I’m a bit shocked that I don’t have a Cobbler recipe posted here yet. I’ve been playing with this dessert for a few years, and have come up with a recipe that is highly sought after. I make four of them for a friend as a donation to a local church during their “Bazaar”. Apparently folks have been scouting for them. I (ahem) personally think it’s pretty good.
I’ve been making a peach and blueberry version, but this works with just peaches, or just blueberries, or just about any other like fruit. I bet even apples could be used. I’ll have to try that.
The recipe is pretty much dead simple – only 9 ingredients. Since there’s 1/2C of sugar and 1C of flour, I measure out two 1/2 C of flour to save dirtying a cup. Yes. Engineers think like that.
My recipe card indicates that this recipe originated with Betty Crocker, who taught me to cook eggs in a Griswold skillet when I was about seven. (I remember cooking in one house but not the prior one, so I’m estimating.) I really started learning to cook by helping my mom.
Preheat your oven to 400F.
The Fruit Part: 4-5 C fruit 2 C (1 pint) blueberries 3 T cornstarch 1 T lemon juice 1/2 C sugar
The Dough Part: 1 C AP flour 1/2 T baking powder 1/2 t salt 3 T shortening 2/3 C milk
Assuming peaches as the fruit, the peels must be removed, most easily by blanching in boiling water for two minutes. The skins will slip right off reasonably ripe fruit. Right now (end of June 2024) 90 % of the peaches are rock hard, wherever they’re getting them. It’s worth the time to find riper fruit. Slice the peach flesh from the pit (I don’t bother trying to halve the peaches) and combine with the remaining ingredients. Cook the peach mixture until the mixture thickens and bubbles.
(Here is where I deviate – I add in a pint of blueberries that have been picked over for stems and debris. Add them to the mixture and cook for about a minute or two. No need to adjust the sugar.) The hot fruit mixture helps cook the bottom of the crust, so don’t skip this step. I have. Don’t.
Combine the dry ingredients and cut in the shortening until the mixture is crumbly. I don’t know. That’s what all the recipes say.
Pour the fruit mixture into a 9″ x 9″ dish (I use glass or Fiestaware). Mix the milk into the rest of the dough ingredients, making a smooth, thick batter. Coarsely cover the fruit mixture with the batter. Go ahead. Be fanciful.
Bake the cobbler for 25-30 minutes (depending on your oven) until golden brown.
Let cool for 20 minutes and serve with ice cream or whipped cream.
I kind of got bored with sourdough bread, and I’m not the one who really likes it, so the starters have died off and I haven’t made any sourdough bread in over a year.
I was looking for a bread recipe that would be easier, but still great to eat. My brother-in-law, Larry, just loves my bread, so I bake weekly to keep him supplied. He turned his son onto my bread as well, so I added another weekly loaf. Larry sits with his grandchildren on Fridays, so I bake on Thursday and truck the bread up to Larry. (OK, I also grow lettuce and microgreens, and bring some of that along as well).
I’ve been working on the recipe for over a year, and only in the past couple of months added some shortening. It softens the bread, allows it to stay fresh for another day or so, and even seems to give the bread a bit more chew.
This recipe scales well. I have an index card with an ingredients table for one to three loaves. That table is reproduced here:
1
2
3
Flour
600
1200
1800
Water
360
720
1080
Salt
12
24
36
Yeast
6
12
18
Shortening
20
40
60
Quantities for up to three loaves
The flour I use is King Arthur Organic Bread Flour. I use spring water, fine sea salt, Fleischmann’s Active Dry yeast, and Crisco shortening. I’m truly serious about the flour, and semi-serious about the yeast. Other ingredients can be generic. I buy Crisco out of habit, and buy organic flour not for any perceived health benefits, but for the benefit of the pollinators, without which we would not survive. I find that the shortening does not need to be cut into the dough – it will just mix in nicely. I heat the water in the microwave to about 100F. This offsets the cold of the kitchen and gives the yeast a bit of a jump start.
