recipes

60-minute rolls to the rescue!

~ nancyruth ~ 1 Comment

Here’s the setting: Thanksgiving Eve afternoon Granddaughter and I are making bread rolls. I had found a recipe that makes three dozen which is the amount needed, a dozen for our annual Thanksgiving Eve Birthday Feast (for Granddaughter and Son-in-Law) and two dozen to take with us to Step-daughter’s house on Thanksgiving Day. Granddaughter and I were enjoying watching the dough being kneaded in the KitchenAid mixer and admiring how it pulled away from the sides. We enjoyed poking at the dough and were pleased with its elasticity. We divided the dough after the first rise into three sections. I showed her how to divide her section up into twelve “equal” pieces and she set about making cloverleaf rolls in the muffin tin. I arranged two dozen rolls in the 9 x 13-inch pan for overnight rise and baking in the morning. All was good.

Except…for some reason I decided to actually paint the rolls with egg wash. Granddaughter painted her rolls with the brush and then I had her paint mine. We let her rolls rise and then baked them for our dinner feast and they were delicious. No leftovers. The larger pan was covered loosely with plastic wrap and put in the fridge for overnight.

Thanksgiving morning arrives. We have our breakfast of eggs, bacon, juice and of course coffee. I have let the overnight rolls sit on the counter for at least an hour to take the chill off. They look okay. I figure they will have an oven rise and puff up nicely. They bake and when I pull them out of the oven they look sad. They are done but they look very sad.

What to do? We are trying to leave the house by 10:00 AM to drive 3 1/2 hours to New Jersey for dinner today.

I have a reputation as a baker to maintain in this family. I don’t think I can take these and present them in good conscience. It’s 9:10 AM at this point. This is where 60-minute rolls come in. I have them in the Fleischmann’s Bake-it-easy Yeast Book, which is more of a booklet. The one I have was published and printed in 1971. This has been a standard roll recipe through the years and I am relieved to have thought of this. I’m making the bread dough and am at the second rising when Hubby starts shooing folks on their way saying we are wanting to leave at 10:00 and it was now 9:50 AM. I have to tell him we are slightly delayed because the rolls are not baked yet. Daughter reports she remembers using this recipe for our Christmas Eve dinner and half for Cinnamon Rolls for Christmas morning when it was just her, Son, and me. We say our goodbyes to the visiting family all who have other destinations for the day and start packing the car for our journey. We are on the road by 10:45 AM. All told the Sixty Minute Rolls took 1 hour and 10 minutes.

  • 3 1/2 to 4 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
  • 3 Tablespoons sugar
  • 1 teaspoon salt
  • 2 packages active dry yeast
  • 1 cup milk
  • 1/2 cup water
  • 1/4 cup butter

In the large bowl of the stand mixer thoroughly mix 1 1/2 cups flour, sugar, salt, and undissolved yeast.

Combine milk and water and butter in a Pyrex measuring cup and microwave for about 1 1/2 minutes until the temperature is between 120 and 130 degrees F. Butter does not have to melt. Gradually add this to the dry ingredients and beat 2 minutes at medium speed, scraping bowl occasionally. Add 1/2 cup more flour and beat at high speed for 2 minutes. Add additional flour to make a soft dough. Knead until smooth and elastic, about 5 minutes. I use the bread hook of the mixer. Put in greased bowl, turing to grease the top. Cover and let rise in warm place for about 15 minutes.

Turn onto lightly floured board and shape into 24 rolls. Place in greased pan and let rise, free from draft, for 15 minutes. Bake at 425 degrees F for about 12 minutes until done.

Notes:

  • In my haste I believe I used only one packet of yeast. Actually, I used 2 1/2 teaspoons of Fleischmann’s Bread Machine Instant Yeast. I have since made the recipe again and used the proper amount of yeast and they do rise a bit more.
  • Also, the instructions for the first rising say to put the bowl in a pan of warm water. I have never done this, ever.
  • I use the microwave for heating the liquids, one can use the stovetop. I always use a thermometer to test the temperature.
  • I use the same mixer bowl as the greased bowl by moving the dough to one side, brushing the pan with oil (or cooking spray), rotating the bread back to the other side and adding more oil. Holding on the ball of bread dough and swirling in the bowl makes sure it is oiled all over. Granddaughter enjoyed doing that bit.
  • I don’t remember why I had brushed the rolls with egg wash before the second rise after shaping. That does not make sense. I wonder if I let both pans have their second rise and then brushed with egg wash right before the first pan went into the oven and the larger pan go into the fridge? I generally don’t use egg wash anyway. Odd!

