Our Daily Bread

Our Daily Bread

 Honey Whole Wheat

Our absolutely favorite "go to" bread for every thing from having it with meals to your favorite sandwich.  It is easy to make and has a delicate wheat taste.  I baked it in my pullman pan and my intentions were to have a nice squared top pullman loaf but obviously, there was too much dough in the pan and by the time I checked it, Poof, it was already above the top of the pan, so I baked it to dome......who cares as long as it tastes wonderful right.  This recipe is from the Harvest Forum at Gardenweb and my friend Annie in particular.  This recipe makes two large loaves or really three small ones.  I usually halve the recipe and make one very large loaf. You won't be sorry you tried this loaf.  It's impossible to tell much about a loaf of bread from pictures and especially if it's just a picture of the loaf, so he's a picture of the crumb.  I just ate a sandwich and it turned out great.

The Crumb 

Honey Whole Wheat Bread

INGREDIENTS:
• 3 cups all purpose flour
• 3 cups whole wheat flour
• 2 pkg. active dry yeast
• 2 tsp. salt
• 1 cup milk
• 1 cup water
• 1/2 cup honey
• 3 Tbsp. oil
• 1 egg
PREPARATION:
In large bowl, combine 2 cups all-purpose flour, 1 cup whole wheat flour, the yeast, and salt and mix well.
In saucepan, heat milk, water, honey, and oil until a thermometer reads 120-130 degrees F (warm)
Add liquid mixture to flour mixture and stir to combine. Beat this batter for 3 minutes. Then, gradually stir in rest of whole wheat flour and enough remaining all-purpose four to form a firm dough.

Sprinkle work surface with flour and knead dough, adding more flour if necessary, for 5-8 minutes until smooth and satiny. Place dough in a greased bowl, turning the dough in the bowl to grease the top. Cover and let rise in a warm place about 1 hour, until double in bulk.

Punch down dough and divide into 2 pieces. On lightly floured surface, roll or press each piece of dough to a 14x7" rectangle. Starting with shorter side, roll up tightly, pressing dough into roll with each turn. Pinch edges and ends to seal and place dough, seam-side down, into greased 9x5" bread pans, making sure short ends of bread are snugly fitted against the sides of the pans. Cover and let rise in warm place until the dough fills the corners of the pans and is double in bulk, 30-40 minutes.

Bake in preheated 375 degree oven for 35-40 minutes, until bread is golden brown. Remove from pans and cool on wire racks. I like to brush the bread with butter when it's still hot from the oven for a softer crust.
Now, all I do is put the wet ingredients on the bottom, the dry on the top, and press the "dough" button. The machine does all the work.

Struan Bread

 Struan Bread

 This big beautiful loaf is called Struan Loaf and it is not only good but good for you.  It bakes into this huge loaf and would be ideal for baking in a dutch oven.  This has become one of my favorite breads.  I am not sure that I remember where I got the recipe but my guess would be at the The Fresh Loaf.  It is a website dedicated to baking bread and is made up of experts and novice bakers.  I assure you that anything you need to know about bread and it's many different types and styles you can find at this website.  From regular yeasted breads to sourdoughs and yeast water breads.  Yeast water is a new to me fascinating way to bake bread.  I promise a whole page on it soon.  In order to give you accurate information, I double checked the website and found the recipe that I use.

This is not what I call our daily bread which is a Whole Wheat Honey loaf but it is a bread that I love to make and we really enjoy.  Especially so since it is so full of grains and good for you.  More on Honey Whole Wheat later. 

Here is the recipe for Struan and I will add that while the recipe calls for polenta, oats and wheat bran in the original recipe, you can use any good grain that you want.  I have a 10 grain flour from Bob's Red Mill that I love to use and use any of his cereal grains instead of the listed items.  The more grains you can get into your diet the healthier you will be. And here is the crumb.

