bread!!

You guys, I totally made bread. From scratch! With yeast and everything! Not going to lie, I'm pretty impressed with myself. I followed the recipe from here pretty exactly.

• 4 cups of all purpose or unbleached flour
• 1 1/2 teaspoons salt      
• 2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
• 1 package dry yeast     
• 1 3/4 cups hot  water

First: mix the flour, salt, and yeast in a big bowl. Then it said to "form a well" in the dry ingredients and stir in the water and then the oil until it looks like dough. It specifically said to use a wooden spoon but I don't have one so I used a plastic one?? It turned out okay. I don't know what effect a wooden spoon would have but use it if you've got it, I guess.

Then, on a "well-floured" work surface knead the dough for 10 minutes or until it feels "elastic." I have no idea what that means because if you ask me it was elastic to start out with? So I just set a timer for 10 minutes and did that.

Then I put it in in a big bowl (the same one from before but I rinsed it out and then sprayed the inside with olive oil spray) and covered it with Saran wrap for an hour and a half.

Here again I diverged from the recommendation of that website because I don't have any "bread bowls." I have one metal loaf pan. And after the dough has risen for an hour-ish, you're supposed to divide it in half and put the halves in whatever you're going to bake them in (greased) and let them rise again for 20 30 minutes. But only one batch of the dough went in the loaf pan and the other half stayed in the bowl. It turned out okay I guess?

I forgot to say, pre-heat the oven to 375 and bake it for 20 minutes or until it turns "golden brown."

OH and I decided to make one loaf of cinnamon bread so I just mixed 1/4 cup of sugar and a couple good shakes of cinnamon in with the dough. There is maybe a more scientific way of doing that but it turned out pretty tasty.

It is tasty! Kind of dense and I wondered if maybe I didn't knead it enough, or whatever, but my friend Mary (who is an accomplished breadstress and sent me this recipe) says the recipe is for kind of dense bread and if I want something lighter I should try this recipe. WHICH MAYBE I WILL.

Oh and Mary says this recipe also makes good pizza dough which I will definitely try in the future. 

Also I have to say that clean-up after this was a bitch and there is still bread dough stuck to my sponge. Worth it? I guess?

PS I consulted with Mary and she said I should leave it out longer for the second rising and it will be fluffier. I made another batch of bread and left it out for more like 30 minutes on the second rising and it totally worked. Yeah bread!

beer bread for nicole!

Ingredients:
12 ounces light beer
3 cups flour
3 tablespoons sugar
3 teaspoons baking powder
½ cup melted butter
Salt to taste

Mix all the ingredients together except the butter.

Grease whatever you’re going to bake it in with a little of the butter, and pour in the batter (the consistency of the mix should be doughy like yeast bread.) Dump the rest of the butter on top of the bread and spread it evenly.

In a regular oven it’s supposed to bake for about an hour at 450 degrees. In an Dutch oven, bake it for 30-45 minutes on medium-ish flame, taking it out only when the top is hard and has a golden/brown color.

(This was originally in the Peace Corps DR magazine's recipes page, submitted by a volunteer named Brianna. It's yummy! It doesn't taste like beer exactly, but it has this unique sweet-salt-rich delicious flavor. Mmmm.)

banana bread

Ingredients:
2 cups flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup butter  
3/4 cup brown sugar* (the original recipe, which I think came from AllRecipes.com, calls for brown sugar, but brown sugar is hard to come by in the DR so I use raw cane sugar. You could probably even use regular white sugar if that's all you have.)
2 eggs
3 or 4 mashed overripe bananas

I like to bake on Sunday evenings and bring in fresh baked goods on Monday morning! My co-workers like it too :) Banana bread is great because you feel like you are a hero for not wasting nasty bananas. But I really like banana bread so sometimes I just go out and buy brown bananas for this exact purpose.

The bananas should basically be straight-up nasty looking. If your bananas reach this nasty stage and you don't feel like making banana bread yet, you can freeze them and then thaw them later. (By the way, I like taking pictures of all the ingredients for the blog, but also I always set everything out before I start making something to make sure I have everything! It's super frustrating if you get halfway through a recipe and realize you're out of eggs.)

If your butter is in the fridge, set it out and let it get to room temperature before you start baking. Microwaving it makes recipes turn out a little weird.

Anyway, measure out the dry ingredients except for the sugar and mix them up in a bowl. (I spaced out this time and mixed the sugar in with everything else and it worked out okay though.) Cream together the butter and the sugar in a different bowl, and add the eggs and bananas (mashed with a fork). Add the wet ingredients to the dry ones and mix it with a fork enough to moisten everything, but don't over-stir it or you'll eff it all up!! Just kidding, but it will make the bread more tough. Not like in a Joan Jett way, but just like not quite as tasty.

Pour your batter into a lightly greased pan of some sort. (This might make two loaf pan-sized loaves.) I use this Dutch oven, because I don't have a real oven. Tip: sprinkle a little sugar on top of the batter! It'll give your bread a shiny, delicious top. If you are using a Dutch oven, which you are probably not, cook this on a low-ish flame for like half an hour. If you are using a real oven, the original recipe calls for 60 minutes at 350 degrees.

Are you... curious about my Dutch oven?

 

As you can see, it's round with a hole in the middle, so everything I make with it looks like a Bundt cake! Or a wreath! It fits over a gas stove burner and it directs the heat so it bakes evenly. Pretty awesome! There are also Dutch ovens for camping, which are basically just cast iron pots with lids that you can stick directly into coals to bake with.

 

Mmm, it's done when it's golden-brown and a toothpick (or fork, because who the hell has toothpicks?) comes out clean!