yeast

Quick Honey Dinner Rolls

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These warm, soft, pillowy, sweet little bundles of happiness will be on your dinner table in 45 minutes.  No lie.  I made them twice this week and everyone in our house loved them.  Ben had 3 with dinner last night, and I had 2…and one a little later in the evening with some butter and honey.  Heaven.  No longer will I be buying rolls in the bakery or pulling a frozen bag of Sister Shubert’s out.  I still love you, Sister Shubert.  Your sausage rolls are amazing.  I’ll still be eating those.

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I had a sudden urge to make dinner rolls earlier this week at 4 o’clock in the afternoon.  My kids eat dinner at 5, so I knew I needed to find something fast.  I googled “fast dinner rolls” and found this recipe from Your Homebased Mom.  I made them as written the first time and loved them.  But as I poured the sugar into the bowl I thought, “Maybe you could use honey in these…”  and so that is what I did the next time.  I also brushed the rolls before and after baking with melted butter.  I loved them more.

These are delicious right after they’re baked, but reheat wonderfully.  So they would make a great addition to your Thanksgiving table that you could easily make the morning of or even the night before.  So go make a batch.  You’ll thank me.

Honey Dinner Rolls

From Your Homebased Mom

Ingredients

  • 1 cup + 2 tablespoons warm water
  • 2 tablespoons active dry yeast
  • 1/4 cup honey
  • 1/3 cup oil
  • 1 egg, slightly beaten
  • 3 1/2 cups flour
  • 1 teaspoon salt
  • 1/8 teaspoon baking powder
  • 4 tablespoons butter, melted

Directions

  1. Preheat oven to 400°F and grease a 9×13 pan.
  2. Combine water, yeast, honey and oil in the bowl of a stand mixer.  Stir a couple times then let rest for 10 minutes to bloom.
  3. With a dough hook mix in the flour, salt, baking powder and egg.  Continue to mix for 2-3 minutes until dough comes together.  If it seems especially sticky add a tablespoon or two of flour.
  4. Turn dough out onto a floured surface and divide into 12 equal sized pieces.  Shape into balls that are smooth on top (in doesn’t matter what the bottoms look like) and place in prepared pan.
  5. Cover with a clean dish cloth and let rise for 15 minutes.
  6. Brush the tops of the rolls with melted butter (about half of what you have) and bake for 12-15 minutes until golden brown.
  7. Brush with remaining melted butter and let cool slightly before serving.

You Can Make Your Own: White Bread

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This is not going to be impressive to you bread aficionados.  Who can’t make simple white bread, you ask?  Me.  That’s who.  Well, until now.  Feast your eyes on my first decent loaf of white bread.

I have only recently begun to feel more comfortable using yeast.  Pizza dough really gave me my initial confidence with trusting something to rise, and I haven’t been too afraid of it for a good while now.

However, after my first trial with making some simple white sandwich bread this past week I was yet again fooled by that tricky micro organism!  I guess I knew it was going to be a flop before I even started.  I bought a jar of yeast at the store because they were out of packets.  I thought, “Well, this is nice.  A big jar I can measure from instead of cutting open those pesky packets.”  I first opened and used the yeast a week ago in pizza dough which rose beautifully.  Then guess what I did.  I put it in the cabinet.  Because that’s where I always keep yeast.  I pulled it out this past week to make this bread and noticed a little, ok fine, a rather large, note on top of the jar that gave a simple instruction.  “Refrigerate after Opening”  Oops.  So what did I do?  I kept on working.  Mixing everything together thinking that by some miracle it would work.  Well, it didn’t.  I plopped the unrisen dough ball into the trash.  It was sad.  I hate throwing food away.

The next day I tried again with new yeast from a package.  It still didn’t rise to double its original size each time like the recipe stated it should, but the end result was a nice, slightly dense white bread of which half a loaf is gone a mere 24 hours later.  So I think I am going to work on perfecting this bread.  It is simple and yummy.  Nothing too complex about it.  It is just good white bread.  This morning we made cinnamon toast with it and it was breakfast bliss.  I think this would make excellent grilled cheese sandwiches and spectacular turkey or ham and cheese, or just simple toast with butter and jam.

This recipe comes from a Houston Junior League cookbook that my friend Megan gave me.  Thanks, Megan!  This cookbook is a lot of fun to browse through since it was originally printed in 1968.  This recipe caught my eye with its title “Old Fashioned White Bread”.  Some recipes don’t get better or improve tremendously over time, and I think basic bread it one of them.  I only changed one ingredient, I used butter instead of shortening, and I changed the instructions a bit since I have the luxury of owning a stand mixer.

If you have any great recipes for white bread, please share them!  While I loved this bread, I always love to try recipes others swear by and also would love any tips you have for bread baking.  I am just a beginner and I know that good bread bakers are made, not born.

