Homemade Heaven

Courtesy of Joy the Baker

Have you ever tasted Heaven? Even just a little slice? Each one of the slices of bread in this picture is a little slice of heaven. All of this is courtesy of Joy the Baker. With our her, this post would not exist. If you love baking (as I do), and you have an RSS or Feed reader (i.e. Google Reader) you need to follow her blog. Conveniently, I have included the link to follow her. It is...HERE! It is definitely worth it. Now, on to my adventures in making slices of heaven in my kitchen.

Although I don't have that many pictures of my process (something I need to work on), I'll show you what I've got. Let me put this out there first. There is a total of about 2 - 2 1/2 hours of down time when making this between risings and cooling down. The wait is so worth it though.



Nothing say good like butter!



I would also recommend that you pre-stage all of your ingredients first. To bring your eggs to room temperature, set them out 30 minutes prior to starting. Or if you forgot to take them out, you can put them in a bowl of warm (not hot!) water for 5 - 10 minutes. More information can be found here. Below is the recipe I used. As I mentioned before, this is courtesy of Joy the Baker. The actual page that I pulled this from can be found by clicking on the title of the recipe. 

Cinnamon Sugar Pull-Apart Bread

Makes: one 9×5x3-inch loaf

For the Dough:

2 3/4 cups plus 2 tablespoons all-purpose flour

1/4 cup granulated sugar

2 1/4 teaspoons (1 envelope) active dry yeast

1/2 teaspoon salt

2 ounces unsalted butter

1/3 cup whole milk

1/4 cup water

2 large eggs, at room temperature

1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract

For the Filling:

1 cup granulated sugar

2 teaspoons ground cinnamon

1/2 teaspoon fresh ground nutmeg

2 ounces unsalted butter, melted until browned

In a large mixing bowl whisk together 2 cups flour, sugar, yeast, and salt.  Set aside.

Whisk together eggs and set aside.

In a small saucepan, melt together milk and butter until butter has just melted.  Remove from the heat and add water and vanilla extract.  Let mixture stand for a minute or two, or until the mixture registers 115 to 125 degrees F.

Pour the milk mixture into the dry ingredients and mix with a spatula.  Add the eggs and stir the mixture until the eggs are incorporated into the batter.  The eggs will feel soupy and it’ll seem like the dough and the eggs are never going to come together.  Keep stirring.  

Add the remaining 3/4 cup of flour and stir with the spatula for about 2 minutes.  The mixture will be sticky.  That’s just right.

Dough is ready to rise!

Place the dough is a large,  greased bowl.  Cover with plastic wrap and a clean kitchen towel.  Place in a warm space and allow to rest until doubled in size, about 1 hour.  *The dough can be risen until doubled in size, then refrigerated overnight for use in the morning.  If you’re using this method, just let the dough rest on the counter for 30 minutes before following the roll-out directions below.*

While the dough rises, whisk together the sugar, cinnamon and nutmeg for the filling.  Set aside.  Melt 2 ounces of butter until browned.  Set aside.  Grease and flour a 9×5x3-inch  loaf pan.  Set that aside too.

Deflate the risen dough and knead about 2 tablespoons of flour into the dough.  Cover with a clean kitchen towel and let rest for 5 minutes.  

On a lightly floured work surface, use a rolling pin to roll the dough out.  The dough should be 12-inches tall and about 20-inches long.  If you can’t get the dough to 20-inches long… that’s okay.  Just roll it as large as the dough will go.  Use a pastry brush to spread melted butter across all of the dough.  Sprinkle with all of the sugar and cinnamon mixture.  It might seem like a lot of sugar. 

Lots of sugar and a bit of cinnamon.

Seriously?  Just go for it.

Slice the dough vertically, into six equal-sized strips.  Stack the strips on top of one another and slice the stack into six equal slices once again.  You’ll have six stacks of six squares.  Layer the dough squares in the loaf pan like a flip-book.  Place a kitchen towel over the loaf pan and allow in a warm place for 30 to 45 minutes or until almost doubled in size.

Place a rack in the center of the oven and preheat to 350 degrees F.  Place loaf in the oven and bake for 30 to 35 minutes, until the top is very golden brown.  The top may be lightly browned, but the center may still be raw.  A nice, dark, golden brown will ensure that the center is cooked as well.

Remove from the oven and allow to rest for 20 to 30 minutes (I did not do this. Cait and I devoured about 1/2 fresh from the oven).   Run a butter knife around the edges of the pan to loosen the bread and invert onto  a clean board.  Place a cake stand or cake plate on top of the  upside down loaf, and carefully invert so it’s right side up.  Serve warm with coffee or tea.

The deliciousness!

I think this bread is best served the day it’s made, but it can also we wrapped and kept at room temperature for up to 2 days (if it lasts that long...)