We arrived on-time to family in New Jersey with our rolls, Hubby’s stuffing, and “the best ever chocolate cake you have ever eaten in your life”! Step-daughter renamed the Best-Ever Chocolate Cake that I have been making since my childhood.

Happy belated Thanksgiving to all, and Happy Holidays and Merry Christmas!

A Fussy Chocolate Cake

~ nancyruth ~ 6 Comments

I was reading Paul Hollywood’s new cookbook, Celebrate: Joyful Baking All Year Round, and his famous chocolate cake recipe is in there. I like chocolate cake. I have several go-to recipes but thought I would try this one. After all, it is famous!

For this cake one needs to have a full container of cocoa powder and three 4-ounce bars of bittersweet chocolate, plus sour cream and heavy cream, and three-plus sticks of butter. It calls for a frosting and a ganache and raspberries, fresh and frozen. My substitutions were as follows:

  1. Unsweetened chocolate for bittersweet as I forgot to look up the difference.
  2. Frozen cherries as raspberries are not in season and are rather expensive.
  3. A completely different ganache using dark chocolate chips and not needing 7 more ounces of bittersweet chocolate and heavy cream which I forgot to buy.

For the cake:

  • 1 ½ sticks butter, softened
  • 1 cup light brown sugar
  • 1 cup granulated sugar
  • 3 large eggs, at room temperature
  • 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
  • 1 ½ cups sour cream (plus one tablespoon, which I forgot)
  • 2 cups all-purpose flour
  • 1 ¼ cups unsweetened cocoa powder (this is a huge amount!)
  • 1 ½ teaspoons baking powder
  • ½ teaspoon salt
  • 1 ½ cups frozen cherries

Grease three 8-inch cake pans and line with parchment paper. Heat oven to 350 degrees F.

Beat butter and sugars until light and fluffy. He calls for using the whisk attachment but I used the paddle which I use for all cakes. Scrape down the batter and whisk again. Add the beaten eggs, vanilla, and sour cream with the mixer on low speed.

Stir the dry ingredients together and add large spoonfuls by spoonfuls to the batter while mixer is still on low speed until fully incorporated. Use a spatula to fold in the fruit.

Spread the batter in the prepared pans. This was a thick batter and a bit difficult to spread in the lined pans. Bake for 25 minutes until the cakes have risen slightly and start to pull away from the sides. My cakes took 30 minutes and did not appear to rise significantly but tested as done. Leave the cakes in the pans for 5 minutes and then remove to wire racks to cool.

For the frosting:

  • 4 ounces bittersweet chocolate, broken into pieces
  • ¾ cup cocoa powder (it’s a lot of chocolate here)
  • 5 Tablespoons boiling water
  • 1 ½ sticks of butter
  • scant ¾ cup powdered sugar

Melt the chocolate and set aside to cool slightly. Mix the cocoa and boiling water to form a paste. I had to add an extra Tablespoon of water. In the mixer bowl, beat the butter until very soft and then add the powdered sugar and beat until pale and fluffy. Add the melted chocolate and the cocoa paste and beat until smooth. When the cake is cool, spread one-third of the frosting between each layer and on top. Spread around the sides of the cake and let sit for one hour.

When frosting is set, make a ganache and pour over the whole cake. Decorate with the fresh fruit.

  • For my ganache I melted one cup dark chocolate chips with 1/3 cup evaporated milk, boiled for one minute, removed from heat, and then whisked in 2 Tablespoons butter. This needs to be mixed until it thickens. I poured it over the cake a bit too soon and had a bit of runoff. But that cleaned up tastily!

Thoughts:

  • I had expected the cake to rise a bit more than it did. This may be because it is on the mixer for a long time and I may have beat the air out of the eggs or the baking powder was old. I have since tested the baking powder and it is active so that is not the culprit.
  • So this is a dense cake in texture and in chocolate flavor. It is like a fudgy brownie and not cake-like. After three days I felt like I had overdosed on chocolate. And I like chocolate!
  • The cherries were a nice touch.
  • Definitely serve with vanilla ice cream.

