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Archive for the ‘Breads’ Category

Daring Bakers: Tender Potato Bread

Posted in Breads, Daring Bakers on November 26, 2007| 33 Comments »

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Part of being a Daring Baker is to push through and keep trying. I have never had so many problems with a dough before and desperately wanted to throw the entire sticky mess in the trash and not bother posting this month’s challenge. But after a pep talk from my husband (and a few glasses of Schnapps), we got through it and produced one loaf and four burger buns. I should have been more creative with their shapes but I kept walking away thinking that I was going to quit. Nothing gets me more steamed than a dough that doesn’t go my way.

This month’s challenge is being hosted by Tanna at her site My Kitchen in Half Cups. Go to her site for the full recipe and very helpful tips and advice. Even if you’re not a baker, go visit her amazing blog. I’ve never seen such a neat website before!

The Daring Bakers has exploded to nearly 400 people. Go visit them at the Daring Bakers Blogroll.

The potato bread I’m used to are in hotdog bun form and have a more complex texture than regular bread. This recipe was a pleasant surprise because it comes out just as the title says: tender. It’s like chewing a cloud only with an earthy potato taste.

The reason why I had such problems came from the ginormous amount of mashed potatoes I used. I failed to heed the helpful hints from Tanna which suggests 8 ounces of potatoes for the beginning baker and 16 ounces for the advanced bakers. Um, dumb ass me used the entire bowl and 4 cups of water.
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Sage Dressing with Apples and Sausage

Posted in Breads, Sides on November 22, 2007| 7 Comments »

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First let me say Happy Thanksgiving to everyone. We’re off to the north soon to Q’s cousins. If we leave by 8:30 we should get there by noontime. Going with us will be the two pans of dressing and a sweet potato pie, all made by yours truly.

I’m glad that I had the day off yesterday or else I would never have been able to do this in one evening. Since the quantity is for two pans and I don’t have a bowl large enough to fit the entire volume of the ingredients, I had to go in two batches. I started with a half a stick of butter and added half of all the ingredients.

It was a process.
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Another Sage Bread

Posted in Breads on November 15, 2007| 9 Comments »

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I love sage dressing more than anything else on Thanksgiving. Honestly, I could do without the turkey and the rest of the trimmings, just give me an entire pan of buttery baked crumbs and I’d be happy. During the non-holiday season, I eat this as a one pan meal.

In the past I’ve made this with a crusty French bread recipe but have found this one more satisfying. It’s the same recipe as the bread a few posts back where the raisins popped out of the loaf, except with fresh herbs instead of the tablespoon of cinnamon.

Me and yeast breads are like this.
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My doughs are never shy and rise just fine.
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Abandon Ship!

Posted in Breads, Shits and Giggles on October 22, 2007| 8 Comments »

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Speaking of breads, has this ever happened to anybody else? I made a nice cinnamon loaf with nearly a cup of raisins folded into the dough. For the next hour I kept hearing soft little pitter patters coming from the oven. I didn’t think anything of it until smoke started wafting out. The raisins somehow managed to rehydrate themselves and completely jumped out of the loaf as it was baking. The smoke was from a few that came into contact with the cooking coil on the floor of the stove. When I say jumped out, I mean completely abandoning ship. Measure out a scant cup of dried raisins and you’ll see there’s a good handful there. The pictures show the remaining raisins, the smattering on the top of the loaf and a few that were smooshed into the glass bread pan were the only survivors.

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Despite this puzzling raisin behavior, it’s probably the best bread I’ve ever made. The texture was just perfect and I’ve since made 2 more loaves for bread pudding and stuffing. Recipe to be posted as soon as I have some more picture to go with everything.

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Cottage Cheese Dill Bread

Posted in Breads on October 22, 2007| 3 Comments »

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If you can picture this doubled in size and darker in color, then that’s what the finished product looked like. Sorry, I never did get a picture after it was done. Too bad, because I heard it was World Bread Day recently on the blogosphere and I completely missed it! Here I made 4 different loaves last Tuesday and it never even occurred to me to take pictures of them all. Oh well, there’s always next year.

This one is a breeze as far as yeast breads go because there’s no kneading. Kinda takes all the fun out of the whole thing, I love the kneading and squeezing and punching of dough. Even though I now have a stand mixer and a food processor, I still prefer making bread by hand plus I can control the texture and it just comes out better.

But for this dough, a word of advice, do follow the directions and do not knead by hand. I gave it a short 5 minute massage and ended up having to remake the whole thing.

Another word of caution is to head the temperature directions for the cottage cheese and the warm water. In my opinion, lukewarm is 60 degrees Fahrenheit. Warm is 80F. Again, this is my own opinion. I actually haven’t seen much written about liquid temperatures when it comes to baking. Hmm, maybe I should write Mr. Brown about this.

When you heat the cottage cheese, heat it slowly and evenly over a double boiler or in a saucepan over very low heat. If it’s too hot, let it cool down. One of the ingredients is an egg, if the temp is too high, you’ll get ribbons of scrambled egg in the batch and the bread will come out wonky.
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