Friday in the kitchen
I spent most of yesterday (Friday) doing cooking related things. I did go to the grocery in the morning, but after that the rest of the day was mostly in the kitchen non-stop. As one might imagine, that produced a lot of results. Lots of things that I made were brown, could that be a theme? It sounds like a boring one, so instead I will group the things with molasses in this first post.
I started my cooking for the day making "Outback Steakhouse Honey Wheat Bushman Bread" from a "copycap recipe I found online. I actually found more than one, but the link above is the one I used. I started with this because I knew it would take a while to let the bread rise, so I wanted to get started early. I had never made bread before (other than things like banana bread and pumpkin bread which are very different from breads made with active yeast.) Anyway, I wasn't sure exactly what to expect since I was new to the process. I recently acquired a bread maker from North Carolina, and I'm eager to try it, but for this recipe I had to cook my bread in small loaves in the oven. I followed the linked recipe exactly except I did not add food coloring to make the bread the right Outback color because I didn't really care what color it was, and didn't see any specific benefit to adding extra dye to my diet. As it was, it came out a very nice color on it's own, so that was fine. So, the conclusion is that they came out nicely in the end, but this dough is STICKY! This didn't matter until I got to the step where I was supposed to separate the dough into six portions and roll it out and make it into logs. The instructions say to "lightly flour" the work surface. I use waxed paper to reduce the mess and made a lightly floured surface to work on and lightly floured my hands as best I could. This did NOT work. I was able to separate the dough into six mostly equal portions after some serious coaxing and scraping and redistributing, but my hands ended up covered in dough and sticking to everything. Also, the dough was sticking to the lightly floured surface I was supposed to be rolling them out on and the rolling pin and my hands and everything else. I kept trying to keep things lightly floured, but it was not working. I eventually had to use lots of flour and ditch the rolling pin to stretch the dough with my hands as best I as I could and then roll it up quickly. I'm sure there is some brilliant way to accomplish this task in a better and less messy way, but I could not figure out what that would be. I also ended up adding a lot more flour because I had to flour the surface so much to make the loaves. They were not sticking together greatly, and they looked kind of funny, and I was concerned that I had ruined them. But, I pressed on anyway. I put out some cornmeal, got my hands wet and dipped the bottoms of the loaves into the cornmeal then placed them on a Silpat sheet on top of a baking sheet and covered them again to let them rise. I didn't roll the loaves in the cornmeal as instructed because I didn't think that would be very pretty, and having just on the bottom was fine. After they rose for an hour they were all stuck together, but I stuck them in the oven and baked them that way. They came out nicely. It didn't rise as much in the oven as I expected it to, and I wasn't sure how it would taste, but they were really good. One loaf was devoured immediately when the guys saw it. By the end of the evening we had eaten almost 2 whole ones (despite how they might look in the picture, they are not huge). Everyone was really happy with the results, they had a great flavor, I was happy. Here are two pictures of a few of the loaves. One is with flash and the other is without. I included both because the flash picture makes the bread look kind of shiny (which it is not) but the other picture made the bread look so dull, and it isn't, it looks beautiful in real life. It really is difficult to photography food. Anyway, here they are:
While I was waiting for the bread to rise I made molasses crinkles. Once again, I followed this recipe exactly except that I rolled the cookies in turbinado sugar instead of just doing the tops. I really love these cookies. They are chewy on the inside and so good with the crunchy sugar pieces. Here is a picture of the results:
The only thing I would have done differently is cook them on a silpat sheet, but I only have one in my possession, and it was under 6 loaves of bread at the time I was baking these cookies, so I really couldn't get it out from under them to use it. This led me to believe that I should have two silpat baking sheets, but I'm still trying to convince Dad of this. It makes a huge difference, and it would have kept a few of my cookies from being slightly burned on the bottom.
The final molasses thing I made yesterday was molasses ice cream. Dad just got me a used automatic ice cream maker from Joni, so I decided to break it in with this. It was incredibly easy and came out great. Dad and Jon complained while it was freezing that it smelled very molassesey, and didn't think they wanted to have much of it, but when it came time for dessert and they both tried it, and were both quick to go for seconds. Dad said I should use the cookies and make molasses ice cream sandwiches, he loved it. Here is how it looked with a cookie:
Now let me explain my molasses binge. Every month the food bloggers come together online to make themed dishes. I've always enjoyed reading the results because everyone makes something different with their own twist and it's great to see how one set of ingredients or instructions can be interpreted so many different ways. Since I've just started writing my own food blog instead of torturing my normal journal readers, I thought about participating in one of these monthly things to inspire my cooking and give myself a purpose in writing this. So, this month's Sugar High Friday (scroll down to March 27th) theme is molasses. I was going to submit to creations, but then I realized that it would likely lead to seasoned food bloggers coming to my sad little food journal, and I would be embarrassed by it's amateurish nature. So, I made the dessert anyway, but I'm not submitting it for everyone to see. Anyway, that's why I made molasses desserts, now everyone knows, and I will move on to a new post documenting dinner.
