The search for the perfect (swoon-worthy) sandwich bread...

is still on, as it turns out. It was pretty and easy and decent tasting, but it didn't make me swoon.

I made this bread for some delicious sandwiches but wasn't too impressed. If anyone has a good recipe for sandwich bread, send it my way, okay? Oooor, maybe you've got tips for livening this one up a bit...

Check it out:

4 c flour
2 tsp salt
2 tsp yeast
1 cup warm milk
1 tbsp butter
1 tbsp sugar

Put the warm milk, yeast and sugar in the bread machine pan. Then get all the rest of your ingredients together while the milk mixture and yeast hang out together for a few minites. Put the rest of the ingredients in and set to a 2lb loaf size. Begin to knead.

When the mixing cycle is done, leave in in the bread machine pan to rise for an hour. After an hour, remove the dough from the bread pan and shape into a loaf. Put into a well greased loaf pan. Cover and let rise another hour or so. It should rise well over the top of the pan. If not, let it rise a bit more.

Preheat oven to 375. Bake for around 45 minutes or until golden brown.

Cool completely before cutting.

Eat in honor of my 200th post!!!

WOOHOO!!!

Beans, beans the musical fruit...

This is almost a guest post from my lovely and talented mom, but not quite. You see, she was recently at my house for a visit and made me this delicious bean soup (and homemade bread!) while I was at work and was kind enough to take pictures so I'd know how to make it myself. Sooner or later she's going to make her own blog, but for now, I'll just steal her recipes and claim them as my own.

Mom's Bean Soup

Get beans. Navy ones. Dump into a pot and cover with cold water. Bring to a boil and cook for 15 minutes. Mom's mom says this "gets the gas out." Mmm-hmm.

Drain beans, dump into a bowl and cover with cold water. Allow them to soak overnight. The water may turn funny colors. Fear not!

Put drained beans in a pot with fresh water and add some cubed ham and chicken broth and carrots and salt.

Simmer, simmer, simmer til the beans are soft and the carrots are done.

Eat, dunking in fresh and delicious bread to scoop up the beany goodness.

I'm Back, Baby!

(said in best George Costanza voice)

Saturdays are my days to relax. Relaxation, to me, is leisurely sipping coffee, catching up on reading and baking/cooking/creating til my heart's content.

Lately I haven't felt up to it, but today...

It's my third Saturday back and I've finally got my cooking groove back. Today I made homemade apple butter and English muffins from scratch. There are no pictures because my camera has gone missing. Maybe the dunderheads stole it. I'm not mad, I promise. I've got my pity hat on now.

I came home and rejoined the ranks of the church ladies. Lots of our church folks have gardens and mini orchards and if I don't eat the produce, it'll go bad, I swear! Lately the fruits of their labors have been apples. Mmmmm, home grown Granny Smiths.

Step One: Obtain Wal-Mart bag full of lovely, non-pesticide treated apples from church ladies. Thank them profusely.

Step Two: Get home, pull off leaves, wash apples, quarter and throw in pot. (Leaving on skins and cores for flavor and natural pectin).

Step Three: Add two cups water and one cup vinegar (you could also use apple cider vinegar or just apple cider, but you'll have to adjust the sugar later.)

Step Four: Bring to a boil then reduce heat and simmer for about 20 minutes. Apples'll get all mushy. It's okay!

Step Five: Toss the whole kit n' caboodle into a food mill (or, if you're spoiled like me, dump it into your Kitchenaid grinder/strainer).

Step Six: Dump resulting apple puree into a heavy pot. Add sugar (about 1/2 cup per cup of apple puree), 2 tbsp cinnamon, 1/2 tsp each ground cloves and allspice. Stir, stir, stir.

Step Seven: Stand there stirring mixture until your arm falls off (about 2 hours at medium heat-don't you leave that pot!) Ooooorrrrr, stir occasionally with heat very low. Cook about 4-5 hours or until deep and dark gorgeous brown. You can even do this in the oven, again set very low or in a crockpot, though you'd want to leave the cover off to encourage evaporation/reduction magic.

Serve on English muffins or, if you're like me, scoop some into a coffee mug and eat it with a spoon. 'Cause we're so civilized around here, dontchaknow.

Slippers You Say?

These two wonderful, delicious loaves of heaven on earth brought to you by Recipe Zaar.

The purpose? Besides making an effort to make my own bread and becoming more of a food snob each and every day, these sandwiches.

