Home Made Bread

[lacal]

Two secrets that were given to me are:
1. sift your flour even if pre-sifted.
2. Add yeast last.

That's it.

[Pat]

I made a quadruple batch of dough in our bread maker using a Black and Decker Beer based recipe. It is used for pizza crust, pretzels and or rolls. I had never made pretzels before and never used the Black and Decker recipe for rolls.

Yesterday I made a big pizza with three kinds of sausage, 4 cheeses, and veggies (bell pepper, minced garlic, and chopped onion) sprinkled on top (under the cheese though.)

I made 16 soft pretzels which were a tad bland but OK with spicy brown mustard with oregano, basil, etc added to it for a dipping sauce.

I made 16 rolls which came out nice.

I put minced onion, minced garlic, oregano, sweet basil, crushed red pepper, and ground New Mexico Chili Pepper in the dough for the crust. I should have put it in the dough I used for pretzels too and maybe the rolls as well but the rolls didn't need as much "help" as the pretzels. The rolls got their bottoms dippedin water dredged in corn meal to coat the bottom and their tops painted with egg white and Honey DiJon mustard salad dressing blend.

The recipe called for egg white and water mix but... like a story, if you can't improve on it in the retelling then who bother to retell it.

Looking forward to lunch and left over pizza.

Pat

[Bird]

Wow, that sounds like a major operation. The pizza sure sounds good.

[Pat]

Bird, I have made what have been called KILLER pizzas by the folks who got to eat some but... I think this one was not only in the top 10% of all pizzas I have made it was surely in the top 10 pizzas I have ever made and likely is the best one ever (It has been a while and maybe the long pizza drought set my taste buds up.)

I typically use Prego brand spaghetti sauce for the base of my pizza sauce. I add stuff to the sauce or sprinkle it on the pizza or put it in the dough or some combination of the above. The stuff I add is usually ground New Mexico chili peppers, garlic, onion, oregano, sweet basil, course ground red peppers, and such. The result is quite tasty and not really overly spicy as the list of ingredients may sound.

This is the first time I used multiple types of sausage. I used pork sausage, pepperoni, and Italian sausage (sweet but I also like the hot variety.) I cook all the sausage (except the store bought pre-sliced pepperoni) and drain the fat and press the sausage while hot between layers of paper towels. Of course, if you aren't prone to having a weight problem you can skip the paper towel treatment and even the draining treatment as lots of flavor is in the fatty juices. (I'm still struggling to keep from gaining back the 60+ lbs I lost and so I watch the fat fairly closely.) I do however, use olive oil to coat the dough 15-20 min before putting on the sauce and toppings. It is just the right thing to do.

Oh, I did another rotisserie chicken and it was just barely thawed as there was a little ice left inside the plastic wrappings. It took 1:30 to get to the poultry marking on my meat thermometer (180F, I think) and I gave it another 10 min for good measure. It was juicy and delicious. Too bad I don't eat the skin as it was browned excellently. While rotating on the spit the juice that comes out for the most part doesn't drip off but is retained by the rotary motion and dries on the skin making it brown and quite tasty (OK so I sampled it.)

Since the rotisserie burner is on the side and not under the rotating spit any dripping does not hit a hot surface nor does it ever flare up. Unfortunately when protein and fat are over heated, as in flareups, lots of carcinogenic stuff is made. (Niotrosamines) This is NOT JUNK SCIENCE or National Enquirer type crap. Avoiding nitrosamines is a GOOD THING.

The following link is an easy read and good science.

http://lpi.oregonstate.edu/f-w00/nitrosamine.html

Pat

[Bird]

Pat, it's been quite a few years since we made our own pizzas and since I always preferred the "Supreme" or whatever they call the pizza with everything, when we made our own, I think they cost at least as much, if not more, than store bought. [img]/forums/images/icons/laugh.gif[/img] I think the last time was when my wife and I made 6 pizzas for a little family get together at her parent's home in West Virginia in July, 1992. I think we used Prego and besides the dough, of course, cheese, sausage, ground beef, Canadian bacon, pepperoni, black olives, bell peppers, mushrooms, and onions.

When did pizza get popular in this country? I still remember the first time I ever heard of "pizza pie" was in Oklahoma City in 1956. I had gone up there to visit my grandparents and a cousin had a date that night to go out to eat pizza pie, so his date arranged a blind date for me. Best I can remember, it was simply cheese pizzas.

[Pat]

Bird, We should all remember our first taste of pizza. When I was in grade school in Lima, Ohio in the 50's a neighbor lady and her daughter made a "pizza pie" and brought it across the street to us. It was in a rectangular glass oven dish. It had some sort of bread crust and some sort of sauce and what looked to be hamburger and cheese "topping." It was OK but nothing like a pizza actually, more like some sort of caserole.

The lady was first generation American born of German immigrant parents and was clueless as to pizza.

Later when in the 9th grade (freshman in high school) at Lindsay, Oklahoma our music teacher took us to OKC for a performance of the New York Metropolitan Opera (Die Fledermaus) and afterward the school buss took us to Sussy's (#3, I think) Italian restaurant in OKC for pizza... REAL PIZZA. Boy was it good, I was hooked.

Later (60's) in college for a year at Edmond (then Central State) after I got my VW bug I drove many a time to another (closer) of the Sussy's Italian restaurants to get pizza. I have been hooked ever since.

You can buy cheaper than I can build but I can build better than you can buy.

Pat

[rfawkes]

After years of making hit or miss bread I found the miracle ingredient is dough extender or conditioner. You could buy it on line or make your own from online recipes. This addition extends the life of the loaf, feeds the yeast, increases gluten content, and increases protein. You just use a teaspoon per loaf for white bread mixed in with the flour. Try it you will like how the texture is improved by even air bubbles, the loaf raises higher and their is no effect on taste. I just made sourdough bread two days ago, and it is all gone already.

[Varina Farmer]

If your hands aren't clean when you start kneading the bread dough, they will be clean by the time you're finished.

[pinkie]

I use my bread machine for all kinds of bread. We also make pretzels and pizza dough in the bread maker. I think the Italian is the lightest! I am not a great baker in the oven so I stick with the bread machine.