When I first decided I wanted to learn how to make bread, I started with a bread machine and a recipe I found online.  I’ve been using the recipe for years now.  For the most part, the basics of the recipe haven’t changed, though I have tweaked it slightly to suit me over the years.  I use only unbleached white flour now as I like how it tastes the best.  I also like the consistency of the bread loaf.  I long ago quit using molasses as I find it makes my dough too gummy.  As well, I’ve graduated from the breadmaker to the regular oven.  It’s my go to basic bread recipe.  It only lasts a few days before molding, so by day 2 I slice it up and freeze the remainder, toasting as I need it during the week.  I make a loaf about once a week and absolutely adore it.

The other great thing I like about this recipe is it is basically a dump it in the mixing bowl and mix recipe.  I don’t proof the yeast first, unless its a bit older and I’m not sure of its freshness.  The ingredients are simple and ones I always have in the house.

• 2 oz (3 tbs) butter
• 1.5 oz (2 tbs) honey
• 0.4 oz (1+ tsp salt)
• 0.9 oz active dry yeast – This equals to 1 packet or 8 grams
• 11.5 – 12 oz (1 1/2 cups) water
• 18 oz (4 cups) unbleached white flour

The only “prep” you need to do to this recipe is to measure out your butter ahead of time and melt it.

Place your mixing bowl on a scale.  First, add the liquid ingredients.  Pour 11.5 ounces of water into the bowl.  Tare the weight. Next, add the honey and butter, taring the weight after each addition to measure the next.

After the final wet ingredient has been added, tare the weight and measure the flour into the bowl.  Tare the weight again.

Measure the salt and yeast into the bowl, taring the weight after each to measure the next.

Add the dough hook to the stand mixer and turn onto the lowest setting allowing the machine to begin mixing the ingredients.  As the ingredients mix and turn from wet glop to an actual dough, the machine will sound like its having trouble mixing.  Step the speed up once or twice to continue the kneading.

As the dough kneads, you’ll find that is picks up the bits that have stuck to the sides of the bowl.

As you continue to mix the dough, it should completely clean the sides of the bowl.  If the dough sticks to the sides, it needs more flour.  Add a tablespoon of flour at a time until it comes away from the side of the bowl.

Cover the mixing bowl with a towel or plastic wrap and allow the dough to rise.

The first rise takes about 60 – 75 minutes.

Once the first rise (or proofing) is done, sprinkle your work surface lightly with flour (just a tablespoon or two).

Turn out the dough on to the work surface and knead the bread for 3-5 minutes.

Shape the dough to roughly match that of the bread pan you plan to use.

Place the dough into the pan, and using your fingers gently press it to the corners of the pan.  I do this to try to shape it close to the size of the pan.

Cover the pan with a towel and allow it to complete its second rise.  This normally takes about 45-60 minutes for me.

After the second rise, score the top of the bread.  With a sharp knife, start at one end of the bread…

and cut a line down the center.  Or the best “center” you can get.  As you can tell, mine is a bit off.  I do this only about half the time.

Bake bread in a 400 degree oven for 25-30 minutes.  Once baked, remove from the oven and allow it to rest for a minute or two until you can comfortably handle the bread pan with potholders or a towel.  Turn out the bread and place on a baking rack or trivet with holes.   Bread should be allowed to rest for 30 minutes before cutting into as the center still bakes a bit.  However, do not leave the bread in the bread pan as it cools.  If the bread bakes properly, it pulls away nicely from the pan, sliding out of the pan easily.  If left in the pan, that space between the bread and the pan builds up with heat and condensation as the pan cools quicker than the bread, causing the bottom of your bread to become wet and mushy.  Remove the bread from the bread pan and cover with a towel while it cools.

Once the bread has rested for 30 minutes, slice with a bread knife and use it. This is a sandwich I enjoyed in recent weeks: turkey burger on homemade bread with “grilled” pineapple and avocado. Oooh, mama mia, I need another!

I hope you end up loving this bread as much as I do.

