High protein flour

Do you want to make french bread, bagels, or other baked goods that require flour with a high protein content?

I've found one such flour here in Chile, and it's only carried in Lider and Lider Express since it's a store brand item.

It's called Triple Cero and includes vital wheat gluten in the ingredients list. Vital wheat gluten effectively ups the protein content on normal wheat flour.

Read more about vital wheat gluten and what it does here.

Link: Triple Cero at Lider.cl

Ingredients (Spanish): Harina de trigo, glúten vital, peróxido de benzailo, hierro (sulfato ferroso), niacina, tiamina, ácido fólico, riboflavina, oxidante (ácido ascórbico), complejo encimático (hemicelulosa fungal y bacteriana) cilanosa alfa molisa pentasomasa

Zapallo makes a great pumpkin pie

With the upcoming Thanksgiving, I decided I'd try my hand at a FROM SCRATCH pumpkin pie. Yes, a pumpkin pie without pumpkin in a can, (because no canned pumpkin here in Chile D: ). It turned out fantastic! It was just a trial, so I only made half of this recipe

For the "mashed, cooked pumpkin":

I bought one of those small zapallos (cost CH$1.500 at my local Tottus, could probably be found for cheaper elsewhere, or you could get a couple cortes de zapallo at the feria or La Vega), cut out a quarter of the pumpkin, scooped out the seeds and scraped off the "gunk", and chopped into chunks. I then put this in the microwave for 15 minutes (covered pyrex bowl), mixing up and pouring out any water every 5 minutes. (after cooling) I then cut off the skin, and mashed it up with a potato smasher. You could also use a potato-ricer, blender, stick blender, fork, etc.

I also made some substitutions in the recipe because I'm lazy: instead of the brown sugar and evaporated milk, I replaced it with condensed milk! Condensed milk is already sweetened! (plus, brown sugar is difficult to find here in Chile). The condensed milk adds a nice, almost caramel flavor to the pie.

I also added ground cloves, because I felt, how do you not add ground cloves to pumpkin pie!?

So, basically my ingredients (I only did half since it was a test batch):

• 1 1/4 cups mashed, cooked pumpkin
• half of a 396g can of condensed milk (so.... 198 grams)
• 1 egg, beaten
• 1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 1/2 teaspoon ground ginger
• 1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg
• 1/4 teaspoon cloves
• 1/4 teaspoon salt

(I didn't cut down the cinnamon and ginger from the full recipe since I love strong spices, but I cut the nutmeg in half since I added cloves)

I just whisked it all together (didn't bother with a beater), poured into pie crust (I used 3 ramekins, not a big pie crust), cooked at 200C for about 35 minutes (until toothpick/fork comes out clean in the middle)

The pie filling turned out wonderful!

The pie crust... well, let's just say that apparently lard (manteca here in Chile) is not a good replacement for shortening... So good thing I did a test batch before our Thanksgiving dinner, lol!