The Martha Challenge

The Martha Saga continues.

I know I said she was dead to me, but I just couldn't walk away from her Pullman Bread recipe without conquering it. I made Peter Reinhart's Soft Sandwich Bread recipe from Artisan Breads Every Day a couple of times now, but it's just not doing it for me. Not like Martha's sandwich bread. Evil woman.

Reinhart's sandwich bread is tasty and has a great shelf life (especially in my handy Tupperware bread keeper). But it's delicate and tears easily when I try to spread it with peanut butter or even just butter. And it doesn't toast as evenly and thoroughly as Martha's denser, heartier sandwich bread. Plus it's a bit too sweet for my taste. So I decided I'm not going to let this she-witch with the minions and the bad instructions conquer me. I'm going to conquer her Pullman Bread recipe if it's the last thing I do.

So I made it again this weekend. I took notes on how long I baked it and how I covered it. Because I'm still working without a real Pullman loaf pan with the cover, I'm having to finagle the instructions (which Martha's minions lied about being accurate) to get it to come out right. Here is my latest result:

Not as pretty as I would like, but not horrendous either. It's taken some serious effort to try to modify Martha's instructions to work with a loaf pan sans lid, though, and I'm not quite there yet. It's tastes magnificent, though, and has a beautiful dense texture that toasts beautifully. The Big Guy and I made grilled cheese sandwiches for dinner with it tonight. Delish!

Here is where The Martha Challenge comes in. I challenge all you bakers out there to try this recipe also - with or without the requisite Pullman loaf pan with lid - and let me know your results. Are you up for the challenge? Here's the recipe.


Pullman Bread
Adapted from Martha Stewart's Baking Handbook

Total time commitment: about 4-1/2 hours

"Makes one 12-inch loaf. If you prefer a loaf with a rounded top, you can bake the dough without the lid in place; the baking time should be the same." (Famous last words, Martha.)

1-1/2 lb (about 4-1/2 cups) bread flour, plus more for dusting
3-1/2 tsp instant yeast
1-1/2 Tbsp coarse salt
1-1/2 Tbsp sugar
1/3 cup nonfat dry milk
2 Tbsp butter, softened
1-3/4 cups warm water (about 110 degrees F)
Spray oil, for bowl and pan

In the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the dough hook, combine the flour, yeast, salt, sugar, dry milk and butter. Add the warm water and beat on low speed until the dough is smooth, elastic and uniform in color, about 5 minutes.

Turn out dough onto a lightly floured work surface and finish kneading by hand, about five times, making sure all ingredients are fully incorporated and the dough forms a smooth ball. Place dough in a lightly oiled bowl, cover with plastic wrap and let rise in a warm place until doubled in bulk, about 1 hour.

Punch down dough in bowl. Pull the sides into the center. Invert the dough in the bowl so that it rests smooth side up. Cover with plastic wrap and let rise again until doubled in bulk, about 1 hour more.

Generously spray a 12" Pullman loaf pan with spray oil (or brush with vegetable oil), making sure to coat the underside of the lid (if you have one), as well as the bottom and sides of the pan. Set aside. Turn out dough onto a lightly floured surface. Roll out the dough to a 12" x 8" rectangle, with the long side facing you. Starting at the top, roll the dough toward you, gently pressing as you go to form a tight log. Tuck the ends in to make even. Gently roll the log back and forth to seal the final seam. Place the loaf, seam side down, in the prepared pan and slide the lid three-quarters of the way closed. (If working without a lid, cover with plastic wrap.) Let rise in a warm place until the dough is almost touching the lid, 45-60 minutes. (If working without a lid, your dough will rise in a rounded fashion about a half inch above the top of the pan.) Meanwhile, preheat oven to 425 degrees F.

Close the lid completely (or cover completely with foil) and bake, rotating pan halfway through, until loaf is light golden brown, about 45 minutes. Reduce oven temp to 350F, re-close the lid (or re-cover with foil) and continue baking another 30 minutes. [NOTE: These are Martha's instructions. My times were as follows: 30 minutes at 425F, then 29 minutes at 350F, checking it every five minutes in the last 15 minutes of baking. My oven tends to bake fast (fancy Whirlpool AccuBake(R) technology), so your results may vary. Let me know.]

Martha says to let pan rest of wire rack for 10 minutes, but I always just dump my bread right out onto the wire rack immediately after removing from the oven. Crust should be a deep golden brown and bread will sound hollow when tapped. Let cool completely before slicing. Bread can be wrapped in plastic (or stored in your handy-dandy Tupperware bread box) and kept at room temperature for up to 4 days.


This is The Martha Challenge. Are you in? Post your results below! Happy baking!

Life Takes Over...But Baking Continues

The Big Guy was chastising me last night for not posting a new blog entry in a couple of weeks. But that's what happens when you have too many irons in the fire.