One loaf is just a little small for the KitchenAid mixer’s dough hook, and two loaves is just a bit too large. Three loaves is out of the question, so I just mix and knead the dough by hand until it’s smooth. I proof the bread until about double, then divide the dough into equal parts, and grease the pans with bacon grease left over from breakfast. The loaves are shaped and put into the pans, and after the final proof, the loaves are scored and baked at 425F for 38-41 minutes in the middle rack. That’s in my oven. Your oven will definitely behave differently.
I haven’t gone over what I use to make the sourdough. Most of it was already on hand just because we cook stuff, but there were a few specialty (read “expensive”) items that aren’t really needed…
One piece of gear you will absolutely need is a kitchen scale that reads in grams up to 10 kilograms or so. Weighing ingredients is much easier than trying to measure by volume. Another smaller scale that reads in tenths or hundredths of a gram is also helpful for weighing salt ( and occasionally, yeast).
I keep and grow my starter in pint canning jars. (Actually, I’ve found that a particular brand of pizza sauce comes in a perfectly-sized jar that oh-so-handily mates with canning lids.) I keep three jars – one for the current culture of sourdough, another for the next culture (daughter, if you will), and a third to grow a batch of starter to make a leaven. [1]
Hopefully a large bowl is obvious. I use a smaller bowl to make the leaven. I have a couple of plastic shower caps that came from (I think) Caesar’s Palace in Las Vegas that I use to cover the bowls between steps. Plastic wrap works.
[1] There’s an engineering method called the “Rubber Duck Technique”, which posits that if you can explain what you’re making to a rubber duck, then you fully understand what you’re doing. In explaining my need for three jars to you (as proxy for the rubber duck), I realized that I really only need two jars.
While I’m thinking of it, I’ll work up what I do to make sourdough bread. Sourdough, to me, anyway, is the technique of using wild yeasts and bacteria to leaven bread. (Don’t be confused. There is a step in which a levain is created. This is just the French term for a pre-fermented portion of the dough. It creates a great deal of flavor.) Sourdough bread does not need to be sour. That one of the aspects that can be controlled. I don’t like the sour bit so much, so I try to control it out to a certain extent.
Anyway, this is my method. The recipe varies somewhat, and follows. These instructions produce two loaves of bread. It’s going to be a bit different this time around as I’m making one loaf and however many rolls I can get out of it for Thanksgiving. Rolls for Thursday means baking on Wednesday. Which means I start on Sunday.
Note that most of my measurements are in grams, not cups and teaspoons. There are two primary reasons for this, and they likely have equal weight, if I’m perfectly honest. One, weighing everything helps in reproducibility. I can make the same bread every time if I’m within a gram or two. Two, I’m lazy. I can weigh everything into one bowl. No cups or teaspoons to wash. And, I don’t have to fiddle with or worry that I’m not getting just the right amount of flour into the cup. (Given my tendency to leave the dishes for Peggy, this results in a higher level of matrimonial bliss.)
Day -3: (baking in three days) Feed the starter and build the bulk starter. I only keep a starter of about 50 grams, and I need 100 grams to make the levain. So I “step up” the starter, and call it bulk starter. I don’t know what other people call it. If I baked more often, I would just keep a bulk starter going all the time, but I’d have to bake every three or four days to justify it.
Day -2: (baking in two days) Make the levain, which is combining more flour and more water with the bulk starter. This will ferment overnight and create a huge amount of flavor. This step also increases the amount of yeast available to make the bread rise. In bakers’ terms, this is a “pre ferment”, in that a portion of the dough (the levain) is fermented prior to making the bread.
