Breakfast Delight: Maple Oatmeal Bread

A friend of ours gave us a bottle of "the good stuff":  real maple syrup from Coombs Family Farms.

I had to act quickly if I was going to get a chance to bake anything with this, as the pancake eaters in the house were making short work of this delicious syrup.

(Coombs, you've completely spoiled my family regarding maple syrup. They've enjoyed the real thing. There's no going back.)

I managed to reserve enough of this maple syrup to add to an oatmeal bread that's great for toasting and has a hint of sweetness--but doesn't go overboard.




For the recipe and nutrition information, please see my new blog, Cook and Count.

The fine print:  recipe and opinions are all mine. I was given no compensation by Coombs Family Farms or any other entity for this post.

For St. Patrick's Day: Irish Tea Brack

I like Irish soda bread as much as the next Irish girl, but the recipe I use makes a LOT of soda bread. I tried this recipe today, since I wanted to bake in a smaller quantity. It's based on a recipe from Georgina Campbell's book Classic Irish Recipes (Sterling Publishing, 1992). It is a "soda bread" but unlike the traditional soda bread, the liquid in the recipe comes from tea. Here's the recipe as I made it.

IRISH TEA BRACK

1/2 cup strong black tea
1/3 cup brown sugar
1 1/4 cup raisins
1 TBL orange zest
1 TBL lemon zest
4 TBL butter, melted
1 egg, lightly beaten
2 cups all-purpose flour
1 heaping tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp pumpkin pie spice (I used Penzey's Baking Spice instead)
pinch of salt

Mix tea, sugar and raisins in small saucepan and bring to a boil, stirring occasionally. Allow to cool. This can be done well in advance.
Grease a 2-quart round glass baking dish and line the bottom with waxed paper. Preheat oven to 350.
In a mixing bowl, combine tea mixture with citrus zest, butter and egg. Add dry ingredients and stir until mixed. Turn into prepared pan.
Bake 50 minutes or until firm to the touch. A cake tester or toothpick inserted into the middle will come out clean.
Cool in the pan at least 10 minutes before turning it out onto a rack.

Sesame Semolina Dinner Rolls

A large-capacity bread machine is needed to make this dough.  This batch makes between 24 and 30 rolls, depending on size. The dough was soft and pliable but not wet, and the oven-spring was impressive.

You'll find this recipe at my new website, Cook and Count!

Cinnamon-Almond Bread

I have this recipe clipping from a 1998 issue of Better Homes & Gardens for "Spectacular Cinnamon-Almond Ring."  Honestly, there are very few recipes of mine that I'd include an adjective like "spectacular" for, but BH&G apparently thought this was pretty special.  It's a cinnamon-swirl yeast bread that is baked in a fluted tube pan, and is designed to be refrigerator-raised overnight.  I've made it several times, and the results are delicious, but it is pretty work-intensive.  Recently I'd been thinking about making this recipe in regular loaf pans, so that's what I tried today.  Instead of a refrigerator rise, I mixed the dough in my trusty dough machine (I'd call it a bread machine, but I never actually bake any bread in it.  I prefer baking it in the oven in a pan that is not tall and square and does not leave a big hole in the bottom of the loaf.)

The original recipe did not call for bread flour, but all-purpose.  I didn't add any gluten, either--wanted to see what would happen if I left it alone.  As it turned out, no gluten was needed, and AP flour worked fine.

Cinnamon-Almond Bread

DOUGH
1 cup milk
1/2 cup water
1/2 cup butter, cut up (1 stick butter)
2 eggs, beaten
zest of 1 lemon
zest of 1 orange
1 tsp salt
3 TBL sugar
5 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1 TBL yeast

Add ingredients to your bread machine in the order recommended by the manufacturer.  Select dough cycle.

FILLING
1 stick butter, softened
3/4 cup sugar
4 tsp ground cinnamon (I used Penzey's Indonesian Cinnamon)
1 cup sliced almonds

Divide the dough in two pieces on a floured surface and roll thin.  Mix butter, sugar and cinnamon and spread on dough, leaving a 1-inch margin.  Sprinkle with almonds.  Roll tightly and place in greased loaf pans.

Allow to rise 1 hour, then bake 35 minutes at 350.  Remove to wire rack to cool.

MAKE SURE you roll this very tightly, as otherwise there will be huge air pockets inside the bread.  This makes slicing and toasting a little difficult, though there's no impact on flavor.

NEXT TIME I will divide this recipe into 3 loaves instead of 2.  That might have kept things more manageable!

Sweet Scones

This is an adaptation of Granma's Irish Biscuits.  The technique is the same, but I've made these a little sweeter with spice and richer due to the use of cream instead of milk.

