Category: Baking

Give Us This Day Our Daily Bread

I realized a couple of weeks ago, when we received our new refrigerator, that I had been neglecting my sourdough starter when I removed the crock from the shelf.   I remembered to feed the starter this morning so that I could bake a loaf of bread this afternoon while a roast cooked in the crockpot.  Since I’m up to my elbows in flour, I thought it fitting to focus my next-to-the-last entry in my ‘Thirty Days of Thankfulness‘ blog posting series on making and baking home-made bread.

I much prefer to bake my own bread.  Yes, I occasionally breakdown and purchase a loaf at the grocery store, but for the most part, I prefer to control all the ingredients and I just adore the smell of fresh baked bread.  Nothing says ‘Welcome Home’ like bread baking in the oven.  My preferred flour, graciously available via my local Dillons grocery store, comes from the King Arthur Flour company.  I live in Kansas, the wheat state, where the prized hard red winter wheat is grown specifically for King Arthur Flour, which based in Vermont since 1790 (KAF is 221 years old, 71 years older than Kansas, which is celebrating it’s 150th birthday this year).  In addition to having my flour shipped back from Vermont (albeit it conveniently by my local grocery store), I do special order yeast (by the pound), toppings and other handy gadgets a couple of times a year.  In fact, I recently took advantage of a free shipping sale to re-stock my pantry.  That’s the kind of spam e-mail I like to receive (and why I specifically opted in for their newsletter and e-mail notifications of specials).  I even ordered my sourdough starter (plus the crock shown above) from KAF, because it’s a descendant of a New England sourdough that has been bubbling away there for over two hundred and fifty years!

Once the sourdough starter bubbled up (three to four hours after feeding), I decided to take the ‘easy route’ today and make a Rustic Sourdough loaf in my bread machine.  The link above includes both a traditional recipe and a bread machine version. I will include the latter in this blog posting:

Rustic Sourdough

1 cup “fed” sourdough starter
1 cup lukewarm water
1 tablespoon sugar
1 1/2 teaspoons salt
3 cups King Arthur Unbleached Bread Flour
2 teaspoons instant yeast

Place the ingredients in the bread pan in the order suggested by the manufacturer.  Select the basic white cycle and desired crust and allow the bread machine to do the rest.

If you prefer to shape and bake the loaf in your oven, then select the dough cycle.  Remove the doug and gently shape it into an oval loaf, placing it on a lightly greased or parchment-lined baking sheet. Cover and let rise until very puffy, about 1 hour. Towards the end of the rising time, preheat the oven to 425°F.  Spray the loaves with lukewarm water. Make two fairly deep horizontal slashes in each; a serrated bread knife, wielded firmly, works well here.

Bake the bread for 25 to 30 minutes, until it’s a very deep golden brown. Remove it form the oven, and cool on a rack.

* * *

Besides sourdough, I enjoy making Italian supermarket-style bread, Honey Whole Wheat variations and White Bread (made special for my dad).  For more of my recipes, which are frequently variations on recipes posted at the King Arthur Flour web site, please visit My Bread Baking Epiphanies web page.

Sticky Buns

I am thankful to have made it safe and sound through two states to visit my children.  So, for my twenty-third installment of ‘Thirty Days of Thankfulness,’ I wish to share their (and mine) perennial favorite:  Sticky Buns (follow the link for the recipe and detailed instructions with photos).

Nearly the first thing I did upon arriving at my daughter’s apartment was to inventory her pantry and then head to the largest Kroger grocery store in the state of Texas.  As expected, since it was early evening on the day before Thanksgiving, the aisles were jam packed, especially the baking aisle.  We survived with most of our limbs intact and only forgetting one item, which we had forgotten to place on our grocery list.

Once back at the apartment, I installed my old bread machine and began mixing up a batch of the sticky buns, using the dough setting on the bread machine.  Since it was close to eight o’clock, I knew I would be up way past my bedtime.  While my husband and daughter’s boyfriend headed over to a friend’s house who had graciously agreed to smoke a turkey for us, Rach3elle and I streamed a couple of old Star Trek: Voyager episodes from the sixth season, ones I didn’t remember but were quite interesting none-the-less.

We decided to go ahead and bake the first batch of sticky buns last night, using my daughter’s large 9×13 inch glass baking dish.  I wasn’t completely satisfied with the way the dough mixed and rose, so I wanted to be able to test taste it in case I needed to re-do a batch early in the morning.  Another strange new experience for me: cooking with gas.  My daughter’s kitchen apartment includes a Hotpoint gas range.  I have only ever cooked using electric ovens.  Interesting.