Struan Bread

Makes 1 large loaf or 2 small loaves

Soaker

3 tablespoons polenta

3 tablespoons rolled oats

2 tablespoons wheat bran

1/4 cup water

Dough

3 cups unbleached bread flour

3 tablespoons brown sugar

1 1/2 teaspoons salt

1 tablespoon instant yeast

3 tablespoons cooked brown rice

1 1/2 tablespoons honey

1/2 cup buttermilk

3/4 cup water

topping

1 tablespoon poppy seeds
Mix together the ingredients for the soaker. Cover and allow to soak for at least half an hour or as long as overnight.
In a larger bowl, combine the dry ingredients, then stir in wet ingredients and soaker. Add more flour or water until the dough can be formed into a ball that is tacky but not sticky. Place the ball of dough on a clean work surface and knead it for 10 to 12 minutes, then return it to the bowl. Cover the bowl with plastic wrap and allow the dough to ferment until doubled in size, approximately 90 minutes.
Remove the dough from the bowl, degas it gently, and split it for two loaves or shape it as is for one. Place the loaves in greased bread pans, spritz or sprinkle water on top, and sprinkle a handful of poppy seeds on top.
Cover the pans loosely with plastic and allow the loaves to rise until doubled in size again, approximately 90 minutes.Bake these loaves at 350 for 40 to 60 minutes, until the internal temperature is around 190 degrees. When ready the loaves will be quite brown on top and will make a hollow thud when tapped on the bottom.

Try this loaf and I think you will agree it is absolutely wonderful.

Prince William's Grooms Cake

Now tell me is there anyone out there that didn't drool when you saw the Grooms cake prepared for the wedding.  It is basically made of rich chocolate and cookie bits, McVities  to be exact which is called a biscuit in England.  The biscuit is a cookie but not an overly sweet concoction more like what we get as a cookie similar to an animal cracker type cookie.  The recipe is at the

Since my husband John's birthday was right around the corner, I decided to make the Chocolate Biscuit cake for him.  It turned out very good and is a wonderful rich treat.  The recipe makes a small cake and I am sure that is because it is very rich.  The wonderful thing about it too is that because it is basically cookie encased in chocolate, it just doesn't go stale.  The cake I made was small and we were still nibbling on it a week later. 

I got the recipe from Oprah . Com when she had Darren McGrady on her show.  he was a former chef to the Queen and often prepared the cake for Prince Williams afternoon tea with the Queen.  How cool for a Grandmother to have afternoon tea with her Grandson.

Chocolate Biscuit Cake

Recipe courtesy of Darren McGrady
Oprah.com   |   April 28, 2011

This cake is so good that Prince William chose it as his groom's cake for the royal wedding.

Servings: Makes one 6-inch round cake (8 portions)

Ingredients

• 1/2 tsp. butter , for greasing
• 8 ounces Rich tea biscuits
• 4 ounces unsalted butter , softened
• 4 ounces granulated sugar
• 4 ounces dark chocolate , for the cake
• 1 egg

• 8 ounces dark chocolate , for coating 
•  
• Mine didn't look as beautiful as Williams Grooms Cake but I carefully followed the recipe and I can tell you it was or is delicious.  Here's the interior of the cake, you can see why it would be so good with a cup of tea or glass of milk.  It's like eating a big chocolate cookie.

Cuban Bread

The wonderful part of being retired is that it affords you the opportunity to do what you damned well please and that means we play a great deal.  I have always loved baking bread and now I have become obsessive about it.  When I read labels on anything, including bread, if I can't pronounce what it's made of, I don't want to eat it.  I have reached a point where I bake just about every day only because I love it.  If not every day then three or four times a week just to keep up with the bread that we need.

My husband is from Tampa and has a "thing" for Cuban bread.  He loves it and I often make it for him.  I realized a few days ago that I hadn't made him any for awhile now so I hit the kitchen and made Cuban bread.  I am a Mississippi/Arkansas redneck so what do I know about Cuban bread but I do know that I can find any recipe I need on the internet.  I finally settled on the bread recipe from "Taste of Cuba" to use for my baking. I don't think you can go wrong with this recipe.  Tampa bakers make a long slender baguette like the ones pictured here  and Miami bakers make a thicker baguette more like what we all recognize as French bread.  Not in taste but in size.

I don't have the Palmetto fronds that they use in Miami and Tampa to put down the center of the bread to make it uniquely Cuban but I substitute a piece of kitchen cord or I use one of our local plants which works just as well.