Day -1: (baking tomorrow – making the bread today) Autolyze the remaining flour, which allows the development of gluten without all that tedious kneading. All that work your mother taught you to do is only hydrating the flour. Just letting it sit for two hours does the same thing. Go have a coffee. Make the dough by combining the autolyzed flour, salt, and levain. Fold the dough twice to provided structure and tension to the dough. Proof dough until about doubled in size. Divide dough into loaves and pre-shape into rough loaves. Shape dough into final loaves and place in tins or bannetons Proof dough – tins until ready to bake, bannetons just shy of that Refrigerate dough in bannetons (or bake the bread in tins)
Day 0: (baking today) Preheat oven to 450F Pull bread out of fridge Score bread Bake bread with steam Let bread cool
These are my ingredients: fine sea salt – it dissolves more easily than the coarse stuff spring water – filtered would also work, but geez, avoid the stuff with chlorine in it. flour – Not just any flour, though. I use bread flour, what the British call strong flour. It’s simply flour that has a relatively high protein content, from 12-14%, versus 9-11% for all purpose (AP) flour. Whole wheat flour adds texture, flavor, and protein. Whole wheat is also the base of my starter. Rye adds flavor (that apparently some of us don’t like so much.) The amounts are included below, but here is a list of the flours I use, just to be organized: King Arthur Organic Bread Flour (12.7% protein) King Arthur Organic Whole Wheat Flour (13.8% protein) Bob’s Red Mill rye flour
John rants: I use organic ingredients not because I think they are superior to, or in any way are more healthy than, “ordinary” foodstuffs, though that’s probably true. I use organic whenever I can to protect the pollinators, all of which are endangered by the indiscriminate use of pesticides.
Bread doesn’t stick to the basket when dusted with a mixture of rice flour and bread flour. Bread slides on the peel when the peel is dusted with cornmeal. (So that’s why my bread has cornmeal on the bottom…) Bob’s Red Mill cornmeal Bob’s Red Mill rice flour
Now, to make bread:
To make the bulk starter(Day -3)( 10-15 minutes):
5 grams starter (50/50 mix of whole wheat flour and spring water)
60 grams whole wheat flour
60 grams spring water
To make the levain(Day -2)(10-15 minutes):
100 grams bulk starter
120 grams spring water
180 grams bread flour
The autolyze (Day -1)(15 minutes):
75 grams rye flour
75 grams whole wheat flour
620 grams bread flour
530 grams spring water
Finally, the dough ( Day -1)(30 minutes):
20 grams fine sea salt
The starter is a 50/50 mix of flour and water (give or take whatever biological action take place), so 100 grams of starter is 50 grams of water and 50 grams of flour. Thus the levain consists of (180+50=230) grams of flour and (120+50=170) grams of water.
To that we add another (75+75+620=770) grams of flour and 530 grams of water, totaling 1000 grams of flour, 700 grams of water, and 20 grams salt.
In so-called “bakers’ percentage”, this dough is considered 70% hydrated, because there is 70% as much water by weight as flour : 700 g water / 1000 g flour = 70%. Salt is usually added at about 2% of the flour weight – 20 grams in this case.
Now the details. The times are merely rough guidelines. Your kitchen may be warmer or colder than my kitchen, and temperature matters. A lot. Warmer kitchens tend to promote faster yeast and bacterial action. Not surprisingly, colder kitchens slow things down. So this is a game of watching the dough, listening to what it’s telling you. All ingredients are at room temperature, which varies probably 60-70F during the winter in my kitchen.
“20” g water“20” g flour and a bit of “before” starter
Day -3: Making the bulk starter is easy. If you feed your starter at the same time, there’ll be no extra dirty dishes. It’s the only sensible thing to do. My recipe calls for 100 g of starter for Day -2. 60 g of whole wheat flour and 60 g of spring water are combined with a bit of starter. Mix it well and loosely cover for about 24 hours. Tomorrow there will be enough starter to make the levain. These pictures are clearly of making the starter. The bulk starter is just three times bigger. I tend to do this step before going to bed.
Day -2: Still a pretty easy day, making the levain. Measure out 100 g of bulk starter into a bowl. Measure out 120 g of spring water, and mix well with the starter. Mix in 180 g of strong white flour until all of the flour is combined and no dry flour remains. Cover and leave for 12 hours or so. I also do this before going to bed to allow breadmaking to start after breakfast. Yes, retirement is nice.
Levain is ready
Day -1: Making the bread consists of a number of steps, each of which is easy. We just have to combine them. Your levain has been growing for about ten hours, and will be in peak shape in another two. It’s time to autolyze the flour. Weigh out 770 g of flour – my normal mix is 75 g rye, 75 g whole wheat, 620 g bread flour – into your bread bowl. Weigh out 530 g of spring water. Weigh out 20 g of fine sea salt. I measure the salt at this point because I forgot it once. Never forget salt in your bread. Never. Really. Never.
