chickensense

Is it true? Home-baked bread every day with just 5 minutes effort, and all you need is an oven and a refrigerator? It sounds too good to be true so I tested it for myself.

On the left is the dough mixed and ready for the fridge. (See the recipe at Bread in 5 Minutes a Day - Master Recipe). I mixed it all in a plastic container, let it sit on the counter for a couple of hours, then refrigerated it for 2 days. (Each additional day you let it stay in the refrigerator the flavor is supposed to really improve.) This is not like a sour-dough starter, you don’t “feed” it each time you use it. You simply cut off a hunk, let it sit out for a couple of hours, then bake. Once you’ve used all the dough you just make another batch.

On the right side, here it is ready for the oven after sitting out a couple of hours to come to room temperature. Nothing seems to be going right for me, though. First I put the bread on the baking stone to sit out and rise, which was wrong since the stone needs to pre-heat before the bread is placed on it. So I moved the bread to a plate (since I didn’t have a pizza peel). That was messy. Then when I slashed the top of the dough it was so wet it just all went together again. Finally, it stuck to the plate despite the cornmeal, so it got on the pre-heated stone upside down. It’ll be a miracle if it is even edible.

I haven’t bought the book (Artisan Bread in 5 Minutes a Day) yet, but the recipe and instructions are available in several places online, for example: Bread in 5 Minutes a Day - Master Recipe. On the author’s web site there are several other variations, one of which is a sweet dough they call a brioche. I’ll be testing that next.

I’m not sure this is any better than using a bread machine. The machine takes less than 5 minutes to pour in the ingredients, but then it bakes it without any user intervention. No pizza peels, cornmeal, preheating, etc. The downside to the bread machine is that it only makes one small loaf. With this recipe you can make 4 or 5 loaves, and more if you double the recipe.

Hmmmm… pretty pitiful looking. It is very flat and the crust is very hard. The inside looks good, with some nice big bubble/air pockets. The whole thing tastes faintly burnt, even though it isn’t. Strange. I think that may be because the baking stone had the residue from the dough (that I had to move to a plate) and the residue did burn. I guess it flavored the whole loaf.

The bottom line: the texture is great, the taste is ok (needs a bit less salt), the crust is too hard, and the whole process was a pain. I’ve got plenty of dough left so I’ll try again, doing things the proper way this time. If there is a big improvement, I’ll update this blog entry.

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I have had lots of trouble over the years getting loaves that aren’t “gummy” inside when using my bread-machine. I’ve written before of my joy when I found I had over-looked the “super rapid” setting on my machine while accidentally using recipes intended for “super rapid.”  Pressing that magic button at the right time helped immensely, but all loaves were still at least a little gummy in the middle (usually more than a little).

I finally found, from several sites online, that bread that is undercooked and gummy inside is bread that didn’t rise sufficiently. After some experimenting, I found a couple of things I had been doing wrong:

1. I use all-purpose flour instead of bread flour, which doesn’t rise as well because it has less gluten and because of some chemicals they add to the bread flour (see note).
   

   fix: compensate by using 1 tablespoon vital gluten per cup of flour

2. I keep my whole wheat flour in the freezer so it is very cold when I add it to the ingredients, which I’ve realized hinders the action of the yeast.
   

   fix: set the timer to begin the bread in 1 hour to give the wheat time to get room temperature

3. For recipes that have any whole wheat flour at all, I wasn’t using the “whole wheat” setting, which allows extra rising time. (I thought they meant to use that only for 100% whole wheat bread. Oops.)
   

   fix: always use the whole wheat setting if there is any whole wheat flour in the recipe

I am now always careful to use vital gluten (available in the flour section of your super-market), especially with wheat flour; I always set the delay-timer to allow whole wheat flour to come to room temperature before mixing begins; and I am more careful to use the proper buttons on my machine: whole wheat if there is any whole wheat flour in the recipe, and super-rapid if I have used a super-rapid recipe.

(If you don’t have any vital gluten but want to use all-purpose flour in a recipe for white bread, you can compensate for the poor rising attributes of the flour by setting the machine to the whole wheat setting. This setting allows extra rising time, which is what all-purpose flour needs.)

Hopefully now my bread will continue to come out as nice as the last few loaves have. No more anticipating and salivating only to have to loaf come out as an inedible gummy mess.

(The photo is of the honey wheat bread I made tonight.)

My Honey Whole Wheat Bread (2 Lb Loaf)

(Based on a recipe from my Gold Medal flour bread machine recipe booklet)

Ingredients:

• 1 1/2 cups water
• 2 teaspoons salt
• 1/3 cup honey
• 2 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
• 2 cups whole wheat flour
• 4 or 5 tablespoons vital gluten
• 2 tablespoons butter (or shortening), chopped
• 2 tablespoons dry milk
• 1 teaspoon yeast

Instructions:

Place all the ingredients in the order above into the bread machine pan. I put half the vital gluten after the all-purpose flour, and half after the whole wheat flour, which I hope helps it to incorporate better.

Use the 2 lb Whole Wheat setting on your bread machine. If your flour is frozen or refrigerated set the timer to start in an hour to allow the ingredients time to reach room temperature before they come in contact with the yeast.

