Potato Buttermilk Bread

 When I baked bread for the week on Saturday, I wanted to try something a little different. My kid's like the buttermilk bread that I occasionally buy at  the store. Since I had a quart of buttermilk that needed to be used A.S.A.P., I thought I would try to recreate it at home.  I couldn't find a recipe that was quite what I was looking for, so I combined a couple of recipes and created my own. The bread actually turned out great!!! It was soft (from the potato flakes), had a little tang to it (from the buttermilk), and had a fabulous texture (not crumbly at all). My family ate most of a loaf for toast Sunday morning. I will definitely by adding this recipe to the bake often file!!

Potato Buttermilk Bread

(makes two loaves)

5 1/2 - 6 1/4 cups bread flour

2 1/4 teaspoons yeast

1 cup potato flakes

2 1/2 cups buttermilk

2 tablespoons sugar

11/2 tablespoons butter or shortening

1 1/2 teaspoons salt

1. In a large mixing bowl combine 2 1/2 cups flour, yeast, and potato flakes.
2. In a medium saucepan combine buttermilk, sugar, butter/shortening, and salt. Heat and stir until mixture is warm (shortening is starting to melt, but not completely melted).
3. Add warm liquid to the flour mixture.
4. Beat mixture with a electric mixer on low for 30 seconds, scraping the sides of the bowl.
5. Beat  mixture on high for 3 minutes.
6. Stir in as much of the remaining flour as possible; until  a medium dough forms.
7. Turn dough out onto a floured surface and knead until the dough is smooth and  elastic. Add flour in small increments, if necessary, to keep dough from sticking to the kneading surface.
8. Place dough in a greased bowl (turn dough over once to grease the top). Cover and let rise until double (about an hour).
9. Divide dough in half . Form into loaves and place in greased loaf pans.
10. Cover loaves and let rise until dough is one inch above the pan
11. Bake at 350 for 25 - 30 minutes
12. Remove from loaves from pans and cool completely on a wire rack.

This bread works great for toast and as a sandwich bread.

Honey Whole Wheat Bread

 Lately, I have been experimenting with baking whole wheat, high fiber bread. This has proved to be a tricky challenge. The more fiber you add into the bread the denser it becomes. My family has issues with dense bread. They have only been eating  whole wheat bread, if it is mainly made from white flour with a little whole wheat sprinkled in (the big babies). I came across a recipe for Honey Wheat Bread in this month's issue of Taste Of Homes Healthy Cooking magazine. It looked promising! I baked up a batch, yesterday, and it was fabulous! The family ate it without complaint (Woo Hoo)!  I did tweak it a little bit to add more fiber ( I calculated it at 5 grams of fiber per slice).  Here is the recipe that I used (of course, you can find the original recipe HERE):

Honey Whole Wheat Bread

(makes two loaves - 16 slices each)

4 1/2 teaspoons yeast

3 cups warm water; divided

1/2 powdered milk

1/2 cup honey (you could substitute brown sugar)

1/2 cup + 1 tablespoon wheat bran

1/3 cup + 1 tablespoon ground flaxseed ( I like Bob's Red Mill Ground Flax Meal)

2 tablespoons butter or canola oil

2 teaspoons salt

4 cups whole wheat flour

4 tablespoon wheat gluten

3 - 3 1/2 cups bread (or all purpose flour)

1. Dissolve yeast in 1 cup warm water (add 1 teaspoon of sugar to feed the yeast). Let yeast sit for 5 minutes.
2. In a large mixing bowl combine 2 cups very warm water, powdered milk, honey (or brown sugar), oil (or butter), and salt.
3. Add whole wheat flour, wheat bran, ground flax seed, wheat gluten, and one cup of bread flour to the liquid mixture.
4. Pour dissolved yeast on top of flours.
5. Beat together until smooth batter forms (about 3 minutes)
6. Stir in the remaining flour until a soft dough forms (it will be sticky)
7. Dump dough onto a floured surface and knead (about 6 - 8 minutes) until a dough is smooth and elastic; adding white flour as necessary to keep it from sticking.
8. Place dough in a greased bowl. Cover with a dishtowel, and let rise until double (about 1 hour).
9. Punch down dough, divide in half, and shape into two loaves.
10. Place loaves in two greased 9x5 bread pans 
11. Cover loaf pans and let rise until dough has risen 1 inch above the rim of the bread pan (about 30 minutes).
12. Bake at 350 degrees for 30 - 40 minutes or until golden brown
13. Remove baked bread from pans (lay loaves on their sides) and cool completely.

Home Made Hamburger Buns

Today I made up a batch of  Parker House Roll dough to turn into home made buns. I am a big fan of using this roll dough for making homemade buns. The rolls are fluffy and stay fresh for several days.They taste so much better than the store bought kind! It took a couple of tries to get the size and shape right. The first try I cut them out with a biscuit cutter, but when they rose they were still too small for the hamburger patties (Oops!). Not long ago, I was looking through a cookbook and saw a tutorial for shaping rosette rolls. I thought it would work great for shaping hamburger buns. After the dough has risen for the first rise, punch the dough down and divide the dough in half.

