Fluffy Sandwich/Snacking Bread (Vegan actually) - for your tax day woes

Happy Tax Day, Pay Day and Spring Turkey Season Opening Day!

So we are back to the bread, yes I love my homemade bread. Of course this time it was not an attempt at my favorite sandwich shops bread. Of course, I still wish I knew the recipe. If only I could bribe the man that owns the place. Maybe with my super secret Gooey Butter Cupcake recipe. Who knows, I probably won't ever find it or figure it out just on the basis that I'm not a food chemist, of course I'm sure I could buy the bread and find a laboratory to break it down for me, I do know people that probably know people who could get this done.

Who knows.

I digress - back to fluffy sandwich bread, or in my case, snack bread. I really should go out and buy a full size loaf pan. I had one that my mother had given me but the coating was flaking off and causing my bread to have flecks of non stick goodness ick on them. Not cool, not cool at all. So I even tried using foil and anything else I could to line the pan - honestly if it's not needed it's a pain.

So, I tossed the pan, I shall buy a new one sometime. But I had to buy running shoes first and so I did.

This bread was appealing in the fact that the ingredient list is not terribly long and the process is straight forward. I also liked that it had oats in it instead of just flour. This recipe also does not require that you use bread flour. SCORE!!

I would love to be able to spend all my money buying different flours and spices and doo-dads for the kitchen but alas, I'm not a millionaire. Probably never will be, working on it. Of course I doubt that I will ever be famous either - not that I want to be, I really to like my privacy and I just can't see paparazzi swarming to my humble one bedroom brownstone apartment in the suburbs of Kansas. Just doesn't seem to fit the area. So I will work hard and live happy.

Speaking of happy, this weekend was one of those, how Mike and I say, "off" weekends. A weekend where we do not see each other. Of course there are many reasons to why this weekend was that way. 1. He has Spring turkey season starting today. 2. I had a race this weekend, Color Me Rad 5k for Special Olympics. 3. I had a family friend coming to my home town, and I have to see her when I can, she lives in Minnesota.

So 9 AM I was off running a 5k by myself, because my friends don't seem to like to run races. Even fun ones where you get pelted with colored powder and sprayed with colored liquid, which is sooooo not cool on a 35 degree morning. But I have done worse on a 35 degree morning, like plunge myself through a giant mud pit. 

I took the shirt off after the race and found that my stomach looked as if I had been beaten with a baseball bat, it took a shower and a washcloth of rubbing alcohol to get all the color staining off my legs, stomach and armpit. Yes in my armpit, on my left side because that's mostly where the color hit. Left lane was for the faster folks like me. 

Even though the race wasn't time I ran it in about 27 minutes, would have been faster if I had not had to wade through about 300 people to finally get to the starting line itself. Then dodging people who thought they were fast but weren't. I felt like a super fast runner with all the people I was passing, but in reality I know I'm around average when it comes to time. 

So back to bread right? I'm sure you really don't care about my running.

So this bread, starts off like any other bread. Flour, yeast, salt, water, oats, oil, and a touch of sugar.

Bring it all together in the mixer until you get a dough to come together, or in my case, cling to the hook.

Then you have to let this baby rise - twice. The recipe gave a trick to this, turn your oven to 400 degrees F for about 2 minutes. Then turn off. Stick your dough in, covered with plastic wrap in your greased bowl and let rise for about 1 - 1 1/2 hours until doubled. Then you take it out, knead it again and then repeat this for 1 hour.

Then you bake this loveliness. And it comes out with a beautiful golden crust and a soft texture. It's marvelous. The brown sugar just accents the bread perfectly.

I turned this into about 10 servings, I'm sure in an actual loaf pan it would be more like 12. But seeing as I'm the odd ball, I used a 10 inch cake pan, much like I do for corn bread, and baked. Turned out great for what I do since sandwiches are not something I'm totally keen on every day. I like them but I generally don't make a lot of them at home actually. Strange since it's such an easy meal. Oh well, I would just as soon eat bread toasted with a little butter or fresh out of the oven with a little jam.