Happy Baking, everyone!  ~Jenn of Not Exactly Bento

Basic Sandwich Bread
adapted from 50% Whole Wheat Bread Recipe from Food.com

Basic Sandwich Bread
adapted from

Ingredients:

• 2 oz (3-4 tbs) butter
• 1.5 oz (2 tbs) honey
• 0.4 oz (1+ tsp salt)
• 0.9 oz active dry yeast – This equals to 1 packet or 8 grams
• 11.5 – 12 oz (1 1/2 cups) water
• 18 oz (4 cups) unbleached white flour

Directions:

• Melt 2 oz (3-4 tablespoons) of butter in a microwave. Let cool slightly
• Place your mixing bowl on a scale. Tare the weight on the scale.
• Add each of the following items to the mixing bowl, taring the weight after each: water, butter, honey, flour, salt, and yeast.
• Add the dough hook to the stand mixer and turn onto the lowest setting allowing the machine to begin mixing the ingredients.
• As the ingredients mix and turn from wet glop to an actual dough, increase the speed of the stand mixer.
• As the dough kneads, you’ll find that is picks up the bits that have stuck to the sides of the bowl.
• As you continue to mix the dough, it should completely clean the sides of the bowl. If the dough sticks to the sides, it needs more flour. Add a tablespoon of flour at a time until it comes away from the side of the bowl.
• Cover the mixing bowl with a towel or plastic wrap and allow the dough to rise. The first rise takes about 60 – 75 minutes.
• Once the first rise (or proofing) is done, sprinkle your work surface lightly with flour (just a tablespoon or two).
• Turn out the dough on to the work surface and knead the bread for 3-5 minutes.
• Shape the dough to roughly match that of the bread pan you plan to use.
• Place the dough into the pan, and using your fingers gently press it to the corners of the pan. I do this to try to shape it close to the size of the pan.
• Cover the pan with a towel and allow the dough to complete its second rise. This normally takes about 45-60 minutes for me.
• Once the second rise is complete, score the top of the bread with a sharp knife, if you desire. This is optional.
• Bake bread in a 400 degree oven for 25-30 minutes.
• Once baked, remove from the bread pan and cool on a baking rack or vented trivet (about 30 minutes). Cover with a towel while it cools.
• Once the bread has rested for 30 minutes, slice with a bread knife
• Enjoy!

I hope you end up loving this bread as much as I do.

Happy Baking, everyone! ~Jenn of Not Exactly Bento

© Jenn for The Feisty Foodie, 2011. | Permalink | 4 comments | Add to del.icio.us
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Which is how I rang in 2011 … with a lime pound cake.  I happened to have a bottle of organic lime juice (yes, a bottle! It’s actually pretty decent- not from concentrate but nowhere near as good as fresh, of course) on hand and wondered if it was going to be lime-y enough.

In the past, I’ve had varying degrees of success with pound cakes.  Some were dense and not buttery enough, others were crumbly and dry, and others were just bad.  I wanted to make one that was moist, dense but not heavily so, and flavorful.  Confession time: I like Entenmann’s All Butter Loaf and it was that product’s dense lightness that I was looking for.

Ingredients

Creaming the butter and sugar together

It turned out pretty great!  Not nearly as buttery as I’d like but I’m not complaining.  The only thing I’d do differently is replace the lime juice with a tablespoon of vanilla- the lime didn’t really come through (I’d need grated lime zest for that), though it did brighten up the flavor of the cake.  It was dense, but not heavy, sweet but not too sweet, and to my surprise, it had a crisp, crackly top that I wasn’t expecting but was a very pleasant addition to the cake.

Sour Cream Lime Pound Cake

3 cups cake flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter, room temperature
3 cups sugar
6 eggs, room temperature
1/2 cup fresh lime juice
1 cup sour cream

Preheat oven to 325°F.

Grease 16-cup tube pan, including the tube. Dust pan with cake flour; tap out excess flour.

Sift flour, baking soda and salt into medium bowl.

Using electric mixer or stand mixer, beat butter in large bowl at medium speed until fluffy. Gradually add sugar and beat 5 minutes. Add eggs 1 at a time, beating just until combined after each addition. Beat in lime juice.  Gently mix in dry ingredients, then sour cream. Transfer batter to prepared pan.

Bake cake until tester inserted near center comes out clean, about 1 hour 20 minutes.  Let cake cool in pan on rack 15 minutes.

Carefully run a flexible knife around the sides and tube, place cooling rack over pan and invert.  Invert again onto another cooling rack so that the cake stands right side up.

© The Blind Baker NYC for The Feisty Foodie, 2011. | Permalink | 7 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: cake, dessert, sour cream lime pound cake

Look at this array of goodies!  My cookie booty is laid out on the holiday napkin Yvo used to wrap her Sea Salt Milk Chocolate Chip Cookies (just to the left of the red Chinese take-out box) and she even included non-baked morsels of awesomeness: smoked almonds & dried cherry bark, sea salt Kahlua caramels, candied orange peels, and a star-shaped sugar cookie with its respective owner’s initial piped on top.  Yeah, she’s fancy like that.  I love having friends who go all out!

