice matched set come spring or next summer-ish.