Scout Baking

We've been doing quite a bit of baking for our Scouts!  Our Scoutmaster is expecting his first baby later this month, and the troop is throwing him a Baby Court of Honor (the Scout equivalent of a baby shower).

We made 3 dozen dark chocolate cupcakes.  They are filled with almond vanilla filling and frosted with baby blue raspberry frosting, topped with a chocolate fleur de lis (the scout symbol).  Recipe here.

When I say "we,"  I mean Klenda made the cupcakes, Mxyl made the chocolates, I made the frosting and filling, and everyone assembled.

We also made our daily ration of "Scout's Honor Rolls."

The main fund raiser for the troop is a charcoal chicken BBQ.  They grill half chickens and serve them with really great coleslaw, the best baked beans, and a really lousy roll.

Well that's something I can fix!  I set out to design a roll that would be the equal of the rest of the meal.

So, for the last few BBQs, we have made 300 plus rolls.  Again, that's not the royal we, everyone helps out!  We make one batch a day for 5 days to hit our quota.

These are too rich for everyday, too tender and buttery...  Mmmmmm.

Scout's Honor Rolls (64 rolls)

4 c. warm water
2 t. salt
scant 1 c. sugar
1 c. potato flakes
1 c. powdered milk
1/2 c. softened butter
4 eggs
3 T yeast
10 - 12 c. flour (I use 1/3 bread and 2/3 pastry, try all purpose)

I mix everything in the KitchenAid, leaving the dough soft and a little sticky.
Let rise until doubled (1 hour?)
I dump it out on a floured board cut it in half.  1/2 goes back in the bowl to cut up later.

That means the lump on the counter should make 32 rolls.  I cut that in half, setting aside half and keep cutting halves until I have 16 rolls.  Then I take the smaller set aside and make 16 from that.  While I'm cutting, the Zoomlians are grabbing hunks and rolling them into ropes.  They tie them in knots (get it, scouts tie knots!) and arrange them on cookie sheets while I keep cutting.

I preheat the oven while the rolls rise.  We bake at 375 for about 15 minutes, switching around the baking sheets for even browning.  As soon as they come out, we brush them with melted butter and let them cool.

When they are completely cool, we put them in batches of 20 in gallon ziplock bags and pop them in the freezer.

The night before the BBQ, we take them out to thaw.  On the big day we reheat all the rolls briefly  so that they are at their absolute peak!

And we always make one last batch for us... :)

Customizable Bread

Realistically, I don't look up a recipe, I (or the kids) just do this:

4 c warm water
3 t salt
1 T oil or butter
1T yeast
7-9 c flour

You can add sugar, ground flax seed, soy flour, wheat germ, oats, potato flakes, honey, eggs, seeds, other flours, or anything else you can think of to this recipe in place of some of the flour.

Mix it all together, knead it 10 minutes, oil it and let it rise.
Shape it into a loaf, let it rise 30 minutes, then bake it 30-40 minutes at 350 degrees.

Things I've learned:

Skipping the oil will give you a lovely crackly crust, but it will stale quickly.

Adding some milk instead of water will give you a more tender, denser "crumb."

If you add a lot of stuff you need to use bread flour, or add gluten.

You can use left over breakfast oatmeal to make oat bread, and leftover mashed potatoes to make potato bread.

A wetter, "slack" dough will give you big holes inside - lovely when toasted, or for "artisan" bread.

You can bake at 400 degrees for 30 minutes, as long as you don't have much sugar in the dough.

Dough is fully kneaded when it passes the "windowpane" test. Stretch a small amount of dough to form a flat "window." If you can see light through it, you pass, if it tears and looks ragged, you need to knead...

If you can't manage to knead it enough to make it really smooth and elastic, let it rise twice and the yeast will do it for you.

If you're pressed for time, you can put a loaf that has mostly risen (20 minutes) into a cold oven and it will finish rising as the oven heats up.

If you have time, the slower the rise, the more flavor. An overnight rise in the fridge (just slip it in a gallon ziplock bag) will give you fantastic bread - try baking it at 400 degrees and you'll get the best crust ever!

Spraying the crust with water right before you bake will give you a crisp crust with the best rise.

Buttering the crust when it comes out gives you a soft crust that kids love! (This tip courtesy of Klenda!)

Favorite Bread Recipes - and Books!

A friend just asked for my favorite bread recipe. I think I mentioned that we've made all of our own bread since I left work when Mxyl was born. That's a lot of bread recipes! How to choose? She relented and let me choose a sweet and a savory recipe.

Savory:

I could eat this every day and not get tired of it. This is from Bernard Clayton's New Complete Book of Breads which I got out of the library enough times that I eventually bought it! There aren't any eggs in it, it's from a B & B in Egg Harbor, Michigan. The weird rising pattern gives it a lovely texture.

