The World May Be Imploding ...

 ... but the bread still rises. My SiL (let's call her Phyllis) and I write each other weekly newsy emails and she told me about her plans for a dinner party she was going to be hosting for friends. Phyllis was making bone broth to use in preparing beef stew and listed the various dishes that friends were making. These included stuffed mushrooms, a salad with winter vegetables, cheesecake, and one friend would be bringing whatever bread she had baked that week. Phyllis said that this friend had started baking bread in January and kept baking as things got worse and worse. She told Phyllis that "The world may be imploding, but the bread still rises."

I was struck by this and felt compelled to start a loaf of cinnamon raisin bread, especially because I hadn't baked any bread in quite a while. It was done baking later at night, so it was dark and the pictures aren't terrific, but it was one of the nicest looking loaves I've made.  

 

 

It looked just as good when I cut a few pieces the next morning, and tasted wonderful. 

 

 

Everybody has to find the coping mechanisms that work for them, whether they involve voodoo dolls, reading, knitting, appreciating nature, music, or baking bread. Just thinking about what my next loaf will be makes me feel better because even though the world may be imploding, the bread still rises. 

 

 

Let Them Eat Bread!

I was thrilled to receive a small Pullman pan (9"x4"x4") for my birthday. (Thanks, Jill!) Since my kitchen turns into an oven of its own during the summer, I hadn’t had the chance to actually use it yet, not wanting to add more heat by turning on the oven.

But we’ve been having a stretch of cool nights and warm (but thankfully not humid) days lately, so it felt like the perfect time to finally bake some bread and test out my new pan. At first, I thought about just scaling down the recipe I usually make for my 13" Pullman, but in the end I decided to give the King Arthur recipe a try.

Everything went smoothly—mixing, kneading, the first rise—until I let it go a little too long on the second rise. I had to punch it down a bit to get the lid on, which I’m pretty sure kept it from getting that nice oven spring. Even so, the bread is delicious, and it makes excellent toast. 

 

I actually think this smaller pan might be more practical since there are just two of us. Next I'll be trying a few other white bread recipes, and then a cinnamon swirl loaf, and after that maybe some oatmeal bread. From the looks of it, this pan should be perfect for just about any yeasted recipe that calls for three cups of flour—so I’ll be happily testing that theory in the months ahead.

 

 

Hope your week is off to a good start, ideally with something tasty on your table too!

Help in the Kitchen

I bought myself a bread machine. 

It's a relatively inexpensive one from Amazon; not the cheapest one, but also not the $400 Zojirushi that King Arthur Baking is always trying to convince me that I need. 

 

 

It's a "Kitchenarm" brand with the delightful catchphrase of "Your extra arm in kitchen". I wish that extra arm would also scrub the kitchen floor, but I digress.

It supposedly has 29 different settings, but I'll probably use it mainly to make dough that I shape and bake myself. I like that it tells me what it's doing (kneading here) and it did a really good job of that considering that this recipe has almost five cups of flour in it.

It also did a good job of providing a warm atmosphere for the dough to rise in. This is the result of rising for just about an hour.

All I had to do was remove the dough, roll it out, spread it with cinnamon sugar, roll it back up, and put it in the pan for a second rise. That took a lot longer than the initial rise because my kitchen is cold, but eventually it was ready to bake (and then eat)!

I'm happy with the bread machine so far and may even try some of the recipes that came with it. Dark rye, zucchini bread, and pizza dough all sound like interesting possibilities. I might even make bread more often now that I have help in the kitchen.

I hope you have some help in the kitchen and some good things to eat this week!

The Weekly Loaf

I know I said I was going to bake cinnamon raisin bread for my next loaf, but I had made oatmeal for breakfast and since the container was still on the counter, I decided to make Honey-Oat Pain de Mie instead. 

This bread was wonderful, just slightly sweet and nutty. John had to bemoan the lack of cinnamon, but I have eaten this plain, toasted, spread with bit of jam, and used it for a turkey sandwich. I have yet to find a way that this bread is not absolutely delicious. If you happen to be making it for a 13" pullman pan, don't miss the note at the bottom of the recipe about doubling all the ingredients except the yeast. As it's written, this recipe would be ideal for baking in a regular 9x5 loaf pan. Baking bread and having fresh-baked bread to eat is making this winter more tolerable for me!

The Weekly Loaf

Earlier this week I posted about the pullman pan I had redicovered in my kitchen cupboard, and wondered how cinnamon swirl bread would work. This is how:

Paul Hollywood might have some less than flattering things to say about this loaf, but I don't think he's stopping by. I rolled the dough tightly and got a good swirl, but there are still a few gaps between the cinnamon-sugar and the dough. But you know what might help fill those gaps nicely? Raisins! I didn't have any when I baked this bread, but I'll make sure there are some in the pantry before I bake next week. 