The sticky buns came out of the over around 11:30 but when we flipped them over onto a large cookie sheet, several rolls around the edges stuck to the sides and came unraveled.  Prime targets for a taste test.  The results were superb but I would need to make another batch in the morning to fine-tune the recipe.  While I had purchased what I thought was non-fat dry milk at the grocery store, it was actually labelled ‘instant’ (I really should where my reading glasses while shopping), so I put an eighth to a quarter cup of half-and-half in the liquid portion of the recipe.  This morning, I decided to forgo any dairy aspect of the recipe and the dough does look like it is rising better.

I sometimes make this recipe up for friends and family, but I don’t bake it for them.  I send them a batch in a disposable aluminum foil pan with instructions on refrigeration, rising and baking so that they can enjoy this treat fresh out of the oven, sticky, gooey and hot, just like it’s meant to be enjoyed.

Happy Thanksgiving Everyone!

 

New-Age Old-Fashioned Pumpkin Pie

My Pumpkin Pies Cooling on the rack

For my twenty-second installment in my ‘Thirty Days of Thankfulness‘ I thought I’d share one of my favorite Thanksgiving traditions: Baking an old-fashioned pumpkin pie with a slight twist.  I have no idea why it’s called an ‘old-fashioned’ recipe; that’s just what my mother always called it.

The changes I’ve made to her recipe include eliminating egg yolks and using fat free half & half instead of condensed or evaporated milk (these two changes were to accommodate my husband’s dietary restrictions).  I’ve even used the Splenda version of brown sugar in previous years in an attempt to reduce the sugar footprint of the pie (back when my husband’s doctors were concerned about blood sugar levels).  But my favorite ingredient has to be the dark molasses; sometimes I include three tablespoons instead of just two.

So while my pies are baking in the over, I’ll provide you with the recipe for your own Thanksgiving experimentation:

New-Age Old-Fashioned Pumpkin Pie

2 pie crusts (9-inch)
2 15-oz cans pumpkin
1 1/2 c brown sugar
3/4 c egg whites
3 T butter, melted
8 oz fat free half & half
2 T dark molasses
4 t pumpkin pie spice
1 1/4 t salt (optional) … I did not add this ingredient to my pies.

Heat oven to 425 degrees.  Prepare pastry, flute.  Mix ingredients with a hand beater or on low speed in a mixer until combined.  Pour filling into pastry shells.

Bake for 15 minutes.  Reduce oven temperature to 350 degrees, and continue baking at that temperature for an additional 45 minutes.

Makes two 9-inch pies.

***

My husband and I hit the road tomorrow, heading south on I-35 to join our adult children and their significant others for our third annual North Texas Thanksgiving family gathering.  Since we are staying with our daughter tomorrow night, and her Internet provider screams along about as fast as early 90s dial-up, you might not hear from me until Thanksgiving, when we’ll be at my son’s apartment enjoying the fruits of our cooking, baking and smoking.

I wish all of you safe travels tomorrow and wish everyone a very Happy Thanksgiving.

A Year in the Life of My Blog

Last year, a few days after my birthday, I scrapped my MySpace blog, mostly due to interface changes, and ventured here to WordPress with a backup blog at Blogger.  My original intention was to journal my astronomical adventures here and do some inspirational topics on the backup site.  While I didn’t blog daily, I did manage to craft over two hundred blog entries here (this being my 225th).

Cygnas (the Swan)
Cygnus (the Swan)

In honor of my original intention to explore the heavens, I wanted to encourage everyone (and motivate myself) to participate in this year’s Great World Wide Star Count.  Don’t be shy!  Anyone can participate and it doesn’t require any equipment beyond your eyes.  This project is an annual survey of the night sky, held this year between October 14th and 28th (7-9 pm optimal viewing window) to record how many stars you can see in the constellation Cygnus (the Swan) in the northern hemisphere (follow the link above if you reside Down Under).  This helps map the spread of light pollution.  I plan to get out my telescope (for the first time this fall) and view the beautiful blue/yellow double-star Albireo. I can’t tell from the survey’s website if they are affiliate with the IDA (the International Dark-Sky Association), but I’m doing my bit (via this blog) to raise awareness about the value of dark skies and their preservation and restoration.