Mix the water and flour until all the water is absorbed and there are no dry bits of flour. This is the autolyze step, which allows gluten to develop without all that tedious kneading your mother taught you. Cover the bowl and go have a coffee, or run an errand.
Spread out and dimpledLevain spread out
Autolyze for thirty minutes to two hours, then turn the dough out onto a wet counter. Wet your fingers, then spread the dough out into a large rectangle, like making pizza.
Dimple the dough with your fingertips, and sprinkle the salt evenly over the surface. Turn the levain out onto the dough, and spread it out evenly.
Folding over the doughFolding levain into the autolyzed dough
Use a bench scraper to fold the dough from the edge to the center, overlapping to contain the levain, keeping your fingers wet to keep the dough from sticking too badly.
Pull the dough toward you, stretching it, and fold it back over itself. Turn the dough, and repeat this folding action until the levain is mixed in and the dough is a homogenous mixture. Scrape the counter clean and place the dough in the bowl to rest for 20 minutes.
Spread out like a pizzaEdges folded inAnd folded in again
The next two steps are simple folds: wet the counter and your fingers again, and turn the dough out. I like to spread the dough out like a square pizza. Then I fold one-quarter side to the middle, then the other quarter to the middle.
Ends folded inAnd folded in againThis the “good” side now
Fold the ends in toward the middle again, then fold that. Put the dough back into the bowl for another 20 minute rest, with the outside of the fold facing up. This is now the “good side” of the bread.
After resting for twenty minutes or so, do another fold as before. Put the dough back into the bowl for proofing again with the “good side” up. Leave the dough in the bowl on the counter until it has about doubled in size. Flour the counter, flour the dough in the bowl, and turn the dough out onto the counter. Weigh the dough and cut into two equal portions. Preshape each portion into a rough loaf, cover, and set aside to rest for 20 minutes.
Place the loaves in bread tins for baking after another proof. When the bread has again almost doubled in size (the crown should be peeking out of the bread tin), it’s time to bake. 375F for 30 minutes? I am guessing. I’ll have to test that.
Or, place the loaves in bannetons, wicker baskets made for proofing and fermenting sourdough bread.
The bannetons are dusted with a mixture of wheat and rice flour, and the loaves are place good side down.
After the bread has about doubled in size (the dough should yield to a finger, and should not spring right back), the bread is refrigerated at least overnight, to develop flavor as it continues to ferment. The action of the yeast is reduced, but the lactic acid bacteria that produces the sour taste continue to work. Longer fermentations produce more sour taste due to more bacterial action.
After their overnight stay, the loaves are scored and baked on a preheated pizza/baking stone at 450F for 40 minutes. Steam is added at the beginning of the bake (a cup of water in a preheated Dutch oven lid) to ensure a crispy exterior. Alternatively, a round boule can be baked in a preheated Dutch oven. When the oven beeps to indicate it’s up to heat, the cast iron Dutch oven will still be cold – give it at least a half hour. Then roll the boule out onto a square of parchment, score, and lower it into the Dutch oven and cover. Bake for 20 minutes, remove the cover, and bake for another 20-25 minutes.
Scoring the crust of the bread creates a path for the bread to expand while it bakes. If you haven’t supplied an easy path by scoring, the expansion will occur in random places – this rarely makes for a pretty loaf of bread. I use a razor blade, and try to cut at least 1/2″ (12mm) deep into the crust. Shallow cuts can be decorative, but a deep one is needed for expansion. Bread baked in tins don’t require scoring, as the sides of the tin prevent expansion out, to it has to go UP.
There is a lot more detail to it in practice, but following these steps will result in bread. And pretty good bread at that. It will only improve.
The heart of sourdough bread is the starter, which is a mix of flour and water that contains wild yeasts and bacteria. These yeasts and bacteria, rather than commercial yeast, provide the leavening so the bread rises.
