Cinnamon Rolls

First of all... Happy Birthday Dad! He's probably the number one fan of this blog, so if anyone will see a birthday shout out on here, it's him.

Last week, for a Labor Day treat, Brett and I made some homemade cinnamon rolls. Believe it or not (I hardly do) I got this recipe from a fellow blogger waaaaay back in May of 2008. This recipe has been on my mind for over two years and I'm just now getting around to trying it! These rolls proved to be well worth the wait.

If you want to eat cinnamon rolls for breakfast, then you need to start making them the night before. So Sunday night we mixed up the dough (we used our stand mixer like the recipe says, but Brett would have rather done it by hand). I kneaded it for eight minutes and then we let it rise in our usual way (covered with plastic wrap, in the off oven, with a pan of hot water beneath) for 2 hours.

When it came out, it was time for Brett to do his thing! He punched it down and rolled it out into the proper dimensions and I slathered on the softened butter and sprinkled on the brown sugar/cinnamon mixture. Some of the brown sugar mixture sprinkled onto the mat instead of the dough, which is almost inevitable if you're me, but wincingly painful to watch if you're Brett.

I backed away and let Brett roll the dough into a log. I have no doubt that I would have made a giant mess. He, of course, was extremely careful and neat.

Next, Brett (again, I would have made a mess of this) sliced the log into 18 equal pieces and put them into the greased baking dishes (I can handle spraying Pam without making a mess...sometimes). The recipe called for two square 9x9 pans, but we used a 9x13 baking dish and a 9x5 loaf pan. It worked out fine.

After being refrigerated over night. I got them out and put them (still covered) in a cold oven with a pan of hot water underneath to rise for about an hour.

Then they baked for 18 minutes.

They looked ok when we pulled them out. But the real magic is hidden.

We flipped them out onto the cooling rack and simultaneously said, "Oooooh."

I stirred up some simple frosting (powdered sugar and milk). The recipe called for a cream cheese based frosting, but I think cream cheese flavor can be overwhelming sometimes, and I really wanted to be able to taste the cinnamon rolls.

The final product was absolutely wonderful. It got me thinking about Thanksgiving and Christmas and wanting to share these with family (also the fact that there were 18 rolls got me thinking about sharing). This is definitely a special occasion worthy breakfast and I've no doubt we will see these again.

They heat up great in the microwave too. We were eating the leftovers for the rest of the week.

Refrigerator Potato Bread

Brett and I are always looking for new bread recipes to try, so when Brett received Beard on Bread by James Beard for his birthday, we were immediately excited to get baking. When confronted with a new cookbook it is a little overwhelming so we decided to tempt fate and just open the book and make the first recipe we saw. This happened to be Refrigerator Potato Bread.

We got off to a bad start. I put the yeast, warm water, and ALL the sugar in the bowl, and then realized that I was only supposed to add some of the sugar. We waited to see if the yeast would bubble anyway, but it didn't, so we threw it out. Oops!

Brett took over and got the sugar measurement correct, only he let it proof for 15 minutes instead of 5. We got distracted and didn't set a timer. Oops again!

While Brett mixed in the rest of the ingredients (milk, butter, sugar, salt, and eggs) I whipped up some mashed potatoes using some potato flakes that we've had in the cupboard forever. I couldn't believe that Beard says that it is okay to use potato flakes! Then Brett started adding flour to form a stiff dough.

Instead of rising like usual, this bread goes directly into the fridge overnight. The next day when we took it out it looked pretty much the same. Punching it down was like punching play-do. At this point I was worried, but we moved ahead. Brett formed it into a loaf and then we let it rise our traditional way for 4 hours.

This time it did rise, so I stopped worrying.

It baked beautifully and tasted wonderful!

Dinner Rolls

It has been a while since I have been 100% happy with a new recipe, but I've got to toot my own horn on this one. I have discovered the most perfect dinner rolls ever! Of course this recipe came from Taste of Home's Baking Book, which is where most of our bread recipes come from. The recipe will make 24 rolls, so I halved it. I even wrote out all the ingredients already halved on a sticky note and placed it over the the ingredient list in the book so I wouldn't accidently look at the wrong list.