Banana Oat Muffins

~ nancyruth ~ 2 Comments

I finally got around to tackling the clearing out of my baking cabinet. This corner cabinet holds the flour, sugar, flavorings, and all the other items needed for baking, including pans. In removing everything before rearranging I found that I have a variety of flours that I should start using. One of these was oat flour and on the back of the bag was this recipe. It used only oat flour and rolled oats, no all-purpose flour needed. And I had some overripe bananas languishing in the freezer.

The problem with baking and wanting to bake is that Hubby and I are the only ones to eat the baked goods and we do not need to be eating all these baked goods, tasty though they may be. So Church was having a brunch which gave me opportunity to have a baking weekend. Yay! I made two things for the brunch and one for Hubby and me, mostly Hubby. This also gave me material for three blogs. Stay tuned for the others.

This recipe is on the back of a bag of Bob’s Red Mill oat flour. I could not figure out if this recipe is also on their website. They do have a number of recipes on there.

  • 2 cups oat flour
  • ½ cup rolled oats
  • 2 teaspoons baking powder
  • 1 teaspoon baking soda
  • ½ teaspoon salt
  • 1 cup mashed bananas, about 3 small
  • ¼ cup granulated sugar
  • ¼ cup brown sugar
  • ½ cup milk
  • 1/3 cup oil
  • 2 eggs
  • 1 teaspoon vanilla extract

For this recipe I used nondairy oat milk and avocado oil. Preheat the oven to 400 degrees F and put paper liners in a 12 cup muffin pan. Mix the dry ingredients in a medium bowl. Mix everything else in the bowl of your mixer to combine thoroughly. Stir these together and then divide into the muffin cups. Bake 18-20 minutes. Allow to cool in pan a few minutes before removing to wire rack to cool.

These are light and airy which surprised me. A touch of butter and jam would go well with these muffins. They had some banana flavor but it was mild.

Shepherd’s Pie

~ nancyruth ~ 8 Comments

This is another food item that does not require a recipe, in my opinion. You may have a family recipe tradition with particular herbs and spices or quantities but I do not. I did not grow up eating this dish although Mom served us a lot of casseroles. I have seen a variety of recipes for this and I know that I have Americanized this dish as I do not use lamb. I have made this vegetarian using lentils but Hubby does not like that much. At a restaurant in Boston recently the chef made this with a tomato based meat mixture. My step-daughter and I thought that was odd, or at least, rather unique. That chef also put a piece of puff pastry atop the mashed potatoes for an interesting presentation.

The church I attend has a rotation of serving a weekend meal at our local soup kitchen. For simplicity they serve Shepherd’s Pie as the main dish and not have a potluck by the parishioners. The recipe suggested is as follows:

  • 2 pounds ground beef, browned
  • 1 large onion, chopped and sautéed with the meat
  • 2 cans creamed corn
  • 2 cans green beans, drained
  • Mashed potatoes to cover, instant or real (about a 2 /1/2 pound bag)
  • Salt and pepper to taste

The meat and onion is put in a 9 x 13-inch pan. Spread vegetables over meat and mashed potatoes on top. Bake at 375 degrees F for 25-30 minutes.

I indulge in a delivery service of locally sourced meat and I receive a pound of ground beef each month. This month I made a Shepherd’s pie, pictured below. I do not use the above recipe although it does make a tasty dish. Mine is a mixture of ground beef with sautéed vegetables in gravy. This is topped with mashed potatoes and baked until the top is crusty but not brown. The insides will be bubbling. Cool for a short while, serve, and eat.

The type of vegetables can vary. For me it depends on what I have around but mostly consists of a bag of frozen mixed vegetables added to sautéed chopped onion. This is cooked with the browning of the meat. I then add a half cup of broth and then another half cup mixed with a tablespoon of cornstarch. This makes a moist but not loose meat mixture under the mashed potatoes. Cheese and sour cream can be added to the mashed potatoes as desired. Although it is a hardy meal Hubby and I usual have two serving each! We won’t be losing weight this way!

Old-Fashioned Custard Pie

~ nancyruth ~ 5 Comments

I like custard: tarts, pies, plain, caramel, the lot. I was wandering the house wanting to make a simple dessert of some sort. I looked up custard in several cookbooks and settled on the custard pie from Pushcarts and Stalls: the Soulard Market History Cookbook. When in St. Louis I like visiting the Soulard Market. Just walking into the spice shop is an olfactory treat.

I had one sheet of frozen puff pastry which I took out to thaw. I thought a puff pastry crust would add a bit of interest to a custard pie. Custard is milk/cream, eggs, sugar, and vanilla. Very simple and most ingredients are already in most kitchens.