And now, a brief retrospective of some of my favorite blog entries (indicated with asterisks) from the past year and a few popular (according to the stats) highlights:

Divide and Conquer Chicken Pot Pie

Last week I received an e-mail newsletter from King Arthur Flour that included a recipe for Classic Chicken Pot Pie.  I forwarded it to my husband, who spends most of his afternoons watching the Food Network and surprising me with some fantabulous dinner when I walk in the door from work.   He found a couple of shows that demonstrated making chicken pot pie, including Anne Burrel’s Secrets of a Restaurant Chef.  We’ve watched several of her shows and the one thing both of us have noticed about her cooking is she loves salt.  This poses a problem for me, since I’m trying to cut out as much salt as I can from my diet.

Terry decided to try her recipe for Autumn Chicken Pot Pie with respect to the filling.  I decided to try the King Arthur Classic Chicken Pot Pie recipe with respect to the pastry shell.  Terry substituted potatoes for the butternut squash and pea’s for the haricot verts, the peas were not added to the simmering chicken and vegetables until the last ten minutes to insure they didn’t over cook. The gravy was made from chicken broth that had been fortified by the chicken and the vegetables cooking in it. The end result was a really rich and smooth gravy. By itself the gravy tasted wonderful, in the pot pie it seemed a little sweet without the added salt to offset the onion.

The crust recipe from KAF included a teaspoon of vinegar with the ice cold water, dribbled in by the tablespoonful.  Once I got the dough into a block, I covered it with clear wrap and refrigerated it until the filling and gravy were ready to fill the crocks.  I rolled out the dough on parchment paper, using the clear wrap as a buffer between my rolling pin and the dough.  I admit I was skeptical of the egg wash as glue between the crock and the crust, but it worked very well.

Mossy Chicken Pot Pie

“The crust was to die for, it was flaky and had a wonderful buttery taste.” –Terry

The only drawback I saw to this recipe was the amount of time it took Terry to get the filling and gravy done.   The Autumn Chicken Pot Pie recipe claims ninety minutes of ‘cook time’ but we spent nearly four hours … so we definitely have room for improvement.

Hot out of the oven, the pot pies delighted our palettes and stuffed out tummies with home-cooked goodness.

Overcoming Pie-xiety

I admit it.  I have ‘pie crust anxiety’ exactly as described in this helpful video I found via the King Arthur recipe site.   I searched for ‘pie crust’ recipes and narrowed the results down to two recipes:  the Traditional American Pie Crust (rated 3.5 stars) and the five star KAF Guaranteed Pie Crust one.  The video included many great tips and a couple of ‘secrets’ that I put into play to make the two crusts for a cherry pie.

Cherry Pie using KAF Guaranteed Pie Crust recipe
Cherry Pie using KAF Guaranteed Pie Crust recipe

I went with the five star rated recipe and I think it turned out well, don’t you?

When the Weatherman Gets the Weekend Forecast Wrong …

Sunrise Saturday 5 Mar 2011
Sunrise Saturday 5 Mar 2011

Now I’m not sure what to do today.  All week long, the weatherman has been predicting doom and gloom for today, including sleet and snow.  I had planned to start a fire in the fireplace and bake pies, bread and experiment with a chicken pot pie recipe I found last week.

But if the sunrise (click on photo to see the rest of the album) is any indication of what the rest of the day will be like, do I really want to be confined another weekend in my house?  Perhaps the dogs would like to visit the dog park today?  If nothing else, I’ll take Apollo on a longer walk this evening.  Roxy and I walked before the sunrise, when it was still only 24 degrees.

Not by Bread Alone

Decadent describes my husband’s first pecan pie.  See for yourself.  You’ll have to take my word on the richness of the flavor though:

Chocolate Pecan Pie
Chocolate Pecan Pie

Terry didn’t provide me with a link to the recipe.  When/if he does, I’ll update this post.

I thought to try a new Italian bread recipe, just for the chance to bake with my Italian bread pan.

I made a mistake, however, in reading the ingredients and used two tablespoons of sugar instead of just two teaspoons.  I may have to try again today. My other modifications to the recipe are listed below in bold:

Dough

  • 4 cups King Arthur Unbleached All-Purpose Flour (Kroger’s Organic All-Purpose Flour)
  • 2 tablespoons potato flour, or 1/4 cup dried potato flakes
  • 1/4 cup Baker’s Special Dry Milk or nonfat dry milk
  • 2 teaspoons salt
  • 2 teaspoons sugar (my mistake … I used 2 Tablespoons)
  • 2 teaspoons instant yeast
  • 1 1/3 cups lukewarm water (1 cup only; I also used 1/2 cup sourdough starter)
  • 3 tablespoons olive oil