SWEET SCONES


2 cups flour
4 teaspoons baking powder
2 tablespoons sugar
1 stick (1/4 lb. or 1/2 cup) butter or margarine, at room temperature (not melted)
raisins, to taste (about 1/2 cup is good)
1/2 cup half-and-half or light cream*
1 tsp coffee cup spice mix

Mix all ingredients. Batter shouldn't stick to fingers (add more flour if necessary).
Drop about 1/2-cup size balls onto floured cookie sheet, or pat into a rectangle on a floured surface, then cut into triangles. Makes about 8 round biscuits or a baker's dozen triangles, depending on how large you cut them.
Bake 15 to 20 minutes at 350.

*The quantity of cream is variable. Granma never used a measuring cup. If you accidentally put in too much liquid, just add a little more flour. This is a "go by the feel of it" kind of recipe.

Honey Butter Dinner Rolls (Bread Machine)

I wasn't even planning to bake yesterday, let alone bake bread, let alone try a new recipe, but when I looked over the Secret Recipe Club reveal, I found these Honey Yeast Rolls over at The Pajama Chef.  Then I realized that if I got started right now, we could be enjoying those rolls with dinner.

Of course, I changed things up a bit.  First, I made the dough in the bread machine.  The other change I made had to do with Sarah's comment that the rolls were "dense" in texture.  She got 12 rolls out of a recipe that contains 4 cups of flour.  That didn't seem like much, and I wondered if adding some vital gluten to the dough would help things along.

I'm pretty sure the gluten was the key here; the dough was beautifully elastic and they baked up nice and airy. I wound up with 2 dozen small rolls, but dinner rolls ARE supposed to be small.  With the honey butter on top, they are deliciously sweet.

Here's the recipe as I made it:

Honey Butter Dinner Rolls at Cook and Count--with nutrition info!

A certain child who lives in this house has declared these the "best rolls ever!"

Granma's Rolls: A Tutorial

My paternal grandmother was famous for her home-baked rolls. Despite arthritis in her hands, she would bake huge batches of these for special occasions. Granma did the whole thing by hand--no stand mixer for her! (For that matter, I don't think she owned measuring cups or spoons, either.) My cousins and I all try to duplicate these rolls; this is as close as I can manage to get. Here's how to make a batch of approximately 30 rolls.

Get the recipe, with photos and nutrition information, at Cook and Count!

Healthy Wheat Bread (for Beginners)

This is an original recipe.  The challenge:  to make a healthy bread without too much added sugar.  This bread can be made on the dough cycle in a bread machine (just add ingredients in the order recommended by the manufacturer.  Often, it's liquid first, then dry, with yeast on top.)   Directions below are for hand mixing or mixing with a stand mixer using a dough hook.  Baking directions will be the same regardless of whether the dough is hand mixed, done in a mixer or in a bread machine.

Makes 2 loaves.  I have not yet worked this recipe out for a single loaf.  Just cutting each ingredient in half doesn't always work.

Get the recipe and nutrition information for this bread at Cook and Count!

Honey-Oat Bread (Secret Recipe Club)

Sometimes things just don't go as planned.  Fortunately, this bread was goof-proof at a time when I really needed it to be!

I was assigned Dinners, Dishes and Desserts as my Secret Recipe Club blog for October.  Oh, the desserts!  I think I gained 5 pounds just looking at the pictures.  A few recipes are bookmarked for future taste-testing, like Cinnamon Roll Muffins--wouldn't those be a delicious breakfast treat?  Erin has recipes for all sorts of tasty treats, as well as some main-dish recipes too.

It was hard to choose, but my decision was made when I saw the recipe for Honey-Oat Bread.  I've got a toast eater in this house, and I was hoping to find a good bread recipe that would make great breakfast toast--to get him off the store-brand white bread he usually eats.  This bread has a healthy dose of oatmeal, plus a touch of sweetness from the honey.  We all liked it so much, there was barely any left for toast the next morning after we ate most of one loaf with dinner and shared the other with a neighbor.

This is some beautiful bread!

Here's the part where things didn't go as planned:  I made the dough in the bread machine, and I was really distracted when I put it all together.  (So distracted, in fact, that I dumped the yeast in with the water and other liquids--usually bread machine recipes call for the yeast to go in last, on top of the dry ingredients!)  I was also so distracted that I didn't pay attention to the part where the beaten egg is used as a wash for the tops of the loaves.  I tossed that right in to the bread machine as well.  Then I realized what I'd done, but I figured, what the heck--I'll bake it and see what I get.

