Made a second batch of wholemeal shortbread.  This time I exercised my new set of cutters instead of making them square.  Still just as yummy.

The third batch will be cooked in a slab and cut into fingers when cold.

Left click to enlarge.

Shortbread baked as a slab to cut into fingers.  There wasn't enough mix to fill the tray, so I had to make a 'stopper' to prevent the mix from spreading as it initially softened in the heat of baking.

I used a bit of pine stripwood, but pine tend to ooze residual sap when heated and this will taint the food quite noticeably.  So I wrapped it  in silicone sheet liner first.  Fixed the liner in place on the wood with some big old fashioned drawing pins.

Once a pine strip has been baked often enough and turned dark it tends to stop oozing.  But I'd still wrap it just in case.

Left click to enlarge.

It's making me hungry. I'm just having a coffee and a piece of shortbread would go very nicely! I've got coffee and walnut muffins and hot cross buns, BUT frozen.  :(

More shortbreads ;-)

Slightly different recipe, using Shipton Mill's wholemeal pastry flour.  This is milled a little more finely than the Allinson  wholemeal I've used previously.   They don't look all that different from white flour shortbread but they taste different.  Mix made 24 fairly thick biscuits, which took 16 minutes to bake at 360 F (180 C).

I also added an egg which made a slightly wetter mix.  Used one size smaller cutter, with a view to packing some into a Pringles tube to send to a relative abroad.

Some of this batch will be half-dipped in chocolate, so I can teach my Grandaughter how.  Will also try for the combed 'wavy' pattern

Commercially i would have probably sprinkled them with caster sugar as well, but they're sweet enough without adding extra on top.  I could reduce the sugar even more if I have to.

Left click if you feel hungry ;-)

Gyppo

   These are my now standard wholemeal shortbreads, but raised to luxury level.  Half dipped with melted chocolate and then patterned before it cools too much with a serrated edge plastic scraper.

    I only dipped six of them.  I did two to show the girls how it was done, and then Alma and her mum did two each.   

    Then I poured some chocolate onto a sheet of silicone, spread it out an eighth of an inch thick, and when it cooled - but was still slightly soft - showed them how to cut out chocolate circles, square, triangles and diamonds.  Commercially we used to use these to decorate the tops of cakes.  At the bakery the puddle would have been about eighteen inches by thirty inches, the size of a full baking sheet.   

The triangles would become chocolate sails on a small marzipan boat for the top of a birthday cake, sailing on a sea of blue icing.  Fifty-five years ago it would never have crossed anyone's mind to buy them ready made.  These chocolate shapes were the sort of things bakers did in between other jobs.

    If you poured and spread the chocolate on a marble slab it cooled really quickly, even in an otherwise warm bakery.  If you had a separate  pastry room away from the ovens so much the better.

   If you worked with a sheet of silicone baking parchment on top of the marble slab  you could then just slide the whole lot into a wooden bakers tray and stack them about six or eight deep.  It didn't take long to have a tray full of each shape, ready to be stored in a cupboard until needed.

    If you worked directly on the slab you slid a long palette knife under the whole lot to break them free then packed them onto the boxes, in which case a sheet of ordinary greaseproof paper between each layer was adequate to stop them sticking.  The trimmings went back onto the melting pot.

    Made with ordinary baker's milk chocolate they'll melt at body temperature if you handle them too slowly.  If you used expensive dark chocolate couverture, (this is the stuff used by confectioners making expensive chocolates), it has to be tempered by getting the temperature just right.  It will melt in your mouth but not in your hand.  This stuff needs a thermometer, or a thermostatically controlled melting pot and is very fiddly in comparison with basic baker's chocolate.  Very unforgiving stuff if you don't follow the rules for heating.  But an absolute joy to work with once you know what you're doing.  With a fine piping bag and a steady hand you can make delicate three dimensional chocolate lattice work to decorate a cake.  (I would have to look up the temperatures if I was going to use the 'real stuff' again.)

    There is a very good reason why confectioners who specialise in high end chocolate work consider themselves to be an elite.  They've earned that rank ;-)

    I enjoyed doing the demonstration and sent the girls home with a little box of goodies to eat.  There are traces of shortbread crumb in the melting pot so I may just crumble a whole biscuit into there and turn it in a chocolate biscuit bar.

    I've had fun today, exercising old skills.

    Left click to enlarge.

    ===

Thirty loaves later...  The 16 Kg bag of wholemeal is empty, save for a very residual dusting.

Started the new bag today.

Got it down to a nice repeatable process now.

Left click to enlarge.

Gyppo

Baker's trick backfires ;-)

With it being much warmer today my batch of shortbread dough was a little too soft for easy handling.  With a high fat content extra soft fat becomes a nuisance.

So I shoved it onto a plate as an inch thick lump and stuck it in the fridge for half an hour. to 'firm it up' a bit.  We sometimes had to do this with pastry in really hot summers, even when we made it using chilled water.