2 1/4 tsp yeast (1 packet)

1/2 tsp sugar and 1/6 cup sugar

1/4 cup warm water (110-115 degrees)

5/8 cup warm milk (110-115 degrees)

1/4 cup melted and cooled butter

3/4 tsp salt

1 egg

3 1/4 cups all purpose flour

How could I possibly mess something up? Well, I swapped the milk and the water. So instead of 1/4 cup of water it ended up being 5/8 cup of water. I was worried from the beginning that I had messed up, but it turned out not to be a big deal. I dissolved the yeast and 1/2 tsp of sugar in the water and then added the milk, butter, salt, the rest of the sugar, the egg, and half the flour. I mixed that with a fork until it was pretty smooth and then I added the rest of the flour. Then I got to kneading. Usually I knead until all the flour is thoroughly absorbed. This time I kneaded for the full six minutes that the recipe called for. Maybe this is what made the difference. I can't say for sure, but I know in the future that I will knead for however long the recipe tells me to.

Our method for rising is simple. The dough goes in a greased bowl covered in foil. We put the dough in the off oven with a pan of hot water underneath for about an hour. It works really well.

When the dough had doubled in size I punched it down and tried to divide it equally into twelve pieces. These pieces were formed into balls by pulling the dough down into a little nub at the bottom. It's kind of like a balloon: smooth and round on top, with a little nub on the bottom. The balls went nub side down into a greased 9x13 pan.

I let them rise again and then uncovered and baked them for 20 minutes in a 375 degree oven and they came out PERFECT! So incredibly perfect. I went on and on about them all through dinner. And I'm not crazy because Brett loved them too and he even gave me a, "Good job," which is high praise from him.

We will definitely see these again, but maybe next time I won't mix up the water and milk. Or maybe I will. Don't mess with a good thing, right?

Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day

I've known about this book for a while and happened across it in the massive cookbook section at my new library.

It seemed too good to be true. Recently Brett and I needed bread but were too lazy to go to the store, so we decided to make it from scratch. Well, luckily we thought of this four hours before dinner because that's about how long it takes to make homemade bread. There is a lot of rising and waiting involved. So I was excited to try the "revolutionary" new method of bread baking that will supposedly take five minutes.

Part of what makes this method take only "five minutes" of your time is that you mix up a giant batch on the first day and keep it in your refrigerator pulling off hunks each day. But the mixing of the dough doesn't take as long as usual either because there is no proofing the yeast, no kneading, no covering and rising (kind of), and no punching down the dough. Brett, of course, was dubious of this method. It really does take all the fun out of baking bread. If you have never punched risen dough, I highly recommend it.

I decided to go with the first recipe in the book since it seemed the most basic- Boule (Artisan free-form loaf.) I used the flour I had on hand which is not the kind they recommend. I also halved the recipe and therefore messed up slightly on the measurement of the yeast and the salt. I should have halved it ahead of time but instead I waited until I had my water already hot and ready to go. Needless to say, my math was rushed. Quick: What's half of 1 and 1/2 T? And don't say 3/4 T because I don't have a 1/4 T measure. Answer in teaspoons please. See? Not that easy. Afterwards, I thought it through and realized I was off by a 1/4 tsp.

Once you've stirred everything up, you put a lid on it and leave it on the counter for a couple of hours and then you move it to the fridge.

After a couple of days in the fridge, I decided it was time to bake. I pulled off a handful of very wet dough. It is supposed to be wet- that is what makes it able to sit in the fridge for up to two weeks. I pulled dough from the top down to the bottom on all four sides to form a "gluten cloak" I don't know if I did this right, but it seemed ok. Then you let it sit on a pizza peel for forty minutes.

This is where I take issue with the book's title. You still have to be thinking ahead to make this bread for dinner. This isn't a Pilsbury "pop it out of the tube and you're done" kind of thing. You have to let the dough rest, let the pizza stone heat up, bake the bread, and let the bread cool. A process I will say takes at least an hour and forty minutes and that's if you don't let the bread cool all the way. So yes, you spend about five minutes of active work, but you still have to have a good deal of forethought.

