Breakfast Soup and Dirt Bread

I can eat some weird stuff for breakfast, but can I eat a doughnut, a strudel, or a danish pastry? Not a chance. Bad things happen to me when those items are ingested first thing in the morning. I don't like to have leftovers hanging around in my refrigerator, so this morning my breakfast consisted of mashed sweet potatoes - made with my new handy-dandy potato ricer!

Look at it! Look at it!

To go with my mashed sweet potatoes, I had Italian Wedding Miso Soup. Let me explain. Leftover Italian wedding soup: not really soup anymore, but tiny pasta pearls + dry miso soup mix + boiling water = Italian Wedding Miso Soup. It was as bazaar as it sounds.

On the topic of food failures, let me show you my latest yeast disaster. I call it Dirt Bread! This recipe turned out so badly, I'm not even going to post it. I wanted to make some hearty, whole wheat bread because it looks like this outside:*Cue the blood curdling scream*

This recipe came from Germany, or it at least tried to. My very good friend, Katharina, sent me a recipe for her mom's delicious rye bread. Katharina is very kind, so she converted some of the measurements for me. A wonderful thought, but I think something went wrong during the converting. Also, the recipe called for "half a piece of yeast". I didn't know what the hell that meant, so I just put in 1 Tablespoon full of dry active yeast. The liquid to flour ratio looked reeeeeally off, so I was just winging it for the most part. As you can see from the above photo, it's a very grainy dough. I liked that. I wanted this to be the first time my whole wheat dough didn't taste like dirt, but I didn't get my way. *Sigh*

Lookin' good here. I was getting good vibes from the bread at this point.

Still feeling good just before the second rise.

And then I hit the wall. Whole wheat yeast bread, why do you look like crap? Did I let you proof for too long or do you normally look like that?

I pressed on, even taking the care to brush my little uglies with egg white before baking. They look nice and shiny, but don't let their exterior fool you.

Too flat. Too much dirt flavor. Seriously folks, I put a bite of this beast in my mouth, and it was like gnawing on wheat straight from the field. Do you have any suggestions on how/why this bread tastes like it's just been unearthed? I look forward to your hypothesis.

*UPDATE***THE NEXT DAY*

After sleeping off some steam, I gave the ol' dirt bread another chance. I popped one of the slices into my toaster and lathered the warm, crispy slice with butter. And you know, it really was not that bad! I believe that the toasting brought out a nutty flavor from the whole grains, and, of course, butter makes everything better. Well, dirt bread, maybe you're not so terrible after all.

Mistakes O' Plenty - More Yeast Disasters

My mom was reminiscing about a delicious bread my aunt used to make - Cardamom Bread. She spoke of a sweet, soft white bread with hints of cardamom. I had to have some. Mom found her recipe and made a copy of it for me. The recipe card was dated 11/29/80. I love it when people date their recipes. I love sweet bread. I love trying new recipes. I love to battle with yeast in an attempt to win. I would love to win.

Of course, I started off on the wrong foot whilst assembling the dough. The recipe made a whopping 4 loaves. I don't have that many bread pans. As you can see, I'm pulling together all that I've got. I would HIGHLY suggest that you bakers at home use baking pans that are all the same. What a convenience! All of the bread done at the same time with little guessing! Genius! Anyways, I halved all of the ingredients except for the amount of warm water used to dissolve the yeast. So that required me to throw in more flour. Blah! Despite that little mishap, the dough - FOR THE FIRST TIME IN MY HISTORY OF BREAD MAKING - was the perfect constancy. I had an Aha! moment with a side of hope.

Mistake #2. This is what happens when you forget that you have dough proofing in the oven with no window.

Solution: punch down again, form into loaves again, wait for it to double in volume again. Blah! again. I went ahead and brushed the egg white and sprinkled on the sugar before they proofed. I was afraid that I would brush them too hard and they'd shrink. No thank you.

Aha! Another glimmer of hope! Now at this point, I had a plan. "Sarah, you have a bad habit of burning your bread," I sez to myself, "Why don't you cover them with foil during mid bake?" "Brilliant, self!" Hugs and high-fives all around...to myself.

"WHYYYYYYYYYYYYYY!!!!!" was the noise I made as I pulled this abomination from the oven MID bake, mind you, MID BAKE!

To make matters worse, when I had to reform the over risen loaves, I neglected to re-grease the bread pans. So instead of sliding out with cooperation, I pried and pulled and persuaded. Ugly on the top. Ugly on the bottom. Sigh.

After I invited Edward Scissorhands over for a little help, the bread began to resemble bread again. There's a lesson in all of this: read instructions thoroughly; if halving a recipe, cut ALL of the ingredients in half; have an oven with a light and a window; lower the racks in the oven or protect the precious loaves with foil; even though an exterior can be tough and ugly, the interior can be soft and warm.