The last couple of weekends have been busy! I tried three new Peter Reinhart recipes, all of which turned out splendidly. And all of which came from his book Artisan Breads Every Day. I've referenced page numbers below.

My biggest problem when it comes to blogging about my baking experiments is remembering to take the darn photos. I get all caught up in the process of baking and forget about the need to document the steps visually. Or, I remember to take a few photos during the process, but when the finished product comes out, it's so delicious that it gets devoured before I remember to snap a shot of the end result. That's what happened weekend before last. We served the French bread - using Reinhart's Lean Bread recipe (page 46) - to guests on Saturday night with dinner, and I was too busy entertaining and enjoying the evening to capture it "on film." The sandwich bread I have no excuse for other than laziness. I thought about taking pictures of it a couple of times before we devoured it, but was too lazy to go do it. Meh, it happens.

Here are the baguettes made from the Lean Bread recipe and the Soft Sandwich Bread (page 105) loaves as they were rising:

 

Pretty, aren't they? I wish I had captured the finished products as well. But as the title says, life takes over.

The Lean Bread recipe tasted great, but the dough was a bit tricky to work with. So the next weekend I went with Reinhart's Classic French Bread recipe (page 49) to fulfill the request for bread boules for the Super Bowl party we were attending. My girl Rachel was going all out with a Snack Stadium, so I had to bring the goods in the baking department to accompany her soups. This time I remembered to take photos of the finished product but not of the steps it took to get there. Feast your eyes on these beauties:

I made them small so that more people could try them, and so that no one was tempted to fill up on soup and miss out on the glory that was the Snack Stadium. When making these bread boules (pronounced "bowl" by the majority of the world, but "bow-lay" by my dear hillbilly co-worker Heather), I went with a tic-tac-toe pattern of scoring on the top so we would have a guide to cut around to remove the centers of the boules for soup. Since there was not a scrap of bread left in the end, I'm calling this one a winner. Woohoo!

Now, you want the recipes? Go buy Peter Reinhart's Artisan Breads Every Day! I promise you that even if you are a complete novice baker you'll find these recipes simple and easy to follow. I would reproduce them here, but every recipe comes with 3 pages of instructions. Don't be intimidated by that! The 3 pages of instruction is what makes these recipes so easy to follow. Reinhart doesn't leave out a single detail, therefore you're not left confused (unlike with Martha's recipes) and wondering if you've done it right.

Get in there and start baking! Or ask me for samples. Either way. Enjoy!

Ciabatta Redemption

After last weekend's epic ciabatta defeat, courtesy of Martha Stewart's Baking Painbook, I went back into the kitchen this weekend determined to redeem myself and wash away the stink of failure that still hung in the air. In my hands was my new favorite book: Peter Reinhart's Artisan Breads Every Day.

Taking many of the same recipes from his earlier work, The Bread Baker's Apprentice, and distilling them down to the basics for the home baker, Reinhart has created the perfect go-to companion for crafting beautiful, insanely delicious breads without special equipment or impossible techniques. He also takes the time to break down professional techniques into easily understandable steps, with helpful accompanying pictures. His ciabatta bread - or pain à l'ancienne - covers four pages in book, with three-quarters of one page being step-by-step photos, plus a fifth page featuring only a beauty shot of the finished product. That's three and three-quarters pages of deeply detailed instructions.

On Friday night, the Big Guy and I got to work. He's such a great helper. He got all my ingredients out and helped me get dishes done from dinner and get everything ready to work while I carefully read Reinhart's instructions for the ciabatta and his streamlined bagel recipe.

You may remember I've been using Reinhart's original Bread Baker's Apprentice recipe, as adapted by Smitten Kitchen. So I was curious to see what he had done with the recipe for Artisan Breads Every Day. Let me tell you...he has streamlined it to perfection. It still takes up six pages in the book, but that includes the requisite full-page beauty shot plus another whole page of photos showing the step-by-step shaping instructions, which turned out to be key to the whole process.

Normally when I make bagels, it's about 3-4 hours of work on day 1 and about 1-2 hours (depending on how many batches I've made) on day 2. Last weekend when I tackled six dozen bagels plus ciabatta bread all in the same day, it took the entire Saturday, plus 4 hours on Sunday to accomplish the task. I'm ecstatic to report that this weekend we spent less than 2 hours on prepping dough Friday night, then about 3 hours on Saturday to finish shaping, rising and baking. Granted, we only made one dozen bagels this weekend vs six dozen last weekend, but still, time will be considerably less no matter how many dozen I'm making because he has switched to more cold fermenting of the yeast vs warm proofing. So now there are fewer steps, fewer ingredients, and less on-the-counter rising time.

