Baking Scones Even on the Thirteenth Night
A dweller of the darkness—perhaps that's why I, who love the moon, often take walks at night (no-guardit's also largely to reduce the risk of encountering Massospora). Although it was cloudy early on after it got dark from the daytime, it cleared up by my walk time, and I looked up at the "almost full moon" for a while.
Cherry blossoms—I suppose I'm strange for preferring the time when they fall over when they are in full bloom.
Thinking that the long weekend must be full of infected zombies and feeling nauseous, I ate the moon-viewing sweets I bought while on high alert and with my yokai antenna standing on end.
Even department store food sections and supermarkets carried items for the fifteenth night, but it's a shame that only Japanese confectionery shops featured the thirteenth night. But thanks to that, I managed not to buy too much (I really did eat too much last time).
Whether there are dumplings or manju, scones are meant to be baked.
This time, I decided to verify what would happen if I (an idea I had yesterday) used citric acid/ascorbic acid instead of yogurt to react with the alkali of the baking soda and reduce the moisture content.
The result...
When I say it cracked, I don't mean it split open at the top. It wasn't a crack like you'd make to slice it horizontally for cream or jam.
When I tried to move it to a plate, a vertical crack appeared from the center, and it broke. I think it's probably because the bottom stuck to the griller and couldn't be peeled off smoothly. Shortbread aside, this was the first time a scone broke just by trying to lift it.
It was completely lacking in moisture. No, of course, I tried to change it because it usually has too much moisture, so the results of that are clearly showing, but... I keenly felt that moisture is indeed necessary in "moderate amounts".
I used ascorbic acid as a substitute for yogurt. I thought it might become sour, but the taste didn't change that much. And since it has a lower pH than yogurt, I thought the reaction with the baking soda would be stronger than usual, increasing the rise and hopefully causing it to split open... but that was completely naive. The rise wasn't stronger at all; in fact, I think it rises more than usual. The texture is also hard, so the usual way is better. Since the moisture was mainly olive oil (though I did add a little Caspian Sea yogurt), the calories must have skyrocketed. It contributed to consuming the stockpiled Bosco, but other than that, it was definitely better to just quietly bake it as usual with Caspian Sea yogurt.
Well, it was worth the verification just to know that.
The accompaniment was the usual coconut milk Caspian Sea yogurt (*boiled for H5N1 prevention) with a little fruit carrot jam added, along with fruit carrot jujube jam and Manuka honey. It's UMF 5+, so the Manuka concentration is a bit high. After all, I went to buy sweets in the middle of all the infected Massospora.
I looked for a Comvita store when I went to New Zealand, but I don't think they carried honey. So, I bought and ate Arataki honey locally.
Shortbread was also verified. I usually bake with wheat & cashews, but I challenged myself to see if I could bake with barley (& cashews) as well.
The result is that, basically, barley is not very suitable for shortbread, which has no binding elements at all. Barley has little gluten, so it just wouldn't hold together. The usual flour blend I tried to replace the wheat with barley and use an amount of olive oil that was shockingly high for me to try to bind the dough, but it crumbled... moving it while binding it like usual was completely impossible. In the end, I had no choice but to add Caspian Sea yogurt and use its viscosity to shape it, but when the moisture from the Caspian Sea yogurt was added, the feel of the dough changed noticeably, and as I expected, it became hard.
I usually cut the bound dough on the container, move it to make it easier to bake, and adjust the spacing (because the dough is well-bound, I can move it with a knife without it sticking much to the container) but this time, since it was obvious that the dough would stick to the container and crumble,
I made cuts in the bound dough and baked it right there. That's why the cross-section in particular is completely different from usual (it looks like, "Oh, you cut it, didn't you...").
Between scones and shortbread, I thought it would be rational to use barley for scones, which have yogurt or egg binders, and consume the stockpiled Barilla in the shortbread.
What should I do with the high-viscosity buckwheat flour & peanuts that I've been curious about but haven't used? If I don't mind it not splitting open, it seems fine for scones, so maybe I'll just check the texture...