Cooking With Kate
The pressure cooker:
It makes me nervous and that's why I love using it. wheeze wheeze blip blip wheeze blip. Ooo, it's an adventure.
How I make our staple bread:
I boil a couple of peeled potatoes then let them cool in their water some.
IN the mixer's bowl, I mix two tablespoons yeast in one cup warm potato water. Along with some sugar. Maybe 1/4 cup or more. Meantime I heat up two cups milk with a slab of butter in the microwave.
I go into another room and forget about it all.
I return to find a buttery surface on congealing milk in microwave (some of it on the microwave floor because the milk's boiled over), and yeast in water frothing and foaming in mixer bowl.
I smoosh the potatos into the milk stuff, add some dry milk powder (extra protein) and oil (because I usually haven't put in enough butter) to the milk/potato mix, and then, if it's cool enough, I add a couple of eggs because the kids eat a lot of bread and I figure protein! PROTEIN! Plus wheat germ and some of that fiber stuff if I remember it. If I try to sneak in too much nutrition, they won't eat the bread and that's a PITA because I make big batches.
If it's no longer boiling hot, I add the milk/potato stuff to the now very happy yeast. Then I remember I forgot the salt, add a bit and maybe a splish of vinegar because I forgot that too. (It sort of makes the milk like buttermilk)
My mixer with its cool bread hook tries to deal with this as I add the many cups of flour (whole wheat and regular) but this is a lot of dough.
I eventually give up and knead it by hand. Flour is everywhere because I always forget to add it gradually in the mixer.
I put it in a greased bowl which isn't large enough because I don't have one that big, and cover it with plastic wrap.
An hour later someone goes into the kitchen and yells Oooooo LOOK!.
I scrape up the dough that's crawled out of the bowl, punch it down, put it in three or four bread pans. It rises and sometimes falls and rises again and then I bake it at 375, usually not long enough.
It makes enough bread for my family for a couple of days. Maybe two days. My kids eat a lot of bread.
It makes me nervous and that's why I love using it. wheeze wheeze blip blip wheeze blip. Ooo, it's an adventure.
How I make our staple bread:
I boil a couple of peeled potatoes then let them cool in their water some.
IN the mixer's bowl, I mix two tablespoons yeast in one cup warm potato water. Along with some sugar. Maybe 1/4 cup or more. Meantime I heat up two cups milk with a slab of butter in the microwave.
I go into another room and forget about it all.
I return to find a buttery surface on congealing milk in microwave (some of it on the microwave floor because the milk's boiled over), and yeast in water frothing and foaming in mixer bowl.
I smoosh the potatos into the milk stuff, add some dry milk powder (extra protein) and oil (because I usually haven't put in enough butter) to the milk/potato mix, and then, if it's cool enough, I add a couple of eggs because the kids eat a lot of bread and I figure protein! PROTEIN! Plus wheat germ and some of that fiber stuff if I remember it. If I try to sneak in too much nutrition, they won't eat the bread and that's a PITA because I make big batches.
If it's no longer boiling hot, I add the milk/potato stuff to the now very happy yeast. Then I remember I forgot the salt, add a bit and maybe a splish of vinegar because I forgot that too. (It sort of makes the milk like buttermilk)
My mixer with its cool bread hook tries to deal with this as I add the many cups of flour (whole wheat and regular) but this is a lot of dough.
I eventually give up and knead it by hand. Flour is everywhere because I always forget to add it gradually in the mixer.
I put it in a greased bowl which isn't large enough because I don't have one that big, and cover it with plastic wrap.
An hour later someone goes into the kitchen and yells Oooooo LOOK!.
I scrape up the dough that's crawled out of the bowl, punch it down, put it in three or four bread pans. It rises and sometimes falls and rises again and then I bake it at 375, usually not long enough.
It makes enough bread for my family for a couple of days. Maybe two days. My kids eat a lot of bread.
They DO eat a lot of bread. I make on focaccia (two cups of flour) and it lasts us two days.
ReplyDeleteYou're going to hate me.
ReplyDeleteWe go to the bakery (if it's nice out, we'll walk - it's about a 3 mile hike down into a ravine then up a steep hill)
We say:
3 baguettes please.
Three warm baguettes - one to eat on the way home, one for lunch, and one for dinner. Any leftover is toast the next morning.
Doug, they eat a lot. Period. We go through 7-9 gallons of milk a week. Two of them are tall and skinny. The third isn't.
ReplyDeleteAnd you're right, Sam. I do hate you. That bread you eat tastes a thousand times better.