As I have mentioned, this bread is phenomenal! Some of you might think that this a monkey bread. And by definition it is. But I'm a fan of the term Pull-Apart Bread personally. Now go forth and bake!
While I want to leave you with a video, I didn't feel the one I wanted was appropriate for this post. So, you can watch the video here. But for my parting remark: Let's learn the alphabet with Star Wars!

 - Brent

Thank you to Joy the Baker for the use of her recipe. I would also like to thank Bowling for Soup for their album "Sorry for Partyin'" as it was the official music of this baking experience.

The Biscuit of Zazzamarandabo

I recently made some Challah bread (which you would know if you follow my twitter @ForceBaker.) and felt that I needed to post about the experience. First off, this recipe comes from Baking Bites and the specific recipe I used can be found here. I use a 3 rope braid for all of my Challah (for now). You can use however many strands you want for your braid. You can even make it look like a continual braided circle. Here's a page on different types of braids.  On to the how-to. Let's talk ingredients.

1 tsp sugar
1/2 cup warm (110F) water
1 tbsp active dry yeast
1/2 cup oil
1/2 cup warm water
1/4 cup sugar
2 tsp salt
2 eggs
3 3/4 cups flour (and up to 1/4 cup extra for kneading)

1 egg yolk, beaten with 1 tsp water
2 tsp cinnamon (optional)

Now that we have that out of the way, onto the making of the bread.

Dissolve sugar and yeast in 1/2 cup warm water in a large mixing bowl. Let stand 10 minutes.

Add oil, water sugar, salt , eggs and 2 cups of flour to the yeast mixture.

Mix until smooth, then gradually add remaining flour until dough comes together into a ball and no longer sticks to the sides of the bowl.

Let dough rest for 10 minutes.

Sprinkle reserved flour onto a smooth surface and knead for 8-10 minutes, incorporating any of the reserved flour as needed.
Place dough into a lightly oiled bowl, cover it with plastic wrap and let rise until doubled, 1-1 1/2 hours.

Oil a baking sheet and sprinkle with cinnamon, if desired. (I strongly recommend this. Not only does the bread have a slight cinnamon taste, your house will smell delicious!)

When doubled, flour your hands and gently remove dough from bowl onto a lightly floured countertop.

Cut dough into three even sections and gently stretch them out.

Starting in the middle, braid them together.

Tuck the ends underneath the dough.

Set loaf on baking sheet.

Brush very lightly with egg wash, you won’t need all of it.

Preheat oven to 400F and let dough rise, covered loosely, for an additional hour, until almost doubled.
Bake at 400F for 30 minutes, until deep golden brown.

I like to transfer it to the wire cooling rack. It tastes best fresh from the over with some butter and jam or butter an honey. I'm working on a cinnamon sugar version (because I'm a sucker for cinnamon sugar) and will post the recipe here if I ever get it made. There is a lot of rest time in this recipe, but it is worth it. Some things I've learned are that you shouldn't make the braids too tight. If you do, it no longer pulls apart quite as nicely or easily. The biggest tip I can give you is to try to make sure your yeast is fresh. Plus if your water is too hot, it will kill the yeast. Too cold and the yeast won't activate. I know it's a pain to get the water just right, but if you can, it is so worth it.

Once again, I would like to thank Baking Bites for this delicious Challah recipe. And now, I leave you with the video for which this post is named after.


 - Brent

Liberty, Liberty, Liberty! Liberty is Hear By Granted For All Hands!

And on our left is the rare Georgia Door Handle Frog! This here is my bakin' post. Mainly this will be about the Bake Off / Cook Off that my unit had. And that I baked 3 desserts for. The picture on your left is the recipe I used for cookies. I also baked some lemon bars and Kathy's Trifle. In addition to all of the desserts, I also made some Cuban Pulled Pork... mmmm... pulled pork.Well, The night before the cook off was pretty busy. I needed to make 2 deserts, finish the Trifle and start the pork. We actually started the Trifle on Wednesday. Unfortunately, he Trifle calls for a Blamage, which Kathy buys from a British store. And to have ordered the Blamage packet, the cook off would have been over by the time it arrived. That and shipping was going to cost more than the actual Blamage.

What you see on the right is what I used for the desserts. One thing to help the time go by...music. You can check out what I was listening to here. But moving on. I was able to successfully bake all 3 desserts in a row with out going crazy. Which I think was a first. It took two days to complete all of the dishes (well, technically 3 because of the pork).

The first thing to be finished was the trifle. During that time, I need to read through a recipe a few times before actually starting it. Good thing Cait showed up to help otherwise the shipped cream wouldn't have gotten added. Speaking of whipped cream, when topping the trifle, you should always use the tubs of whipped cream instead of the cans This is because the stuff from the tubs holds up a lot better then the canned version. Moving on. Up next, the cookies! They are small chocolate cookies rolled in powdered sugar. They are delicious! And while the dough was firming up in the fridge, time to start on the lemon bars. For that, you start with the crust.