Soft and Fluffy Sandwich Bread (Vegan) - From Averie Cooks

Prep Time: 15 min          Cook Time: 30 min          Total Time: 3 hours 30 minutes

Makes: One 8x4-inch loaf pan

Ingredients:

1 cup boiling water

1 cup old-fashioned whole rolled oats (not quick or instant)

2 cups all-purpose flour (bread flour may be used and will create a heartier, chewier bread)

1/4 cup water (from tap, not hot, not cold)

2 to 3 Tbsp canola or vegetable oil (I used 2 myself)

2 Tbsp light brown sugar, packed

2 1/3 tsp instant dry yeast (one 1/4 oz package - Averie and I both use Red Star Platinum)

pinch of salt, optional and to taste

Directions:

1. In a small bowl, pour boiling water over oatmeal, stir to combine. Set aside and let cool until temperature reaches around 130 degrees F, about 15 minutes. (The yeast Averie and I use necessitates this temperature; allow mixture to cool to the 100 degree F range for other types of instant dry yeast, or to package directions)

2. To the bowl of a stand mixer, fitted with the dough hook, (or a large mixing bowl and knead by hand for about 10 minutes) combine flour, 1/4 cup water, oil, brown sugar, yeast, and cooled oatmeal. Knead 5 to 7 minutes on low speed, or until a moist, shaggy dough forms. The dough is fairly moist and sticky, but resist adding additional flour, unless it's so moist that it won't combine. Conversely, if it is too dry, add up to 1/4 cup water. Erring on the side of too moist is always preferable to dry in bread making.

3. After kneading, turn the dough out into a large, greased bowl, cover with plastic wrap, and let it rise in a warm, draft-free place for about 90 minutes, or until doubled in size. Create a warm environment by preheating your oven to 400 degrees F for 1 to 2 minutes, then shutting off. This creates a 90 degree F -ish warm spot. Slide the bowl in and wait while the yeast works. Just make sure your oven is off.

4. After the dough has doubled, punch it down, turn it out onto a floured surface, or silpat and knead it for about 3 minutes. With your fingers, shape it into a 10-inch by 6-inch rectangle, just eyeball it. The long side should be slightly longer than the baking pan. Then, fold the short sides in so that the dough is about 8 inches in length. Roll to form a tight cylinder. There's not much to roll, about 3 turns. Optionally, when rolling, sprinkle with cinnamon, nutmeg, ground ginger. Or go savory with dill, chives or thyme.

5. Spray an 8x4-inch loaf pan with floured cooking spray, or spray with non-stick spray and add flour to pan and shake out extra, and place the cylinder in the pan, seam side down. Cover with plastic wrap, and allow dough to rise in a warm, draft-free place until doubled, about 60 to 75 minutes.

6. In the last minutes of rising, preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Bake for about 30 minutes, or until domed, golden, and puffy. When tapped, it should sound hollow. The internal temperature should reach 210 degrees F. Let bread cool in pan for 5 to 10 minutes before turning out onto a wire rack to cool completely before slicing (of course if your name is Sarah or Mike, you can't help but eat bread when it's fresh out of the oven with some delicious butter.)

Store bread by wrapping in plastic wrap, be sure the bread is completely cooled. Then place in a zip lock bag and it will keep fresh for 5 days. Bread freezes well and can be stored similarly in the freezer for up to 3 months.

Now go out and cook and bake. Have to cook something to eat with this bread. Like eggs and bacon. 

(Shot) Guns and (Cookie) Roses

So last weekend I was a little bored. I was also in kind of a "I love you" type of mode. Just felt like baking and making something pretty. It was a "me" weekend. Mike and I had our off weekend and he was working and I was enjoying the weekend in the ways I know how.

I first started off by getting up early Saturday so I could make it to the range by opening (10 am).

I shot well the first round, the second I didn't take my time like I should have. So out of two rounds 16/25 and 13/25 for my first Trap practice without Mike. He's gonna come with me this weekend. To watch.

So while shooting and being so happy with myself for breaking clay birds, it's quite a thrill really. Everyone should learn how to responsibly use a firearm, learn the value of life, and go shoot some clay birds. 

Of course while I shoot, being still fairly new to it, I remind myself things as I get ready. "Feet wide, toes forward and out slightly, bend at waist, knees loose, elbow up, beads only on barrel, breathe, focus, take my time, follow through." Yes I really do say these things to myself. But it's helpful and I'm told to do it. Habit makes for muscle memory and second nature. 

Of course one shot I thought I had it all down, had recited my little shtick and said "PULL!"  Bird goes flying, I pull the trigger and BANG!! Yeah, that one wasn't set into my should right. Somehow I had it just a bit high and the stock kicked just enough to hurt. So in the end here I am with a bruise.

Needless to say I learned my lesson. Only takes one bruise to learn.