Topping

  • 1 egg white beaten with 1 tablespoon water; or substitute Quick Shine
  • sesame seeds

Directions

  1. In a large bowl, stir together all of the dough ingredients till cohesive. Knead the dough for 5 to 8 minutes, until it’s smooth and supple, adding more water or flour as needed.  I used my Kitchenaid mixer with a dough hook.  I let the water, sugar and yeast proof for 5-10 minutes in the bowl while I measured out the other ingredients.
  2. Cover the dough and allow it to rise for 1 hour, or until it’s doubled in bulk.  I let it rise for about 90 minutes (mostly because I was preoccupied watching a movie).
  3. Transfer the dough to a lightly greased work surface and divide it into two pieces. Shape each piece into a smooth 16″ log. Place the logs into the two wells of a lightly greased Italian bread pan, cover, and let the loaves rise until very puffy, about 1 hour.  I love my Italian bread pan (see photo above).
  4. Brush the loaves with the egg wash (or spray them with Quick Shine), then sprinkle heavily with sesame seeds. Bake in a preheated 400°F oven for about 25 minutes, until the loaves are golden brown. For the crispiest crust, turn off the oven, prop the door open, and allow the bread to cool in the oven.  I brushed with an egg-white wash and sprinkled liberally with sesame seeds.  I also scored each loaf three times with my razor-sharp lame.  Again, I misread the directions and baked at 425 degrees for 25 minutes.  I spritzed the oven every five minutes with water from a spray bottle to encourage a crispy crust.  I also let the loaves cool in the oven.

We enjoyed some home-made baked Italian sandwiches courtesy Terry’s early life experiences working for his father at the Grinder Man in Wichita, Kansas.  Terry’s dad conceived, owned and operated several Grinder Man sandwich shops in Wichita during the 70s and 80s.  Sadly, only one remains open now.

Blizzard Baking Bonaza

Telecommuting lets me multitask to the aroma of baking breads all day.  I’ve already baked a Vermont Maple Oat scone mix from King Arthur Flour, which is cooling on the rack as I type this blog.

Next up, I’ve started my own version of the Harvest Wheat Bread recipe (also courtesy King Arthur), which I call Harvest Cracked Wheat Bread.  I’ve boiled the water and have the cracked wheat and water cooling down in the bread machine bread pan.

Later today, after feeding the sourdough starter, I’ll make a couple of loaves of some sourdough variety, probably of the Italian persuasion.

I’ll update this blog with photos later as the results come out of the oven.  I just pray the power remains on long enough for me to finish all this baking.

Mid Afternoon Update:  The scones mix turned out well.  The Harvest Cracked Wheat bread looks scrumptious:

Harvest Cracked Wheat Bread
Harvest Cracked Wheat Bread

And I’ve got Rustic Sourdough Kaiser Rolls rising for the next hour or so:

Rustic Sourdough Kaiser Rolls Rising
Rustic Sourdough Kaiser Rolls Rising

Sadly, my bread machine has reached the end of its useful life.  As I was proofing the yeast in the bread pan for the Rustic Sourdough, I noticed a puddle forming on the counter under the bread pan.  Once a bread pan starts leaking, it’s time to trade up or trade in or whatever you do with old bread machines.  This will be my fifth bread machine.

And, of course, I’d like to move way, way up on the fashion scale, from my Chevy model that I bought at Wal-Mart a couple of years ago, to this Cadillac model offered and highly recommended by King Arthur Flour:

Zojirushi BB-CEC20 Home Bakery Supreme Bread Machine - Stainless Steel

 

The Irresistable Aroma of Fresh Baked Bread

Sunday afternoon, while Terry and Sean practiced in the band room downstairs, I baked three loaves of bread.  My first loaf, baked for my dad who graciously cleared my driveway yesterday, is the ever popular White Sandwich Bread, pictured here:

White Sandwich Bread
White Sandwich Bread

Immediately following dad’s loaf, I baked my hubby his favorite, which he refers to as trashy wheat bread, but I call Honey Wheat Bread (pictured below):

Honey Wheat Bread
Honey Wheat Bread

The last loaf, and my personal (at least recently) favorite is Rustic Sourdough, modified slightly to mix and rise in the bread machine and produce only one perfect loaf, shown below:

Rustic Sourdough
Rustic Sourdough

So I filled the house with the smell of fresh baked bread and tortured Sean in the process.  Terry even tried to sell my bread to him (at outlandish outrageous prices), but Sean did not succumb to the temptation.

Later in the week, I may try a variety I haven’t baked in years … Cracked Wheat.