2 hours later the dough cycle was done and the dough was JUST at the top of the pan.  It looked and felt just like bread dough is supposed to; slightly tacky, a little lumpy from the oatmeal (I only had old-fashioned oats).  I divided it into 2 loaves, rolled up the dough and put in greased loaf pans.

So here's the recipe as I made it (the original recipe can be found here):

Honey-Oat Bread (makes two loaves)
Printable Recipe

1 ¾ cup warm water
1 large egg, beaten
1/3 cup honey
3 Tbl Canola Oil
2 ½ tsp salt
5 cups all purpose flour
¾ cups oats (I used old-fashioned but the original called for quick oats)
1 Tbl Active Dry Yeast

Add ingredients to your bread machine pan in order recommended by the manufacturer.  Select the dough cycle.  When the cycle is done, remove bread to a floured surface and divide into two portions.  Pat or roll into a rectangle, then roll tightly and place in two greased loaf pans.  Allow to rise 1 hour.  Bake at 350 for 35 to 40 minutes.

Thanks, Erin, for this recipe for a delicious bread that went as well with dinner as it did with breakfast!  This one is a keeper for sure.

Secret Recipe Club: Buttermilk Biscuits

My teenage daughter has been on a biscuit kick ever since we vacationed in Florida this summer.  I think she ate biscuits at every meal.  Then she wanted me to make them for her at home.  I'm not a fan of Bisquick biscuits, so any biscuits I'd been making were the kind that came out of a Poppin' Fresh can.  All you Southern cooks can laugh at this ignorant Yankee if you want.  But you can be done laughing now, because I found a really good recipe and I know how to use it.

Thanks to Victoria at Mission: Food, the blog I was assigned for September's Secret Recipe Club, I learned that buttermilk biscuits are not mission:  impossible for me!

Buttermilk Biscuits from Mission: Food
Get the recipe and nutrition facts at my new website: Cook and Count!

Pepperoni Bread

Make the dough in your bread machine, then fill, roll, rise and bake!

DOUGH:
1 cup water
1 1/2 tbl butter or olive oil
1 tsp sugar
1 tsp salt
3 cups bread flour
2 1/2 tsp yeast

FILLING:
1/2 lb. pepperoni, sliced thin
1/2 lb. mozzarella cheese, shredded

Use the dough cycle of the bread machine, and put in the ingredients in the order recommended by the manufacturer.

Remove dough; cover and let it rest 10 minutes. Then roll it out on a floured surface into a large rectangle.

Sprinkle with: 1 cup mozzarella cheese

Spread a generous layer of pepperoni over the bread. Make sure that cheese and pepperoni are not too close to the edges. Leave 1/2 inch margin all around.

Roll tightly like a jelly roll. Pinch the seam closed, and the ends as well. Place on a foil-covered baking sheet. (The foil is important in case the bread springs a leak.) Cut a few slashes in the top.

Cover and let the bread rise 30 to 45 minutes.

Bake 35 minutes at 350. Allow to cool for 15 minutes before slicing.

Print this recipe!

French Country Bread

I got this recipe from the Wooden Spoon Bread Book (a really good book, especially for beginning bread bakers) and adapted it for the bread machine--because I'm lazy that way. If you like "artisan bread," try this one.

Makes 1 round loaf.

1 cup warm water
1/2 tbl salt
1/2 tbl sugar
3 cups bread flour
1/2 tbl yeast

Put all ingredients in your bread machine in the recommended order. Use dough cycle.

Prepare an 8-inch cake pan by brushing it with oil (bottom and sides). Shape dough into a round ball and place in prepared pan. Allow to rise 1 hour.

Mix 3 TBL warm water and 1 TBL salt. Brush carefully over the surface of the bread. Sprinkle a little more coarse salt on the wet surface if desired.

Bake 35 to 40 minutes at 375.

Irish Soda Bread

In honor of St. Patrick's Day! 

There are as many recipes for Irish Soda Bread as there are Irish cooks.  This is how my mom makes it; she got the recipe from a friend.

Get the recipe at Cook and Count.

Olive Garden-Style breadsticks

I worked up this recipe so I can have anywhere from 8 to 32 breadsticks.