I was excited to try the new method of rolling the bagel dough out into ropes and then pinching the ends together to form a circle, rather than my previous method of just poking a hole in the middle of a ball, which produced majorly lopsided bagels sometimes. The rope method will be my go-to from now on. Look at these beauties:

  

The one in the middle was formed using the rope technique. The one on the right used the less-than-scientific "poke a hole in it" method. I decided we needed to make some cheese bagels this time. Why we hadn't tried cheese yet, I don't know, because we're both big fans. So I grabbed a giant bag of shredded parmesan and started spreading the love:

  

With my oven set to "screaming hot", I slid them in to bake. A short 20 minutes later, here's what we ended up with - cheesy, golden heaven:

  

You'll notice a few of them have "snail tails." I still need to work on perfecting the rope technique. But for a first try, I think I did pretty darn well! The ciabatta came out beautifully also - just need to brush off more flour next time before baking. And it tastes awesome.

Then, after all this was done, just for fun I decided to try pesto parmesan bread from a recipe I found on Pinterest. I have all this pesto sauce in my freezer from the overabundance of basil in last summer's garden, so we're finding creative ways to put it to use. And since my girl Rachel was feeding us lasagna Saturday night, what a perfect complement! I used the Braided Pesto Bread recipe from Confections of a Foodie Bride (how cute is that??). It was tasty and a huge hit with nearly everyone, but it was a pain in the ass to make, if I'm being honest. I even went back to the blog to check the comments to see if anyone else had as much trouble braiding this damn loaf as I did. But either all of the people who made it are much more skilled at braiding unwieldy dough than I am, or they're just not as easily irritated about stuff like that as I am and so didn't bother mentioning it when they commented. Either way, it was annoying. But tasty! Here's what it looked like:

More adventures next weekend, I'm sure! But for now, that's all I got. Now off to relax before tomorrow morning brings another busy week. Bye, y'all!

New baking books!

After last weekend's giant Martha fail, I decided she and I should break up. At least for a while. So after I put up my last blog post Wednesday evening, the Big Guy and I headed over to Barnes & Noble to get some better guidebooks. We came home with The King Arthur Flour Baker's Companion: The All-Purpose Baking Cookbook and Peter Reinhart's Artisan Breads Every Day. We're getting started tonight with a couple of Peter's recipes, and I CANNOT WAIT. *squeal*

Ciabatta bread fail...and other weekend food adventures

Like the meme? Came across it while browsing memes.
Thought it might be appropriate for this post. Made me lolz.

I'm always on here like, "Look at what neat thing I made today! It was soooo yummy!" like I'm the greatest cook/baker on Earth. The fact is, however, I'm not perfect.

As a perfectionist, it really hurts to say that out loud. I'm not perfect. Ugh. I actually cringed after I typed that. But it's true. I do fail sometimes when experimenting with a new recipe...and sometimes with old recipes too. It happens. But this weekend I experienced an EPIC FAIL when I decided to tackle another Martha recipe.

F*cking Martha.

I'm on a sandwich bread kick, so I decided to try her ciabatta bread recipe on page 329 of Martha Stewart's Baking Handbook. After my last Martha adventure, I decided to read the recipe completely several times before even starting. Everything appeared to be in order, so I got to work. And everything seemed to be going according to plan for the first couple of hours. (Don't freak out. It was like 5 minutes of work and 2 hours of proofing.)

But, see, the other problem I have with Martha's Big Ol' Baking Book is the lack of pictures. Oh sure, there are lots of pretty, well-staged, well-styled photos of mouth-watering pastries and breads. But there are next to no photos of the PROCESS of getting to those drool-worthy finished products.

So I end up reading the description of what the first phase of my dough should look like after proofing and thinking, "Yup, it's pretty wet, slack and sticky, alright. I guess I'm on target." Boy, was I wrong. The Big Guy helped me scoop it out of the mixing bowl onto the pile of flour I'd laid down...and the dough prompted oozed everywhere - nearly off the counter, even. This was not good. I spent the next 15 minutes trying like hell to "fold" this glorified pancake batter like a freaking envelope while "not getting too much flour on top," cursing Martha the entire time. My mother would blush at the words that came out of my mouth. Sorry, Mom.

It was such a horrific experience that I didn't even pause for photos. Not that I could have, even, since my hands - and the Big Guy's hands - were covered in this ooey, gooey, sticky mess. But we went through all the stages, the combined total four and a half hours rising time, and it was finally time to bake the ugly, misshapen bastards. So I turned back to Martha's minion's instructions: "place baking stone on floor of oven."

This is where it really got ugly. Thank God I had already cooked the roast we were having for dinner, because what followed was a nightmare. It's been three days, and I still don't have the guts to open my oven and confront the situation.

I placed my Pampered Chef baking stones on the floor of my oven. Luckily I have a fancy oven with hidden heating element. Hey, Martha...what should one do with her baking stone if she has an exposed heating element like most of middle America? Hm? Anyway...$50 worth of Pampered Chef goes down on the bottom of my oven. "Preheat oven to 450." Ouch. With the stones ON THE FLOOR? Okey-dokey, Martha. You're the "expert." Here goes.

