Category: Food

Old Fashioned Apple Dumplings

writ­ten 10/15/2023

What

Old-Fash­ioned Apple Dumplings: Peeled and Cored apples wrapped in dough and baked

Ingredients

Main: Apples, Brown Sug­ar, Gran­u­lat­ed Sug­ar, Apple Pie Sea­son­ings (cin­na­mon, nut­meg, all­spice, or what­ev­er you’d like), But­ter (reg­u­lar or veg­an), Dough (hand­made or bought pie crust), water/apple juice

Sup­plies: Peel­er, Cor­er, Bak­ing Dish, Roller, Work Sur­face, Saucepan, Bast­ing Brush

Option­al: Ice Cream

Time

1 hour (peel, core, roll, wrap, and make sauce) + 1 hour (bake) = 2 hours Total

Making

  • Choose your apples
  • Peel and core them
  • Pre­heat the oven to 375F (190C)
  • Acquire and roll out the dough (whether you make it or buy pie crust)
  • Place the apple in the mid­dle, and then cut a rough­ly cross shape
  • Using a 2:1 Brown Sug­ar to White Sug­ar mix + apple pie spices, put a bit inside the cored-out area, plus a dol­lop of but­ter (I topped mine off with some more sug­ar)
  • Add some around the base of the apple
  • Wet­ting the pieces so they stick (I used apple juice), wrap the apple up
  • If you’d like, this is where you can get cre­ative with hid­ing the seams or using them to your dec­o­ra­tive advan­tage (I used some dough to make fun shapes)
  • Put apples on a bak­ing dish
  • In the saucepan, add but­ter + brown sug­ar + apple juice (I used the apple juice from wet­ting the dough and the sug­ar mix­ture)
  • Stir it fre­quent­ly until it becomes a syrupy sauce
  • Using a bast­ing brush, brush it onto the sur­face of the apples
  • Bake for 50–55 min­utes
  • Take it out, and use remain­ing sauce to drizzle/brush over­top

EAT with ice cream

Notes

I had to bake mine for 1 hour and 30 min­utes because I made the mis­take of using ALL of the sauce over­top the apples which then cre­at­ed a pool at the bot­tom of the dish. AVOID THIS. I spec­u­late that’s why it took so long to bake. That’s why I rec­om­mend just brush­ing it over­top and not pour­ing over the top like most recipes call for

Over­bak­ing caus­es the apples to dry out and the tops to get super hard espe­cial­ly with the sauce over top

If you don’t like crust (like me), make that dough THIN

I don’t think I’d do this again, instead opt­ing for cut apples in a bak­ing dish and a lay­er of dough over­top that with fun shapes. I’m not a mas­sive fan of crust

If I were to do it again, though, I’d roll the crust thin­ner, and maybe add some liq­uid to the inside of the apple (con­tem­plate leav­ing the bot­tom of the apple or mak­ing the crust thick­er there). It just felt dry even if I did over­bake it

Be care­ful of the seams that will bust open and release any sauce inside

Pizza: Dough + Baking

writ­ten 10/12/23, updat­ed 10/15/23

What

Piz­za dough recipe

Ingredients

*See notes for unit con­ver­sions and oth­er tips

3½ cups All-Pur­pose Flour (plus for knead­ing)

1 pack­et Active Dry Yeast (2¼ tsp)

1⅓ cups Warm Water (105 ‑115F/38–46C)

1 tsp Sug­ar

Hon­ey (option­al)

2 tsp Salt

2 Tbsp olive oil

Pinch of Corn­meal (option­al)

Top­pings of your choice

Sup­plies: Stand Mix­er, Work­ing Sur­face, Plas­tic Wrap/Kitchen Tow­el, Large Mix­ing Bowl, Wood­en Spoon, Mea­sur­ing Sup­plies, Some­where Warm, Oven

