Lazy woman's bread part 5: bagels.

This recipe is slightly different but the nice thing about making this recipe is that is is good for bagels but you can also use it for any of the other recipes I have posted so far.  So if you ask me, make these couple changes and use this as your stand by.

So for this everything is the same as to how you make the dough except a couple ingredients and amounts.  So you can look back here for the "how to" and use these amounts and ingredient changes.

Ingredients for dough

3 cups luke warm water
1 1/2 T granulated yeast (2 packets)
1 1/2 T kosher salt
1 1/2 T sugar
6 1/4 flour

Prepare dough as I showed you in the first post in this series.  After your dough is done and refridgerated this dough can be used for any of the previous breads along with bagels, soft prezels, bilays.

Depending on how "dense" you want your bagels  you can give them the 20 minute rise time or  form them then immediately boil them.

Boiling-pot
8 quarts boiling water
1/4 cup sugar
1 tsp baking soda
I have halved all this before and it has turned out fine.

Poppy  or sesame seeds optional
extra flour for dusting towel
whole wheat flour for pizza peel (not 100% neccessary)

My first suggestion is to start your water boiling before starting to form your bagels.  That is usally the longest part of the process it waiting for the water to boil.  20 min before baking preheat oven to 450 degrees.  If you have a pizza peel you can put your stone in the oven before preheating.

Dust your dough with a little flour and pull off a piece of dough about 3 oz or the size of a small peach.  Form the same as all the other recipes.  Rolling your hands down and under to make the top to the "ball" smooth rotating as you go, blah blah, you know the drill.  Repeat and form the rest of your bagels.  Cover them loosely with plastic wrap or dont' and let rest for 20 minutes.  Honestly this isn't rocket science and there is nothing to be intimidated about. It is hard to mess up and even if it isn't salvagable it costs so little it is not like much is lost.   Go for it!

Here are my bagel balls!  How you like em?  I'd have to say though that these were a bit bigger than a small peach and they made, well, large bagels.

Once your water is boiling punch your thumb through the center of the ball and stretch the center of the bagel hole is about triple width of the bagel wall.

There are alot of different ways you can get the desired shape. You can do a little spin on the finger.

Or pull it apart and try to fit your head through it.

But the idea is to have fun in your kitchen act like a complete fool and get about this kind of result.

Drop the bagels into the boiling water one at a time making sure not to crowd them.  They need enough room to float.  Simmer for 2 minutes, flip and boil one more minute.

Dust a towel with flour, sound weird?  It kinda is, just do it :)

 and place the them on the towel.

  At this point you can sprinkle them with seeds if you like or not if you don't have them. 

I got me a pizza peel!  Do you need one?  NO.  I have been doing this for over a year without one but it was a little indulgent on my part.  I wanted one!

 There they are ready to bake for 20 minutes.

Put the bagels in the preheated oven for 20 minutes or until brown.  You will love these!  They store great so you can make them for now or later or both!

For breakfast egg and sausage bagel!

Or with chicken salad for lunch!

Remember how I said these were big?  That is why you see them halved in these pics.  Unless you are a lumberjack half was plenty!

Or you can go simple with these yummy bagels and just a little cream cheese.  I dare yo to just eat one bite!  It ain't gonna happen!

Tree tapping day!

I wasn't sure if we were going to get to it this year because we have been extra busy.  But this winter has been mean, harsh and nasty BUT it has been a fantastic year for sap so the tapping weather stuck around long enough for me to get to it!  Last night was the night.  I was determined to do it this week because the entire week should be lovely for good sap flow. 

Last year we only tapped two trees to try it.  This year we decided to do all 6.  So after a quick trip to the Amish farm store around the corner to get taps and tubing we were set to tap.  We were trying to be resourceful and find the cheapest way to collect.  Last year we had a tubing system which worked well but was more costly than we would like.  Not that we consider this a money saving venture but we also don't want to spend a bunch of money on it.  This year we used a combination of milk jugs, tubing and rubermaid containers.  Pretty much what we had on hand other than the taps and a little tubing.  Bottom line is you don't need any fancy equimpent if you ever want to try it yourself.  If you have a milk jug, a little tubing and some twine you can pull this off.  It can be a fun learning experience!  Or you can read about me doing it and make me do all the work and you can follow along in the process.  Also taps are cheap I bought some online last year for $2.50 but this year I found them here locally for plastic one they were only $.52.

It was a fairly quick process except when my dear husband got a bit zealous and broke the bit off in the tree.  So a quick trip to Lowes and we finished just before dark with the first 4 trees at least since I needed some time to come up with a few more collection methods.

Here is the over zealous husband and our crazy little helpers!

Milk jug metal taps and tubing, method.

We came up with this last year.  It is a combination of tubes and connectors all going in to one 5 gallon bucket.  It works ok but the jugs are a bit better and less cost and less complicated.