1.  Roll the dough out into a rectangle.

2.  Use a pizza cutter to cut the dough into sections.

3.  Divide the dough into eight section.

4.  Cut each of the eight sections into thirds.

5. To make each hamburger bun, lay the three sections side by side

.

6. Overlap the three sections to start the braid.

7.  Braid the three sections together like you were braiding hair.

8.  Twist the braid into a circle to form the bun. Pinch the ends of the roll onto the dough to secure.

9.  Place rolls onto a greased cookie sheet, and allow to rise until doubled (about 45 - 60 minutes).  

10. Bake according to the recipe. When they are done baking, you have snazzy looking hamburger buns!

Tonight's rolls accompanied BBQ Chicken, but they are great with grilled hamburgers, sloppy joes, or any BBQ style sandwich. My kid's like to use them to make hoagie sandwiches or peanut butter and jelly for school lunches.

Another Baking Day

 Bread prices seem to be on the rise in my area, lately. Even a loaf of cheapy store brand bread is well over a dollar a loaf now. On the upside the rise in baked good prices have strengthen my resolve to continue to bake our bread (and other baked goods) from scratch. It's not always easy to find the time to "whip" up a batch of bread or rolls. Of course, yesterday we ran out of bread, so the choice was made for me. A baked a double batch of white bread. Yes, the children put a united front and requested (okay, begged) that I make white bread this week instead of wheat. Being a sucker for "puppy dog" eyes.....I caved. I also baked a double batch of banana bread to use up a half dozen bananas that went from green to black over night. The troops are banana bread junkies, so there was not a lot of complaining from them.In fact, they ate it with homemade applesauce for breakfast this morning.

In my quest to reuse and recycle what I have. I discovered that pulling apart a cereal box liner and laying it flat works wonderfully for covering my rising dough, so that it doesn't stick to the dishtowel.

If I would have been thinking clearly last night, I would have photographed it laying on top of the rising loaves of bread (Oops!!). I folded it up when the dough was done rising, and placed it in a Ziploc bag in the fridge to use next week. Using the cereal liner saved me using up waxed paper (which I have to pay for)!

Baking Day

I mentioned in an earlier post that I was going to start baking more from scratch. I came to this decision for several reasons: it's healthier (Dear Daughter's emergency gall bladder surgery in December has really gotten me thinking about all the additives in the food we eat.), it's cheaper ( I like bread with some body to it, and all the kinds we like to eat have gone up in price. I can bake a loaf for about $.67 or buy a loaf for $1.67. Plus if  I have odds and ends of  fruits and veggies, they can be pureed and put in muffins or quick bread.),  baking for me is a stress reliever ( I know that sounds  bizarre, but measuring, mixing, and seeing the end result makes me a Happy Little Camper. Plus, kneading that bread helps vent those frustrations!) Yesterday was the official baking day for the week. At the end of the morning I had baked:

 Parker House Rolls

I shaped half the dough into larger rolls to be used for buns. Child #4 likes to take the "buns" slathered with peanut butter and jelly in his lunch.

Whole Wheat Bread

I have a confession! It is not totally whole wheat, yet. I figured if  I exposed my family to the joys of  TOTALLY WHOLE WHEAT bread suddenly, they might have a stroke. Instead, each week I am going to substitute one more cup of whole wheat flour vs. white flour into the recipe. TIP: If you make Totally Whole Wheat bread adding one tablespoon of Vital Wheat Gluten for each cup of whole wheat flour will help keep your bread light and fluffy (and increase the chances of your family eating it). 

Oatmeal Cinnamon Bread

I found this recipe on The Frugal Girl's blog.  I consider her a baking guru, and I haven't found a recipe of hers I didn't like. The family gave this bread a two thumbs up, in fact, one of the loaves disappeared. as soon as the kid's got home from school.  It tastes just like a cinnamon roll (delish!!!). If you notice the ugly loaf in the middle, the recipe says it makes two loaves, but when I rolled the dough up to put in the loaf pan it seemed awfully large.  I ended up cutting  part of the dough off of the ends and smooshing them together into a third pan. If you make this recipe plan on three loaves ( I'm sure you have a neighbor or friend who would LOVE to take the extra loaf off your hands!).

As, I mentioned in this week's menu post, I used the leftover mashed potatoes from Sunday's dinner in the dough for the whole wheat bread and the oatmeal cinnamon bread. I added one cup of mashed potatoes into the wet ingredients before adding them to the dry ingredients (you may end up adding in about an extra half cup more flour as you mix the dough together). Adding potatoes into yeast bread dough helps make the bread soft, and it will stay fresh much longer. If you don't have leftover mashed potatoes, just add 1/2 cup of potato flakes in with the first cup of  flour.

