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May 29, 2008
Mama's new toy
The kids are asleep. We finished our last encyclopedia article and sent it in last night. So, I'm finally going to finish a blog post I started awhile ago.
A couple months ago, my grandma gave me her breadmaker that she never uses. And it's been soooooo much fun! I don't think I've bought a loaf of bread since she gave it to me.
I like the idea of making bread completely by hand. But it just takes too much time and planning for me at this stage of my life. Here, I just need to find a fun recipe, dump in the ingredients, and let the machine do its thing
I found a fabulous cookbook for bread machines. It has artisan breads, sourdough breads, any kind of baguette you could imagine, sweet breads, multigrain/whole-grain breads, etc., even some gluten free breads. Some that you bake in the oven, some that you shape in traditional ways. And fun extras like pizza doughs, English muffins, naan, pita breads, and how to make pasta doughs in your machine. The thing I love most about the cookbook is that it explains the process, why you do something or add something, the chemical reactions, and what results from it. So the recipes are more like processes than simple five step formulas. Anyways, geeking out a little here.
As far as traditional breads go, I've made an oatmeal bread, a cracked wheat (bulgur is what I had on hand) bread, a pain viennois, and a milk bread.
One night, we made pizzas together. I made one recipe of whole-wheat pizza dough, and another garlic-parmesan-herb pizza dough. It made four good sized pizzas.
We ate one pizza that night, partially baked the other three and froze them for easy meals on other nights. Much cheaper than take-out, and we piled them with lots of fun toppings.
And here's my favorite recipe so far from the book--pain au chocolat. More like a sweet roll than a croissant, but still amazingly good!
I also made whole wheat cinnamon rolls. Note to self: even if the dough is frozen, don't take it on a 14 hour car drive, unless you want swollen rolls exploding lids off containers in your trunk.
cooking stuff | By Tim and Jo | 12:35 PM
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