It’s easy to keep an established starter happy and healthy. It might seem wasteful (this can be addressed), but the starter has to be “fed”, a misnomer I think meant to confuse the novice. What really happens is that a little bit of the “before” starter is added to a mixture of flour and water to make the “after” starter. This process is repeated every three or four days at room temperature. Refrigeration will slow things down, but I’m not experienced in that – I once put the starter in the fridge when I was gone for a week. It lived. That’s all I know.
But my starter began as 100 g each of spring water and King Arthur Organic Whole Wheat flour. I just mixed that up and put it in a pint canning jar with a loose lid. Yeasts and bacteria that naturally exist in the flour were activated. Subsequent feedings increased the microorganic population, and after a week or so, the starter was ready to use.
John Rants: Many will say that the yeasts “in your environment” are what makes “your sourdough” special, but mostly it’s wheat-specific yeasts that live on the wheat plants. Kind of like nature, right? Huge variety, to be sure, but I don’t think it’s “you”. But I was a software engineer. What do I know?
Continued care of the starter consists of feeding it every three days or so. I will with clear conscience admit that I have let this slip to likely a week. Three-day-old starter is nice and bubbly, and smells yeasty and a little sour. Seven-day-old starter looks like it’s died and smells like old socks. But feed it. It’ll be fine.
My feedings occur primarily when I think of it, but fortunately I keep the starter on the kitchen counter, so it’s never too far out of sight. In a pique of experimentation, I created a starter using whole wheat flour. My prior starter was based on strong bread flour, and worked quite nicely, but I wanted more flavor. I was surprised to see that the newly-created whole wheat starter showed signs of activity after only two days. I fed it generously (100 g water / 100 g flour / teaspoon of “before” starter) once again, and after two more “normal” feedings, I was making bread.
A “normal” feeding involves weighing out equal parts water and flour (20 grams is my goal, but it’s tough to pour grams of water). I hit 21 this time (below). So I used 21 grams of flour simply to make it equal parts. And then I mixed in just a tiny bit of “before” starter. I’ll cover that loosely and set it aside for two or three days.
“20” g water“20” g flour and a bit of “before” starter
When it’s time to make bread I’ll build a large starter in addition to a normal one. For my bread recipe I typically need 100 g of starter, so I’ll branch off with 60 g water, 60 g whole wheat flour, and a teaspoon or so of “before” starter, and the next day that’ll be ready to make the levain. So much more “before” starter is used because there’s a lot more flour to consume, and this large starter has to be ready on time. I allow a day for this large starter to be ready.
It’s getting pretty clear I’m going to have to get one of those cool blogging cameras…
I saw an episode of The French Chef with Julia Child recently, and she divulged a recipe for this dish. I don’t know what she called it, but Peggy actually liked it (surprise!), so that’s what we named it.
I don’t measure so much for this dish. I scale it according to the number of people, and season to taste. That being said, here’s a “recipe” for two people. That’s what I cook any more, so that’s the scale of my recipes.
1 zucchini 1 T butter 1 T chopped onion 1 T flour 2 T cream Salt & Pepper to taste 1/8 t nutmeg
Grate the zucchini. Lightly salt the zucchini (use great discretion) and drain in a colander. Reserve the liquid.
Melt the butter in a skillet. Add the drained zucchini and onion, and saute.
When the zucchini is nearly done, mix in the flour and reserved liquid, add the cream and nutmeg, and complete seasoning with pepper and maybe just a bit more salt.
I was never a fan of “sourdough” bread, although Peg loves it. Always up for a challenge (and nice guy that I am) I tried to make some.
Retired as I am, I have plenty of time to watch videos on YouTube, hundreds, if not thousands of which are on the subject of baking sourdough bread. The YT channel that most resonated with me was ChainBaker, a bloke named Charlie who taught me how to make the starter from just water and flour, to making some pretty good bread.
I don’t try to get the bread really sour, per se, rather I use the wild yeast to do the leavening. And I am still learning how to control how the bread comes out.
I just realized I have a pending post from at least a year or so ago (this is 1 SEP 2022), so I’ll post it and continue…
I have been doing a bit of baking during the pandemic, and I’ve been a little experimental while I tried to settle in on a “standard” recipe. I am very close.