  • One unbaked pastry shell
  • ½ cup sugar
  • 3 eggs
  • 2 cups cream: I had 1 1/2 cups cream so I topped it off with oatmilk.
  • 1 teaspoon vanilla
  • Nutmeg
  • 1 egg white beaten until frothy

I omitted the last two ingredients. I forgot completely about the nutmeg, and did not bother coating the inside of the pie shell with the egg white.

I blind baked the puff pastry in the pie tin. I should have rolled it out a bit to fit better but I did not. This would have prevented a bit of seepage behind the crust. Ten minutes in a 400 degrees F oven did nicely.

Beat the custard ingredients in a mixer with a whisk or just by hand. Pour into the pie shell. Place on a baking sheet (important in case of leakage) and bake for 30 minutes.

In rereading the recipe now I find that I was supposed to reduce the temperature of the oven to 350 for the pie and the higher temperature was for the par-baking of the shell. Well, my pie took 35 minutes at the higher temperature anyway.

It was not that pretty coming out of the oven. So I found a small amount of frozen mixed berries in the freezer and cooked those down with a splash of cranberry juice to make a small compote to serve with the pie.

This was a tasty pie. It is not too sweet and the puff pastry was a nice shell for it. It made it a bit lighter than a regular piecrust. Yummy!

Another Basque Cheesecake

~ nancyruth ~ 5 Comments

It has been a while since I last wrote. I am going to try to write again but in my retirement I have been embracing the “I don’t have to” about schedules and activities. Yes, I do pay the bills and minimally clean the house and get up and dressed every day, feed the dog, cook sometimes, keep medical appointments, etc. I guess there is a lot of things I do but on my own time. I have not been baking a whole lot in the summer between heat waves and camping trips.

I was perusing the New York Times cooking section and they listed a number of favorite fall baking recipes that looked and sounded interesting. This Basque Cheesecake was one of them. I know I have made a Basque Cheesecake before but that was the King Arthur Flour recipe which I apparently altered slightly. It is somewhere in a past blog post. Here is the link for this one https://cooking.nytimes.com/recipes/1024483-basque-cheesecake.

I gathered all the ingredients. Well, actually, I wandered off to the grocery store to buy more cream cheese. This calls for 4 ½  packages! I had heavy cream from making pastry cream for cream puffs recently. And 5 eggs which, luckily, have come down in price. Line a 10-inch spring-form pan with parchment paper that extends up the sides. Preheat oven to 400 degrees F.

  • 1 ¾ cups sugar
  • 36 ounces of cream cheese at room temperature
  • ¼ teaspoon kosher salt
  • 5 large eggs
  • 2 cups heavy cream
  • ¼ cup all-purpose flour

Cream the cheese and sugar in a stand mixer. I mixed this for 5 minutes. Add the bit of salt. Then beat in eggs one at a time. Then the cream. Sift the flour on top and mix in. This makes a lot of batter. Pour this into the prepared pan and bake for 50-60 minutes until “burnt” on top. Let cool completely before removing from the pan. This is a large cake so having flat spatulas on hand to help move it to a cake plate will be handy.

Voila!

This is a light cheese cake, not at all dense like New York Style. But it is very pleasant.

Ginger Beef

~ nancyruth ~ Leave a comment

Well I seemed to have lost momentum for writing. So I’ll try again. It’s not like I don’t have time. My time is my own as I am retired. There are some demands on my time such as Stepdaughter’s wedding, Easter celebrations with grandkids complete with burnt cinnamon rolls, attempts to keep an exercise routine going, various healthcare appointments, etc.

And I am cooking and baking just not writing about it partly because I don’t always make something new and I try other bloggers’ recipes. And some of those are very worthwhile to make over and over again!

I was gifted by a friend several (actually a lot) packages of frozen meats. I have ground pork from which I will be trying to make younger Stepdaughter’s pork pie. But what to do with ground beef? There is just so much chili my aging stomach can tolerate. Hubby will be making his fancy meatloaf at some point, and we have preformed burger patties ready and waiting already. So I perused a few of my many cookbooks, looked at the NYTimes Cooking app, and decided to make Stir-Fried Beef with Onions and Ginger from Mark Bittman’s How to Cook Everything but with ground sirloin instead of flank steak. My ingredients are as follows:

  • 1 medium onion, chopped
  • 1 garlic clove, minced
  • Olive oil for sauteing the onion, and then some more for the pan to brown the meat
  • 1 inch ginger root, minced
  • 1 pound ground sirloin beef
  • 1/2 cup vegetable broth, homemade
  • 1 Tablespoon soy sauce

First, brown the onion on high heat until beginning to char, then I added the garlic just at the end. Sprinkle with salt and pepper and remove from pan. Add more oil, most of the ginger and the beef. Stir cooking this until the beef is no longer pink. Add the rest of the ginger, the broth, and the soy sauce. Cook and stir until most of the liquid is gone, but leave some. This process took less than 20 minutes with the ingredients prepped already.