I started my cooking for the day making "Outback Steakhouse Honey Wheat Bushman Bread" from a "copycap recipe I found online. I actually found more than one, but the link above is the one I used. I started with this because I knew it would take a while to let the bread rise, so I wanted to get started early. I had never made bread before (other than things like banana bread and pumpkin bread which are very different from breads made with active yeast.) Anyway, I wasn't sure exactly what to expect since I was new to the process. I recently acquired a bread maker from North Carolina, and I'm eager to try it, but for this recipe I had to cook my bread in small loaves in the oven. I followed the linked recipe exactly except I did not add food coloring to make the bread the right Outback color because I didn't really care what color it was, and didn't see any specific benefit to adding extra dye to my diet. As it was, it came out a very nice color on it's own, so that was fine. So, the conclusion is that they came out nicely in the end, but this dough is STICKY! This didn't matter until I got to the step where I was supposed to separate the dough into six portions and roll it out and make it into logs. The instructions say to "lightly flour" the work surface. I use waxed paper to reduce the mess and made a lightly floured surface to work on and lightly floured my hands as best I could. This did NOT work. I was able to separate the dough into six mostly equal portions after some serious coaxing and scraping and redistributing, but my hands ended up covered in dough and sticking to everything. Also, the dough was sticking to the lightly floured surface I was supposed to be rolling them out on and the rolling pin and my hands and everything else. I kept trying to keep things lightly floured, but it was not working. I eventually had to use lots of flour and ditch the rolling pin to stretch the dough with my hands as best I as I could and then roll it up quickly. I'm sure there is some brilliant way to accomplish this task in a better and less messy way, but I could not figure out what that would be. I also ended up adding a lot more flour because I had to flour the surface so much to make the loaves. They were not sticking together greatly, and they looked kind of funny, and I was concerned that I had ruined them. But, I pressed on anyway. I put out some cornmeal, got my hands wet and dipped the bottoms of the loaves into the cornmeal then placed them on a Silpat sheet on top of a baking sheet and covered them again to let them rise. I didn't roll the loaves in the cornmeal as instructed because I didn't think that would be very pretty, and having just on the bottom was fine. After they rose for an hour they were all stuck together, but I stuck them in the oven and baked them that way. They came out nicely. It didn't rise as much in the oven as I expected it to, and I wasn't sure how it would taste, but they were really good. One loaf was devoured immediately when the guys saw it. By the end of the evening we had eaten almost 2 whole ones (despite how they might look in the picture, they are not huge). Everyone was really happy with the results, they had a great flavor, I was happy. Here are two pictures of a few of the loaves. One is with flash and the other is without. I included both because the flash picture makes the bread look kind of shiny (which it is not) but the other picture made the bread look so dull, and it isn't, it looks beautiful in real life. It really is difficult to photography food. Anyway, here they are:
While I was waiting for the bread to rise I made molasses crinkles. Once again, I followed this recipe exactly except that I rolled the cookies in turbinado sugar instead of just doing the tops. I really love these cookies. They are chewy on the inside and so good with the crunchy sugar pieces. Here is a picture of the results:
The only thing I would have done differently is cook them on a silpat sheet, but I only have one in my possession, and it was under 6 loaves of bread at the time I was baking these cookies, so I really couldn't get it out from under them to use it. This led me to believe that I should have two silpat baking sheets, but I'm still trying to convince Dad of this. It makes a huge difference, and it would have kept a few of my cookies from being slightly burned on the bottom.
The final molasses thing I made yesterday was molasses ice cream. Dad just got me a used automatic ice cream maker from Joni, so I decided to break it in with this. It was incredibly easy and came out great. Dad and Jon complained while it was freezing that it smelled very molassesey, and didn't think they wanted to have much of it, but when it came time for dessert and they both tried it, and were both quick to go for seconds. Dad said I should use the cookies and make molasses ice cream sandwiches, he loved it. Here is how it looked with a cookie:
Now let me explain my molasses binge. Every month the food bloggers come together online to make themed dishes. I've always enjoyed reading the results because everyone makes something different with their own twist and it's great to see how one set of ingredients or instructions can be interpreted so many different ways. Since I've just started writing my own food blog instead of torturing my normal journal readers, I thought about participating in one of these monthly things to inspire my cooking and give myself a purpose in writing this. So, this month's Sugar High Friday (scroll down to March 27th) theme is molasses. I was going to submit to creations, but then I realized that it would likely lead to seasoned food bloggers coming to my sad little food journal, and I would be embarrassed by it's amateurish nature. So, I made the dessert anyway, but I'm not submitting it for everyone to see. Anyway, that's why I made molasses desserts, now everyone knows, and I will move on to a new post documenting dinner.
posted by Erin at 12:52 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home