yeast bread

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!

Pumpkin Bread

~ nancyruth ~ 1 Comment

It’s been awhile since I have written but now it is bread baking season and I have no long camping trips planned. I have perused my cookbooks and have listed various dishes I want to cook and bake. Sometimes I find recipes of interest on the internet as well as other blog sites. I also have tried and true recipes that I repeatedly use. Not always of interest to write about. But then there is this…

I made Food Network Kitchen’s Pumpkin-Shaped Pumpkin Bread. It is a simple recipe to follow and you most likely have everything in your pantry. I did not make the Spiced Pumpkin Butter. Here is the link to the recipe: https://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/food-network-kitchen/pumpkin-shaped-pumpkin-bread-8849742

My thoughts:

It is important to use kitchen twine. I found that I did not have enough, 3 lengths of 24 inches, so used a length of cheesecloth for the third string. I had to carefully tweeze threads out of the indentations after baking but no real harm done.

The instructions were to tie the twine not too tightly. I think they must have made several loaves to get the right tension. I think I should have not used the cinnamon stick to hold up the twine. I probably thought that the bread would rise enough on the second rise to make it taut. But it did not. Still, it does look like a winter squash of some kind!

My cinnamon sticks are apparently too old. It did not fill the kitchen with a wonderful aroma while baking.

I ate a wedge for breakfast and found it had good flavor and a dense texture, but not too dense.

This was baked with a new batch of yeast packets. I had baked a pumpkin yeast bread earlier in the month but found that the yeast had gone past…disappointing because it was less than a year old and I had it stored in the fridge. So if you have a big batch of yeast in a container somewhere check it for life before investing it in baking bread.

Fresh Yeast

~ nancyruth ~ 3 Comments

I store my instant yeast in the refrigerator and had paid no attention to the length of time it has been there. A thought came to me out of the blue that perhaps it is past its prime even though the breads and rolls I have been baking over the past few months do rise some. “Some” is what was concerning me. Why did not my bread rise to the heights above the bread pan as shown in recipe books?

for example

I truly have no idea how long that yeast I have has been. It has been there throughout the course of the pandemic and before. I looked on the internet for information on how long instant yeast should be stored. I found information that recommended anything from 4 months to one year. Then I went and purchased a new batch. And then made a loaf of bread.

What a difference the new yeast made!

This particular bread was flour, salt, water, and yeast with a touch of milk. The dough rose significantly higher than my recent bread endeavors. The baked bread was above the rim of the loaf pan.

I have put the date on the container that the yeast is in and will endeavor to use this up within a year’s time. Now that I am retired I will have more opportunity to bake bread and other goodies.

Who is Sally Lunn?

~ nancyruth ~ 6 Comments

Food:

It was a weekend and I wanted to bake. Bread should be better than cake when counting calories, don’t you think? I looked through several cookbooks and finally settled on one from my handy-dandy Fleischmann’s Yeast Booklet from long ago. I have wanted to bake this particular bread for a long time but have never done so. It looks like a cake and is in the “no-knead” chapter. One of my other cookbooks explained that the origin is probably French and is popular in the South here in America. The Smithsonian magazine site relates that she may be a French pastry chef who sought refuge in England or a different woman, or even from Sun and Moon as descriptive of appearance. Others say it was one of George Washington’s favorites. Read all about it here: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/colonial-recipes-sally-lunn-cake-82438919/

Whatever its origin it sounds of interest to me and I set out to bake. No knead breads are batter breads. This recipe made one large loaf baked in a tube pan, the kind used for Angel Food Cake.

  • ½ cup warm water (105-115 degrees F); I got to use my new instant read thermometer which was not very “instant”; hmmm?
  • 2 teaspoons instant yeast
  • 1 cup warm milk (I used unsweetened oat milk)
  • ½ cup softened butter; okay, I nuked it for 20-30 seconds ( this apparently is a no-no but works for me in a pinch)
  • ¼ cup sugar
  • 2 teaspoons salt
  • 3 eggs, well-beaten at room temperature; I put the eggs in a bowl of warmish water to take the chill off
  • 5 ½ to 6 cups all-purpose flour

Put the warm water in the big bowl of the stand mixer (KitchenAid fitted with the dough hook) and sprinkle the yeast and stir to dissolve. Add milk, butter, sugar, salt and eggs and beat until well blended about one minute. Stir in enough flour to make soft dough. Cover, let rise in warm place, free from draft, until doubled, about one hour. So my kitchen is not a warm place. Hubby suggested I bring the bowl into the living room near the fireplace but I was afraid it would rise too fast. So I went off to the library and let it rise almost 1 ½ hours.

Grease well the tube pan. This needs to be a 10-inch pan and not a smaller decorative one. Stir the batter down, it basically needed to be gently pounded by the wooden spoon for this. My batter was all in one piece so I “poured” it into the tube pan and stretched it around to fit the circle. Cover and let rise until doubled, about one hour. Bake at 400 degrees F for about 30 minutes. Remove from pan and cool on wire rack.

Very yummy!

Thoughts: Also about food

I am hungry! I continue to count calories but find that I go over the weight loss amount regularly now. And it is not from the empty calories from drink. I’m not even eating a lot of sweets. How can I enjoy food and cooking this way? I don’t want to not pay attention to what I eat because I tend to put on weight that way. So far, I am not gaining but not losing either. Here is a typical work day’s food intake:

  • coffee, black
  • egg and cheese on English Muffin
  • leftover chili or vegetable curry, one cup
  • orange
  • 17 whole almonds
  • homemade sausage, peppers, and onions, one cup, if that
  • hamburger bun for sandwiching the sausage and peppers
  • handful of potato chips
  • dates for a sweet treat after dinner
  • glass of red wine at bar for Trivia night

Okay, so the potato chips were not the best choice. The dates add up as well but they are very nutritious. But this is not a lot of food. And this put me over the “limit” by at least 300 calories! Some mornings Hubby fixes oatmeal for me and sometimes I have yogurt for lunch. But I am still hungry.

One night we had grilled steak (4-6 ounces), sauteed squash, and Caesar salad with red wine and sat around the table having a nice conversation. The calorie count was over 50% of the allotted amount. And we only added a piece of fruit for dessert.

How can I keep this up? Yet I don’t want to give up. We’ll see at the end of the month what the scale says. Stay tuned.