So, later that weekend, after shopping and working out, I decided while I waiting for Svengoolie to come on MeTV at 9 pm (CST) I decided to bake some pretty cookies. 

I found this recipe by chance, I think through a food related newsletter in my email. They are called Fragile Rubella. The blog was in Polish, so Thank God for Google and the ability to translate a page. :)

Of course I still had to figure out a few things. Like translating Celsius to Fahrenheit. Of course grams is no biggie since I have a scale and milliliters is easy now that I have my trusty oxo cups that measure in just about every available system, metric or standard. This cookie is basically a basic butter/spritz type of shortbread. A little of both mixed together. 

So to start off, after making your dough and chilling it. You roll it out and then cut circles out, I used a 3 inch cutter. Then you take your circles and layer 4 together (just the edges overlapping, creating a line of circles.)

I forgot to capture this while doing it, messy hands.

Then you roll up all 4 circles on top of themselves. Then cut them right down the center to make two pieces. like so.

Continue to do so until you run out of dough. Then place the cut side down and pull down the "petals" to shape the rose.

So once you have them shaped, place them on a baking sheet. I did that the first time and all my roses fell over and turned out rather pathetic, so the next batch I put in muffin tins so they wouldn't wilt on me. That worked absolutely perfectly!

The final product on the right was beautiful. Dust with powdered sugar to give a little extra. The original recipe doesn't call for food coloring to create red roses but I just felt like it. So you could make dough colored roses and sprinkle with red sugar crystals or edible glitter. Get creative.

Speaking of creative, I got creative Sunday. I had an empty space up above my headboard in my bedroom between the 4 small pictures I have. So I brainstormed, got a few ideas from Mike and then made a decision. I would create something rather than buy it.

I got to playing with the shells that were on my counter from trap practice and shaped them into a heart which then gave me an idea to turn those shells into something even more beautiful than shot.

I took the two canvas I had and painted them completely black. Then mapped out where I would glue the shells on. From there I let everything dry and set. Then I wrote a quote on the canvas with a silver sharpie (because it's prettier than me painting words, trust me)

"The best thing to hold onto in life is each other." Audrey Hepburn *my favorite actress ever also stars in my favorite movie set in Manhattan New York New York, "Breakfast at Tiffany's." You can see all those elements here below. The New York pictures in black and white with just a pop of color. And the art in the middle depicting a black and white setting with a pop of red color. I call this - Shotgun Love.

So, while we are now finally coming to the end of the "Great Blizzard of Oz," the two weeks where we had almost 2 feet of snow dumped on us within 3 days worth of time, I can finally see some grass and the sidewalks are emerging once again to be run on so I do not have to dodge drivers that don't care to give me the time of day while I run on the side of the road.

So we have survived the snow, and I have gotten some cool pictures because of it. Ice and snow walls on the sidewalks at the brownstone.

Ok, enough flapping my fingers on you. Here's the recipe you are wanting.

Fragile Rubella

200 g cold butter (about 2 sticks)
2 1/2 cups flour
3/4 cup sugar
3 egg yolks
Pinch of salt

Chop flour together with salt and butter. Add sugar and egg yolks and chop everything together with a pastry blender or with your hands. Quickly knead the dough and form a ball. If it does not stick together add 1-2 tablespoons of cold water until it comes together.

Wrap the dough in plastic and place in the fridge for about half and hour.

Roll out the chilled dough thinly on a lightly floured surface (about 3-4 mm thick). Cut dough into circles, about 3 inch circles. After you have 4 circles, arrange so as to overlap each other, and roll it into a roll (rather loose). Cut the roll in half to create two parts. Thus obtaining two rubella's.

With the cut side down on your rubella part the petals on the top and place on a baking sheet lined with parchment paper (or place in cupcake cups). Bake in a preheated 200 degree C/400 degrees F oven for about 10-15 minutes, until golden brown on the edges.

Baked cookies can be sprinkled with powdered sugar.

Go out and cook, make something pretty and delicious. :)

Turning your kitchen into a sauna and mastering the art of a gas oven

Yeah that title will confuse you a bit. Turning your kitchen into a sauna is easy when you have a kitchen like mine. Galley style and one doorway to the rest of the apartment and in said doorway now hangs a curtain to keep the heat from my oven (gas) in the kitchen and not heating up the rest of my apartment. Since it is currently 100 degrees F here in the Midwest I would say keeping my apartment as cool as possible without cranking the AC and spending my hard earned money is a good thing.