Ingredients

For Sponge

1/8 teaspoon active dry yeast
2 tablespoons water (105-115 F)
1/3 cup room-temp water
1 cup bread flour

For Bread

1/2 teaspoon active dry yeast
2 tablespoons warm milk (105-115 F)
2/3 cup room-temp water
1 tablespoon olive oil
2 cups bread flour
1 1/2 teaspoons salt

Directions

Make sponge: Stir together, warm water and yeast. Let stand 5 minutes, until creamy. Transfer yeast mixture to another bowl and add room-temp water and flour. Stir for 4 minutes. Cover bowl with plastic wrap. Let stand at cool room temp at least 12 hours and up to 1 day.

Make bread: Stir together yeast and milk in small bowl and let stand 5 minutes, until creamy. In bowl of standing electric mixer, with dough hook, blend together milk mixture, sponge, water, oil and flour at low speed until flour is moistened. Beat on medium for 3 minutes. Add salt and beat for 4 more minutes. Scrape dough into oiled bowl and cover with plastic wrap, until doubled- about 1 1/2 hours.

Note: Dough will be VERY sticky and full of bubbles.

Cut two pieces of parchment paper, approx 12 inches by 6 inches. Place on baking sheet and flour well. Turn dough out onto a well-floured surface and cut in half. Transfer each half to paper and form irregular ovals approx 9 inches long. Dip fingers in flour and dimple loaves. Dust tops with flour. Cover with dampened kitchen towel and let rise 1 1/2 to 2 hours, until almost doubled.

At least 45 minutes before baking bread, pre-heat pizza stone on lowest oven rack position at 425°F. Transfer 1 loaf, along with parchment paper, onto stone and bake for 20 minutes or until pale golden. Remove to cooling racks and repeat with second loaf.

For Steve's favorite sandwich: Saute onions (Vidalias if you've got them) in butter. Slice ciabatta in half lengthwise, top with roast beef and onions. Pile cheddar cheese on the other half. Broil until bubbly and delicious, taking care to remove it from the oven before it bursts into flame. Add mustard if you're feeling frisky.

Bagels for BYOB!

I'm proud to report that I haven't purchased bread since starting the BYOB challenge over at the Baker's Bench. I found a great bagel recipe here.

Homemade Bagel Recipe
*adapted from John D Lee*
4 c bread flour
1 tbsp sugar
1 1/2 tsp salt
1 tbsp vegetable oil (Being out of veggie, I used olive. Good result.)
2 tsp instant yeast
1-1/4- 1-1/2 cups of warm water.

Mix all the ingredients in a bowl. The dough should feel stiff, but add the extra water if it's really stiff, or you can't get all the dry flour incorporated.

Plop the dough down onto the counter, and knead for about ten minutes, or until the dough is uniform and smooth. (I used my stand mixer for this, and only kneaded with the dough hook for about five minutes. Kneading dough is great for working out frustrations and building up those muscles. My arms are big enough, thanks.)

Cut the dough into 8 equal sized balls, and let rest for 10-20 minutes.

Preheat your oven to 425.

Recalling your childhood playdough fun, roll each dough ball into a snake. Once it's about a long as the width of both your hands, roll it around one of your hangs and join the ends together. The dough will adhere to itself easier if you wet your fingertips a little before the smooshing part. Practice makes perfect! (I really liked his description for the rolling...he's even got a video of it on his site...)

Let your bagels rest on the counter for about 20 minutes. Meanwhile, bring a pot of water to boil, and grease a large baking tray lightly.

After the 20 minute wait, your bagels will start to look puffy, and it's time to get them boiling! Add them as many at a time as you can to your boiling water without crowding them. Boil for about a minute, turn them over (use a fork or a chopstick) and boil for another minute. Take them out and let dry for a minute and then place them on your oiled baking tray. Repeat until all the bagels are boiled.

Add the tray to the oven, and after 10 minutes, flip the bagels over, bake for another ten minutes.

Let them cool for at least 20 minutes.

Add toppings after the boiling if you like. Onion, poppy seeds, pig droppings, whatever you want. I sprinkled on some sesame seeds and they look beautiful. Bake in the same way, turning bagels over halfway through baking.