Time

5–10 min­utes yeast acti­va­tion

7–10 min­utes in Stand Mix­er

~1½ hours for dough to rise

15 min­utes for anoth­er dough rise after sep­a­ra­tion or punch down

10–15 min­utes to shape the piz­za + 5 min­utes for more rest­ing

10–15 min­utes to let olive oil sit

~10–20 min­utes to bake

Total: 2–3 hours

Steps

Yeast-leav­ened dough smells, looks, and feels sooo gooood

Making the Dough

  • In stand mix­er bowl or oth­er bowl, dis­solve sug­ar (1Tbsp), hon­ey (option­al) in warm water (1⅓ cups @ 105–115F)
  • Sprin­kle the dry active yeast (2¼ tsp or 1 pack­et), try­ing to not let it clump (you want them to dis­solve, and clump­ing won’t allow that)
  • Cov­er with plas­tic wrap or tow­el
  • After 5 min­utes, if not all the yeast has dis­solved, stir it a bit, and wait a lit­tle again for them to foam up (they’re alive!!)
  • Then add flour (3½ cups), salt (2 tsp), and olive oil (2 Tbsp)
  • Using the mix­ing pad­dle attach­ment, mix the ingre­di­ents until they com­bine
  • Swap out for the dough hook attach­ment (sticky! messy!), and now set it on low-medi­um for about 7–10 min­utes
  • Test the dough around the 7‑minute mark. It should be a lit­tle sticky/tacky and smooth-look­ing. If it’s too wet, sprin­kle on some more flour and keep going. It’ll be ready when you can poke it with your fin­ger and it bounces back
  • Light­ly grease a large bowl
  • Form the dough into a rough ball and place it in the bowl
  • Cov­er tight­ly with plas­tic wrap or tow­el and place it in a warm place for about 1.5 hours until it dou­bles in size (see notes for tips)
  • Remove the wrap/cover
  • With light­ly floured hands split the dough into how­ev­er many piz­zas you’re mak­ing (or just 1 big piz­za is cool)
  • Roll them into balls, cov­er, and let it/them rise again for about 15 min­utes to 2 hours

Pizza Time

  • Pre­heat your oven and stone/pan to 450F (high­est mine can go)
  • Start prep­ping the top­pings
  • Take your dough ball and using your fin­gers, start stretch­ing the dough from the cen­ter, out­wards. Get the thick­ness as thin or thick as you’d like (if it starts to resist, let it rest a lit­tle before con­tin­u­ing to the size you want)
  • Brush on olive oil and let it sit for 10ish min­utes to soak in
  • Work on oth­er dough balls in the mean­time
  • Option­al: Sprin­kle corn­meal on bot­tom of work­ing sur­face, piz­za pan, and/or piz­za peel (helps with trans­fer and pre­ven­tion of stick­ing, plus it adds some tex­ture to the crust if you like that)
  • Put those top­pings on!
  • Get it into the oven (watch out, the pan will be HOT)
  • Bake for 10–20 min­utes
  • It’ll be done when the crust is gold­en brown, and the top­pings are melt­ed

ENJOY!

This was smoked brisket and chick­en with fresh moz­zarel­la and home­made fresh toma­to sauce

Notes

  • Try not to pile too much stuff on the piz­za or it won’t cook even­ly
  • You can do stuffed crust piz­za eas­i­ly with some moz­zarel­la tucked under the crust edge!
  • Don’t over­work the dough unless you want it denser. Be gen­tle!
  • Bread flour will give the piz­za some chewi­ness. You can sub­sti­tute it 1:1
  • Piz­za dough needs 4 basics: Flour, Water, Yeast, and Salt. Salt and olive oil are option­al though, they help with brown­ing, slight­ly taste, and tex­ture, espe­cial­ly since home ovens can only get to around 450F (pro­fes­sion­al piz­za ovens cook at 600 — 850F)
  • Active Dry Yeast needs to rise at least twice, but Rapid Rise Yeast only needs to rise once
  • 12/25/23: used bread flour and acci­den­tal­ly used 2 Tbsp salt. Incred­i­bly salty

Gen­er­al­ly, Neapoli­tan piz­za is about 60–65% mois­ture (depends on the style. Detroit it 70–80% mois­ture). Here is some math, if you want to use a cus­tom amount of flour for your piz­za

Conversion

1g = 1.17ml

1ml = 0.00423 cups

1 cup flour = 125.16 grams (HERE)

Example

3.5 cup = 438.04 grams

438.04 grams ✖ 0.65 (65%) = 284.73 grams

284.73 grams ✖ 1.17ml = 333.13 ml

333.13ml ✖ 0.00423 cups = 1.41cups

Proof­ing Dough

65% mois­ture: 3.5 cups flour @ 1.41 cups water

60% mois­ture: 3.5 cups flour @ 1.30 cups water

If your house is cold and can’t find a warm place, you can try:

Cup of boiled water — Boil some water and pour it into a mug. Put your dough and the mug in a hard cool­er or a toast­er oven (I tried the microwave, not rec­om­mend­ed). This should give it the right envi­ron­ment to rise. May need to top off if it’s too cold. I used this with suc­cess when try­ing to make French bread

Oven — You can heat the oven up to 150F or so for about 30 min­utes, and then place the dough in the oven with the door propped with a wood­en spoon. After about 30 min­utes, close it to keep the heat in. I used this tech­nique though it was much hot­ter because I’d just fin­ished bak­ing pota­toes at 350F for an hour. I let it air out a bit, test­ed the tem­per­a­ture with a ther­mome­ter to make sure it was aroudn 200F (I fig­ured if it’s too hot, it’ll bake the dough), then propped the toast­er oven door open with a spoon. Dough rose amaz­ing­ly