The bread turned out beautiful. It was slightly misshapen from my poor pizza peel skills, but golden and very "artisany" looking. The recipe said to let it cool completely, but we couldn't wait any longer. The outside was very hard. I ended up peeling the crust off and eating it first, saving the squishy, wonderful innards, or "crumb" if I'm being fancy. I prefer innards:) It was ok. Most, if not all, of the other yeast breads we've made were better. Brett thought the innards were like the texture of dumplings. They were soft and chewy, but kind of sticky and dense. The flavor was not all that great- I'll blame that on the flour.

I will be the first to admit that I did not execute the recipe entirely accurately, but it was not good enough to merit a second chance. Maybe this method would work for you, but for us it's back to old fashioned (fun) bread.

Apple-Honey Challah

When we were picking apples we were intrigued by the description of the Mutsu apple and decided that we had to find them.

"Mutsu- A great all-purpose green apple- dense, crisp, and juicy- good for pies and eating fresh- makes a coarse, flavorful applesauce- much better than Granny Smith"

Granny Smith is our favorite apple. We buy them every week at the grocery store. "Much better than Granny Smith" totally got our attention. We found the Mutsu grove and saw that they were GIANT green apples. We picked two each with plans to eat and bake them and then moved on.

Sunday evening around 6 o'clock, we pried ourselves off of the super comfy couch and started making the final recipe that I had clipped from my mom's Martha Stewart Living magazine- Apple-Honey Challah. I got the water hot enough for the yeast (the recipe says 100 degrees but we always go between 110 and 115 for our yeast breads) while Brett assembled all the ingredients on the counter. We mixed everything up, and Brett took the lead on kneading. The dough was very sticky, so we ended up adding about 1/2 a cup extra of flour.

After the first rise we sliced up the Mutsu and each snuck a little bite. It was sort of like Granny Smith, not better or worse, but we could tell the difference. The hardest part of the recipe was kneading the apples into the dough. The apples just globbed everything up, making it sticky again. And to make matters worse they didn't really want to stay in the dough. They kept squeezing themselves out.

After the second rise Brett attempted to roll the nice plump ball of dough into a rope so we could coil it in a cake pan. The dough was even stickier because of the apples and all the butter we kept brushing onto the top between rises. The rolling did not go well and we finally gave up and put a very fat "coil" into the cake pan. I don't even think you could call it a coil.

The really annoying part about this bread is that it has to rise three times! Right before the final rise Brett said, "I don't ever want to do anything that has to rise three times. This isn't worth it." Keep in mind that we hadn't eaten it yet. Thinking of the Martha Stewart cream cheese and chive biscuit fiasco I had a couple of years ago, I made some comment about how Martha likes to make things harder than they need to be. We decided that coiling the loaf was totally unnecessary, and if there was a next time we would just plop the ball into the cake pan.

One thing we love about our new oven is that it has a window and a light. We hunkered down by the oven to watch the dough rise for the final time, and then again as it baked.

We had to let it cool for a while in the pan and then a little while longer.

Finally at 11 o'clock, we were blessed with the wonderful deliciousness that is Apple-Honey Challah! It was light and fluffy with a hint of sweetness. It reminded me a little bit of King's Hawaiian Bread (with apples of course.) The apple bites were my favorite. The Mutsu did not disappoint.

Although it was very time consuming, we both really enjoyed the final product. So if you have five hours to spare, I highly recommend making this :)

Garlic Bubble Loaf

I make pizza dough. That is my yeast specialty. Every other yeast bread we've made has been spearheaded by Brett (with the exception of flat bread, which tasted suspiciously like pizza dough.) So I was feeling brave the other day and decided to make my own non-pizza yeast bread. I got out Brett's Taste of Home Baking Book and picked out a recipe that sounded delicious and looked fun to eat: Garlic Bubble Loaf.