Potato Refrigerator Dough

Awhile back I was reading the Tightwad Gazette, and came across Amy Dacyczyn's entry for having a stash of refrigerator dough in the fridge for last minute baking needs. I thought this was a genius idea! The only problem was she did not include the recipe. She only mentioned that the recipe could be found in any pre 1986 Better Homes and Gardens Cookbook. Drat! My BH&G cookbooks is a 2003 edition. I searched in vain at the library, but no dice! There oldest edition was from the late '90's. I had almost given up hope, but when my Grandmother passed away I inherited her BH&G cookbook. Grandma's edition of the BH&G cookbook was copyrighted in .......1953! Can you tell that Grandma loved her BH&G cookbook, as much as I love mine?

I flipped to the bread section, and there was the recipe I had been searching in vain for! Hurray! Of course, being a busy gal, I put my treasured cookbook keepsake on the shelf, and forgot to try the recipe (Silly me!).

That is until this week!  Since I am still participating in The Eat From Your Pantry Challenge, and I knew the recipe required ingredients that are pantry staples at my house, it was time to give it a try!!!! I whipped the dough up on Monday night and put in the fridge. On Tuesday I rolled out half the dough and shaped them into rolls to go with beef stew. I really wanted to post this recipe on Wednesday, but the troops ate all the rolls before I could take a picture (they are that yummy!). On Thursday, I turned the other half of the dough into rolls to go with Baked Potato Soup (and photographed them right out of the oven before they were snatched up!). The last roll went into Child #4's lunch today, as a PB&J. The beauty of this recipe is that the dough will last in the fridge for a week, so you do the work once and enjoy the benefits all week long! I couldn't wait to share the recipe with all of my favorite bloggy friends!!!!!

  

Potato Refrigerator Dough

2 1/2 teaspoons of active dry yeast 
1/2 cup warm water 
1 cup milk scalded 
1 cup hot mashed potatoes ( I used instant that I made from package directions)
1/2 shortening or butter; softened
1/4 cup sugar; divided
2 teaspoons salt
2 beaten eggs
5 to 6 cups all purpose flour

Sprinkle 1 tablespoon of sugar over warm water. Add yeast to warm water and set aside until yeast is bubbly. Combine milk, potato, shortening, sugar, and salt in a large mixing bowl. Let sit until wet ingredients are lukewarm. When ingredients are lukewarm, add in yeast and beaten eggs. Mix in 1 1/2 cups flour and beat until mixture is smooth. Cover bowl and let mixture stand in a warm place for one hour; until mixture is full of bubbles. Stir in 3 1/2 to 4 1/2 cups more flour to make a fairly stiff dough. Turn dough onto a lightly floured surface and knead until smooth and elastic (about 8 - 10 minutes). Place dough into a large greased bowl with a lid. Grease the top of the dough. Place lid on bowl and refrigerate dough overnight before using. The dough will stay good in the fridge for one week. 
To use the dough; remove the desired amount of dough out of the bowl (punch down remaining dough and return to the fridge until ready to use). Let sit on a lightly floured surface for 7-10 minutes. Lightly flour dough and roll out. Shape dough into desired shapes and place on a greased cookie sheet. Cover dough with greased wax paper and a dish towel. Let raise in a warm place for 1 to 1 1/2 hours, or until double in size. Remove wax paper and towel. Bake at 400 for 15 to 20 minutes. Yield 3 dozen rolls.

This dough could also be use to make:

• Breadsticks (Roll dough into a rectangular shape and cut into strips. Place dough strips on a greased baking sheet. Brush with melted butter and sprinkle with garlic powder and Parmesan cheese. Let raise and bake at 400 for 10 -15 minutes)
• Cinnamon rolls (Roll dough into a rectangular shape. Brush with melted butter. Sprinkle with 1/2 cup sugar mixed with 1 tablespoon cinnamon. Roll up jelly roll style. Cut into 1 inch rolls. Place close together in a greased baking pan. Let raise until double. Bake at 400 for 15 - 18 minutes.
• Let your imagination run wild. Use could use this dough in a ton of different ways!

No baking post would be complete without a couple of frugal tips! Here are a few items I used to make this project easier!

 

• A electric heating pad works great for providing a warm place for your dough to rise. Just set your bowl or baking sheet on the pad and turn the temperature control to low. Works like a charm! 
• An empty Parmesan cheese container filled with flour works great for flouring surfaces. Flip the lid open to the sprinkle side and gently shake out the amount of flour you need.
• Wax paper sprayed with cooking spray and laid over the dough as it raises will keep the dough from drying out, keep your dishtowel from getting grease stains, and it lifts off the raised dough easily without ruining it.
•  A pizza cutter works great for cutting dough. It rolls easily without stretching the dough out of shape.

This is the perfect make ahead recipe for those of you who will be making rolls for Thanksgiving dinner this year!