Love on a Plate

Since I am B-ing my own B, I found this lovely recipe for Hamburger Buns. I was a little worried about the texture, since (in my own humble opinion) one of the wonderful things about homemade bread is the chewy yumminess, and commercial hamburger buns are generally softer and less flavorful (presumably to showcase the meat and fixins). These did not disappoint. The flavor was good and the smell while they were baking was hard to resist. They were a little crumbly, though, when weighted down with all the extras, so I think next time I'll substitute some bread flour for some of the all-purpose flour. All in all a good recipe.

ingredients:
2 cups warm milk (110 degrees F/45
degrees C)
1/4 cup margarine, melted
1/4 cup warm water
1/4 cup white sugar
2 (.25 ounce) packages instant yeast (I used bread machine yeast)
2 teaspoons salt
6 cups all-purpose flour, or as needed
Directions:
Preheat the oven to 375 degrees. In a large bowl, stir together the milk, margarine, warm water, sugar and yeast. Let stand for about 5 minutes. Mix in the salt, and gradually stir in the flour until you have a soft dough. Divide into 12-14 pieces, and form into balls. Place on baking sheets so they are 2 to 3 inches apart. Let rise for 20 minutes. Bake the rolls for 15 minutes in the preheated oven. Cool slightly, then split them in half horizontally to fill with your favorite burgers.

If you're really hungry, try these with some homemade French fries.
(Caution: this is my "recipe" so there really isn't a recipe. Just fling things around the kitchen and hopefully some of it will land on your plate.)
2 or 3 potatoes
salt
water
vegetable oil (or some other oil with a high smoke point, like peanut)

Retrieve potatoes and skin them with very dangerous knife.



Prepare a bowl with lukewarm water and salt. I would say a handful of salt but some of you have giant Sasquatch hands and some have little pixie hands so use one of mine. I'll guess about three tablespoons. Mix it around so you don't have any salt-lumps. Cut potatoes (counting fingers before and after cutting for safety) into desired fry-shaped sticks and put into salt water for about 20 minutes.



Meanwhile, heat the oil in a nice big pot. I like a Dutch oven, but you can use whatever your heart desires, best beloved. As long as it's metal. And heat proof. And big enough to hold all the potatoes. You may not have a nifty heat monitoring device like mine, but that's okay. We can't all be spoiled. See the red dot? See it?



When it's time for cooking, drain the potatoes and dry them thoroughly to avoid unnecessary oil turbulence. Yes, that is an AC Delco towel, and I'm not sorry.


Fry, fry til your heart's content. Or until golden brown and delicious. Um, that's the potatoes, not your heart. Remove the fries with a spider or a fork or whatever's handy and then devour in mass quantities.



This is love, best beloved.

Call the Fire Department! Oh, and a recipe, too.

I read about an interesting bread recipe at No Fear Entertaining. A little research led me to the original recipe and a lot more. This stuff is so stinkin versatile! So far, with a little bit of "boule," which is what they call the basic dough, I've made sandwich bread, pizza, and some sinfully fabulous pecan sticky buns.

I've been in search of the perfect pizza crust for quite a while and I think this is it. It's chewy, flavorful and delicious.

So anyway, I mixed up a batch last night in anticipation of making a lovely homemade pizza for dinner tonight. The oven was preheating to a slightly terrifying temperature of 500 degrees, the toppings were out and ready, and the dough was properly stretched on the board when I noticed smoke rising from the oven. Through the foggy glass of the oven window I could see orange flames glowing malevolently.

I opened the oven to be greeted by hissing, sizzling, smoky, smelly fire. I had time to think, "Well, I hope it's not a grease fire" before my hand reached out and grabbed my cup of water and tossed it in.

Dad, before you ask, the fire extinguisher you gave me is lost. I plan to purchase a new one ASAP. How does one lose a fire extinguisher? I have no idea, and yet, I've done it.

Cue the smoke alarms. I had never noticed that we have both alarms and sprinklers in each and every room, including the bathrooms and closets. How lovely. Luckily, it is a balmy 68 degrees here in Tennessee and when I came home from work, I had immediately opened the patio door and all the windows. I raced through the house, ripping out the batteries and waving my wet dishtowel at the shrieking alarms and praying that the sprinklers wouldn't come on. Many children were at outside at play with their parents nearby. I can imagine their conversations:

Kid: Mommy, what's that noise?
Mom: That's just Old Lady Curtis trying to burn down her apartment again.
Kid: Why is she waving that dishtowel at the ceiling?
Mom: She's "special." Don't look over there.

Did you know that smoke alarms can continue to squeal even when their batteries are ripped violently out?

Crisis averted, I sat down on the kitchen floor to wait for the oven to cool so I could clean it or for Steven to get home. Whichever came first.

I needed an excuse to clean that oven anyway. I hadn't cleaned it since we moved in about three years ago. Hey, don't judge me!