I returned to my dinner prep while the oven heated up. (Yes, I was making chuck roast, mashed potatoes and corn while trying to "gently fold" this blasted dough into submission. I didn't plan it this way. I just couldn't turn down that beautiful piece of meat when I saw it at the butcher shop the day before.) Pretty soon I noticed smoke rolling out of the vent on the back of my cooktop. Ruh-roh. I had the Big Guy take down the smoke detector before I opened the oven door. I held my breath, opened the oven, and a giant cloud of smoke rolled out...and set off a second smoke detector in the house. Awesome. Big Guy made a cute remark that earned him the Asshole Husband title for the next two days.

Nothing was on fire, and I figured it was just a little something baked into my stones combined with the high heat that was making things extra exciting. Figured it would settle down in a few minutes. Besides, at this point I was committed to baking this damned bread. So I very carefully started lobbing dough blobs onto the stones on the bottom of my oven (because nobody actually owns a peal, Martha, seriously). Halfway through I ran out of room, said eff it, threw the rest of the formed rolls onto a baking sheet, slid it onto the rack (which was way up top out of the way of my stones), and slammed the oven shut.

More smoke. Opened windows in 40-degree temps. Dogs confused. Eyes watering. Asshole Husband walking around making cracks about smoke detectors "singing the song of your people." Stink of failure hanging throughout the house, even in the garage. Neighbors could probably smell it.

Finally pulled them out, and here's what we ended up with:

Pretty on top. Slightly doughy in the middle.
Didn't get that nice crunch on the bottom.

White on top. Black on bottom.
Fantastic in the middle.

A whole pile of tasty failure.

Burnt stones

Now, if you think my stones don't look too bad, I invite you to come to my house and get a close-up look at the soot for yourself. We actually left the stones in the oven overnight to cool off, they were so hot. I'm hoping they clean up ok. We'll see how it goes. And except for the burnt parts, these tasted pretty good. But it was murder getting to the finished product. And the house still reeks with the stink of failure.

So I'm done with Martha for now. I'll probably go back to her for some cookies or crap like that, but I just don't trust and her and the minions with bread anymore. It's over, Martha. We're breaking up. For now.

I'm on a mission tonight to pick up a book written by the man who is quickly becoming my Bread Hero - Peter Reinhart. He's the dude whose bagel recipe I use. And he knows bread better than Martha knows self-branding and house arrest. He's my man. Bugger off, Martha.

In other news, the Big Guy and I picked up that half a hog I told you about. Here's what 90+ pounds of custom-butchered pork looks like in your freezer, if you were ever wondering:

Not pictured: 4 lbs of lard

Now, the question is, what do I do with the feet? I'm scared to unwrap them. That's a little too much for me, I think.

Can't wait to start grilling, frying, smoking, and eating this piggy! Yum!

Tackling Martha

Tackling Martha Stewart sounds like fun. Taking that snooty broad down and wiping that smug smirk off her face would be.... Wait, that's a different blog. What I'm talking about is tackling Martha's RECIPES, not her physical person. Because that would be illegal. And two felons don't make a wicker basket or some shit. I digress.

In a post a couple months back, I told you about the book my mother-in-law gave me for Christmas several years ago: Martha Stewart's Baking Handbook. I made a meme and everything. You should go check it out. I still giggle when I see it.

Well, that blog post has been taunting me for weeks now, and so I finally dusted off that book, re-read some of the recipes I had flagged years ago, flagged a bunch of new ones, and picked my first recipe to try. I wanted to try a nice, simple sandwich bread, so I went with Pullman Bread on page 297.

The recipe sounded simple enough, and even though I don't have a lidded pullman loaf pan, she said I could still make the recipe. So I got started early in the day, allowing plenty of time for all the rising, punching, rising, shaping, and rising again. Finally, I had a beautiful pan of swollen yeast dough, perfectly rounded on the top like I imagined it would be. I referred back to Martha for the baking instructions, which, of course, all talked about the lid and opening and closing it. So I double-checked what I had read earlier about baking without the lid and I double-checked for specific instructions about baking sans lid. At the top of the page, Martha (or I should say Martha's recipe-writing minion) clearly says, "If you prefer a loaf with a rounded top, you can bake the dough without the lid in place; the baking time should be the same."

Lying bitch.

Since the directions said to rotate the pan halfway through the first 45-minute baking interval, I opened the oven about 20 minutes in. Much to my surprise, I had one seriously dark loaf in the oven! And according to Martha/Martha's minions, I still had 55 more minutes of baking time to go. Yikes! So I carefully tented the loaf with foil, reduced the heat as directed (albeit 25 minutes earlier than indicated) and let it go another 5-10 minutes. At that point, I looked again - still dark brown - and tapped on it. Hollow-sounding, like it should if it were done. So I decided to just pull it out and check the bottom. My beautiful, dark brown loaf slid easily from the pan, and when I tapped on the bottom - hollow-sounding! I moved it to a cooling rack and decided to just see what happened.

