Teju is the best most awesome bestest-est.
She had my sisters, mom and I over for lunch today for an authentic Indian cuisine, and boy was it divine! Lentil soup and Shahi Paneer with rice and homemade wheat tortillas. This girl knows how to COOK!
During Bella's nap, my mom decided to go into overhaul, and re-organize my entire downstairs. She bought me some beautiful paintings and home decor and went crazy. We stopped at a few antique shops and thrift stores and scored some sweet deals to fill in a few blanks in my house. Thanks mom for getting my house in order and for making it feel all fung shui in here. I don't even know how to use that word. haha.
And tonight for the baby shower I helped host...
My buns.
They were off the charts good. Can I brag just this once?
Best. Batch. Ever.
For bread and rolls, I always use Camille's mom's recipe - Grandma Collett
Each time I make it, I try to make it a different way...different flour, sugar, etc.
And I think I've finally mastered it to my liking...Or maybe I just got lucky. Bread making is a lot like dealing with a hormonal, pubescent pre-teen...you never know what mood you'll catch 'em in. So maybe I really haven't mastered it. We'll see.
I usually use whole wheat flour, since it's healthier than all-purpose flour, but this time I added some spelt, rye and buckwheat to my usual WW! I had never used these flours before, so I thought I'd give it a try. You should, too! I got these flours at the Good Earth store in the bulk section, so if you're thinking of branching out of your usual tastes, try somewhere like that.
Grandma Collett's Bread, with a twist of Emily
2.5 cups warm water (i use the hot hot water that comes out of sink)
1.5 T yeast (I use SAF yeast from Winco. No "proofing" stage.)
1 T salt
.5 cup oil/shortening (i use vegetable oil)
.5 cup sugar or honey (I used half brown sugar and half white sugar. Honey is yummy tho!)
6 cups flour (I used 2 cups wheat, 1 cup rye, 1 cup spelt, .5 cup buckwheat and 1.5 cups white flour roughly)
I have used this recipe over and over, changing the sugar type and flour type each time. This most recent attempt with the above amounts of flour was definitely my absolute best batch ever.
For the flour amount, I think I actually end up using about 5 or 5.5 cups of flour. I want moist bread, so I only do about 5 cups, then add slowly after that until it's just barely not sticky. A bread scraper thingy works great for this part.
I have found that after kneading by hand for the first round, for maybe 10-12 minutes, turns out the best.(my wrists were tired!) I use the finger-poke test to see that the dough bounces back up where I poked my finger in. If it's pretty springy, it's ready to sit and rise. I just leave it on the (clean) counter for an hour, or until it doubles in size, with a hot rag on top to retain moisture and encourage rising.After it's risen, I knead it gently until most air has compressed out, then form golf ball size dough-balls and place on a greased cookie sheet or in a 9x13 pan. Sizes will vary - I put the smaller ones in the middle to give the bigger ones room to grow inward. This batch will yield about 24-28 rolls, depending on size chosen. Bake 350 for 20 mins and viola! Beautiful rolls! For bread, bake 30 mins, depending on pan size.
