White Bread - Final Version

I finally made white bread which I think is perfect. I took two of the previous white bread recipes, combined them, and slightly altered the result. This bread is soft and chewy. It isn't too sweet like the bread I posted last week. It tastes great warm and cool. I will have to make dinner rolls out of this recipe at some point!

The method for making this bread is exactly the same as the last recipe. You mix all the ingredients together, let it rise for a total time of nearly 3 hours, and bake at 400 degrees Fahrenheit. Baking bread is actually very simple. And having fresh bread is a great thing!

White Bread (Printer-friendly PDF version)

1 packet dry active yeast

1/4 C warm water + 1/4 t sugar

1 C milk, scalded

1 C water, warm

2 T butter

1 t salt

2 T sugar

6 C sifted flour (perhaps a bit more)

Proof the yeast in the 1/4 C warm water (add the 1/4 t sugar to feed the yeast).

Scald the milk. Place the scalded milk into a large bowl with the warm water, sugar, salt, and butter.

Mix in two cups of the flour. Add the yeast and stir. Slowly mix in the remaining 4 cups of flour. Add the flour until the dough isn't very sticky. I added just a bit too much flour, but it turned out fine.

Knead the dough until smooth. My dough was too non-sticky to do the method I usually use, so I just kneaded normally.

Roll the smooth dough in a bit of flour and place in a floured bowl.

Cover with a towel. Place in the oven (oven OFF) with a pan of hot water. Let rise for an hour.

Punch down the dough. (The dough was sticking to the bowl a bit, but I didn't add oil or anything. The sticking won't ruin anything.)

Return the dough to the bowl (reflour the bowl!), and return it to the oven. You might want to refresh the hot water in the pan to create more steam.

Remove the dough from the bowl and cut into two pieces. Let rest for 10 minutes.

Form into a loaf shape and place in lightly greased bread pans. Cover and let rise until doubled (at least 30 minutes).

Uncover and brush the top of the dough with melted butter. Bake at 400 degrees Fahrenheit for 30 minutes.

Let cool for at least 15 minutes before slicing.

Enjoy!

S'mores Cookie Bars

The internet has a lot of recipes and I have a small subset of these recipes bookmarked to make at some point in the future. For this post I wanted something simple to make that was also very unhealthy, so I looked through my bookmarked recipes. I rediscovered this one for S'mores cookie bars.

These are delicious. They're slightly too sweet for me, but that's okay. I will make these again at some point, but I'll use a good dark chocolate instead of the Hershey's milk chocolate. Dark chocolate just has a better flavor (in my opinion!).

This recipe comes from Une Gamine dans la Cuisine, which is one of the few food blogs I currently follow. She got this recipe from Baking Bites who got the recipe from...? I'm not sure. This recipe seems to be everywhere on the internet, so there is no saying where it originated. There are many slight variations as well. Here is mine.

S'mores Cookie Bars (Printer friendly PDF version)

1/2 C butter, unsalted, softened

1/4 C brown sugar, packed

1/2 C white sugar

1 egg

2 t vanilla

1 1/3 C flour

3/4 C graham cracker crumbs (or 7 full sheets, smashed to crumbs)

1 t baking powder

1/4 t salt

4 or 5 chocolate bars

1 1/2 C to 2 C marshmallow fluff

Stir together the flour, graham cracker crumbs, baking powder, and salt. Set aside. Note: If you don't have graham cracker crumbs, take the sheets of graham crackers and place them in a large sealable plastic bag. Wrap a dish towel around the bag and use a rolling pin to crush the graham crackers into crumbs. Be sure to occasionally shake up the bag to help crush the crackers evenly!

Cream together the sugars and butter until fluffy.

Beat in the egg and vanilla.

Slowly stir in the flour mixture and mix until combined. The dough will be kind of dry looking.

Press half of the dough into the bottom of a well greased 8x8 inch pan. I used a 9x9 inch pan and it worked out okay.

Layer the chocolate bars on top of the cookie dough. Leave 1/4 to 1/2 inch of dough around the edges.

Spread the chocolate bars with marshmallow fluff. To make the marshmallow easier to spread, heat up the jar in a bowl of hot water while preparing the recipe up to this point. Stir the fluff before spreading.

Using the rest of the cookie dough, make a layer on top of the marshmallow fluff. I did this by pressing the dough into flat pieces with my hands and placing it on top. Press the dough down along the edges of the pan to make a seal.

Bake at 350 degrees Fahrenheit for 30 minutes or until the top starts to brown.

Let cool for 15 minutes before slicing. Or slice right away if you are impatient. It would most likely be delicious with some ice cream!

Enjoy! 

Snow White Bread

First of all, my bread did not turn out white. It was a sort of yellowish color. That might be because I decided to use butter instead of shortening because butter just seems like a better option! Also, I scaled down this recipe. The original made 6 loaves of bread which is way too much for me! Here is one of the lovely loaves and a few slices.

This bread is good, but it strangely had a slight taste of a cake style donut. I don't think I'll use it again. It's a bit too sweet for just plain white bread. The recipe is almost identical to the first white bread that I made, so I'm not sure why the taste is so different. For the next white bread I make, I'm going to use the first recipe and change the 2 cups of milk to 1 cup milk and 1 cup water. It might cut down on the sweetness a bit. We shall see.

Snow White Bread (Printer friendly PDF version)

1 packet active dry yeast

1/4 C warm water

2 C milk, scalded

2 T sugar

2 t salt

1 T butter (or shortening)

6 C flour, sifted

Proof the yeast in the 1/4 C warm water. Add 1/4 t sugar if desired to feed the yeast during the proofing process.