About 20 excruciating minutes later I was a bad girl and carved a slice off of the still-warm loaf and schmeared it with butter. Oh my Land O' Lakes! That was one delicious, perfectly baked slice of bread! Which can only mean two things:

1. I am Super Baker. Hear me roar.
2. Martha and her minions are fallible. 

In other words, Martha's baking instructions are wrong. You're WRONG, Martha! WRONG! And even though you're WRONG, I am Super Baker, and I made one helluva delectable loaf of bread. Warning: graphic food porn image shown below...

Isn't that sexy? Sure, it's a little dark, but on the inside it's white - but not too white - soft, dense but with a light texture, and slightly salty. I may not go back to store-bought after this. Now the hunt is on for a lidded pullman loaf pan to see what kind of difference that makes, though, with regard to the baking instructions.

Tonight had breakfast for dinner - a longtime favorite of mine - and I sliced up the rest of this loaf for some rich, thick French toast. Yummers! Turns out this is the perfect bread for French toast!

Suck it, Martha. I will conquer you and your terror-inducing recipe book filled with errors.

Love, Krista

Salty, Carby Goodness: Pretzel Rolls

Browsing through my "dough" board on Pinterest looking for my next baking challenge, my eyes rested upon one from une bonne vie: Pretzel Rolls. Warm pretzels are pure ecstasy to a salt and carb lover like me, so I decided to make this my next baking adventure.

I had an ulterior motive for making pretzel rolls aside from my rabid drooling. Right now there are only two places in town I know of where you can buy pretzel rolls: The Fresh Market and Schnucks grocery. After hearing some friends wail on Facebook about having to wait for their next trip to Cincinnati to stock up on some decent pretzel rolls, I figured I should try making them and see if I can't become their favorite in-town supplier. So I got to work on these right after I finished all my Christmas cookie baking.

Here is the recipe direct from Une Bonne Vie:
________________________________________________________________
Pretzel Rolls
The Dough
6 - 7 1/2 cups unbleached, all-purpose flour 
1 teaspoon salt
3 tablespoons canola oil
2 teaspoons active dry yeast
2 1/2 cups milk, slightly warmed
1 cup water, slightly warmed

Coarse sea salt for sprinkling

The "Bath"
7 cups water
1 tablespoon salt
4 tablespoons baking soda

In a small container, mix yeast with warmed milk and let rest for 10 minutes. Whisk 5 3/4 cups of flour and teaspoon of salt in a large bowl. 

Add canola oil and warmed water to yeast mixture. Pour into bowl with flour and salt. Knead in the bowl until dough is mostly smooth. Only add more flour if your dough cannot be easily handled. The dough will be somewhat stiff. Cover the bowl with a dish towel and put in a warm place to rise for one hour.

Punch down dough and knead in bowl for one minute. Cut dough into 15 pieces. (Cut more pieces if you would like smaller size rolls.) Form balls by pulling the dough under. Place on a well-greased surface. Let the dough balls rise for 15 minutes.

While the dough balls are rising, preheat the oven to 400 degrees and get the pretzel "bath" ready. In a large pot, bring water, salt, and baking soda to a rolling boil. Plunge three dough balls into the water and let them "poach" for 1 minute total. Using a slotted spoon, transfer them to a well-greased baking sheet. With a serrated knife, cut 2-3 lines across each roll and sprinkle with coarse sea salt. Bake for 20 to 25 minutes, or until pretzels are a rich brown.  These are best eaten the same day they are made.
_______________________________________________________________

Here are my notes and results:

Since it was pouring down rain the day I made these, I think I ended up using about 9 cups of flour before getting the dough stiff enough. (Tip: Humidity affects yeast goods. The damper it is outside, the more flour you're gonna need inside that dough.)

The Big Guy and I scarfed a couple down while still warm, and they were sooo good. I went easy on the sprinkling of sea salt on the top, and I think they could've done with more. But maybe that's just me and my salt craving talking. They were also delicious lightly warmed in the microwave the next day. But after a couple days in a Ziploc bag on the counter, they were definitely not good anymore. I have a bag left in the freezer to test out how they are frozen for later use. Will report back on that in a future post.

The true test, though, was in giving a couple of these rolls to those Facebook-ranting friends. We delivered a roll to each of them along with their bag of holiday goodies, and a few days later I checked in for an opinion. According to Friend #1, who gave me his brutally honest opinion (as always), there was not an even enough distribution of salt throughout the dough, and they were a bit uneven in bake. The center was too doughy to work properly as a sandwich roll. Overall, though, I think he thought I did well for my first attempt. Persnickety bastard.