So this week has been kind of blah and because I feel as such baking is a way to release that feeling. Let's see, Monday made brownies to use the chocolate coconut frosting I had made the week prior (sorry no pics). Then I made Tuesday, more pretzel bread by request of Mike so we could eat Brats inside the buns on Sunday for dinner/lunch - whatever. So I happily obliged in creating "brat buns" from the pretzel bread recipe. You can find the recipe here so you can make it too. Of course last time I made it into rolls rather than loaves, as the recipe suggests. This time I made buns. This is how things turned out

Activating the yeast in butter, water, milk and brown sugar

Dough fully mixed and ready for the oiled bowl

Dough ready to sit for 30 min

Risen dough after 30 min, time to knead for 5 min

Dough proofing/rising for another hour

Ready to degas

Degassing and ready to cut into pieces for buns

My attempt at bun shaped dough

Boiling water - ready for the baking soda. New pan is pretty huh :)

Boiled in baking soda boiling water

Dough boiled and cut tops. Ready for the 400 degree oven

Fresh from the oven

Beautiful are they not?

 Now note in the title - trying to master my gas oven. I have never used a gas oven until I moved to my current residence. I love the oven. Makes my heating bill cheaper in the winter. BUT regulating the temperature is another story.

Typically I seem to find that my baked goods keep coming out a bit over done on the bottoms. So I've had to adjust the time and make sure to pull goods out before they over brown. Mike told me to buy an oven thermometer so I could monitor it while baking. Glad I did. Didn't bother the brownies any, didn't bake as long as the recipe called for but having set the oven to 350 degrees the thermometer registered the oven at 350 degrees. However, going up to 400 my oven seems to think it's a blast furnace and cranks itself to 425/450!! HOLY CAT BALLS BATMAN!!! So I ended up baking for the first half of the time (10 min) and then reducing the last half to 8 min so as not to over cook my precious bread. It's soooooo delicious and the crust is just perfect and pretzely. The inside is fluffy and light. Mmmmmmm, yum. Can't wait to try them with bratwursts.

I only have one complaint about how my pretzel buns came out, they didn't puff as much as I would have liked them to, they stayed almost flat so they aren't as fluffy as a traditional bun, but part of that is due in part to the fact that I'm not making these with a loaf pan meant for things such as baguettes or french bread.

But these turned out beautifully - obviously.

So more to come later, I can't give everything away today in one post - well two since I did one this morning too. Banana bread and cookie dough stuffed Oreo's are on my brain. So you will see the results soon.

Köstliche Brezel Brot zu teilen - Anfrage von Mike (Pretzel Bread)

OK, pretzel bread. YUM! Granted you say pretzel and I'm in, must be the German side of me. Bread, pork, apples...yum. I'm definitely of German descent. I mean look at this family.

- yes there is an American flag back there, but this is my grandmother and her parents (great grand parents for me) Grandpa was from Germany - came over on the boat.

So I think my family has had a great influence on food for me as far as enjoying traditional German foods. OK, enough of the family history lesson here. I'm a proud German descendant lol I could go on forever. Mike has some German background but he is more of a European mix than anything. He looks like a good ole German boy though ;)

Anyway, so Mike actually suggested I make pretzel bread. He had some while visiting his folks last week and had it with a bratwurst. He said that if I could find a recipe I should try it, it was delicious (if you see the clam chowder post you can see the pretzel bread he had).

So I hunted down some recipes and compared what would be easiest and best. Of course I also choose to do this in the heat of the summer, where it has been in the low 100's lately. Topping 107 last I checked. We are breaking some records this year for hottest summer. Ick, so I tend to stay inside a bit more at the moment so not to have a heat stroke or burn to a crisp (that's another story).

So last night I had an easy workout going on and now that Mike has helped me keep my apartment cool by helping me hang black out curtains in my room and a sheer curtain in the doorway to my kitchen I now can bake and not have my air running CONSTANTLY - I have a gas oven/stove and so it's always a bit toasty in the kitchen to begin with. Just wait though -

So i pulled all the ingredients out and actually measured them prior to baking - that never happens. I then took my time making this, letting the milk come to room temperature, making sure the water was 120 degrees and getting flour sifted. (Again, I'm the simple type of baker who just bakes).

I let the yeast expand and start to bubble, added the salt and continued and created a lovely sticky bread dough.