INGREDIENT          HALF     WHOLE   DOUBLE
yeast                1/2 tbl     1 tbl            2 tbl
water                ¾ cup     1 ½ cup      3 cups
flour                 2 ¼ cup   4 ¼ cup      8 ½ cups
butter, softened 1 tbl         2 tbl          4 tbl
sugar                1 tbl          2 tbl         4 tbl
salt                   1 ½ tsp     1 tbl         2 tbl

TOPPINGS             HALF        WHOLE      DOUBLE

butter, melted   4 tbl        6 to 8 tbl      12+ tbl
salt                    ¼ tsp      ½ tsp            1 tsp
garlic powder     1/8 tsp    ¼ tsp           ½ tsp
dried oregano     pinch      1/8 tsp         ¼ tsp

Proof yeast in ¼ cup of the water in mixer bowl for 5 minutes. Add flour, butter, sugar, salt and remaining water. Mix with paddle attachment until slightly sticky dough forms (5 minutes).

Knead 3 minutes. Shape into breadsticks. Arrange on covered baking sheet (silicone or parchment) Cover and rise 45 minutes.

Brush with half the melted butter, sprinkle with half the salt. Bake at 375 to 400 about 15 minutes. Top with remaining butter and seasonings.

Whole recipe makes about 16 breadsticks.

Granma's Rolls

2 ¼ cup milk
2 tbl sugar
1 tbl vegetable shortening (Crisco) NOT butter flavor
2 tsp salt
5 to 6 cups flour
1 tbl yeast (if you get it in packets, 1 packet)

Heat first 4 ingredients until melted. Allow to cool until it is "baby-bottle warm." Stir in yeast and flour. Rise dough until double. Shape into rolls. Place on heavy floured pan. Rise until double. Bake 12 to 15 min at 350.

Rising hint: Put the dough in the microwave. DO NOT TURN IT ON. Leave it 1 hour or so. No drafts! It works great.

Thrifty Thursday: Sesame Seed Buns (bread machine)

For today's Thrifty Thursday (hosted at Amanda's Cookin') I'm contributing my own recipe for sesame seed buns. I tweaked a cookbook recipe and came up with a way to make rolls for sandwiches and dinner rolls, all in one. This way, sandwich rolls are always fresh because I'm only making 2 days' worth--at the most--at a time. The rest of the rolls are made into dinner rolls which we eat that day. No more moldy sandwich rolls by Friday!



Barb’s Sesame Seed Buns

1 cup milk
2 tbl softened butter OR olive oil (I've tried this both ways and they both work)
1 tbl sugar
1 1/2 tsp salt
3 cups bread flour
3 tbl vital gluten
1 tbl yeast

For egg wash:
1 egg
1 tbl sesame seeds (or more)

Use dough cycle. At the end of the cycle, remove from the pan and place on floured board and punch down. Cover with a clean dish towel for 20 minutes.
Divide and roll into balls. Place dough balls on oiled cookie sheet. Cover
with the towel and allow to rise about 1 hour. Beat egg and brush over
rolls. Sprinkle with sesame seeds. Bake 15 minutes at 375. Cool on a wire rack.

This recipe makes 6 sandwich rolls or 12 dinner rolls. Bake time is the same either way.

These rolls have been given the "Big Brother thumbs-up" for lunchbox sandwiches. He thinks he's lucky to get homemade rolls for his lunches. I'm happy to be saving money--supermarket rolls are SO pricey!

"Almost Like Cracker Barrel" Sourdough Bread

My latest effort in sourdough breadmaking is enough like Cracker Barrel's bread that I won't need to buy theirs anymore.

This is a bread machine recipe.

About 8 hours before you want to bake, take your starter out of the refrigerator and toss a pinch of sugar in there, and then stir. Cover loosely. Stir the starter again just before using it.

Put in your bread machine pan:

1/2 cup warm water
1 cup starter
2 1/2 TBL oil (I use light olive oil)
1 tsp salt
2 TBL sugar
3 cups flour

Use the dough cycle. Shape the dough and place in an oiled loaf pan. Allow to rise at least 2 hours.

Bake at 375 for 35 minutes.

BIG Sourdough Bread!

The recipe for the starter AND the bread (mixed in the bread machine!) can be found at Cook and Count.

Cooking with Alicia & Annie: Asiago Cheese Bread

Today I made the Asiago Cheese Bread from Alicia's Recipes. I am addicted to the Asiago Cheese Bagels at Panera, so I was hoping that I could learn to make some Asiago bread at home. Even with the pricey cheese, it's easier on the budget to make my own.

Find my version of the recipe along with photo and nutrition information at Cook and Count.

Oatmeal Bread

Oatmeal Bread

1 tsp active dry yeast
2 Tbl honey
1/2 cup rolled oats
2 cups bread flour
1 Tbl vegetable oil
1 tsp salt
1 cup water

Place ingredients in bread machine pan in order suggested by manufacturer. Remove after manual cycle is finished, shape and bake in oven for 35 minutes at 375. Makes a 1 pound loaf.

Source: bread machine recipe Yahoo group