I appreciated the candid feedback, though, and now I know what to do differently next time. I'll be more diligent in whisking the dry goods together, and I'll make them smaller to try and avoid the doughy center. I think because of the amount of extra flour, the dough was probably larger than the original poster's, so my rolls were probably larger than hers. They did seem pretty big - like a VERY large hamburger bun. But boy, were they pretty. Check it out. *drool*

Family Traditions

Christmas has come and gone, and it was all such a blur. I hope everyone had a wonderful holiday season, whatever you may celebrate. Ours was quiet and peaceful, just the way I like it. Bonus: I managed to revive two family recipes this year.

This year I continued my tradition of making homemade gift baskets and bags for family and friends, though weather and illness prevented me from doing all that I wanted to do and delivering all the finished goods within the necessary timeline. Here's to better success next year!

I tried some new cookie recipes and was sadly disappointed. If any of you have any tips or tricks for successfully using a cookie press, please share them! I just ended up with a glob of cookie dough hanging from the end of the press without releasing to the cookie sheet. It reminded me of the old Play-Doh Fun Factory...minus the fun. Maybe it was the dough I used (though the recipe specifically stated it was for use in a cookie press), but I ended up so frustrated I quit and tried rolling and cutting my shapes instead. That was spectacularly awful as well. My dough spread out into shapeless blobs of chewy grossness instead of the light, buttery, whimsical shortbread cookies I was going for. This photo I saw on Pinterest kind of depicts my cookie strife:

Disclaimer: This is not me. I am not a skinny blonde. (Though my kitchen is exactly this shade of green. Weird.)
This is some random chick from Imgur: http://imgur.com/dcY336C

So, in true Krista fashion, I got pissed off, threw it all away and moved on to the next recipe.

One family recipe I revived this Christmas was my grandmother's sugar cookies. Again, they spread out more than I wanted, which I didn't understand. Mom and I used to make them every year, and every year they were beautiful. This year not so much. I might try them again for Easter or something and see what I did wrong. But they were tasty, if a little flat. My goal for this year had been to learn to make royal icing. I had visions of my grandmother's sugar cookies lovingly decorated with fancy hard icing, but as happens so often, life got in the way and I ran out of time.

Our freezer cooking group had planned to meet mid-month to make goodies to swap for our homemade gift baskets and help one another with some larger tasks, like making my grandmother's Swedish meatballs - my favorite family food tradition. Sadly, sickness and work got in the way - though surprisingly it wasn't MY illness or work this time! My mom also lacked the spare time to make these delicious bites of meaty goodness as well, so for the first Christmas in memory, we didn't have them, which made me very sad. We still had the cocktail wieners and some frozen meatballs in grandma's traditional beer/chili sauce, but it wasn't even close to the same. I may have to schedule a game night just as an excuse to make some damn meatballs. They are so time-consuming, with all the rolling and browning, but every savory bite is worth the effort.

In an effort to make up for the lack of meatballs - and in the spirit of trying new yeast recipes - I reached out to my Great Aunt Ethel for her yeast roll recipe. I've heard about these light and fluffy "biscuits", as she calls them, for decades, but I've never had the opportunity to taste them. When my grandmother was alive, she and my Pa hosted dozens of extended family and friends on Christmas Eve, and according to Mom, Aunt Ethel would bring her delicious rolls to town with her, already risen and ready to pop in the oven for dinner. After my grandmother passed away (before my second birthday), our family's Christmas Eve traditions changed and slowly each part of the extended family began to form their own annual traditions closer to their homes across Indiana and Kentucky. I know how much my mom misses these Christmases that pre-date my memory, so I decided to bring a piece back to her.

It's been many years since Aunt Ethel (now near 90 years of age) attempted to make her biscuits but, bless her heart, she gave it a go after Thanksgiving just for me, since these rolls were never made from a written recipe. It was always just one of those "use about this much flour and knead until it feels like this" processes. Unfortunately, too much time and memory had faded for her to make them successfully, but she knew she had taught her daughter Pam to make them several years ago. Though she warned me, Pam makes hers differently now.

Hip-hip-hooray for Pam taking notes on the original process and then saving them where she could easily find them! A few emails later and I had Pam's notes on Aunt Ethel's original yeast roll method. They were loose, and I was a little nervous starting out, but as I carefully walked through the process I could see and feel what was conveyed in the notes, and I knew I was on the right track.

Once you start working with yeast recipes, you get a feel for what's right and what's not right. Like I talked about in an earlier post, your fingertips come to learn what "lukewarm" feels like exactly, and you just know it's right. So I credit my recent baking experiences with giving me the knowledge I needed to successfully make these rolls. They were so beautiful as they were rising.