I carefully measured the milk and added the little bit of water that the recipe called for, and then heated it in the microwave stopping often to check the temperature. I've learned to be meticulous about the temperature of the liquid because that's what gets the yeast going! If it's too cold nothing will happen and if it's too hot it will kill the yeast and, well, nothing will happen. Pizza dough starts out with yeast, sugar, and water because (I realize this is not very technical) the yeast needs something to eat. So I just assumed that the yeast would get the sugar from the milk. I didn't read the recipe very carefully because I was supposed to dissolve the yeast in just the tiny bit of water, not the milk too. But I like my way better, and it turned out fine:)

Mixing the dough and letting it rise for an hour went perfectly, so I punched the dough down (so fun!) and divided it up into twenty four pieces using our bench scraper, which really is a fantastic tool.

I tried to roll each piece into a ball, with minimal success. I'm sure if Brett had been there he would have insisted that I spend more time making perfect spheres, but he wasn't, so I didn't. Then I mixed some melted butter, dried parsley, and garlic powder for dipping. Unfortunately most of the garlic powder just sunk to the bottom. I wonder if I had been more patient if it would have eventually dissolved. Next time. Towards the end of dipping I ran out of butter and was just trying to soak up whatever I could from the dish.

Anyway I dipped each ball and then placed them into a greased loaf pan.

I covered that up and let it rise again.

Then I baked it...

I turned it out of the pan...

And I pulled a ball off for eating! This would be great for a big family-style dinner because there is no need to slice the bread. It just neatly pulls apart.

It was delicious and I was so proud of myself. Brett said that maybe I should be in charge of the bread baking from now on, but I will not let him relinquish his crown just yet.

Flatbread

I made hummus again this week for a lunchtime snack, which has become quite a regular thing around here.  Usually I spread it on pitas, but this week, I forgot to buy pitas so I was dipping carrot sticks into it.  I KNOW!  Me eating veggies- voluntarily!  Well, I must say that the hummus is so strong in flavor that I can't really even taste the carrots.  After a couple of days of carrots, I did get a little tired of them, so I decided to make some flatbread to spread the hummus on.

I used Bobby Flay's recipe on the Food Network website but I didn't really read ahead, I just started making it.  I did read far enough to see that it had to rest for an hour so at least I had the foresight to start making it at ten in the morning.  I mixed the yeast and what looked like A LOT of warm water, let that rest for about five minutes and then added half the flour gradually.  This was where it was supposed to rest for an hour " to form a sponge."  I'm not really sure what it was supposed to look like.  It had little air bubbles that sort of made it look like a sponge, but it was not even close to the same consistency.  

This was the first time ever that I've used my dough hook.  I usually just do these things by hand, but I thought I would give it a try.  With the mixer going, I added the salt, olive oil, and remaining flour.  It was pretty fun, but I think I let it go a little too long because it formed a ball and then a few seconds later turned to goo.  I added a little more flour to thicken it up and then I scraped it off onto a floured surface to knead it.  Needless to say, the dough was sticky.

Then I got to the part in the recipe where it has to rise for two and a half hours.  So much for the lunchtime snack.  After that I divided it into three balls and let them sit for another half hour.  Then I rolled them out and put them on silpats.

After 15 minutes of baking they were ready to eat. Finally!  It was four o'clock!  It pretty much just tasted like pizza dough, which I love, and for some bites I didn't even add any hummus.  It was delicious all by itself.  Well worth the wait.

Next time I may try to add some seasonings, we'll see.  Any suggestions?

Challah

It has been a few months since Brett, the resident yeast expert, has made anything with yeast.  In fact, I've been making some serious strides to match his expertise by making lots and lots of pizza dough. But finally, inspired by Giada at Home and a Mother's Day breakfast we are planning for my mom, Brett got the urge to get up and make some Challah, which is a traditional Jewish bread made with eggs.

If I were the one making the Challah, I would have talked about it for a couple of days.  However, I was just watching T.V. and assumed that Brett had got up to get a drink of water.  When he took a little longer than water requires I asked, "What are you doing in there?"

"Making Challah," came his matter of fact response.

As he prefers for his yeast projects, I stayed out of the way. He came and showed me his fist imprint after he punched down the risen dough. I watched him cut the dough into thirds using the bench scraper he got for Christmas. And he required my "girl skills" when it came time to braid the bread. I pretty much just pointed and told him what strand to put in the middle.  One strand was way longer than the others, so he made three little knot rolls.

