My 23 year old son is home from his job as a cruise ship musician. He plays saxophone on a huge ship traveling all over the world. When he returns for a little time off, I try to treat him to his favorite foods and breads. Today being St Patrick's Day in the US, I'm certain he is singing Irish tunes at one of Milwaukee's many Irish Pubs. I thought some of you might appreciate the humor in the picture he just sent me. Apparently some one gave him a slice of home made beer bread so he asked for the recipe. Here it is written out on a piece of paper and photographed with his cell camera, directly into the heart of dear ole dad's kitchen. What better use for technology!

It looks like a quick bread. Maybe I'll use a bottle of dark beer and swap a cup of WW to give it some tooth. He'll need that tomorrow, no doubt.

Eric

In the middle of the week,  I decided to make some bread after returning from 2 full days of meeting,  I need to de-stress.  Picked up Bernard Clayton's book and saw this attractive name - Feather Bread.  I wondered if this is the same kind of bread that I had at the restaurant of the hotel that I stayed.  So,  I started late in the night.  Click here for the recipe

Well,  it didn't turn out like the bread from the restaurant,  although I shaped it like it,  it turned out tasting really good when it is fresh.

Somehow,  I realised that white breads seems to harden fast?  Rye bread taste even better as the days goes by.  I tried heating up the bread,  but it was not the same as freshly baked.

My son and I discussed that perhaps I should wait till we want to eat these breads,  have it ready in the fridge and bake it near meal times.  suggestions anyone?

My attempt of french dimpled rolls last night , I would say turn out ok.  But I felt that I had to proof longer,  this is one thing I can't seem to get it right. The dough is a little dense, or is the roll suppose to be like that??

I went into a bakery to buy their rolls just to compare,  there's lots more holes,  the rolls felt much lighter.  As for the taste,  it was a little more salty than what I normally like,  I'd probably reduce it.  

For more details,  see attached.  

http://sites.google.com/site/jlohcook/home/breadmaking/french-dimpled-rolls

This morning after my spinning class I stopped by the local farmers market. While I was there I picked up some beautiful dark green zucchinis and immediately thought of the wonderful spicy taste of fresh zucchini bread. This recipe has been in my family for as long as I can remember - a family friend shared it with my mother ages ago. Hope you enjoy!

Zucchini Quick Bread
This Recipe will make two good sized loaves. I have often doubled the recipe to make four and find that the bread freezes well.

Preheat oven to 350.

Ingrediants:
3 Eggs
2 Cups Granulated Sugar
1 Cup Vegetable Oil
1 Tablespoon Vanilla
2 Cups (loosely packed, coarsely grated) Zucchini *
2 Cups Flour
2 Teaspoons Baking Soda
1/4 Teaspoon Baking Powder
1 Teaspoon Salt
1 Tablespoon Cinnamon
1 Teaspoon All-spice
1 Teaspoon Ground Cloves

Optional - 1 Cup Chopped Nuts
* Do not peel! The color of the bread will vary depending on the color of the zucchini. The darker the zucchini, the darker the color of the bread. Personally, I prefer a darker loaf.

1. In a large bowl, beat the eggs until frothy.
2. Add the sugar, vegetable oil and vanilla. Beat the mixture until think and lemon colored.
3. Stir in the fresh zucchini.

4. Sift together and add the flour, spices, salt, baking soda and baking powder. Generally, I tend to ignore the spice measurements and just dump them straight in. I love a strong spice flavor. When I make this bread, the dry ingredient mixture tends to be a light brown and very fragrant.
5. Add the sifted dry ingredients in two portions. Fold in the chopped nuts if desired.
6. Pour mixture into 2 oiled and floured loaf pans and bake for about one hour or until cake tester comes out clean. Cool in pans for 10 minutes.
7. Invert the pans onto a cooling rack and allow the loaves to gradually fall as they cool completely.

Hello, everybody!  

I'm eight or so days away from departing on a loooong trans-Europe camping trip, and currently I'm gathering as many recipes for baking as I can - pitas, Irish soda bread, bannock, mantou buns so far - but I have a rather silly experiment I'm like to try.  Perhaps some guidance would help...  I'll be preparing everything with a Coleman camp stove, but I have a pretty severe sweet tooth.  I also have a basic recipe for brownies, essentially flour, egg whites, joghurt or milk, baking soda and powder, sugar, and vanilla or chocolate.  It's largely a low-fat sweet quick bread, bakes for 20 minutes or until the toothpick-in-the-center method verifies it's done.  

What I'm wondering is whether it would be possible to pour the batter into a pan - a griddle pan, saucepan, cover it on the stove, and bake it that way.  Does anybody have any thoughts?  If so, what heat would you recommend?  How long would it take?  Or is this the sort of thing that would give me a tummyache?

Any help is appreciated, and until then, blessings!

Banana Bread

In addition to all the yeast breads, including sourdoughs, Peter Reinhart has also provided us with recipes for other types of baked goods. In Crust&Crumb, he has a Banana Bread recipe I tried for the first time yesterday.

Reinhart gives two methods of mixing: one if you use butter as the fat("Creaming method"), the other if you use oil ("Batter method"). I had an attack of self-restraint and used oil. I also cut down the sugar by about 1/3, because most recipes call for more sugar than I like, and cut down the walnuts by 1/3, because I didn't have as much walnuts as I thought I did. Reinhart does not call for toasting the nuts, but I did - 5 minutes at 350F.

Next time, I am going to try using less oil (Canola).

The past and future tweaks aside, this made a very nice quick bread. It is very moist and tastes delicious.

David

I decided to make dinner early for a change and needed to make some bread as well.

I began the bread so that it could rise while I was doing dinner. It began as my usual loaf, but I thought we needed more grains in our diet (seeing as I had been having porridge each morning for breakfast while I was getting used to the cold UK weather and then while the oven was broken and once it was fixed I have been eating bread for breakfast, lunch and snacks......tut tut tut)

Today I had a little triumph.

My oven has been broken for 5 days and finally the oven repair man came to replace the element....yesterday....

So, after testing the oven with lentil Pie and Steak and red wine pie (for the hubby) last night. I was ready to make some bread today.

I had made a poolish, but after a bit of a busy/mixed up day, it had been left out for too long and I decided not to use it. I had made it way too wet as it was anyhoo.

My sweet bread-loving best friend suffered a heart attack last year, and since then I've been searching for and experimenting with lower-fat, healthy versions of his favourite recipes.  This incredibly easy moist, delicious loaf, adapted from Bonnie Stern's Best of HeartSmart Cooking is not only lower in fat, but what fat it contains is mono or polyunsaturated, which boosts HDL (good) cholesterol. 

I have a friend who needs a lot of par baked bread on hand but I have been having difficulty getting the bread out at 90% baked, usually 180 F. My thermometer takes about 20 seconds or longer to show the temperature and with differing temperatures in the kitchens it's all across the scale unfortunately.

So I am looking at a Thermapen, it is expensive (120.00 CAD) but it measures temp in 4 seconds and has a good range too, -50 to +570 F.

Anyone use this item or a similar thermometer with a short temp measurement?