When we baked the first batch up at Mom's house on Christmas Eve, though, they were HUGE (like Grands biscuits on steroids) and ever-so-doughy in the middle. But everyone agreed they were delicious, and Mom said they tasted "just right." Score! The Big Guy liked them so much he sweetly asked me to go through the entire six-hour process again on Christmas Day for dinner with his folks. I couldn't say no to those big blue eyes, plus I wanted to try again with smaller rolls and a little melted butter after baking. So, on Christmas Day, I made them half the size of the previous day, and when I pulled them out of the oven (at the Big Guy's suggestion), I brushed them with some melted butter before serving. HOLY YUM! We were so excited to tear into them (and the rest of the meal) that I forgot to take a picture until we were digging into the second pan. Now, mind you, there were only four of us eating these things, so I think I can safely say they were a hit!

So, here is a great big THANK YOU to Aunt Ethel and my cousin Pam for helping me bring back this yearned-for recipe and Christmas tradition in our family.

I hope all of you enjoyed your holiday traditions this year - and maybe even added a new one or brought back an old one. Here's to a happy and healthy 2014, y'all!


Top of page photo credit: Mukumbura via photopin cc

What the heck is a "pilau" anyway?

I am such a dork sometimes.

There's this recipe I found in Southern Living magazine about 10 years ago and have been making ever since. It's called Chicken & Smoked Sausage Pilau. And for 10 years, every time I made it, I thought to myself, "What the heck is a pilau?" But I never thought until this week to just Google the damn word. Turns out it's just another variation of "pilaf." Which got me thinking, what exactly is a pilaf anyway? I know in general American restaurant terms it's just seasoned rice. But since general American restaurants have a tendency to generally bastardize everything, I looked up the term pilaf as well.

Here's what Dictionary.com tells me about pilaf/pilau:

pi·laf

  [pi-lahf, pee-lahf]  Show IPA

noun

1.

a Middle Eastern dish consisting of sautéed, seasoned rice steamed in bouillon, sometimes withpoultry, meat or shellfish.

2.

rice cooked in a meat or poultry broth.

Also, pi·laff, pilau, pilaw.

Origin: 
1925–30;  < Turkish pilâv  < Persian pilāw

Ahhh, that makes sense! The recipe is basically chicken, smoked sausage and rice. But the time, labor and seasonings make it so much more than what those three simple ingredients imply. And so it quickly became a favorite in our home. And since the recipe makes way too much for two people to eat - even taking leftovers and lunches into consideration - I always freeze half of it for later.

So, for my freezer cooking friends, here's the recipe - with my modifications from over the years. 

Chicken & Smoked Sausage Pilau
Adapted from Southern Living
(Cook time: approx. 1.5 hours; Serves 8-10)

Photo source: MyRecipes.com

5 lb whole chicken or whole chicken cut up
2 lb smoked sausage, sliced into 1" pieces
1 large bunch fresh thyme (or 2 tsp dried)
2 bay leaves
2 carrots, cut in half
3 celery ribs (including leafy parts), cut in half
2 large sweet onions, chopped
1-1/2 Tbsp seasoned salt
1/2 Tbsp black pepper
8 cups water
4 cups long-grain rice

In a large stockpot, bring all ingredients EXCEPT rice to a boil. Reduce heat to low and simmer, covered, 1 hour. Remove from heat and let stand 15 minutes. Remove and discard celery, carrots, thyme stems and bay leaf from stock, reserving stock in stockpot.* Remove chicken and cool slightly. Remove skin and bones, then coarsely chop chicken.

Saute sausage in large skillet until browned. Drain, if needed. Add chicken and sausage to reserved stock in stockpot and bring to a boil. Stir in rice and return to boil. Cover, reduce heat to low, and cook 20 minutes or until stock is absorbed and rice is tender.

If you're not serving an army or are unwilling to eat leftovers of the same thing for a week, freeze some! Cool half of finished meal completely, place in gallon freezer bag, squeezing all excess air out of the bag as you close it. Press contents out to flatten bag and freeze. To reheat, thaw in refrigerator overnight and nuke for a couple of minutes. If rice is too dry for your liking, add a splash of chicken stock.

*I often get the veggies and herb stems out of my stock by placing a colander or sieve over a large mixing bowl and straining the stock into the bowl. Then dump the stock back into the pot. It can be downright maddening to chase soft pieces of carrot and those ninja bay leaves around in hot, murky chicken stock with a frickin' slotted spoon.

Cooking with homemade pumpkin puree

Oh my gosh! Time flies when you're having fun! I meant to publish this post within a day or two of writing about our homemade doggie treat adventure, but time just got away from me. And now that I've been sufficiently chastised by more than one person for not being quick enough about it, I'm committed to publishing this before I head to bed tonight! (Thanks for the prod, Angie & Steve-O.) :)

Because I've been making a serious effort to bring fewer processed foods into our home this year, I was determined to finally try making my own pumpkin puree this fall, rather than buying the super-convenient canned pumpkin like I've always done. (And I needed material for my blog. Hahaha)

I googled a few different options for making pumpkin puree and ended up with this approach:

1. Buy two small sugar - or pie - pumpkins. 
2. Using a large, sturdy knife, cut the stem straight off. 
3. Then halve the pumpkins from the top down and scoop out the seeds and stringy stuff. Rinse off the seeds and save them for roasting separately. 
4. Place pumpkins cut side down on a large, edged baking sheet and roast for about 45 minutes at 350 degrees. 
5. Let cool slightly and then carefully remove the skins, using tongs or a fork if needed. The skins will peel right off. 
6. Transfer the cooked pumpkin to a food processor or blender and process until smooth.