 

As you can see this local plant works really well.  I flip the baguette over and let it rise with the plant strip down the center and then I roll it off the parchment onto a baking stone after it has finished proofing so that the palmetto is on top. My oven isn't big enough to make the long long Tampa baguettes so mine are more like a cross between Tampa and Miami.   It is a lot of improvising but it all works and  pleases me immensely when my husband takes a bite and says....."You made Cuban bread"...You know your are eating Cuban bread when you take a bite and the crust scatters all over the table in front of you.  It is crusty and flaky at the same time..

Here are pictures of the bread ready to go into  the oven.  

And right out of the oven.

F

From Wikipedia 
Cuban bread is a fairly simple white bread, similar to French bread and Italian bread, but has a slightly different cooking method and ingredient list (in particular, it generally includes a small amount of fat in the form of lard or vegetable shortening); it is usually made in long, baguette-like loaves. It is a staple of Cuban-American cuisine and is traditionally the bread of choice when making an authentic Cuban sandwich.

The only thing better than a slice of Cuban bread with a cup of Cafe con Leche (preferably at the Tropicana in Tampa) is a Cuban sandwich.  The Tropicana has a great sandwich but honestly, there are dozens of places in Tampa where you can get a great Cuban sandwich.  You have to decide if you want it pressed or unpressed...I love mine pressed, they put your sandwich in a press and make it crusty and the cheese is all melted......John prefers his unpressed but either way, they are DeeeeeeeeeeeeLISH!

Godfather Ridge

Chapter 1--The Journey

After six years of working and living in MA, we retired and headed home to Kerrville, TX..what a wonderful feeling to put the working years behind us and head out for our new life in TX. The property is there waiting on us and and the home we are going to build.... it was an exciting trip home....We visited friends and family at every chance but we didn't stay long at any stop because we were anxious to get this chapter, maybe the final chapter, underway....Mr. Gee unlocking the front gate for the first time was such fun.....



The trip home was momentous in itself...traveling with our little old Doxie, Candy and our "Cat", Charlie wasn't exactly pleasant ... Candy, somehow got locked in a bathroom while we were unloading luggage and since we had paid for one pet and didn't declare the other, we were hesitant to call the office for help...One credit card yielding husband handled it just fine...I didn't ask where he acquired that skill....

Our Beloved Charlie, sweetheart that he is disappeared for nearly 8 hours....we were ready to pack up and leave without him when we couldn't find him after a number of hours. After searching all day for the wayward cat we headed back to the hotel to rest and I was stretched out on the bed resting when he popped up out of no where...Arghhhhhhhhhhhhh I can't tell you how happy I was to see him and mad at him at the same time...He had spent the last 12 hours under the bed...yes we looked under the bed but didn't believe he could get under there...Don't ask...he did and that's it...

It's hard to believe that we were so excited about this piece of property...It was going to be home forever. Granted it needed a lot of work and we needed to do something about living quarters before we could even think about building our home. This is what greeted us on our arrival...our shed, that for all practical purposes, we would be living and working out of for the next upteen months....and our overgrown 5 acres .

Opening the door and checking it out was a real experience....but we made it all the way to TX and now we just get ourselves organized and wait for the Household goods to arrive....


I think we found home...or should I say heaven...It seems like a million years, and a million moves but we made it....we are home...we are going to build our retirement home here on Godfather Ridge...How cool is that?

We are going to live in this shed and in an RV that we have purchased while we build our home. The RV should be here within a day or so...we just have to get the RV site cleaned and somewhat level and get the electrical hookup ready...both pretty big jobs ...


Shannon is helping us here to clear the RV space. Doesn't look like much but you know what, It feels like heaven. This is where our RV Home is going to sit for the next year while we bring Godfather Ridge to life....It's feeling really good about now...

And now the electrical......We were fortunate to have electricity on the property already but we had to have a connection to where the RV is going to be parked....we're getting down to business here at the ranch....Let there be light!



And our new home arrives......Here she comes.....Home sweet Home!




It's been a really long day and the first of many many to come...Mr. Gee started right away managing the affairs of Godfather Ridge...The one thing he is known for is keeping people on their toes and Godfather Ridge needed lots of managing....This picture with service trucks lined up behind him is so typical of what our life was to become for the next long ....long...months.
Just like our years of retirement, life on Godfather Ridge is just beginning and promises to be quite the ride...