Tagged with Bread …

Jan 19 2010
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Breakfast

Cinnamon Rolls with Cream Cheese Frosting

It took me a long time to figure out how food advertising works. I always thought that commercials for McDonald’s or Wendy’s were so pointless because there was no way I was going to run out and buy a cheeseburger after watching one. Even on the day in college when my roommate and I saw ad announcing the return of the McRib and she exclaimed, “Oh my god! The McRib is back!” I chalked it up to her being an employee of the corporation rather than food advertising actually working. After spending hours upon hours (not) considering the effectiveness of food advertising I’ve come to the conclusion that although McDonald’s advertising doesn’t work on me because I don’t like their food and no advertisement would get me to eat there (Sorry, Amy.), it probably works on a certain audience. If Ruth’s Chris starting flashing pictures of medium-rare filet mignons on my television screen, I might be persuaded to run out the door and eat one for dinner. I would at least put that on the top of my list of places to go the next time my parents are in town. And no, Mom and Dad, let’s not tell the waiter that Sean Hannity sent us.

So maybe McDonald’s commercials don’t do anything for me, but I’ve discovered something else that has the same desired effect: food blogs. Whether I’m scouring food blogs for something to make for dinner or just perusing them because I am putting off reading about tax law I can always find numerous things that I want to eat. The main thing preventing me from weighing 500 lbs. is the fact that I have to go out, buy the ingredients, and cook in order to eat what I see on a blog. I’m slightly more in control of the situation.
And then our friend Kate had to go and make big, beautiful cinnamon rolls and post them on her blog. I saw the pictures, and I wanted one so very badly that I started contemplating making a batch. I quickly talked myself out of it, though, because cinnamon rolls are the last thing I need sitting around my kitchen. I had completely pushed them out of my mind when Matt walked in a few hours later and said, “Did you see the cinnamon rolls that Kate made?” We were helpless to the power of the cinnamon rolls, and the last day of our long weekend was spent mixing, rolling, sprinkling, slicing, and, eventually, indulging. Kate (and Zach), if I put on some 300 lbs. in the near future I am going to blame it on you and your blog for planting the idea and making it look like such a wonderful thing to do.

 

Like Kate, we used Martha Stewart’s Truck Stop Cinnamon Roll recipe. I cut the recipe in half hoping to end up with just six rolls, but I somehow ended up with eight. [Shrug.] I had originally wanted to make the recipe from Pioneer Woman, but it yields seven pie plates full of cinnamon rolls. Seven. I know a little math could have made the PW rolls a viable option, but who needs math when the alternative is Martha Stewart?
Here are the ingredients I used:
For the dough:
1-1/2 tsp active dry yeast
2-1/2 cups warm water (110 degrees)
Between 5 and 6-1/2 cups flour
1/4 cup brown sugar
1-1/2 tsp salt
For the filling:
2-3 tbsp melted butter
1/2-3/4 cup brown or white sugar
1/3-1/4 cup ground cinnamon
For the frosting I combined about 3 oz. of softened cream cheese and 2-3 tbsp. of softened butter in the bowl of a stand mixer. I used the whisk attachment to beat them together for a few minutes, poured in a little vanilla, and then added powdered sugar (maybe a few cups) until it was thick and frosting-like.

In the bowl of a stand mixer (or just a big bowl) dissolve the yeast in the water. Add 2-1/2 cups flour, and stir to combine. Add the brown sugar and salt, and stir to combine.
Keep adding flour, 1/2 cup or 1 cup at a time, until the dough is sticky and starts pulling away from the edges of the bowl.

Look, Mom, I got a haircut.
Turn the dough out onto a floured surface, and knead it until it comes together and is smooth and elastic. Add more flour if needed.
This was the easiest dough I’ve ever worked with. It was light, fluffy and very pliable, making the kneading a piece of cake.

Lightly oil a big bowl with a little vegetable oil and add the dough. Cover it with plastic wrap and let it rise for an hour or two.
This is a good point to take a walk around town for a couple hours like Matt and I did. Once you get back you’ll feel like you’ve earned your right to eat a sweet, doughy coil of goodness. While we were out walking around I came up with about 15 ways I want to tweak this recipe and add in other ingredients, so once I run about 50 miles to work off this batch I’ll try out some of the ideas and let you know how they go.
Here’s the dough about 2 hours later. Super gigante.
Roll/press it out on a lightly floured surface into a big rectangle or square. If you get to a point where it’s not stretching out as much as you’d like it’s helpful to let it rest for a few minutes and then try to work with it again. I wasn’t really trying to make this any particular size, and it ended up being about 17″ long and 12 or 13″ wide.
Martha tells you to drizzle the dough with oil or melted butter. The idea of using oil for it kind of skeeves me out, so I chose butter. I used 2-3 tablespoons and it was plenty.
Sprinkle the dough generously with sugar – white or brown. I stopped with the measurements at this point. Just add a bunch and when you think you have enough, add a little more.
Do the same with cinnamon, except add a lot more than this. I thought I was being pretty generous, but once the rolls had baked I wished I would have added about twice as much. This looks a lot like my dad’s favorite way to eat toast – piled high with butter, cinnamon and sugar.
Roll the dough up length-wise as tightly as you can.
Mr. Squirrel is checking it out from afar.