Before rising:

After rising:

We did not having any extra eggs, so Brett had to forego the egg wash that gives Challah its characteristic sheen.  The final product looks dark and dull, but believe me, it was perfect on the inside.

The little knot rolls were my favorite.  If we ever have some big special occasion meal, I think we should make Challah knots. Of course the actual loaf was delicious too.  I'm looking forward to having this again soon ... in a very different form.

Christmas Donuts

I know that I am a lucky gal to have a husband who loves to bake.  A few weeks ago (I've been waiting until it was closer to Christmas and thus more appropriate) Brett cracked open his trusty Taste of Home Baking Book and found a recipe for no-fry donuts.  Brett loves donuts.  He comes from the land of Dunkin' Donuts (which I think means anywhere other than Southern California) and always looks forward to visiting Chicago so he can get his fill of them.  I can appreciate a good donut, but for some reason they always make me sick to my stomach so I tend to stay away.  Anyway, I watched TV almost the entire time Brett was in the kitchen working.  Hey, sometimes I just don't feel like cooking!

As many of you know, Brett is the yeast specialist in our household so, not surprisingly, these were yeast donuts.  He made the dough, let it rise, rolled it out, and instead of going for a traditional donut shape, he used cookie cutters to make snowmen and Christmas trees.

The shapes had to rise again and then were finally ready to bake- not fry.

After baking, they smelled amazing, but they were not quite done yet.  This is where I got interested because my nose was telling me it was almost time to eat.  I watched as Brett made the glaze and used tongs to dunk the tops of the donuts.  (The suggestion of using tongs was my only contribution to this project.)  He used plain glaze for the snowmen and then dyed it green for the trees.  His hope was that the glaze would dry white on the snowmen, but he was disappointed to find out that it did not.  When it came time to do the trees the glaze kept stiffening so he kept adding water.  That is why some of the trees are a lighter green than others.  

Finally!  Time to eat!  While these donuts were not as light as those of Dunkin', they were still delicious.  They were not cake-like either so I'll put them somewhere in between.  The best parts were that they had a hint of nutmeg which is one of my favorite Christmas flavors, and they did not give me a stomachache.

By the time they were finished it was quite late, so I limited myself to three and just crossed my fingers that they would still be tasty the next day.  (We always seem to have issues with storing our yeast products.)  However, the next day I put one in the microwave for about 10 seconds and it was just as delicious as the first day.

Soft Pretzels

The first yeast bread we ever made was soft pretzels so it has a special place in our hearts. We use the recipe in the Taste of Home Baking Book that has instructional pictures and is really quite easy to follow.  The pretzels turned out so wonderfully the first time that we've been brave enough to try lots of different yeast breads and pretzels multiple times.  Brett got a hankerin' for soft pretzels recently and already had the dough rising when I arrived home.

When it came time to roll the dough out into logs and form them into pretzels I jumped in there because I had only ever watched.  It looked like fun.   I had seen something on T.V. about noodle making where the guy takes the dough and swings it around and it stretches out perfectly, so I decided to try that.  My first one swung and stretched pretty well so I thought I would try it with my next one.  Well, as I was swinging I must have gotten a little overzealous because the long end that had just stretched out broke off and went flying across the kitchen and landed in the sink right in a dirty enchilada pan.  Oops!  Of course I was left with a handful of dough so I made a baby pretzel and fired myself.  Here is some of Brett's handiwork:

With the pretzels formed, Brett poached them in boiling baking soda water for a short time and then I got to salt them before they went in the oven.  My mini pretzel came out cute and soft.  I thought it might have a different texture than its larger counterparts, but it was equally delicious.

We must have a knack for pretzel making because they turn out as good as the kind you buy at sporting events or fairs.  I'm not kidding.  When we see soft pretzels out in public we are able to resist because, "What's the big deal?  We can make them at home!"  We saw some Mickey Mouse shaped pretzels at Disneyland recently and thought that maybe we could try that next time.

The only problem is that they have to be eaten fresh.  They do not store well at all.  We tried the empty cereal bag trick that helps with other breads, but it just does not work with pretzels.  They taste ok the next day but they look wrinkly and have a different texture.  So we just gorge ourselves when they're fresh so that we have as few leftovers as possible.