Old Fashioned White Bread

Houston Junior League Cookbook

Ingredients

  • 1 package dry yeast
  • 1/3 cup warm water
  • 1/4 cup butter, melted and cooled
  • 1/2 cup sugar
  • 1 tablespoon salt
  • 2 cups lukewarm water
  • 6 cups bread flour
  • Egg Wash: 1 egg whisked with 1 teaspoon of water or milk

Directions

  1. Dissolve yeast in 1/3 cup warm water.
  2. In the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with a dough hook, combine sugar, butter, salt and 2 cups lukewarm water.  Add yeast and mix.
  3. Mix in flour and run the mixer on slow speed for 2 minutes, then on medium speed for 4-5 minutes.  Dough will be sticky.
  4. Oil a large bowl and turn dough out into the bowl, turn to coat with oil.  Cover and let rise for 1-2 hours until doubled in size.
  5. Sprinkle hands with flour, punch down dough and turn onto a lightly floured surface.  Cut dough in half and shape into 2 loaves.
  6. Place dough into 2 greased loaf pans, cover and let rise for 45 minutes, until doubled in size.
  7. Brush loaves lightly with egg wash.  (You will not use it all.)
  8. Bake at 350°F for 40-45 minutes until tops are lightly browned.
  9. Let cool for 5 minutes in the pan, and then completely on wire racks before cutting.

 

Artisan Bread in 5 Minutes a Day: Loaf 1

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For Christmas I got this book, Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day, from my mother-in-law.  Thanks, Kate!  I have always felt a little negative toward yeast and yeast breads.  I have had some success with yeast doughs, but not enough to make me feel very confident.  This book makes bread baking seem accessible and simple.

After reading through the introduction, tips, ingredients and master recipe I ordered these food storage containers from Amazon.com and once I received them I got started.

The ingredients are simple and you most likely have all of them at this very moment.  Flour, water, yeast and salt.  That’s it.

If you have a large enough container, you can mix it all up in there with a wooden spoon (less clean up), let it rise for a couple hours, then store it in the fridge for at least 3 hours and up to 2 weeks!

There aren’t many hard and fast rules here.  Temperature of the water, initial rising time, the amount the dough has risen (double, triple, etc) days in the fridge, and the amount of dough for your loaf are all approximate.  The directions and ingredients are clear, you just don’t have to worry about water that is exactly 101.3 degrees or a ball of dough that is exactly 1 pound 2.25 ounces.  This is stress free bread making!

That is the part I really love about this.  If you thought you were going to have time to make baguettes to eat with dinner, but suddenly your 2 month old spits up all over the couch and you, then you don’t have to worry about it.  Flexibility.  Wonderful flexibility.

Here are the pre and post risen dough.  My dough just about doubled in volume after 3 hours at room temperature.  I really like these containers.

The dough rose well, it was easy to form into a “boule”…fancy French term for ball of dough, and while the directions for baking seem a bit tedious they are actually quite easy to pull off.  After 30 minutes of baking my bread wasn’t very dark, and it did not look like the bread on the cover of the book.  BUT, it smelled lovely, it had a nice crisp crust, a chewy interior and a yeasty, and just slightly salty flavor.  I am hopeful that the more bread I bake, the better each loaf will be.  So, here is loaf # 1!

St. Louis Gooey Butter Cake

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Glad to report that I made it to Austin this weekend and got to see my pregnant sister and feel lil Kim kick, punch and hiccup a few times.  Babies are amazing.  I don’t think there will come a time in my life that I am not completely and totally in awe of a pregnant woman.  That little kid has fingers, toes, and eyelashes!  Incredible.  I cannot wait to see my little niece in just a few months…

I also got to see my nephew, my parents, aunt, uncle, cousin, and many relatives and family friends at my Grandpa’s 90th birthday celebration on Sunday.  It was wonderful to have the opportunity to spend time with those people.  I am so blessed to have such incredible family and friends!

Back in Amarillo tonight and remembered that I had some of this cake leftover in the fridge.  The piece I ate today wasn’t as good as it was 5 days ago, but it was still tasty.  It was crazy gooey and delicious freshly made!

In my search for the origin of gooey butter cake, I discovered that the cake’s roots are in St. Louis.  I know next to nothing about St. Louis.  I do know that this is the home of the well known Gateway arch, which is the tallest man-made monument in our country standing at 630 feet at its highest point.  It is part of the Jefferson National Expansion Memorial and it located near the starting point of the Lewis and Clark expedition.  I had no idea there was so much historical significance to the arch!  Maybe I will plan a vacation to see some historical sights in the USA someday.  Someday…

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First Days and the Start of a Beautiful Friendship…Bread

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My Amish Friendship Bread on Foodista

I survived my first 2 days with 6th graders.  I realized that I’ve kinda missed teaching.  I didn’t miss staying at school for 11 hours, getting home after 6pm, sitting down and realizing just how exhausting it can be to be on your feet all day, well, except for a 25 minute lunch.  That’s right 25 minutes.  All of you office people out there who enjoy hour lunch breaks where you get to eat at a real restaurant with waiters and such should be thankful.  And on those days where you have to have a quick lunch, think of the teachers out there who don’t ever get to leave the building they work in for lunch.

Sorry!  I forgot this wasn’t about self pity,  but about Amish Friendship Bread.  I wish I knew these kids…they look so very friendly.

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Photo courtesy of hiddenvalleys.com

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