Slice the log into uniform pieces, somewhere between two and three inches long.

Add them to a lightly oiled/buttered pan, cover them with plastic wrap, and let them rise for 30 minutes or so.
Preheat your oven to 400 at some point in here.

Make sure you use a pan with room for the rolls to grow, because after 30 minutes they will be fighting each other for space.

I had to use an overflow pan for some stragglers. I didn’t plan well and slightly underestimated the size of pan I would need.
After growth spurt number one.
Bake the rolls on the top 1/3 of your oven for somewhere between 25 and 40 minutes, depending on their size. You want the tops to be golden, or slightly paler if you’re going for a doughier version. These took 30-35 minutes to brown and bake through.
After growth spurt number two. I don’t know how much you can tell from this picture, but if the rolls have room to expand they certainly will. This dish is 8″x11″ at its widest points, so these guys got huge. The others were in a 9″ cake pan, and they grew quite a bit but maybe not as much as the ones in the oval pan.
You may think these are pretty now, but just wait until we get to the frosting.

YUM! The cardinal rule of frosting (cream cheese or otherwise): Don’t skimp.  Matt just told me that I look like a cinnamon roll, so I guess I’d better lay off these puppies. I don’t know that I have it in me, though.

 

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Dec 02 2009
3 Comments
Bread

Pretzels and Pretzel Pups

For months now my mom has been talking about wanting to make pretzels, and since she planted that seed in my head I’ve been wanting to make them as well. I’ve certainly never been one to turn down an opportunity to eat a twisted mass of dough. Or dough in pretty much any form, but that’s beside the point. My mom wanted to make pretzels, and my brothers and I were happy to assist. Although the process of making something like pretzels or bagels can seem a little daunting at first, once you’ve done it a couple times it’s really no big deal. You just throw everything in a mixer (or not, as my brother has successfully made pretzels sans any sort of special equipment), let it rise, shape it, boil it, and bake it. If you have 5 people working together to do the shaping, it takes no time at all and can be really fun.

After it was settled that we would be making pretzels, my brother mentioned the bagel dogs from Einstein’s, and that got the ball rolling on pretzel project #2. Way back when we would buy bagel dogs from Ted, the Schwan’s man, but I think Kyle was too busy picking his nose and eating it to remember that. Roasted! Besides, bagel dogs are so fifteen years ago. Pretzel dogs are the new thing. Pretzel pups, rather. Forget about those dried up hot dogs sitting behind the plastic case at Einstein’s. Pretzel pups are the real deal.

My mom almost drove into town to pick up smokie links for the pups because she sometimes gets cravings for things we used to feast on back in the 80s (Cheez Whiz, Chef Boyardee ravioli, Bugles), but after discovering a package of Niman Ranch hot dogs in the freezer we decided to just use those. It turns out, not surprisingly, that Niman Ranch makes some top notch hot dogs. I think they actually call them Fearless Franks, but let’s be honest, they’re hot dogs. As the old saying goes, you can put lipstick on a hot dog, but it’s still a hot dog. Am I right?

By the way, I don’t mean to turn all Rachael Ray on you by making up a cutesy name like Pretzel Pups. I just felt like busting out a little alliteration. A little alliteration: an oxymoron? Anyway, puppies are so cute, so why not name foods after them?

The pretzel recipe we used is from Bobby Flay, and you can find it here. We doubled the recipe, but we didn’t follow it to a T. Instead of muscovado sugar we used regular brown sugar, we didn’t have the full amount of yeast so we used slightly less, and we certainly did not use 3/4 cup of baking soda in the boiling water. I don’t think using all of that baking soda would hurt anything, but for some reason my brother was adamantly opposed to using so much. In the end it all worked out, and that’s what matters.

Soft Pretzels
Slightly adapted from Bobby Flay

1-1/2 cups warm water
1 package active dry yeast
2 tbsp brown sugar
6 tbsp unsalted butter
2-1/2 tsp kosher salt
4-1/2 to 5 cups all-purpose flour
Olive oil
About 3 quarts water
About 1/4 cup baking soda
2 whole eggs beaten with 1 tbsp cold water
Coarse sea salt or pretzel salt

Melt the butter over low heat in a small saucepan. Add the water, yeast, and sugar. Turn off the heat and let sit for 5 minutes so the yeast activates. You could also melt the butter in advance and just combine the four ingredients in the bowl of a stand mixer.
After the 5 minutes, add the butter mixture to the bowl of a mixer. Add the salt and flour 1/2 or 1 cup at a time, mixing to combine. Once you’ve added all of the flour, increase the speed to medium for 3 or 4 minutes or until the dough starts to pull away from the sides of the bowl.