I served this with rice and a cucumber/carrot salad with sesame dressing.

Thoughts: the fat in the ground sirloin (90/10) and the onion overpowered the ginger. The sesame dressing on the salad had more flavor. It also needed a sauce. Very thinly sliced flank steak would be the choice of meat as in the original recipe. For the leftovers I will douse this with teriyaki sauce. It could then be served over more rice or in a wrap.

Until next time…thanks for reading!

Another Loaf: Apricot

~ nancyruth ~ 3 Comments

I have not written nor baked in a while. We have been eating ordinary meals. You know, baked frozen fish, grilled chicken or burgers, frozen vegetables, scrambled eggs with onion and peppers, and open-faced grilled cheese with tomatoes. Peanut butter and jelly sandwiches in a pinch! Sometimes I just do not feel like cooking, so when Hubby comes home he throws something together. The open-face grilled cheese with tomatoes are one of his specialties.

At my last camping weekend I brought along the Settlement Cookbook to look through. There are some bread recipes that looked good. Simple and straightforward breads, quick and raised. My mother had given me a paperback Settlement Cookbook when I got my first apartment. I knew how to bake but not how to cook. This book was my guide to cooking meat and vegetables. I remember making biscuit dough cinnamon rolls from this book. Unfortunately like most well-used cookbooks it fell apart and eventually I could not justify saving the torn thing. 😦

At a tag sale (yard sale, garage sale, depending on what region of the country you hail from) there was this newly revised Settlement Cookbook. So I bought it for sentimental reasons. This edition was published in 1965, 1976.

I was originally looking at the banana bread since I had extra ripe bananas in the house. But I froze those so the pressure was lessened. I had some dried apricots so the apricot bread was my choice for the afternoon. I figure I have to bake while the weather allows.

Alterations to the recipe as pictured above are as follows:

  • why would one grind the dried apricots? I roughly chopped them.
  • I used 1 cup whole wheat pastry flour and 1 cup all-purpose flour; to be healthy.
  • I did not have to strain the orange juice because the juice I like does not have pulp.

The batter smelled quite orange-y. The loaf came out very nicely colored and crunchy on the outside. The inside is quite nice with the squares of apricots and nuts throughout. For the future I might add a teaspoon of ginger and/or cinnamon for added kick!

I suppose spreading it with apricot preserves might be a bit too much!

There’s a hole in my kitchen!

~ nancyruth ~ Leave a comment

 

20170114_205124557_iosYes, there is a hole in my kitchen ceiling this weekend. Hubby put it there. We needed to check the plumbing from our less-than-two-year-old new bathtub. About a month after it was installed water came leaking down through the ceiling. We had the contractor bring his plumber back out but nothing was wrong. The water leak never happened again until this past week. We sort of, maybe, figured out what could have happened so off we go to the local hardware store for a plumber’s wrench. Hubby tightens a connection and we are hoping for the best. We have not tested it yet. Perhaps we should put a hinge on this panel of ceiling for easy access should it happen again?

Meanwhile, what to cook? What to bake? I have not gotten around to anything citrus-y yet even while the grapefruits, oranges, and lemons linger in the bottom of the fridge. But there are two jars of cherries in the pantry. But first…

Friday evening and what to have for dinner? There is an “emergency pizza” in the freezer but that does not appeal. Fish filet from a frozen box and what to serve with? Rice pilaf comes to mind. I go back and forth in my thinking about whether it should be sweet or savory. I pull out a bunch of ingredients:

  • nub of fresh ginger, peeled
  • 1/2 green pepper, diced
  • 1 smallish carrot, sliced
  • tops of green onions, sliced
  • one clementine
  • 1/4 cup raisins
  • 1/4 cup banana peppers
  • 1/4 cup diced roasted red peppers, from a jar (not shown here!)
  • coconut oil for sauteing
  • soy sauce for seasoning
  • garlic infused beef broth for seasoning as well
  • brown rice, this is the kind that cooks in 10 minutes in boiling water

I basically just pulled out stuff I thought fit in a pilaf. I had mushrooms but they smelled funny so I did not use them. I must stop buying mushrooms unless I plan to use them right away. This was the second batch that smelled funny and had to be disposed of. Chop and mince and dice every thing to pilaf size. Saute everything while the rice is cooking. Add the raisins and clementine at the end. The amounts of the seasoning ingredients are up to you. The broth kind of brings it all together before adding the rice. It was very yummy!