When finished remove from the pan and cool on a wire rack. To more easily slice bread, use a serrated knife and a gentle back and forth sawing motion.

NOTE: Bread flour is a high-gluten flour that has very small amounts of malted barley flour and vitamin C or potassium bromate added. The barley flour helps the yeast work, and the other additive increases the elasticity of the gluten and its ability to retain gas as the dough rises and bakes.

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I think I have created the most amazing cornbread recipe, if I do say so myself. I’ve been making it for a year now and always receive many compliments. It is a little bit sweet, crusty and absolutely delicious. It is so popular around here that I make a mix of it so I can whip it up any time I need to.

Chickensense Skillet Cornbread Mix

5 cups white flour
5 cups cornmeal
2 1/2 cups white sugar
1/4 cup powdered milk
2 1/2 teaspoons each baking soda, baking power, and salt

Mix it all together and store in a covered container until ready to use. Shake or roll the container to mix the ingredients together well.

To Make Corn Bread (from the mix)

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Add 1/4 cup margarine to an 8″ cast iron skillet and place in the preheating oven.

Meanwhile, measure 3 cups Skillet Cornbread Mix in a mixing bowl; set aside.

Crack 1 egg in a measuring cup, mix well with a fork. Add enough water to measure 1 cup. Pour the water/egg mixture into the cornbread mix and stir until moistened. If it is too dry, add up to a 1/4 cup more water. The batter should be a bit thick. (Don’t stir too much or the cornbread will be tough.)

Once the oven is hot, very carefully remove the hot skillet from the oven, taking care not to spill the melted margarine. Pour the cornbread batter into the skillet. Use the back of a spoon to spread the batter, and slosh some of the melted margarine from the sides over on top of the batter. Don’t stir the margarine into the batter.

Return skillet to the oven. Bake at 350 degrees for 30 minutes.

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I’m trying a new recipe for Banana Bread tonight because I’ve got some over-ripe bananas that really need to be used. Banana bread has always been a favorite of mine, but this is the first I’ve made with all whole-wheat flour. (It certainly smelled luscious while it is baking!)

My whole wheat flour was ground for me by a friend when we went in on a group buy of 5 gallon buckets of wheat this summer. It has been excellent in the honey wheat bread recipe I often use, so I know it will be good in this recipe too. (I keep it in the freezer since whole wheat flour doesn’t keep as well as white flour at room temperature.)

11p.m.- update: The banana bread was delicious! This is a fantastic recipe!

Tip: Freeze ripe bananas until there is enough for a recipe or two. Just peel, break in half, and freeze in a plastic bag. To use, just thaw and add to mixing bowl.

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I found the coolest tip in the world from the Hillbilly Housewife web site! She advises making your bread dough in a dishpan in your lap. When it is time to knead, just add flour and knead right in the dishpan.

I found that a dishpan, with its square corners, was too awkward, but my large silver mixing bowls are perfect for kneading. I mix the ingredients into the bowl, add flour until it is too stiff to stir with a spoon then start kneading right in the bowl. Talk about easy clean-up!

My biggest tip, though, is to use lots of flour. Plenty of flour on your hands and your work surface, and keep adding flour as you knead whenever the dough starts to get the least bit sticky. This keeps the dough easy to handle.

If you do knead on your counter, I found that a flat square of plastic, similar to a credit card, is perfect for scraping the dough off the counter quickly and easily, and makes clean-up a snap.

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Mmmmmm! I made home made bread, without the bread machine. I have gotten comfortable with kneading roll dough, so I decided to go for the gold. Kneading bread dough isn’t that different from the rolls, except that it is 4 times as much dough. Whew! It was much more tiring pushing around that huge lump of dough; still, the 4 beautiful loaves that resulted were well worth it.

I did find that these loaves were simple to slice thinnly, unlike bread-machine bread which falls apart. This is great, because I’ve been buying bread from the store for sandwiches because of the bread-machine bread; now I won’t have to.

Yesterday I made pizza with home made crust with Hunts canned spaghetti sauce, and topped it with shredded mozzarella. It was good, but I thought the crust was a little heavy, especially near the center. I didn’t let it rise, but perhaps I should have. Jesse absolutely loved it; he raved and raved about it. Pizza is one of my favorite foods, now that I can make my own I’ll be able to have it more often. I haven’t found a recipe I like for pizza sauce yet, but once I do, and once I start making my own mozzarella, then pizza will only cost pennies.

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Why is it that sometimes you just suddenly notice something you’ve never noticed before?

Today, as I was looking for new recipes to make some bread, I found the recipe booklet that came with my el cheepo (Regal Model K6732) bread machine. It has been buried among the cookbooks for years because all the recipes I tried just didn’t seem to work: either the loaf came out only 3 inches tall, or else it rose so high it pushed the top of the bread-maker open.

As I flipped through the booklet this time, I saw that I had penciled in adjustments to the ingredients, trying to get the recipes to work correctly. I saw that I was always cutting down on the amount of yeast. Then I noticed (aha!) that the first several recipes were for the “Super Rapid” mode of the machine. Super Rapid? Sure enough there is a Super Rapid Mode button, that I had never noticed, on the machine!