My two pumpkins produced about 7-8 cups of puree.

Please do this. I implore you. It's so, so simple, and you're not eating all those preservatives from the canned stuff. Plus, the best part is that your whole house will smell like Thanksgiving. It's not a spice smell, not a turkey smell, not even really a PUMPKIN smell...I can't even describe it. It's just the smell of Thanksgiving and warmth and good things on the table. Do it. Make your own pumpkin puree. And then make these dogs treats.

Ruff life

My dogs are like my kids. I won't deny it. These two rotten bastards stole our hearts the moment we first laid eyes on them. I mean, come on. How could you not love these faces?

Our sweet Cody was a hard case. Purebred perfection nearly starved to death and neglected in a small crate for the first 18 months of his life, he was a scared, skinny shadow of the dog he has become. We used to joke that he had a bellhop to cart around all his baggage. We adopted him on sight after the Big Guy's manager - who owned Cody's half-sister from the same breeder - had fostered him for a bit. Vinnie was a wandering stray who had clearly never been inside a home. He was happy enough and healthy but had zero manners and no concept of human authority. He nuzzled and cuddled with me for five minutes in his foster's home (a friend of mine) and stole my heart like the thieving bugger he is. We filled out the paperwork to adopt him from Animal Control days later. 

These guys are my heart. And yes, they're a bit spoiled. They love their "cookies", but I refuse to feed them crap food or treats. And while I can always buy treats from the local doggy biscuit bakery, I figured since I'm on this whole baking/blogging kick, why not just make them myself? Thanks to Pinterest, I found the perfect recipe to tackle two projects at once:

1. Baking with fresh pumpkin
2. Making homemade dog treats

The post on how to make your own pumpkin puree that DOESN'T come from a can - and what to do with it - is soon to come. Here's a teaser...

But right now our focus is on my furbabies. Here they are again while the Big Guy and I were working on their treats. They knew it was all for them.

I seriously cannot say no to those faces when it comes to yummy treats. The original author of this recipe said she started making the treats because her dog - Cleo, another lab - turned up her nose at straight pumpkin puree. I have a theory about that: it's because she was using the canned garbage! Or maybe my dogs just want anything they deem "human food," because we put a handful of fresh pumpkin puree (the homemade labor-of-love kind) in front of them, and this was the result:

I almost pulled back a nub. Here's the recipe, courtesy of epicurious.com. I won't link you back to the original blog because, since I originally pinned it, it's now producing some suspicious voodoo, according to Pinterest and my browser. Homey don't play that. Homey goes and gets the recipe from someplace else and repins it from there. So here, use my blog to pin the recipe for yourself. 

Cleo's Pumpkin Dog Biscuits

2 eggs

1/2 cup fresh (or canned, if you want to be that dog-mom) pumpkin puree

2 Tbsp dry milk powder

1/4 tsp sea salt

2-1/2 cups brown rice flour* (you can get it in the gluten-free aisle)

1 tsp dried parsley (optional - I did not use)

Preheat oven to 350.

In large bowl, whisk together eggs and pumpkin, then stir in dry milk, sea salt, and dried parsley (if using, optional). Add brown rice flour gradually, combining with spatula or hands to form a stiff, dry dough. Turn out onto lightly floured surface (can use the brown rice flour) and if dough is still rough, briefly knead and press to combine. (Note: I did need to knead mine a bit, but it all came together nicely with a spatula to begin with. It just needed some TLC from my hands to completely meld.)

Roll dough between 1/4 – 1/2″ – depending on your dog’s chew preferences – and use biscuit or other shape cutter to punch shapes, gathering and re-rolling scraps as you go. Or, if you're not feeling so fancy (which I wasn't that night), simply use a pizza cutter to cut into long strips and then go back across to cut into 1 – 2" squares. Place shapes on cookie sheet, no greasing or paper necessary. If desired, lightly press fork pattern on biscuits before baking. Bake 20 minutes. Remove from oven and carefully turn biscuits over, then bake additional 20 minutes. Allow to cool completely on rack before feeding to dog.

*Brown rice flour gives the biscuits crunch and promotes better dog digestion. Many dogs have touchy stomachs or allergies, and do not, like many people I know, tolerate wheat.

The original recipe writer claimed this recipe makes up to 75 small (1″) biscuits or 50 medium biscuits. We have to go with medium biscuits in this house, because these boys need a treat they can sink their teeth into. I only got 43 out of the recipe. Close enough! Your pups will love these treats. Ours sure did!