These are the milk jugs and plastic taps.  The plastic taps are made to fit that blue tubing so it all fits great and easy to put together.

I got to last two today.  I invited a friend and her kids to come over and take part in it.  Here is me and my wild monkey "helpers".

Here is a closer look at the platic taps, tubing and milk jug assembly.

 This is the last tree.  Here we had some tubing and a rubermaid container so I drilled 3 holes in the top for the tubes and just connected it all.

If you look close you can see the sap line.  This was only 20 minutes after tapping.

This morning we woke up to some gallon jugs over flowing and others almost full!  For a total of 9 gallons in about 12 hours!  And that is only the four.  So we are adding two more to that today.  So after 7 days of collecting 20 gallons a day we should end up with 140 gallons!  That is fantastic except when it comes to the fact that we are not adequately prepared to store 140 gallons of liquid.  So we get to practice our resourcefulness again and come up with something.  The cool thing is sap to syrup is about 40-1 so 140/40 we are talking over 3 gallons of syrup!!!  That is awesome!  We shall see how the week goes and I will try to update you on collection numbers.

Lastly our resourcefulness will be tried again when it comes time to boil.  I have a feeling there will not be a whole lot of sleeping going on for a couple days.  But I am going to see if there is interest in a boiling party with some friends of ours and at least it would be fun times!

My hopes are to continue this series with the rest of the sugaring (that is what it is called by the "real" syrup people,though I don't know how much sense it makes) process along with some of the technicality of tree tapping.

Lazy woman's bread part 4: Batard

So far we have eaten 4 pizzas, two loaves of bouhl and the last thing out of that batch we had were Batard.  These are great for individual loaves for sandwiches or whatever.

The nice thing about artisan bread is that once you get these few steps down almost all of the variations start out the same.  Preheat your oven to 450 degrees.  And similar to the other breads we have done you sprinkle the top of your dough with flour and take off a hunk of dough.  This time about the size a a large peach.  Roll it down and under with your hands forming it into a ball.   I formed 6 of these for our dinner of Italian beef. 

Then you can practice your playdough snake making skills.   Really, just roll them in your hands that same way . Sprinkle your stone with corn meal and let them rise for 20 minutes.

 Just before baking sprinkle the top of your mini loaves with flour and take a sharp knife and cut about 1/4 of the way through each loaf.

 I do about 3 slits each and this is what they look like pre-baking.

 After approximately 20 minutes they will look something like this.

And when you serve up these mini loaves with this or just about anything you will get rave reviews.  I promise.

 

Cake truffles

These are also featured over at Sweet as Sugar Cookies in her sweet treat linky party.

These little dessert treats will make you look like the gourmet cook in all of us.  When in reality they are as easy as can be and you won't believe how delicious they are!

It may not seem this way but I really am not a baker and rarely do but with most everything I do I cannot just make a cake and slap on icing.  Why?  Will it taste the same?  Yes.  But I cannot settle for just one aspect of the process.  I not only love funtionality but beauty in the practical is what I love.  So it is actually hard for me to bake cupcakes and slap on icing for childrens treats because I just don't see the beauty in it but when I stumbled upon these beauties in a bakery I just had to find out what they were.  Because the look of them caught my eye enough to get me to purchase one for $3.99 but when I ate it...oh mmm.  My curiousity wouldn't rest until  I found out what it was I was eating.  They were called cake truffles.  What I found was they are incredibly simple.  So here it is in a nut shell. 

Today I made "Turtle Cake Truffles" to celebrate my husbands 32nd birthday.  But last week they were "Chocolate Covered Cherry Truffles" for my daughters 6th birthday.  The combinations are endless. 
What you will need:  Cake mix of your choice, container of icing your choice, chocolate for melting and any other extras you want to add.  Here I also used carmels and pecans.

Step 1: Make the boxed cake mix as directed,

OR enlist any helpers from the 4 ft and under crowd to do it for you.

The you have a perfectly good cake.  Slap on some icing and done!  Ha, nope I said simple but it is not that easy.  You take that perfectly good cake and....

demolish it!  Cut it into peices while it is still warm.  Not need to worry about keeping it pretty.

Then take a container of frosting.  I used caramel.  (It did not auto rotate so it is sideways icing)

Dump the cake and the icing into a large bowl.  I know it may seem weird but stick with me here.

Mix it all together until it is all well incorperated.  No need to over mix.

I said it was simple but I didn't say you wouldn't get really messy!  Now you need to form balls.  I do 1 1/2-2 inch balls.  They will be kind of rough at first but if you let them set for a couple minutes and clean your hands you can reroll them and they will be more shapely.

Let them cool.  I would suggest putting them in the freezer for about 20 min before dipping in chocolate.
During this phase you could also get a little fun and add suprises in the middle.  EX: chocolate covered cherry, chocolate cake, cherry icing and put a marcino cherry in the center of the ball.  Or Turtle, you can put a whole pecan or caramel in the center.