Well, tacky - it rested on my counter for 30 minutes to rise (didn't have to put in a warm place because my kitchen was probably already 90 degrees).

After I had to pull it out of the bowl and knead it for about 2-5 minutes until smooth and "silky."

After it rested a second time I portioned it out into the balls you see on the left (5 to be precise).

Then I had to get the water bath ready. You have to boil water and add baking soda - which makes the water froth and foam like vinegar would with baking soda. Never knew that but was almost like a science experiment and was fun to watch the dough balls bounce around and dance in the water.

This method was used to help create a sort of tough outer layer to make the "pretzel" part of the bread. The crusty doughy outside of a soft pretzel. This is how that is achieved. Kind of like making bagels I would presume. My friend had come over and he was just fascinated with this as well. Mind you my kitchen is a sauna at this point with the stove going to boil water and now having to actually turn the oven on to preheat to 400 degrees!!!

My friend had, at one point, looked at me and said "I'm sweating my balls off but I'm curious and fascinated by this." I think it's funny that people think it's fun to watch me cook/bake. I just find it fun and stress relieving. Especially bread like this. I think I sweat off about 10 lbs last night. Phew!

So after I boiled each side of the dough for 30 seconds on each side I took it out of the bath and made sure the excess water came off and then placed each dough ball on a greased baking sheet.

This is where it gets exciting. Now is the time to bake. First I had to cut an X into the tops of each dough ball so that the bread would have a place to expand and not pop or I guess explode in the oven. I can't imagine it would "explode" but that is an interesting visual.

Now when they came out of the oven I was truly impressed with how they looked and promptly brushed with butter as the recipe suggested.

They are beautiful!

They came out golden brown with the chewy outer crust and the soft delicious inside. Doesn't taste like a soft pretzel really but oh my this was delicious. The recipe called for "bread flour" but I don't carry that in my kitchen let alone am I going to go buy some right now. So I just made sure to sift my AP flour. Don't these just look amazing!?


I packed one of up for work today and have the others for this weekend when Mike will be making sirloin steak and mushroom sauce - YUM!!! Oh he feeds me well. :) 

Add a little butter or some mustard - YUUMMMM


I could eat this bread all day.


A big thanks to Two Bites in Suburbia for the recipe.


Here it is:


Signature Pretzel Bread (makes 2 small loaves or 5 sandwich rolls)


2 1/4 tsp yeast (dry active is what I used)
1 cup water (110-120 degrees)
2 Tbsp room temperature milk (I used skim because that's what I have)
1 Tbsp dark brown sugar (I had light on hand)
3 Tbsp softened butter (blue bonnet margarine)
1 tsp kosher salt (I used plain old table salt)
2 1/2 - 3 cups bread flour (I used sifted AP flour)


4 quarts water
1/2 cup baking soda


Kosher salt to taste (table salt again)
2 Tbsp melted butter (in my case the butter was already pretty melted due to my new "Sauna kitchen")


Add yeast, water, milk, brown sugar and butter into a large bowl, whisking until all ingredients are combined. Let mixture rest for 10 minutes for yeast to activate. Mix in kosher salt. Start by adding two cups of the flour to the bowl, combining it with the other ingredients. Add more flour as it's needed, reserving just a bit for coating the dough mat later.


The dough should form a slightly tacky, but firm ball. Oil the bowl, place the dough ball in the bowl and cover with a damp towel for 30 minutes. After 30 minutes, knead the dough by hand or machine for at least 5-10 minutes until the dough is elastic and satiny (that's the word they used). Place dough back in bowl and recover for 1 hour.

Preheat oven to 400 degrees and bring the 4 quarts of water to a boil. When the water is boiling, slowly add the baking soda, (if you add it quickly and all at once, your boiling water will froth and boil over all onto your stove).

Remove the dough from the bowl and gently degas it.  Form two separate balls of dough, forming them into the shape you want.  Drop one of the smaller balls into the baking soda bath for no longer than 30 seconds, turning it once to guarantee both sides covered.  Drain the excess water from the dough and place it on an oiled baking sheet.  Repeat with second ball of dough.

Sprinkle the kosher salt over the bread to your specific tastes, and make sure to use a knife to cut a small incision on the top of the bread so the dough has somewhere to expand.

Cook the bread for 22 minutes, rotating the baking sheet once.

Once removed from the oven, immediately brush the melted butter over the loaves to guarantee a soft crust.

Now enjoy and try not to eat it all at one time ;)