But I got 'sidetracked' by what I was writing and it was several hours before I remembered the shortbread.  Which was by then a rock solid lump.

I put it on the work surface and tapped it with a rolling pin and it shattered into several smaller lumps.

It is now sat under a cloth and overnight it will soften enough to be usable by morning.

Gyppo

  ...I utilised my other skills.  I can write quite peacefully - and productively - with a timer to remind when other stuff needs to be checked.

    Made my routine wholemeal loaf and a slab of bread pudding, which is also wholemeal.  The latter will cut into fourteen fingers, be frozen, and used one or two at a time.  This one is an 'eyeballed recipe', apart from weighing the stale bread to make sure there's enough to fill the tray.  A part-filled tray is a bit of a faff, tending to spread out and burn on the thin end ;-)

    This is a fairly lean and basic recipe which suits me but anyone could up the fat,  sugar, and fruit content to make it a bit more luxurious.  In fact, seeing the local tree surgeon come home with a six-pack hanging from one hand, it has just occurred  to me that a bread pudding could just as well be made using beer as the liquid component.  Not for me, but it could be a fun experiment and might taste quite nice.  After all, beer and bread are both yeast products, so they shouldn't clash ;-)

Left click to enlarge.



Gyppo

broke open my third 35 lb bag of wholemeal flour today.  Which means it as approximately six months since I last bought a loaf from a shop.

Here I am modestly hiding behind the bag as I empty the last bit from bag two.

Left click if you feel a crazed compulsion to enlarge the picture.

Gyppo

I also made a small batch of wholemeal pastry last week, which I turned into 8 individual apple pies.  They turned out rather well.  When I make some more I'll remember to take a few photos.

I stuck some in a plastic storage box in the fridge for my 'testing panel' to try when they visited a week later.  They passed with flying colours ;-)

This was an oil-based pastry, and the 'raw taste' test wasn't too encouraging, but once baked off they tasted good.  I shall return to this experiment.

There was no sugar involved, except in the filling,  so this same pastry could be used for meat pies as well.

I've had a busy evening.  Made a batch of wholemeal fruit scones, which was moderately successful.  they need more fruit.  The next batch I make will be cheese scones.

Also 26 oatcakes, a strange number, but that's how the mix turns out.  If I only get 24 then I know they're all a bit too thick  These oatcakes have become an important part of my diet after several months of eating them.  They're tasty as a plain biscuit, and can be topped with something either savoury or plain.  I've not bought any crackers since optimising my oatcake recipe.

I now make bread twice a week.  Once for my eight segment 'wheel loaf', which, suitably frozen, allows for my daily ration of lunchtime bread plus one extra for an occasional indulgence.  I also make a wholemeal loaf each week for my daughter and grandaughter to take home with them after a visit.

I don't understand what an oatcake is, apparently. Or it is a different beast over there. I don't think of them as more than a different kind of pancake and cannot fathom them being a substitute for a cracker. I'm guessing I'm thinking wrong in some way.

Patti;

Oatcakes are nothing more than oats, a little bit of fat (Rapeseed Oil in my case), and hot water.  Mixed to a paste and then rolled out thin like pastry before cutting into round biscuits.

They take a little over half an hour to bake and keep easily for a couple of weeks.  Beyond that time I don't know as they get eaten before then.

Here's a picture of them being served up with salami on top.  Does that make sense now?

Left click to enlarge.

Patti

They are a type of pancake here too, but oatcake is prefixed by the county name. Mostly Staffordshire (where I live) but also Derbyshire and possible some others.

Pic is my Staffordshire Oatcakes.

Mark

They look rather tasty, Mark.  Do you have a recipe to share?

Mine are a slight variation on a Scottish Oatcake recipe.  The original suggested using two different kind of oatmeal, 'pinhead' and rolled.  Two much 'faff' for an old school baker, apart from which all I had in the house was rolled porridge oats.  I bashed them around with the oil in the mixer on a high speed for a few minutes so about half of them broke down, but left enough whole flakes so they still looked 'oaty'.  I judge it by colour.  It's a subtle change, but obvious enough once you've seen it.

If you overmix it still handles and bakes okay, but loses some of the texture.

I use water which is only just off the boil.  The resultant mix is a little uncomfortable to handle when it first comes out of the mixer, but it rolls out well without needing to dust the bench.

I upped the water a bit recently and this made it even easier to handle.  This can vary enormously depending on the 'make' of rolled oats, so I now stick with 'Quaker'.  Co-Op's own use noticeably less water.)

They take thirty five minutes to bake properly, flipping them halfway through to make sure they dry out properly.  If they're still even a bit soft they don't keep well.

A hairy-arsed wild Scot crouched in the heather would probably cook them on a griddle over an open fire.  I may try this one day.

Gyppo