Egg Harbor Bread

3 T sugar

1 T salt

2 1/2 c warm water

2 T soft (even melted is OK) butter

5-6 c bread flour

2T instant yeast

Dissolve the sugar, salt and yeast in the water. Add the butter. Stir in 3 c of flour and mix until absolutely smooth (100 strokes by hand, 2 minutes by mixer). Add flour 1/2 c at a time. Knead 10 minutes. This can also be done in a food processor if you have a plastic dough blade), add ingredients in the same order and process 60 seconds instead of kneading.

The secret to this dough is that it rises 5 times (but only for a total of 1 1/2 hours). You punch it down after 30 minutes, then again every 15 minutes for an hour. Then you shape it into loaves and let it rise again until doubled (45 or 50 minutes). Then bake at 400 degrees for 30 to 40 minutes. I often let it rise in the pans for 30 minutes, put it in the cold oven and then turn it up to 400.

Sweet:

This is heaven for breakfast. We often have it Christmas or Easter morning. It's from the same book. I actually like a lot of recipes from Beard on Bread (another library find), but these are my absolute favorites!

Orange Cinnamon Swirl Bread

6 c bread flour

2 T instant yeast

1/2 c sugar

1 1/2 t salt

1 1/4 c warm milk

1/4 c soft butter

1 T grated orange peel

3/4 c orange juice (or 3 T frozen concentrate with some warm water added)

1 egg room temperature

Filling: 1 T cinnamon mixed with 1/2 c sugar

Frosting: 1 c powdered sugar

1 t vanilla

4 t orange juice

Mix 2 c of flour with the rest of the dry ingredients. Add the warm milk and mix until smooth. Add the butter, orange peel, OJ, and egg. Mix well, then start adding flour 1/4 c at a time. Knead 8 minutes (or use food processor). Let rise one hour, then preheat oven to 375 degrees. Punch down the dough and gently pat it into a 15'' by 7" rectangle (you may need to let it rest 5 or 10 minutes for the gluten to relax). Sprinkle with the cinnamon sugar and roll up, sealing the end with a little water. Bake, seam side down in a greased loaf pan at 375 for 10 minutes, then turn down the heat to 325 and bake for 20 more minutes. After they cool, mix up the frosting and frost! It doesn't keep well because of the egg in the batter, but I bet you could give a loaf as a gift, freeze it (before you frost it), or make fabulous french toast from the other loaf! I usually make it the night before I want it.

I would also just like to add that the book I learned the most from was Crust and Crumb. It explained so much of the science of bread making that I was able to design my own recipes, even though I don't generally use the recipes from that book. Even if you just like to eat really good bread, it's a deeply satisfying read! Tomorrow, I'll post some of what I learned from it.

Growing Bread Part 2 of 4: Planting

The soil was ready, but what to plant? I live in cold hardiness zone 7 in Maryland and I wanted to make bread from my wheat. Bread wheat needs to be high in protein (gluten is the protein in the wheat that acts like rubber to make pockets to catch the gas from the yeast so the bread can rise) so I talked to my agricultural extension agent about what kind of wheat to grow. Hard winter wheat was the answer. Some very nice people from the wheat commission in Kansas gave me a pound of this wheat for free! I should probably mention that the ag agent and the Kansas people may have injured themselves rolling on the floor laughing at my 1/100th of an acre....

If you don't care too much about how high your bread rises, you go for the random wheat seeds sold as "Wheat Berries" in the health food section.

Still, I would encourage you to contact your ag agent (Google him based on your county) because he or she probably needs a laugh and because they can tell you things like: don't plant winter wheat (in my county) until after October 15th or it will all be eaten by a particular kind of fly!

Anyway, we scattered the wheat and let some of it fall on the path (sidewalk) where birds really did eat it very quickly, some on stony (untilled) ground and so forth. And we waited.

Growing Bread from Scratch Part 1 of 4: Soil Prep

We've been making our own bread since my oldest was a few months old, but there was that time we decided to grow our own bread from scratch. It takes some time a piece of your lawn, but it was terrific! I'd been thinking about because I was curious and then, my oldest daughter showed signs of getting ready for her First Communion. I thought it would be great to go through all those parables about sowers and reapers and tares and so on. I actually had hoped to have a home Mass and make the hosts out of this wheat. Well, that didn't happen, but it was a really great experience.

We have a side yard on a bit of a hill that I hated to mow so... that became our field. You can use anything with sun. Wheat is grass, so if you have a lawn, you can grow wheat. Since you won't starve if you don't get the maximum possible yield, it's OK if your soil is bad or you don't have full sun. If all you have is deep shade, try a smaller version in a sunny window! Dig up as much of a field as you like (or have energy for!). Just get the grass off and loosen the soil. If you are doing more than a few square feet, renting a tiller is a wise investment! We tilled ("we" being my dear dedicated home schooling hero of a husband!) 1/100th of an acre (about 15' by 30'). That gave us enough for a theoretical 60 loaves of bread. I think 3' by 3' will give you enough for at least 2 loaves if it's full sun.