I delivered my mangled bread to many folks in my family. Everyone welcomed the chewy, sweet deliciousness. They're enjoying there's toasted and smeared with butter.

(Adapted from) Aunt Jean’s Cardamom Bread

In a sauce pan, combine 2 cups of milk, 8 Tbsp. (a stick) of butter, 1 tsp. salt, and 1 1/3 cups of sugar. Place on low heat until butter is melted and sugar is dissolved. Take off of heat and let cool to room temp.

While milk is cooling, dissolve 2 ¼ tsp. of active dry yeast (one single packet or even a yeast cake will do) in ½ cup of warm water.

Combine slightly warm milk and yeast-y water in a large mixing bowl. Add one egg yolk (egg white reserved) - slightly beaten, 1 tsp. ground cardamom OR 3 tsp. of crushed cardamom seeds, and 1 tsp. salt. Mix until combined.

Add 2 cups of flour to batter and mix until just combined. Add 1 cup of raisins, mix until incorporated. Now, time to estimate! Add enough flour so that a workable dough is formed. Dough should be stiff and slightly sticky. If you are using a stand mixer, knead with a dough hook for 3 minutes on med-high speed. If you are working by hand, knead the dough for about 10 minutes on a lightly floured surface.

Place dough in a well greased bowl – covered with plastic wrap or a warm, damp tea towel. Let rise until doubled in volume. Keep in a warm place.

After dough has risen, punch down, cut in half, and form into two loaves. Place in well greased bread pans, cover, and let rise until double in volume again.

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Gently brush tops of loaves with reserved egg white and sprinkle with a light layer of sugar.

Bake for 35-50 minutes or until loaves are brown on top and pulling away from their pans.
Turn out onto cooling racks and let cool completely before slicing.

Sad Mood? Have some sweet bread!

Cinnamon Raisin Bread to be exact. I found the recipe on AllRecipes.com. I needed an easy, sweet yeast bread to cheer up my family. Sweet, chewy comfort food with a beginner's level of difficulty. (You have seen my previous attempts at yeast bread. Sigh.) I feel like I've improved a bit, but I've still got a loooong way to go before I'm satisfied with my yeast bread-making skill level.

Here's the dough after the first rise. With this batch, I let it rise in the fridge for a day for the first rise, then over night after I shaped it for the second.

This beast was quite some work to roll out. The recipe makes three loaves. I made 6 mini loaves, but it still required a lot of muscle. The dough is very hearty. (And I'm always wondering if I put in too much flour. With every dough I've made, I always added more flour because the dough was too sticky.) Sigh, again. BUT! Cinnamon and sugar make anything delicious.

The giant loaf of sweetness. Reminds me of a sea cucumber. I was going to put a link on "sea cucumber", but they are not appetizing animals. I'll let you research that one for yourselves.

I cut the loaf into six equal pieces. The recipe suggests that you ball up the ends so that the cinnamon lines don't show.

I wanted to see what happens, so I only closed up half. I like the cinnamon lines.

Here are the tasty mini loaves after a night of resting in the fridge. I now see why they said to close up the ends. The moisture inside the pan, under the cellophane wrap, causes some of the cinnamon sugar to run out of the roll. Sadness.

Two things: my balling/tying the ends didn't hold at all, and I had an issue with baking consistency. Also, I do not suggest baking them in a casserole dish like I did. The bottoms didn't get cooked, so I flipped them upside down to bake, whilst the tops still continued to cook...

...Ta-da! My usual burn on the top yeast bread. Will someone tell me how you bake the bread evenly? PLEASE!

For what it's worth, the non-burnt parts were very tasty. The bread had a nice "tooth-feel", good chew, and didn't flake/fall apart. Hooray! One problem solved at a time, one at a time. I hope I haven't discouraged you from baking this bread. Please give it a try. If yours turns out better, hit me up with your tips. Happy baking!

This is why I bake cookies.

I love bread. I love all forms of it; all types and shapes and flavors. I love to make bread, or I should say, I love to TRY to make bread. I've got the quick breads down: pumpkin bread, applesauce bread, zucchini bread, cinnamon bread, etc. Those are no problem at all. But when yeast is involved, that's another story. Yeast, why do you toy with me so? It is an unrequited love, the yeast and me. I finally had some spare time last week to do one of my favorite activities: baking homemade yeast bread. I love purusing through my collection of recipes, searching for the perfect one to make. I decided on a whole wheat bread that called for bran, flax, and wheat germ. Sounded good to me. Here's the loaf before the first rise. Doesn't look too bad....

Still looking good just before the second rise....

Looking pretty good after the second rise....

...and then they look like total crap after baking. They sunk and got too brown. Yeast bread gods, have you any mercy?

I'd say that this is the typical outcome of my breads. Pseudo ok, but mostly blah. It makes decent toast. I'll be having this toast for breakfast for the next three months. Almond butter, anyone?