Some people might think it weird to sprinkle sea salt on top of a chocolate chip cookie, but believe me, it is a wonderful and simple way to bring out the warm caramel-iness of this classic while giving a satisfying crunch.  Genius!  The edges had a beautifully crisp snap while the center was chewy.  It’s exactly the texture I look for in a good chocolate chip cookie, and this was good for sure.  I teased Yvo about the lack of chocolate in the cookie I tasted as soon as I got home but to be fair, it was the only one that was missing its chocolate chips; the rest were only a little light on chocolate.  At first, I was a bit dismayed.  After subsequent tastings, however, I discovered that a cookie NOT chock full of chocolate was actually a bonus in this case; I was able to taste the vanilla and deep caramel notes from the brown sugar, which only served to emphasize the chocolate, and the whole cookie just tasted…better.  Better than nearly any other chocolate chip cookie I’ve ever had, and I’m certain it’s because the recipe she used is a little off the eaten path. 

Here are Hungry’s Toffee and Hazelnut Cookies.  I finished the entire dozen in a day.  I cannot promise that I took a breath between bites, they were so fantastic.  I love baked goods with nuts in them and the hazelnuts in these were fragrant, crisp, and a gorgeous complement to the bits of toffee scattered with careful judiciousness in each cookie.

These are KC’s Italian Nut Balls./snickers

What?  You know you were thinking the same thing!

Anyway, I’m noshing on the nut balls as I type and getting powdered sugar all over my keyboard.   I don’t really care because these things are so damned good, I’m pretty sure KC coated them in actual crack (you should taste her stromboli!).  So smooth and rich with butter and roasty-toasty walnuts, and just the right size to pop into your mouth.  The best thing is, these nuggets of fabulousness have a tender sweetness to them that doesn’t hit you over the head.  Instead, it lets you bask in the warmth of its own simplicity.  I kinda want KC to move in with me so she can cook and bake for me every day.

And my contribution?   Lavender sugar cookies.  This time, the color was more vibrant because I used lavender sanding sugar instead of granulated sugar.  The biggest difference between the two sugars is, well, size.  Another benefit to sanding sugar is the crunch and sparkliness it lends to the finished product.  If you don’t happen to have lavender sanding sugar, you can use food coloring and mix it into the sugar really really well.   And then mix some more because it’ll clump.

Our cookie exchange was the most fun I’d had in a long time.  I’m truly blessed to have friends to share my baking as well as a wonderful meal with.  I can’t wait for next year’s cookie exchange!

Merry Christmas, everyone!

Lavender Sugar Cookies

Milk Chocolate Chip Cookies

Hungry’s Toffee & Hazelnut Cookies
(Makes about 60 cookies)

Cookie Base
2 1/2 cups all purpose flour
3/4 cups sugar
3/4 cups dark brown sugar
2 large eggs
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 tsp salt
1 tsp baking soda
2 sticks butter, softened

Extras
1 bag Heath bar brickle bits (look in supermarket aisle where you find choco chips)
1 bag of chopped hazelnuts

Preheat oven to 375F.
1. Cream butter, sugar, brown, sugar, and vanilla. Add eggs. Mix well.
2. Add flour, baking soda, and salt.
3. After you mix the base, you can add any other ingredients you want. This is the same base I use for my chocolate chip cookies.
4. Shape into golf ball sizes setting about 1-1.5 inches apart on lined cookie sheet. I use a Silpat.
5. Bake 7-9 minutes depending on your oven.
6. Cool in pan on rack for at least 5 minutes. They’ll be too soft to move.
7. Remove and finish cooling on rack.
8. EAT!

KC’s Italian Nut Balls

1 cup butter
2 egg yolks
½ cup white sugar
1 tsp. vanilla
2 2/3 cups all purpose flour
1 cup walnuts, chopped
1 cup confectioners’ sugar
1. Preheat oven 350.
2. Cream butter, sugar and egg yolks until light and fluffy. Stir in vanilla, then flour and finally nuts.
3. Roll dough into walnut sized balls. Bake 10-12 minutes or until slightly brown on the bottom.
4. Roll in confectioners’ sugar while hot and then again when cooled.

© The Blind Baker NYC for The Feisty Foodie, 2010. | Permalink | 8 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: cookies, FBM Cookie Swap, Italian Nut Balls, lavender cookies, Toffee Hazelnut Cookies

I’ve told countless kitchen-wary people that if they can read, they can cook and bake.  Most of the time, it works out pretty well. But not always.  Here’s an example:

1.  When a recipe calls for 8 tablespoons of butter, melted, do you:
a) take 8 tablespoons of butter and melt it
b) melt a whole bunch of butter and then measure out 8 tablespoons

Answer: a) take 8 tablespoons of butter and melt it.