Scald the milk. Meanwhile, place the sugar, salt, and butter in a bowl.

Pour the scalded milk into the bowl and stir. Let cool to lukewarm.

Once cooled, add the yeast and 2 cups of flour. Mix together with a spoon.

Slowly mix in more flour until you get a slightly sticky dough. You will most likely have to use your hands near the end of the flour adding process.

Plop the dough on a clean surface and knead. (As mentioned before, I use the "lift, flip, smack down, stretch out, and fold over" method. See the sweet dough recipe for more info!)

Once kneaded, lightly coat the dough ball with flour. Place the dough ball in a lightly floured bowl and cover with a non-fuzzy cloth. Let rise for an hour or until doubled in size.

Punch down the dough. I do this by removing the dough from the bowl and placing it on the clean surface. I then press it down all over with my finger tips. Fold it and repeat until you get a ball shape again. Return the punched down dough to the bowl, recover, and let rise again until doubled (about an hour).

Remove the dough from the bowl and split it into two pieces. Let these pieces rest for 10 minutes before shaping into loaves and placing in lightly greased loaf pans.

Cover the loaf pans with a non-fuzzy towel and let rise until doubled again.

At this point, I decided to make a slit in the top of the dough and brush them with a lot of butter. The slit in the top made prevented the loaf from rounding much, but nothing else.

Bake at 400 degrees Fahrenheit for 30 to 35 minutes. Let cool for a bit in the loaf pan before removing. Let cool at least 15 minutes before slicing.

Enjoy!

German (Soft) Pretzels

I wanted to make these pretzels since I found the recipe in one of the old cookbooks. The main reason that I wanted to make these pretzels is that they contain a mashed potato. Potatoes are a great food and anything with potato is possibly awesome. Living up to my super high expectations, these pretzels are great. I will do a few things different if I make these again, but the method I used produced a deliciously edible soft pretzel.

As a note, be sure to grease the baking sheet that you use. I neglected to perform this step and every single pretzel stuck completely. I basically had torn pretzel tops instead of full pretzels. The clean up wasn’t very fun either.

German Pretzels (Printer friendly PDF version)

1 medium sized potato (boiled & mashed)

1 C potato water

1 C warm milk

1/4 C sugar

1 packet dry active yeast

1/2 C shortening

Approximately 7 C flour

Kosher salt or pretzel salt (any large chunk salt might work)

10 C water

3/4 C baking soda

Proof the yeast in 1/4 C of the potato water.

Peel, cube, boil, and mash the potato. I added a little bit of milk to make them creamier. I'm sure that wasn't necessary.

In a bowl, combine the remaining potato water, milk, sugar, and shortening. If it isn't completely mixed at this point, that is fine.

Stir in 2 cups of flour. Make sure this is combined. Add the yeast. Mix in 4 more cups of flour. Add a bit more flour until it isn't too sticky. I think I used 6 and 1/2 cups of flour total.

Dump the slightly sticky dough onto a clean surface and knead. I use the same method that I used in the sweet dough post. (It's the lift, flip, slap down, stretch out, and fold over method.) Knead until the dough is smooth. Shape into a ball and lightly coat with flour.

Place the floured dough ball into a lightly floured bowl, cover, and let rise until doubled. (If your kitchen is cold, place the dough in the oven with the oven off along with a dish of boiling water.)

Once the dough is doubled in size, punch it down. Divide it into sections and roll those sections into strips. Let the strips rest for a few minutes.

Cut the strips in half, roll out more, and then twist into the shape of a pretzel. Place on a non-fuzzy dish towel. Let the pretzel shaped dough rise until doubled.

Make a baking soda bath with 10 cups of water and 3/4 cup baking soda. Heat this mixture until boiling.

Once the baking soda bath is hot, place the pretzels in the liquid for 30 seconds. I think I should have heated the solution to a higher temperature, but I was afraid that I was going to burn myself. Next time I'll make the solution boil and not just simmer.

Place the bathed pretzels on a well greased baking sheet and sprinkle them with the salt.

Bake the bathed pretzels for 10-15 minutes at 425 degrees Fahrenheit. Baking time will vary depending on how large your pretzels are and how dark you want them.

Let pretzels cool for a minute on the baking sheet before removing to a wire cooling rack.

Enjoy!

PB Cookies

Peanut butter cookies were requested earlier this week, so I made them. This recipe is *almost* identical to the previously posted peanut butter cookie recipe, but it has some extra baking soda and a bit more flour (maybe). I'm going to go ahead and claim that the difference is enough to justify another recipe post!

Also, pretend that this was posted on Tuesday. It will probably be Sunday by the time I have this up. My week has been crazy and I haven't had much time to work on this. I had the pictures all edited and ready to go, but I never got around to typing this up. So here is a lazily typed up recipe. Good luck.

PB Cookies (Printer friendly PDF version)

1 C shortening

1 C white sugar

1 C brown sugar

1 C peanut butter

2 eggs

3 C sifted flour

2 t baking soda

1 t vanilla

Put the shortening, sugars, peanut butter, and eggs into a mixing bowl. Make it creaming and homogenous-ish. 

Add the vanilla, baking soda, and flour. Stir it up. Make sure you scrape the bowl or you might have dry crumblies at the bottom of the bowl. Those don't make good cookies. I wasted some dough.... sigh.

Form the dough into balls with your hands. Place on a lightly greased cookie sheet. Press a criss-cross shape into them with a floured fork.

Bake at 350 degrees Fahrenheit for 10 to 12 minutes, depending on the size of the dough disks.

Let cool on the cookie sheet for a minute and then remove the cookies to a cooling rack.

Eat lots of cookies.

Enjoy!