Being an engineer warps me a little bit, and watching British baking shows hasn’t helped normalize me, so I tend to make my recipes in milliliters and grams, especially for bread recipes. Flour absorbs water, and that changes it’s weight-to-volume ratio, making it difficult to properly measure flour with a measuring cup. So I use a kitchen scale. I got it at Walmart for about $11. It weighs in grams and lbs:oz, so it’s quite handy.
The provided weights are approximate. If you end up with 53 grams of honey, nothing bad happens. 12 grams of yeast? OK. 510 g of flour? No problem.
The recipe is relatively straightforward, though I do use bread flour and honey, as well as canola oil. You can used all-purpose flour, sugar, and any other oil you have on hand. Bread flour has a bit more protein than AP flour, so makes a bit nicer, chewier bread.
I have been specifically using Bob’s Red Mill Artisanal Bread Flour, and Fleischmann’s Active Dry Yeast. I bought a pound package of yeast in October 2020, and it’s still in use seven months later, though I did get another package the other day. I use active dry yeast because I’m used to it – and – it shows in the proofing stage that it’s still alive. No guessing.
The other really weird thing about this recipe is that I start it in a cold oven. I use the oven for proofing and raising, then just start baking when that is done. Stay tuned for instructions.
Recipe:
275 ml tap water 50 g honey 10 g yeast 10 g Kosher salt 20 g canola oil 500 g bread flour
Grease a standard bread loaf pan. I tend to use bacon grease for this part of the job. It’s what my mother-in-law Evelyn used when Peg was growing up, and the smell of bread with bacon grease makes Peg smile. My job is to make Peg smile, so I use bacon grease. (I also coat the loaf in bacon grease after baking to keep the top supple.)
Measure out the water. Place the measuring cup on the scale and zero (tare) it. Add 50 grams of honey. I microwave the the cup for 50 seconds to get 110-120F water in the cup. Mix in the yeast and set it aside.
In your (one – count ’em – one) mixing bowl, weigh out 10 grams of salt, 20 grams of canola oil, and 500 grams or so of flour. By now the yeast mixture should be active, with a layer of foam over the top. If not, your yeast is dead and you need to make a trip to the store.
Otherwise, mix in the yeast. I just fold it in with a scraper until it’s mostly incorporated, then turn the whole thing out onto a clean surface. Scrape the bowl clean – we’ll be using it for proofing in a few minutes.
Incorporate all loose flour into the dough, and knead the dough for five to seven minutes, until the dough is relatively smooth. The dough should be not quite sticky.
Gather the dough and form into a ball – it should be slightly larger than a softball at this point. Cut a deep (1″) cross in the top of the dough ball (it’s to make the rise more uniform), place it in the bowl, and cover with a clean tea towel or cloth. Put the bowl in a cold oven, and place a pan of hot water (1 quart/1 liter) in the oven next to the bowl. Let this proof for 30 minutes.
Once the dough has doubled in size, turn it out on the counter and flatten it out into a rectangle. Roll the rectangle into a loaf shape. Make the loaf pretty and place in the greased bread pan.
The loaf pan is covered with the tea towel and placed in the oven with new hot water, and allowed to proof until it’s just about 1-1.5″ above the pan rim. Remove the hot water, remove the towel, and make decorative and functional cuts into the bread’s crust if desired. A single 0.5″ deep cut down the center lets the bread rise nicely while baking.
Turn on the oven to 350F, and set a 40 minute timer. Assuming your oven is like mine (it’s within 5F), the bread will be done at that point. Remove from the oven, remove from the pan, and cool on a rack. When still warm but cool enough to handle, brush the top of the loaf with butter (or bacon grease 🙂 ).
Banana Bread – Straight-up Betty Crocker recipe from the 1976 version of the Betty Crocker Cookbook. There doesn’t appear to be a publishing mark in the book, but this is the cookbook I bought for Peggy in Christmas of 1976, the year we were married. My mother had a Betty Crocker cookbook, and by gum, Peggy would have one, too. This is one well-used cookbook!
