Croissants and Croissant Braids

Croissant Braid

There are a handfull of foods that rank on the top of my list of most indulgent.  Croissants are one of them.  Yummy and perfect with eggs, cheese, and sausage.  This was something I had aspired to make but was always a little hesitant.  They are time consuming, consisting of many steps, and a tad more difficult than bread.  So I would day dream about making criossants but never actually trying.  That is until I stumbled upon a Craftsy class, Classic Croissants at Home. 

Colette Christian did a wonderful job and walking the viewer through the steps it took to put out some tastey croissants.  My firsts were, well, firsts.  Not great but passable.  Over time though I have come to be quite good at making them.  At least it seems that way by how they always disappear when Cook and I have guests over.  I just love them for breakfast.

I thought I had taken more pictures than I actually had.  Promise, the next time I make some I will take bunches of pictures and post them here.

This actual braid was made from the scraps I accumulate as I make the actual croissants. I roll the scraps togeather in long snakes no bigger than a pinkie.  After collecting the number of snakes I wanted I then carefully braided them togeather.  It helps to check over after a number of crosses just to make sure you don't cross in the wrong way.

100% Whole Wheat Basic Bread

1 loaf and 6 rolls of whole wheat

Cook for a long time had bugged me to make whole wheat bread.  I hesitated, mostly because I didn't care for the whole wheat taste.  The taste, in my opinion would over power what ever was on the slice of bread and eek through.  Then my father asked if I could make him some whole wheat as well.  By this time I had become more curious and adventurous in bread making.  I wanted to see if I could find or make a recipe for 100% whole wheat that I would actually like.

After trying a few different recipes, I settled on one that I found tolerable.  It did begin to grow on me, though I still hands down prefer bread made with bread flour.  One day I read that you can replace the oils of quick bread (banana and such) with apple sauce.  Again the experimenter kicked in and I wanted to know if this would work with yeast breads.  I didn't see why not but who knows, maybe the apple sauce would interfer with the yeast in some way.  After scouring the internet and finding nothing, I went ahead and tried it.  It worked just fine, not a noticeable difference in taste, texture, or rising but less calories (you do know how many calories is in and eighth of a cup of oil right?).  Originally the recipe called for honey as well, that went about a month ago when I made a couple of loaves and forgot the honey.  Oops!  Didn't even notice anything, I simply remember later that day that I hadn't added any honey.

100% Basic Whole Wheat Bread

by Sheena Badger-James

Prep Time: 1 hr 40 min

Cook Time: 30 min

Ingredients (1 loaf)

• 2.5 teaspoons yeast
• 1 to 1.25 cups lukewarm water
• 3.5 cups 100% whole wheat flour
• 1.25 teaspoons salt
• 1/8 cup apple sauce
• 9 by 5 loaf pan

Instructions

1. Mix the yeast into the some of the water, about a 1/2 cup, cover and let sit for 5 minutes or until bubbly.
2. Meanwhile, mix your whole wheat and salt togeather into your mixing bowl. Create a small dip into the flour, like a little cup, to pour the water and yeast mixture.
3. After your yeast is activated, bubbly, pour into your small dip in flour, add in the apple sauce. Mix in some of the flour with your yeast, water, apple sauce mix until you form a paste. Let sit for 20 minutes.
4. Add in most of the rest of your water and mix until you form a mostly smooth ball of dough. Add more water as you need it. If too moist add in some more flour, but avoid this if possible. You are looking for a dough that holds together, firm, and a bit sticky.
5. Kneed until fully smooth.
6. Put in a warm (75 degrees F or above) moist place and let rise for 45 minutes or until double.
7. Punch down and let rest for 10 minutes.
8. If making two loaves split dough in half, if only one skip this step.
9. Form a brick or log of sorts and place into your baking pan.
10. Set oven to 350, I also put my oven rack in the slot one lower from the middle but middle will work fine as well.
11. Let rise for another 45 minutes.
12. Bake for 30 minutes
13. Let sit on a cookie rack, I also spread oil/butter over the crust to help soften.

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Baked Omelet

Yummy Omelet

A yummy way to make omelets for many people without slaving over the stove is to bake it.  It is even possible to do two separate ones and then reheat them later.  Just wrap in foil and heat in the oven.  Original recipe can be found on All Recipe.  We did make a bit of a change.  The original calls for rolling up the egg from the short side, we roll it up from the long side.  When we did it from the short side the omelet was huge.

Baked Omelet

by Sheena Badger-James

Prep Time: 5 minutes

Cook Time: 20 minutes

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Ingredients (4 servings)

• 6 eggs
• 1 cup of milk
• 1/4 cup all purpose flour
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1/4 teaspoon pepper
• Various toppings

Instructions

1. Preheat oven to 450 F. Lightly grease a 9x13 baking pan.
2. Combine eggs, milk, flour, salt, and pepper; process until smooth. Pour into prepared baking pan.
3. Bake until set, about 20 minutes.
4. Add various toppings, and leave in warm oven until cheese melts.
5. Carefully loosen edges of omelet from pan. Roll and then cut into servings. Cook and I found it best to roll the longer side up.