If the dough is too wet and not pulling away from the sides after a few minutes you can add more flour in small increments. It will look something like the photo above when it starts to pull away. Remove the dough from the bowl, and transfer it to a flat surface to knead with your hands.

Ahh! My brain has been sucked out of my skull! Unfortunately my numerous talents do not include the ability to cross my eyes, so the whole brain-outside-of-the-skull trick did not work as I had hoped.
Knead the dough a few times and form it into a ball. It should be pretty smooth at this point.

Drizzle some olive oil or vegetable oil in a bowl, add the dough, and turn the dough to coat it. Cover the bowl with a clean towel and set it in a warm spot for about an hour, or until the dough doubles in size.

While the dough is rising, cover a couple baking sheets with parchment paper and spray the paper with cooking spray. Toward the end of the rising period preheat the oven to 425, and turn the heat on under a large pot of water and baking soda.

Pretzel making is fun for the whole family! I’ll spare you the more obscene pictures that you can imagine ropes of pretzel dough would produce.

Once the dough is ready, all you have to do is tear of chunks about the size of an orange and roll it into ropes. You could also turn out the dough onto a flat surface and divide it into eight equal pieces, but what fun is that?

Look at that thing fly!



Form the ropes into pretzel shapes (you can add another twist in the middle if you prefer), and they’re ready to boil.

Boil the pretzels two at a time for 30 seconds in the water and baking soda.


After boiling, transfer the pretzels to one of the lined baking sheets and brush with the egg wash. Sprinkle liberally with salt or other toppings. My brothers put some minced fresh garlic on a couple of them. Grated cheese would be good, too.
Bake for 15-18 minutes, or until golden brown. Let them cool for a few minutes before diving in.



Did I mention there was cheese sauce involved? Because there was. My mom would never consider making pretzels if there was not cheese sauce. The original recipe makes a poblano cheese dip, but we didn’t have poblanos so we used pickled jalepenos. There was a mustard sauce as well, but I prefer plain old yellow mustard to the sweet, grainy mustard sauce from the recipe.


For the pretzel pups, follow the same steps as above for regular pretzels. The only difference is that you wrap a rope of dough around a hot dog instead of forming it into a pretzel shape. Everything else is the same. Boil the dough with the dog in it, brush it with egg wash, sprinkle with salt, bake until golden, etc. Please, please, please do not skip the step where you make a rope with the dough and just wrap a chunk of dough around the dog or you will end up with more of a hot dog bun than a fully encased hot dog once they are baked. See the difference between the bottom one and the third from the bottom? The third from the bottom one was done properly.

P.S. My apologies to Ted, but homemade pretzel-wrapped hot dogs are so much better than frozen bagel dogs from your big, yellow truck.

P.P.S. If I one day get a wiener dog I am going to make him a pretzel dog costume for Halloween instead of the traditional hot dog costume.
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Nov 30 2009
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Main, Vegetarian

Vegetable Potpies with Sweet Potato Biscuits

The night before Thanksgiving my brother made delicious vegetable potpies from a recipe in Food & Wine. They were a great way to fill up on veggies before feasting on turkey, stuffing, and mashed potatoes the following day, and they’d make a good meal for any cold winter night. I’m a big fan of traditional potpies (like the chicken potpie I made a year ago), but this one comes with far less guilt since it’s stuffed with vegetables and topped with a sweet potato biscuit.

The original recipe called for parsnips, brussels sprouts, pearl onions, cauliflower, and celery root, but it takes well to substitutions. Instead of brussels sprouts ours had beets. My mom was really excited about purple pearl onions, so those went in instead of white ones. Being easily excitable runs in the family.

Bobby did most of the work on the filling.


And I got to make the biscuits.


These biscuits are delicious and would be great eaten on their own.


My mom kindly spiked some eggnog with whiskey for us to enjoy while we cooked. My dad doesn’t drink, and I’m pretty sure he thinks that one drink makes you drunk. While this is generally not the case unless you’re maybe a small child or my friend Sarah, it was certainly the case with these suckers. You could get drunk on the fumes alone. I’m not sure if it was the fact that I don’t really like eggnog or that I’m still not over the last time I drank large quantities of whiskey and chased it with karaoke, but I simply could not handle this stuff.


After being tossed with olive oil and seasoned, the vegetables are roasted for 30 minutes.