You can see the flour mixture as its falling from the sifter! As you can see, there was a lot of sifting going on. That bowl in the picture actually contained a lot more flour and other ingredients still waiting to be sifted. Which leads me to my next point. I need a bigger sifter. If you want to buy one for me, I won't complain. The scent that the dough gave off... a little bit of heaven. Once the dough was formed and placed into the containers, time to bake the crust. While this was baking, I filled a bowl with some powdered sugar and grabbed the nice and firm cookie dough from the fridge. You roll the dough into little balls, cover in the sugar and place on a baking sheet. I was able to fit 18 on to each baking sheet.

By the time that I had finished laying all the the dough out, my crust for the lemon bars was done. Time to swap. Crust comes out and cookies go in. Now lets make some curd! You can't have lemon bars with out the lemon, and I used the juice from 3 lemons to give these a nice lemony flavor. Everything about them turned out good, except for the color. And I think was due to the fact that I left out the lemon zest. Oh well.

After I made the curd... you know, curd sounds kinda gross. From now on, it shall be called the "lemon mixture." Now, as I was saying, after I made the lemon mixture (and the crusts had cooled down a bit), I poured the mixture over the crusts and did another swap. This time cookies put and lemon bars in. You can see the cookies above and the lemon bars on the right. See how the lemon bars aren't that yellow? I'm pretty sure that's due to no lemon zest. I might be wrong. If you know, please let me know. Once all of the baking was done, time to clean up catch some sleep. The next day (Friday), I was able to come home after muster and finish getting everything ready. We let the pork slow cook over night. That was a wonderful smell to wake up to.

We loaded up the car with everything and headed off to the base. In this picture, you can see me leaning over the trifle. It was pretty delicious. There were not enough actual slow cooker dishes that wasn't pulled pork to actually have its own category. So they combined the slow cooker and meat categories together. The cook off was a big hit though. We raised over $200 for the morale fund! I'm expecting some very nice Christmas prize at the Christmas party this year. Time to declare the winners. I actually won! In the meat category of all things.And what did I win you ask? I won a day of special liberty! That's pretty exciting. Our deserts didn't get any votes except from Cait and I. Oh well. I had fun cooking. And that's what matters. And now I leave you with what I looked like when I was dancing while baking. Enjoy!

- Brent

Strangeness, Silliness, and Pictures

Well all, I think this post is along the lines of needing to get in the habit of posting more often. As you can see, Savannah has her own ballerina outfit. We even found a princess wand to go with it. She loves it. She had a lot of fun the other day running around the house in it. The wand though, is sometimes used as a weapon. It seems that anything we hand her will be considered a weapon that can and will be used against us. Its okay though, she seems to understand more and more that things we hand her are not weapons. On that, it seems that most things we hand her also end up in her mouth. But she's starting to get over that. She's done pretty well on stoping bad habits on her own (for the most part).

On another front, my unit has formally announced the Cook Off / Bake Off. There are 4 categories. Meat, Casserol, Slow Cooker, and Dessert. I've got things for all but the slow cooker category. Although if you do cook a meat dish in a slow cooker (i.e. pulled pork) it will be entered in the meat category. I've got about 10 ideas for the dessert category (but are we suprised?). I've got to narrow that down to about 3. Hopefully, I'll be able to at least take the dessert category. And what are the prizes you ask? Well, the cook of the best dish in each category wins a day of special liberty (that's a day off when I choose for those who don't know) and the overall winner (the best from the final 4) gets to park in the XO's parking spot for 3 days. As you can see from the picture, Savannah is trying to select a baking pan for me to use. She's always trying to help out. As i've said before, I'll keep you posted on the contest. Recipes will be posted after everything is said and done.

Another thing we did was to install a swing on the front porch for Savannah. It was a bit tricky to figure out how we were going to do it, but Cait same up with a pretty good idea. I drilled a hole in 2 rafters and screwed a big eyelet screw into the holes, strung a chain between them and hooked the swing up to the chain. Pretty ingenious. Although I have figured out a way to help make the swing a bit more...stable. But I'm not to worried about it. Savannah loves it and it remains pretty cool through out the day. Everytime Savannah sees the swing she wants to..well...swing. Of course with the weather we've been having, whenever she goes outside the first two words out of her mouth are "hot" and "icky." Shortly after that, she's saying "inside" bringing swing-time to a close. Of course almost a soon as sh'e inside, she wants to go out back into the pool.

Here's another thing that we got for the little one. She now has more vehicles than Cait and I combined. It's kinda sad. We even re-arranged the living room so that her "new" car would have room to manevure. She loves her car. She'll put her sippy cup and a couple of possesions in the tray in back, climb in the car, wave good by and back up into some furnature. It's pretty funny. I suppose she thinks she's running away, but can't seem to get very far. She has fun though. It's just another tool for Hurricane Toddler to use while working on destroying the house. One more thing, I've made the 4th of July album available on Picasa. You can find that here. I've also created a Google profile found here. Well, I think that's it for this post. I leave you with this video from Improv Everywhere.

- Brent