A New Food Thing on the Blog

John brags on my baking, which is gratifying. I decided to put up a few recipes and comments about food, since (occasionally) people ask for them. Yesterday at the birthday party we had bread rolls, which are best hot out of the oven. I think I'll put all the variations at the end, and you can experiment with whatever seems fun. All amounts are approximate--I don't actually measure very much. Also, you can do the whole thing by hand, but it goes a little quicker if you have a mixer.

Basic White Bread

Stir 2 Tablespoons dry yeast in a small bowl with 1/2 cup lukewarm water and 1 teaspoon sugar. Set aside.

With a mixer (I have a KitchenAid and I use the cookie dough attachment for this part), blend 3/4 Cup sugar, 4 teaspoons salt, and 1/2 Cup vegetable shortening. Add 3 and 1/2 Cups hot water from the tap. Add 5 or 6 Cups of white flour and mix on high speed until smooth. Test temperature of the dough to make sure it's not much more than body temp, and add the yeast mixture, blending again until smooth. (You can actually kill the yeast if the water is too hot, which yields a sad dead lump of dough. Learned at a young age by experience.)

Now switch to the dough hook if you have a KitchenAid-type mixer. If not, I'm afraid it's time to move to a wooden spoon and muscle power. Add 5-6 more Cups of flour, one or two cups at a time, mixing until smooth. Flour has different levels of moisture, which is why the amount of flour you add may vary. You may prefer a softer or a stiffer dough. Too little flour and your dough will be soft, sticky, and messy--too much and it will be hard to mix and hard to work. But both soft and stiff doughs make good bread.

Once all the flour is mixed in and the dough is as smooth as you can get it, let it rise* in a warm spot until it doubles in size. Beat it down twice. Flour a clean counter- or table-top and dump the dough out. This is the fun part! Knead the dough and shape it into rolls, breadsticks, loaves for loaf pans, round bread, or longer French style bread. Let it rise and bake it between 20-40 minutes (depending on the size and thickness of the shape you're using--20 for breadsticks, 40 for full-sized loaves) in a 350-400 degree oven (depending on how hot your oven bakes--our electric oven in Springville baked hot--our gas oven in Provo bakes a little cooler).

For dinner rolls, shape into golf-ball size balls and put in a greased 9-13 inch cake pan. This much dough will probably do 3-4 cake pans full--enough for a fairly large dinner party. It's nice if you can let the rolls rise again to about double in size, but we are always in a hurry, so the rolls are usually rather small and dense--but still good. Also if you have time, butter the tops when you get them out of the oven.

Basic Bread variations:

1. For French-style loaves, substitute olive oil for the shortening, and use a greased cookie sheet dusted with cornmeal. Slash the top of the bread diagonally. This much dough will make about 4 good-sized loaves, two per cookie sheet. Of course you can make your loaves as big or little as you please--small ones are good to use for individual sandwiches. For Italian-style loaves, shape into a flattened round and slash the top diagonally (they're not really Italian, but kind of look like Italian bread).

2. For whole wheat bread that is heavier and more dense and nutritious, substitute whole wheat flour for half (or more) of the white flour. Substitute honey, molasses, home-made jam, or whatever else for the sweetener (we have 75 pints of ancient apricot jam I'm trying to figure out how to use). I suggest that you still use shortening for the fat, but you can use less or even none. Use hot milk for the liquid, or add powdered milk to the mix with the flour. This is a good way to use milk that is close to its expiration date, by the way, as long as it's only slightly sour. Whole wheat bread won't rise as much or as fast and may need a little longer to cook (sometimes at a slightly lower temp). You can switch other flours in for the wheat flour.

3. Breadsticks work best if you want to shape dough to freeze for later. You can make them into any shape--my favorite fun shapes are as bones to eat with chili or tomato soup on Halloween. To freeze, put them on a greased cookie sheet, let them rise, cover them, and put them in the freezer for not longer than 12 hours or so (longer and they pick up freezer smells). After they've frozen, take them off the cookie sheet and put them in large freezer bags (or triple plastic grocery bags) in the freezer. Take out however many you need for the meal. You can butter the tops after they've baked at 380-400 degrees for 15-20 minutes.

4. Flavored breadsticks are also fun, and can be done with frozen sticks. Put the breadsticks on a greased cookie sheet and brush the tops with melted butter. For garlic sticks, sprinkle garlic salt or garlic powder on top. For cinnamon sticks, mix cinnamon and sugar and sprinkle on top. Bake as usual.

5. I like to make rosemary or sage bread with the standard recipe when I have fresh herbs. I chop or break the herbs and punch them into the loaves as I shape them (usually French-style, and usually without the cornmeal). Then I'll decorate the loaves with a sprig or leaf or two pressed into the dough.

Whew, that was longer and a bit harder to write than I thought! The main thing is that bread-making is very forgiving (as long as you don't kill your leavening or forget the salt), and you will get a feel for what you like if you try it.

*I never know whether it is "rise" or "raise." "Rise" is done by the actor, while an object is "raised" by something else--and the dough does rise, but it's actually the yeast in the dough that is doing the raising.