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Rolled up

Insides before being warmed in oven

Strawberry Cream Cookies

Strawberry Cream Cookies

Cook is home, and he is cooking. Wednesday he decided he wanted cookies and this is what we got. A yummy and soft cookie topped with a cream cheese and strawberry jelly frosting. Irresistible! Plus, this frosting of his taste good on other stuff like bananas and oatmeal.

The cookie is actually a soft snicker doodle recipe minus the sugar and cinnamon.

Strawberry Cream Cookies

by Sheena Badger-James

Keywords: bake dessert cookie

Ingredients

For the Cookies

• 1 cup butter
• 1 1/2 cups sugar
• 2 large eggs
• 2 3/4 cups flour
• 2 teaspoons cream of tartar
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/4 teaspoon salt

For the Frosting

• Batch or half batch of cream cheese frosting
• Jam or preserves of your choice

Instructions

For the Cookies

Preheat oven to 350

Mix butter, 1 1/2 cups sugar and eggs thoroughly in a large bowl

Combine flour, cream of tartar, baking soda and salt in a separate bowl

Blend dry ingredients into butter mixture.

Chill dough, and chill an ungreased cookie sheet for about 10-15 minutes in the fridge

Place one inch globs of dough on chilled ungreased cookie sheet, and bake 10 minutes.

Remove from pan immediately.

For the Frosting

Cook found a nice Cream Cheese Frosting on Simply Recipe. For the cookies he halved the recipe, added a bit more cream cheese (so it would be less sweet), and then mixed in some strawberry jam. Tastes wonderful!

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Bread baking, some tips

Originally I was going to write a long post about bread baking, sharing the knowledge I have acquired the past 6 or so years. This post was to include all sorts of information including the relationship that flour, gluten, water, and yeast have. Then I found a webpage that did a much better job of explaining and with more knowledge than I had, so instead of rehashing it here and doing a poor job of it, I will simply provide the link, Tips for Baking With Gluten-Free Flour, it is actually an About page for Celiac disease, which now that I think about makes perfect sense.

The Oatmeal Artist!

I'm a big fan off eggs. I love eggs! In all forms, omelets, over easy, scrambled, so on. That being said, I do need a bit of variety occasionaly. With my egg whites low, I decided it was time to give home made oatmeal a try again. I've tried before and went bleh! Cook can do it, it's always a marvle to me. He shakes a little of this, mixes a little of that, and bam! A tasty oatmeal. Me? Nope.

So, with this renewed desire for some oatmeal and Cook not being around, I took to the internet, and came upon The Oatmeal Artist. Hundreds of recipes using oatmeal, all good, can be found in her recipe list. Yum, yum!

Some of my favored recipes so far:

• Applesauce Oatmeal: Yummy but simple.
• Basic Overnight Recipes: She explains how to convert any stove top recipe into a refrigerate over night one. Easy and no cooking.
• Basic Oatmeal How-To: I tried the peanut butter one, put too much in but that was easily fixed with some honey.
• Gingerbread Latte: I like gingerbread cookies and lattes, so why not!

 

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Tortilla!

Stack of Tortilla

Folded Tortilla

I think I have found it, a tortilla recipe.  It isn't perfect, no where the size of store bought and they do look a bit different but it is a start.  Now it is just a matter of adjusting and wiggling.  The Cook would probably have an easier time getting the dough rolled out to bigger sizes, he is better at that.  Alas, he is not here at the moment so I made do.

The recipe calls to cook the rounds on medium heat and I did, I feel that this may have been a bit to high.  Next time I think I will be cooking it on a medium-low heat, at about 2 or 3.  This should give it more time to cook without crisping, we do not want crisping.  That happened to the first one.
I found on the food network and would have just linked to it but I feel that the directions are written poorly there.  Now here it is:

Flour Tortilla

by Sheena Badger-James

Keywords: bake bread

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Ingredients

• 2 1/2 cups all purpose flour
• 1/2 cup (3 1/2 ounces) shortening
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1 cup water

Instructions

1. In a bowl mix flour, salt, and shortening until crumbly. I used butter instead and turned out fine, I am curious how bacon drippings will turn out.
2. Gradually add in the warm water until you get a nice ball of dough. I didn't even use all the water for this. Kneed until smooth.
3. Place your dough on your working surface, cover, and let rest for at least 15 minutes.
4. Divide your dough into even sections. How many sections depends on how large you want your tortillas. I had about 8 sections that came out to about 8 inch rounds, though they could possibly have gotten bigger if I had a press. 8 to 12 is a good number.
5. Roll out each section into a flat thin, really thin, rounds
6. To cook, preheat your skillet on medium (or lower). Cook the tortillas one at a time, flipping to keep from scorching. The cook time for each round should be 30 secs to a minute.
7. Enjoy!

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