Then a milk/cream/flour/butter/spice mixture gets combined with them. I guess what I said before about this being a healthy alternative to chicken potpies is not entirely true.

The mixture is divided among 8 4-inch ramekins. It should be fine in a larger dish, too, if you don’t want to mess with individual servings.
Each dish is topped with a biscuit and a sage leaf or two.
Bake for about 15 minutes.
These go really well with a side of tart cranberry sauce.
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Oct 31 2009
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Bread

Easy Homemade Bread

Water, yeast, salt, flour, cornmeal, a broiler pan, and a pizza stone. If you have these seven things, you can make your own bread. A stand mixer won’t hurt, but it’s not required. As with most baking recipes, and especially if you’re making bread for the first time, it’s important to follow the directions exactly. I’ll give you a few specifics later of what not to do, learned by my brother’s mistakes and my far less significant mistakes. Once you combine all of the ingredients there is very little active cooking time involved, and there’s no need to be intimidated by bread-making with this recipe. Or should I say there’s no knead to be intimidated. Hi-yo!

Boules

3 cups lukewarm water
1-1/2 tbsp yeast
1-1/2 tbsp yeast
6-1/2 cups all-purpose flour
Cornmeal

Note 1: If you want a little more clarification or more details, click on the Mother Earth News link above.
Note 2: This recipes makes four 1-lb. loaves.
Heat the water to 105-115 degrees. Add the water, the yeast, and the salt to the bowl of a stand mixer or to a large bowl with a lid. Give it a quick stir.
Add the flour 1/2 cup or 1 cup at a time by scooping it up and then leveling it off with a knife. Mix with every addition, with either the dough hook of the mixer or with a wooden spoon. The first time my mom and I made this recipe we just dumped all the flour in at once, and I don’t think it made that much of a difference in the end result so do whatever works for you.
Keep adding flour and mixing until all of the flour is incorporated. The dough will be very moist.
Cover the bowl loosely with a towel, and let the dough rise at room temperature for about 2 hours, until the dough rises and then flattens on top. Letting the dough sit out for up to five hours will not hurt it.
Here it is after 3 or 4 hours. You can skip to the baking process at this point, but it will be easier to work with if you refrigerate it for a few hours.
After a few hours of refrigeration, dust the top of the dough with flour.  Since the recipe makes four 1-lb. loaves I think it’s easiest to score the dough before cutting off a piece so you end up with uniform loaves.
Dust a pizza peel with cornmeal. Holding the dough in your hands (and adding more flour if it’s too sticky), turn the dough over itself, from the top to the bottom. Rotate a quarter turn and repeat so you have four bunched ends on the bottom. If that’s confusing just think of a mushroom cap, but instead of having a hollow bottom, the dough that you pull around fills up what would be the hollow space.
Let the dough rest on the peel for 40 minutes before baking. After 20 minutes turn on the oven t0 450, with the pizza stone on the the middle rack and an empty pan for water on another rack. Before going into the oven, liberally dust the top of the loaf with flour and make a few slashes in it.

When the 40 minutes is up, transfer the dough to the pizza stone, pour a cup of hot water into the broiler tray to create steam, and quickly shut the door. This is where my brother totally blew it the first time he tried this recipe. In case you are a ditz like he is, here is a warning: never pour a cup of cold water into a preheated glass pan. Especially if that glass pan is on a rack above your bread. Unless, of course, you enjoy eating crunchy bread which gets its crunch from shards of glass.
Bake for 30 minutes or until the outside is browned and firm.

The remainder of the dough can be kept in the refrigerator for a couple weeks. Store it in a container with a lid, but not one that is airtight. I used a lidded container and just set the lid on top instead of sealing it. The longer the dough hangs out in the fridge, the more it will take on a sourdough flavor. You can also reserve a little of the dough from your last loaf to incorporate into the next batch of dough for a more immediate sourdough flavor.
Repeat the same steps as before with the remaining dough, dusting the top with flour and cutting off a piece of dough.
I decided to make my second loaf slightly larger, using about 2/3 of the remaining dough.
This is where I messed up. I was slightly distracted by putting the final touches on my Margot Tenenbaum costume that I forgot to dust the loaf with flour or make slashes in it before throwing it in the oven.
I still ended up with a nice loaf of bread, but it was a loaf of bread with a tumor shooting out of it. Maybe it was more of a goiter. The mark on the top of the loaf is from my unsuccessful attempt to make a slash after it had been baking for 20 minutes.

This loaf was a little more dense than the last, probably from it’s large size and lack of slashes on the top which give it room to grow. It’s still delicious, though.

Happy Halloween from my nearly-albino piece of candy corn!



And happy birthday to the cutest cupcake-eyeballing one-year-old I know.



Who is slightly unsure of what to think about dolls that are nearly as tall as he is. Happy Birthday, Nolan!
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