Ingredients lists usually give you the order in which to perform certain actions.  In this case, it’s directing you to take 8 tablespoons of butter and then melt it, not the other way around.  This is really important.  Cooking is a lot more forgiving of measurement errors, but baking is an exacting mistress; she relies mightily on science and proportion, and if you don’t do it her way, she’ll pimp-slap you with dense cakes, cookies that resemble rocks, and pastries as tough as shoe leather.

What about when you want to measure a dry ingredient like flour?  Use the dip and sweep method.

Dip your measuring cup or spoon into flour

Take it back out, this time filled with flour

Do not tap the cup against the counter top or shake it.  This will compact the flour (or whatever dry ingredient you’re using) and result in an inaccurate measurement

Using the back of a knife or another straight edged item, sweep it across so that it’s level with the top of the measuring cup/spoon

Voílà!  You’ve just measured flour!

© The Blind Baker NYC for The Feisty Foodie, 2010. | Permalink | 4 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: dry ingredients, how to, measure

So I broke out the ingredients and was surprised by how easily it all came together.  There’s no creaming together of butter and sugar because the butter is melted.  The biggest surprise was the addition of cream cheese; it would never occur to me to put cream cheese into sugar cookies, but add it I did.  I adjusted the recipe to my taste and made three different versions to see what I liked best: plain, pumpkin-spice, and with lime icing.  The plain and pumpkin spice won me over; the lime icing, while really tasty and easy, was gratuitous and made the cookie overwhelmingly sweet.  I’d used a light hand with the spices for the first batch of pumpkin spice sugar cookies, which seemed to please the faculty members who tried it; the Feisty Foodie family also got to try this batch, and maybe they will post with their accolades comments.  The second time I made the pumpkin spice version, I went heavier on the spices and that turned out well too.  It kind of reminded me of snickerdoodles, which I love.

This cookie dough is really soft and tender. Be sure not to overwork it!

I used my #20 scoop

Sugar and spice coated cookie dough

I flattened the dough balls as directed in the original recipe

I didn’t really love the way the cookies turned out after flattening the cookie dough balls prior to baking; they baked up flat and a bit tough.  I’m pretty sure I didn’t over-handle the dough, but I suppose you never know.   At the end of the day, I don’t think squishing the dough balls is worth the added step.

I didn’t bother flattening the cookie balls in the subsequent batches; they flatten out on their own in the oven.

Look at those crackly tops!

Closeup of the chewy, sugary, crackly goodness

This is hands-down the very best sugar cookie I’ve ever made or eaten.   I love how quickly and easily this dough comes together.  It’s on my list of goodies I’ll make over and over.

A note about the spices in the recipe: if you only have a commercial pumpkin pie spice mix, feel free to use it instead of buying everything separately.  I’d say about teaspoon is more than sufficient, but of course, add more or less as suits your taste.

Per Cook’s Illustrated: The final dough will be slightly softer than most cookie dough. For the best results, handle the dough as briefly and gently as possible when shaping the cookies. Overworking the dough will result in flatter cookies.

Pumpkin Spice Sugar Cookies
Adapted from Cook’s Illustrated

Makes 48 two-inch or 24 three-inch cookies

Instructions

1. Adjust oven rack to middle position and heat oven to 350 degrees. Line 2 large rimmed baking sheets with parchment paper. Whisk flour, baking soda, baking powder, salt and spices together in medium bowl. Set aside.  Whisk ingredients for rolling in a plate and set aside.

2. Place 1½ cups sugar and cream cheese in large bowl.  Pour warm butter over sugar and cream cheese and whisk to combine. Whisk in oil until incorporated. Add egg, milk, and vanilla; continue to whisk until smooth. Add flour mixture and mix with rubber spatula until soft homogeneous dough forms.

3. Scoop dough using a tablespoon or a #20 ice cream scoop . Using hands, roll dough into balls. Working in batches, roll balls in sugar spice mixture to coat and evenly space on prepared baking sheet, 12 dough balls per sheet.  I wanted larger cookies, so I combined two of the dough balls to make one larger ball and then spaced them nine to a baking sheet; I got 24 three-inch cookies.

4. Bake, 1 tray at a time, until edges are set and just beginning to brown, 11 to 13 minutes, rotating tray after 7 minutes. Cool cookies on baking sheets 5 minutes. Using wide metal spatula, transfer cookies to wire rack and cool to room temperature.

© The Blind Baker NYC for The Feisty Foodie, 2010. | Permalink | 9 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: pumpkin spice sugar cookies