seasonal food
Apr. 17th, 2022 10:59 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
nosrednaydujYesterday afternoon I tried to make Ukrainian Easter bread, after being inspired by somebody from Valerie's church. The recipe was one that called for original yeast with the whole proofing thing, and also manually needing and rising and so forth. I don't have that much patience. So I tried to adapt it for the bread machine.
This was moderately successful, and the bread came out beautifully in the end. But I ended up with too much liquid because I didn't reduce it enough to compensate for the eggs, I think or the fact that it called for quite a bit more fat than my normal recipes (it called for melted butter, but I substituted vegetable oil), so what ended up happening was that the little paddles spun around uselessly in the liquid without actually mixing the dry ingredients in. But I was alert to it potentially not working, so I was checking periodically, and when I noticed this I started doing some mixing with a fork, trying not to get my fork bashed by the little paddles, which were still going. You can't stop and start the bread maker, you just have to work with what it's doing.
This produced a dough that seemed kind of still too sticky, so I sprinkled in some more flour while it was mixing. This made me concerned about the fact that the bread machine can handle 4 cups of flour, and I had just sprinkled in more like 5, and was it still going to fit (it did).
Fast-forward to kneading time, and now it seems like it's really asymmetric in its kneading, so I got out my trusty fork and pushed things from one side to the other. Since the recipe called for raisins, which the bread machine will beep and tell me when is the right time to add, I did a little fluid dynamics experiments by dropping in a couple of raisins and watching where they went, and it seemed like it was actually being okay, but I still pushed it around a little. I helped a little with the punch down portion as well, because it seemed like maybe it wasn't going to do a good enough job. When it got done kneading and into the last rise, I tried to straighten it all out so it would be an even loaf.
It was perfect. And, I think, a lot less actual work than doing the kneading and rising and all that stuff myself, and a lot less cleanup as well at the end.
Then, this morning I made some hard-boiled eggs and dyed them, because why not.
This was moderately successful, and the bread came out beautifully in the end. But I ended up with too much liquid because I didn't reduce it enough to compensate for the eggs, I think or the fact that it called for quite a bit more fat than my normal recipes (it called for melted butter, but I substituted vegetable oil), so what ended up happening was that the little paddles spun around uselessly in the liquid without actually mixing the dry ingredients in. But I was alert to it potentially not working, so I was checking periodically, and when I noticed this I started doing some mixing with a fork, trying not to get my fork bashed by the little paddles, which were still going. You can't stop and start the bread maker, you just have to work with what it's doing.
This produced a dough that seemed kind of still too sticky, so I sprinkled in some more flour while it was mixing. This made me concerned about the fact that the bread machine can handle 4 cups of flour, and I had just sprinkled in more like 5, and was it still going to fit (it did).
Fast-forward to kneading time, and now it seems like it's really asymmetric in its kneading, so I got out my trusty fork and pushed things from one side to the other. Since the recipe called for raisins, which the bread machine will beep and tell me when is the right time to add, I did a little fluid dynamics experiments by dropping in a couple of raisins and watching where they went, and it seemed like it was actually being okay, but I still pushed it around a little. I helped a little with the punch down portion as well, because it seemed like maybe it wasn't going to do a good enough job. When it got done kneading and into the last rise, I tried to straighten it all out so it would be an even loaf.
It was perfect. And, I think, a lot less actual work than doing the kneading and rising and all that stuff myself, and a lot less cleanup as well at the end.
Then, this morning I made some hard-boiled eggs and dyed them, because why not.