Some people use dutch ovens, I improvise.  This is my set up to melt the chocolate.

Drop in the balls...

Cover them thoroughly and quickly.

The last couple steps I failed to get photos of because my hands were full.  I just used the same method to melt the carmel as I did the chocolate.  Drizzled the balls with the caramel and quickly sprinkle with toasted pecans.   And here is your finished product!

And they taste amazing!  Like a super moist, dense, rich cake, covered in chocolate.  What is not to love?!

Happy Birthday Love!

Have you ever ridden Steady bareback?

A friend asked me today on facebook and my response I thought you guys might enjoy.

ouch! yes, I try not to but sometimes I will. Mostly just walking though. But one time at a horse show I entered myself unknowingly in a ride-a-buck class. My friend told me it would be fun. She said that we had to put a dollar under our leg and whoever kept it there the longest got all the money. She failed to mention it was BAREBACK! So they called out walk, trot and canter and the goal was to keep the dollar between you and the horse. My personal goal was to keep my butt from hitting the ground!! Though I never actually got him to pick up a canter he flew around the ring in his fastest trot instead which is way worse than if he would just canter. We actually did pretty well and I was impressed. I think we were third to last left in the arena. I guess when your goal is just to not fall off and you basiscally made it to third place then you are doing good.  My motto should be set your sights low and you won't be disappointed. That would be a terrible title of a self help book but has worked well for me and Steady.




But riding Steady bareback is the worst version of a wedgie one can imagine. It is a spine wedgie repeatedly administered with incredible force. To say the least it is not fun and you are sore for days. Though I can only imagine the way that Steady would describe the experience. Probably something like. "Hey Moonlight you know that lady that gives us food? Well seriously has she ever considered weight watchers! I mean why would someone insist on climbing on my back with absolutely no padding the force me to run around in circles while they repeatedly slam their fat ass directly onto my spine??! These people are idiots!"

Lazy woman's bread part 3: Bouhl

Bouhl is a fancy term for what I call a round loaf.  Which is completely versitile.  I have used it for soup bowls, for sandwiches, it is fabulous when you make the knorr vegetable dip and use it as a bread bowl.  A huge crowd pleaser.  This day I used it for garlic bread with our spaghetti dinner.  We had homemade spaghetti sauce all ingredients right out of our summer garden perserved for a fridged winter night like this to have a taste of summer.  Also meat balls made from our homegrown turkeys that we ground ourselves.  I also served green beans steamed from the freezer which also came from our garden.  The only thing that was store bought unfortunately was the pasta.  My mother insisted on confiscating my kitchen aid attachment pasta maker last time she was here.  Ok ok I guess it did belong to her but still  :).  And it is a bit pricey for me to justify purchasing.  And I am domestic and all but you won't find me hand rolling pasta when I can get it in a box for a buck.

So you take your dough from the fridge.  Preheat your oven to 450.  Sprinkle your stone, or if you have a pizza peal then put your stone in the oven while it preheats and do everything else on your pizza peal, but since I don't have a pizza peal I just do everything directly on the stone.  Sprinkle the stone with corn meal. 

Grab a hunk about the size of a grapefruit.

Use your hands to form it into a ball.  Rolling it under, turning a quarter turn each time.  It should be smooth on the top.  This whole process should take all of about 30 seconds.

 Let the dough rest for about 30 minutes...about the time it takes for the oven to preheat.

 When your oven is preheated sprinkle with flour.

Take a knife and cut slits into the dough.  You can make what ever pattern you choose.

Sometimes this dough can be funny depending on how long it sits.  What I have found though is that it all tastes the same may just not be as pretty.  But 90% of the time they do turn out very pretty.

Cut into slices covered in butter garlic and herbs put under the broiler for couple minutes you won't even care what the loaf looks like...mmmmm.

there you have it now we have made 4 foccia breads(we had pizza another night) and two loaves of bread.  The garlic bread was made from one loaf my family devoured the other the next day.  This bread does not store long.  Which is fine since it doesn't usually last long :)  It does store well for 1-2 days but not air tight.  I usually use paper bags.

Cows, you can thank me later.

I haven't eaten ground beef in probably 5 months.  Since we butchered our turkeys I cook everything I would normally use ground beef for.  Meatballs, chili, burgers, tacos you name it all with turkey.  I hadn't realized until tonight when I made tacos using ground beef that I really have not missed it at all.  Turkey tastes sooooo much better.  One nice thing about turkey is it really takes on the flavor of what ever is in it.

It won't be long now and we will have some more gobblers  hanging around the farm.  Raising turkeys has been such a great experience for us.  And this year having ground up 30 lbs has been wonderful to have.  So I cannot see myself buying any ground beef in the near future, so cows you can thank me later.