 

 

In the meantime I'm starting my morning wonderfully with a couple of pieces of toasted cinnamon swirl bread and a steaming mug of chai. Life is pretty good when you've baked bread!

Look What I Found!

And look what I made with it!

I usually go to the grocery store once a week, but it's a chore I really dislike. With several freezers full of vegetables and venison, I honestly don't need much besides bread, milk, eggs, and a few other miscellaneous items. I had put off shopping for several days when it was raining, but when I had finally decided to go, all I really needed on my list was bread. I decided that I would much rather bake bread than shop for it, so I looked through all of my kitchen cupboards for something that I hoped was still there and that I hadn't gotten rid of in some ill-advised cleaning out.

And look what I found - my pullman pan! It's a lidded loaf pan that minimizes crust and makes it possible to bake nice square sandwich bread or pain de mie (if you're fancy but I'm not). I had lusted after this pan for several years and finally broke down and bought it probably 15 years ago or so. I baked with it quite a bit, but after the kids moved out, I barely used it at all. But I was glad to find it and bake a stellar loaf of sandwich bread. That was much more satisfying than going to the grocery store. 

 

 

 Justin and John's brother were here over the weekend to do "men things" with John so I used  up quite a bit of the loaf to make grilled cheese sandwiches for lunch. It also makes great toast.  I think it would make delicious french toast and I'd like to make cinnamon raisin swirl bread with the it so I won't have that gap between the filling and the bread that you sometimes get in swirl breads. 

My pan came from King Arthur Flour and I originally purchased the 13" one. They also make a 9" one that might be better suited to our two-person household. I'm going to think about it for a while, but that 9" pan might be my Christmas/New Year/just because present to myself. 

Who Knew?

 Over the weekend I made a new recipe from a new cookbook I got recently. 

I almost always make some kind of bread when I make soup, and decided that English Muffin Bread would be a good choice. When I looked at the recipe, the first line said "Weigh your flour". I know recipes always advise this but I've stubbornly stuck to dipping a measuring cup in my flour container, leveling it off with a knife, and dumping it into my mixing bowl. But I bought a digital scale back when I knit my Hitch on the Move to weigh my remaining yarn and I keep the scale on top of my microwave. This is right next to my flour container and mixer, so I decided it was time to finally try weighing my flour. 

I was a little bit surprised that the 360g the recipe called for was equivalent to only about two and two-thirds cups of flour the way I usually measure it. I didn't weigh any other ingredients but I was very pleasantly surprised at how smooth the batter turned out with minimal mixing.

And the bread turned out beautifully. I think I'll keep weighing my flour, especially because the scale, flour, and mixing bowl are all within a couple of steps of each other. 

So the answer to the question I asked in the title is possibly lots of bakers, but now I know, too. You can teach an old dog new tricks!

Daily Bread

It's been grey and cold this week, with sleet, snow, and rain. Weather like that always makes me feel like baking, and I've been thinking about bread since I made turkey soup for my BiL. I took it over to him after he had arthroscopic knee surgery last week, and when you have soup, you need bread to go with it. I didn't want to make something complicated, and since I have a case of Michelob that somebody gave us (but nobody here drinks it), I decided to make beer bread. 

I've made regular beer bread for quite a few years. It's perfect when you want a quick bread to serve with dinner, but don't have time for a yeast-risen loaf. It's especially good to use up beer that nobody likes to drink. My kids used to think they were getting away with something when I "let" them have beer bread.

As good and easy as beer bread is, the variations are also great. I made a loaf of cheddar beer bread to serve with some beef barley soup I made for us. If you happen to have swiss cheese on hand, swiss beer bread is also favorite of mine.  

For something a little sweet, I started with this recipe for cinnamon raisin beer bread and tweaked it a little bit, increasing the cinnamon to I Tbsp, increasing the raisins to 1 cup, and soaking them in beer for a while before adding them to the batter. Plump and juicy raisins are so much better than dry, shriveled ones.

I did have to try a small slice of both of these, just in case they didn't turn out. They both tasted just fine so I won't have to worry about serving sub-par bread to my family. The cheese was evenly distributed, but Paul Hollywood would probably have something to say about the distribution of the raisins. (Good thing he's not invited.)

I haven't tried any of these variations yet, but they all sound good to me, so I'm sure I'll be making them soon.

Guinness Bread Recipe

Apple, Cheddar, and Rosemary Beer Bread

Spicy Italian Sausage and Mozzarella Beer Bread

I hope your week is a delicious one!