And now for the weekend dessert. This is a cherry cobbler baked in a cast-iron skillet from America’s Test Kitchen. You can find the recipe here. I promise I followed the recipe exactly. Well except for using a 10 inch skillet instead of 12 inch, having only 5 cups of cherries instead of 6 cups, and not having turbinado sugar. Isn’t it pretty?

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And tasty too! This was simple enough to make. One does cook the cherry juice into a syrup before adding the cherries and biscuit topping. I do not see how this would be any better in a larger skillet. Ten-inch is just the right size. The biscuits come together easily enough with buttermilk and melted butter. Sprinkling the sugar on top before baking gives a nice color and crunch. I used an organic fair-trade sugar from Aldi which has a slight caramel color. I will make this again even with fresh or other types of canned fruits. I may reduce the sugar a bit even though it was just 1/2 cup.The only real improvement needed was to have vanilla ice cream for serving.

Have a blessed week!

 

Everyday Table Bread…

~ nancyruth ~ 4 Comments

On this cold New England winter-ish day, I bake bread. I also made a nice supper in the crock pot. Tomorrow I may even bake cookies.

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I sat at my kitchen table early this morning and wrote out my Christmas cards. Hubby has put the wreath on the front door and we play Christmas music. I have been looking at my cookbooks, not in them, just at them wondering about doing any Christmas baking. We did purchase Red and Green M&Ms so that is Christmas-y! We take the dog to a dog park. It is not crowded and is in a wooded area. Leo (our new old dog) is great. There was one other dog and Leo put up with the puppy’s antics. We also stopped at the Home Depot to buy a kitchen trash can with a lid because “you know who” thinks “dumpster diving” is productive daytime activity!

Back to bread. I have made this bread before but don’t remember how long ago. It has good stuff in it like cornmeal and oats. It is from the Soulard Market cookbook.

  • 2 1/2 cups whole wheat flour
  • 1 1/4 cups cornmeal
  • 1/2 cup rolled oats
  • 1 teaspoon salt
  • 2 packages active dry yeast; I use 4 1/2 teaspoons instant yeast
  • 1/3 cup butter
  • 2 1/2 cups warm water
  • 2/3 cup molasses
  • 2-3 cups all-purpose flour
  • 1 egg
  • 1 tablespoon water
  • rolled oats

In the large mixer bowl, I combine the first five ingredients. In a glass quart measuring bowl I put the water, butter, and molasses. I microwave for about 1 1/2 minutes, 30 seconds at a time, until the mixture is about 125 degrees F. Between 120 and 125 was close enough for me. Stir that into the flour mixture. Add enough of the all-purpose flour to make a stiff dough. I then kneaded this with my bread hook for 5 minutes.The dough was not very stiff so I kneaded in about 1/2 cup more white flour. Still none to stiff but I did not want it to be too dry so I pushed the dough around the bowl while I sprayed with cooking spray so it would rise in a greased bowl. Cover this with a tea towel and let rise until double. In just one hour it had reached the top of the mixing bowl.

In reading the recipe it says to punch dough down and shape into round loaves. I don’t remember  these as being free form loaves, so I spray my two loaf pans and shape into loaves. Now let these rise for another hour or so.

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These have risen above the rims.

These are nicely risen. Make an egg wash with the egg and tablespoon of water. Brush this on top and sprinkle oats on top. Bake in 375 degree F oven for 45 minutes. If making round loaves check after 35 minutes for doneness (is that a word?).

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A good and hearty bread.

Questions:

  • Why does my bread not stay as high and risen as before baking?
  • Do I use too much yeast?
  • Did brushing on the egg wash deflate them?

I suppose I could call the baking hotline or I’ll just internet search it. I could even look in some of my bread-baking cookbooks. Meanwhile we enjoyed this bread with supper and then for toast at breakfast.