I thought I had a better photo…
2 1/2 C All-purpose flour
1 C granulated sugar
3 1/2 t baking POWDER (that’s 1 T, 1/2 t for those keeping score at home)
1 t salt
3 T salad oil (I used canola)
3/4 C milk
3 bananas, mashed up (about 1 C) [1]
1 egg
1 C chopped nuts (I used pecan)
Preheat oven to 350F. Grease and flour two small loaf pans (or one large loaf pan).
Let the mixer mash the bananas. Mixing slowly, add in the oil, egg, and milk. Add the sugar, nuts, and salt. Mix in the flour and baking powder, combining all well.
Divide batter evenly between the two pans. If you’re an annoying geek like me, you’ll use a kitchen scale to get the weights equal. To within 1/10 of an ounce. :).
Bake for 50 – 60 minutes, until a skewer or knife inserted in the center of the loaf comes out clean.
Please. Let it rest for a few minutes.
Enjoy!
[1] While the original recipe calls for 1 cup of mashed banana (about 2-3 medium), I find that there is no such thing as a medium banana. Also, as an engineer (and a damned Yankee), I don’t like waste, so I use three bananas. It’s about a cup. I know. Betty Crocker is rolling in her fictional grave.
Ordinarily I’d just get some brown-n-serve rolls at the market, but to mix things up, I decided to make rolls from scratch.
There are only the two of us this year, so I’ve shot for a dozen rolls, which is severe overkill. My research involved nothing more than pulling down our trusty Betty Crocker cookbook from 1976. The recipe for their brown-n-serve rolls was halved and slightly modified, ending up with a yeast-rich dough:
one packet yeast (Red Star instant today)
3/4 C tepid water – just warm – definitely not hot – shoot for about 100F
2 T fat – I used bacon fat today, because – bacon
2 T sugar
1 t salt
2 1/4 C bread flour
The original recipe calls for all-purpose flour, shortening, and half milk-half water mixture.
The mixing for this can be done by hand, but when one has a KitchenAide with a dough hook…
Dissolve the yeast in the warm water with the sugar and let it sit for a few minutes. If the yeast is alive it will start to foam, and the bread will rise. That’s important. If it doesn’t, get new yeast. Don’t waste your time.
Add the salt, fat, and about half of the flour to the mixing bowl and mix until a smooth batter is achieved. Gradually add most of the remaining flour until a soft dough is formed.
Flour a surface and turn the dough out onto the flour. Knead for five minutes, adding more flour if the dough is still sticky. Place dough in a greased bowl and cover with a damp tea towel. Place in a relatively warm, draft-free area, and let the dough rise until it’s about twice its volume, about 1-2 hours.
Punch the dough down to release the gas that’s built up, and divide the dough into twelve equal portions. Form each portion into a ball, stretching the dough to the bottom, pinching the dough sealed there to form a smooth roll surface. Place rolls in a muffin tin. Cover with the tea towel again, and let the rolls rise again, until about doubled.
Brush rolls with melted butter ( or bacon fat, because – bacon), and bake at 375F for about 15 minutes.
I recently found some elderberry jelly at a folksy roadside stand, and boy do these play well… oh, yeah, we had to test some of the rolls.
N.B. These rolls were not done in muffin tins. Nor were they created under the most auspicious conditions for yeast bread. They were half through the second rise when we had an unexpected trip to the Emergency Department in Boston, so they suffered an interrupted rise. The crumb was not as good, the texture was just OK, but they sure do taste good.
I’ll check back in after Thanksgiving…
I didn’t take many pictures on Thanksgiving. I think I was busy. I need an entourage… But this time, I used the muffin tin, and they turned out beautifully, but no photo, no proof. I didn’t get a picture of the turkey, either, and it should have been a turkey pin-up, it was so pretty.
I had a bear of a time with the other two packets of Red Star yeast. Neither of them rose! I ended up at the market with the choice of Pizza Yeast or a pound (a pound) of proper yeast. I know the shelves are rather sparse, but that choice was asinine.
I found in subsequent batches that using about 2 C of the 2 1/4 C of flour in the initial mixing is just about right. The other quarter cup can be kneaded in as necessary to get the right dough texture.