Honey Wheat Bread (for Regal Breadmaker Model K6732) 2 Pound Loaf

(Ingredients should be at room temperature. Water should be 100-110 degrees f)

Warm water: 11 - 12 ounces
Salt: 1 teaspoon
Vegetable oil: 2 tablespoons
Honey: 2 tablespoons
Whole wheat flour: 1 cup
Bread flour: 3 cups
Bread machine yeast: 4 teaspoons

Press SELECT until desired setting (Super Rapid) appears on the display. Press START. When unit signals and display reads END, press STOP and remove bread.

I’m sure you’ve guessed the outcome by now: I made the recipe, this time using the magic “Super Rapid” button. The bread came out so beautiful! And, as an added perk, instead of the usual 3 hours, it only took one hour to finish.

Now, as I sit here munching on warm bread and butter, I have this “half full / half empty” thing going on in my head. I am irritated at all the wasted years that I could have been making perfect bread, yet I am happy that from now on I’ll be able to make perfect bread all the time…

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At last, I received powdered margarine and powdered shortening that I had ordered from Mix A Meal. The Mix A Meal cookbook gives recipes to make homemade mixes using powdered margarine, shortening, eggs, and vanilla to give truly “just add water” convenience without the chemicals, additives, and cost of store-bought.

The margarine and shortening powder were very inexpensive, but the powdered eggs were a bit out of my budget so I make the mixes without powdered eggs, and, instead, just add an egg to the water in the measuring cup at cooking time.

Our first recipe test was the pancake mix. They were delicious! Our homemade syrup was heavenly with them. Now we can make pancakes easily–1 cup mix, 1 cup water.

Since that was such a success I tried the cornbread mix. It was very, very good too! My son said it’s the best he’s ever had; but I thought it was a bit too sweet, so when I mixed up the large batch I added 1/2 cup less sugar and the results were fantastic! Delicious!

I am so pleased with the Mix-A-Meal cookbook. Everything is far better than I expected. It is so nice to have the convenience of just-add-water mixes far more inexpensively than store-bought.

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So you’ll never guess what I’ve been doing this afternoon (I had to start early so they’d be done by supper time): I cooked black-eyed peas with ham hocks. I had a heckuva time finding ham hocks the other day! No one knew what they were. I finally asked the meat dept lady and she knew. They are pigs ankles! Bony and weird looking, too.

Southern Style Blackeye Peas

-= Ingredients =-
2 cups Blackeye peas ; (16 oz package)
1 cup Uncooked rice
1/2 teaspoon Pepper
1 small Ham hock
8 cups Cold water
Salt to taste

-= Instructions =-
Place ham hock in water; bring to boil; reduce heat and simmer for 30 minutes. Add peas to ham, continue simmering 1 1/2 hours, add rice and simmer 45 minutes or until rice and peas are done and liquid is almost absorbed. Remove meat from bone/ Serve peas and rice on hot platter, place ham on top.

I also made southern cornbread which is made with no sugar or honey. David hates cornbread that has any kind of sweetener. Jesse and I like it with a bit of sugar though, so I make both kinds. Now I’m going to make biscuits. This will only be the 2nd time I’ve made biscuits. I’ve always avoided anything that had to be kneaded, but now that I’ve done it once I’ve found it’s not so bad at all. Plus I made bread in the bread machine, and we had pancakes for brunch.

Aunt Jemima Southern Cornbread

-= Ingredients =-
1 cup Cornmeal
1 cup All purpose flour
2 tablespoon Sugar ; (2 to 4 tablespoons)
4 teaspoon Baking Powder
1/2 teaspoon Salt
1 cup Milk
1 Egg
1/4 cup Vegetable oil

-= Instructions =-
Preheat oven to 425.
In a large bowl, combine corn meal, flour, sugar, baking powder, and salt
Add milk, egg, and oil. Beat until fairly smooth, about 1 minute.
Bake in a greased or sprayed 8-inch square baking pan for 20 to 23 minutes, or until a wooden pick inserted in the center comes out clean.

We’ve been raising 2 chicks, Rhode Island Reds. One died last week because it got hold of some old, moldy feed in an old cage outside. We just finished setting up a pen outside for the other. This will be her first night outside. She looks very happy eating bugs in the grass. Now that the weather is finally getting warm we’re ordering 25 chicks from a hatchery. I’m going to go into egg production big time. Eventually I hope to learn to butcher chickens, or get someone to do it for us. I am getting afraid to eat chicken from the store.

The weather is gorgeous here. I just got in from the garden. All four of my rose bushes are blooming like crazy. 2 of them are soooo fragrant! I have a 3 year old peach tree but we had a really late frost and lost the peaches. Too bad, this year would we probably would have gotten our first peaches to eat. I have a nice strawberry patch that is a few years old but the berries aren’t ready yet. These are ever-bearing so they really get going in June. Plus I have 2 blueberry bushes that are 4 years old. We should have a nice crop this year. I have to cover them with netting so that the birds don’t get all the berries.

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