5 min bread

This is one of the easiest breads I have ever made! I got it from a friends website but it originally comes from This book

Ingredients:

• 3 cups lukewarm water
• 1 1/2 tablespoons granulated yeast (2 packets)
• 1 1/2 tablespoons kosher salt or 1 1/2 tablespoons other coarse salt
• 6 1/2 cups flour, unsifted, unbleached, all-purpose (not strong)

1. Put water and yeast in mixing bowl. (I use the bowl from my mixer, and actually add everything with it attached to the mixer with the bread hook attachment.)
2.  Add flour and salt. (yes, all at once) 
3.  Knead on low until flour starts to come together, then a higher speed until all the flour is incorporated.
4.  Cover (I spray a piece of foil with non-stick spray and tent it over the mixing bowl) and let it rise for 2 hours. After 2 hours, you can refridgerate the dough (will last up to 4 weeks) or, if you're like me, you can bake some right away.

To bake: 

1. Sprinkle flour on top of dough. Cover your hands with flour (especially if you're doing this the day of making the dough, it will be STICKY!) 
2.  Tear off a piece about the size of a cantelope. I use a cookie sheet, so I just try to make a loaf-like shape and throw it on the sheet.
3.  Let it rise for 40 minutes. 
4.  At 40 minutes, put a baking pan (empty) in the oven on a seperate rack (that won't interfere with your bread) and preheat to 450. 
5.  Dust top of bread with flour, and slash with a serrated knife. You can do an 'x' or just slashes down the bread.
6.  When preheated, at 1 cup of water to baking pan and put bread in oven. 
7.  Let bake for 30 minutes or until golden brown.
8.  Remove from oven, cut, slather with butter, and enjoy. 
9.  No joke, this is the best bread ever.  This has FOUR ingredients. And one is WATER. It's foolproof. I can't wait to get this book!

Directions (you can find more detailed ones on the site, but this is what I do)

Strawberry Freezer Jam

My son and I decided to make some strawberry Jam. I LOVE this one (even if it takes a TON of sugar!)

2 pts strawberries
4 cups sugar
1 pkg pectin
3/4 cup water

1) Cut the tops off the strawberries
2) Mush up the strawberries (they suggest 1 cup at a time) with a potato masher or food processor (make sure to keep it a little chunky but  not a lot)
3) Add sugar to strawberries and mix. Let it sit for 10 minutes stirring occasionally

4) In a sauce pan put in pectin and water put on high stir constantly
5) once boiling let boil for one minute take off and mix in with strawberry mixture.
6) Stir for 3 minutes or until almost all the sugar grain is gone.
7) Put in containers let it sit on the counter for 24 hours
8) Freeze until you want to use it.

** thaw it in the fridge.

Sweet and soft rolls!!

I did these yesterday! THEY ARE SOOOOO YUMMY. They do take some time to do but WELL worth the effort I got it from a website called foodieshope.org (see link). YUMMY!!


Sweet and Soft Dinner Rolls:
Who wouldn't love the sweet and soft dinner rolls? But stopping yourself with just eating one or two would be a huge problem! Haha. I found this recipe in one of the Jewish Bread-making book borrowed from the library. Recipe sounded great to me when I read it although I made some adjustments ie adding a bit less sugar than recommended in the recipe.
If you don't want 15-18 rolls, cut the recipe into half to bake less than a dozen rolls. You can also make full recipe dough, cut the dough into half and freeze half the dough for later use. All you have to do is thaw the dough completely, knead a little, divide into rolls and let it rise until it doubles and bake.

For sweet rolls, you need:
1 tbsp active dry Yeast,
4 tbsp Sugar,
1 cup + 2 tbsp Warm Milk (2% milk will do nicely),
1 tsp Salt,
1 Egg to add to the dough (optional, skip it if you don't like Eggs)
2 tbsp Butter,
3 1/2 to 4 cups Plain flour or mix Wheat and White flour,
1 egg beaten for glazing/brushing the rolls (Optional, but gives rolls a gorgeous reddish color if you Egg glaze) or you can use melted Butter or milk to brush. on top.

To bake these:
1. Mix the Yeast, 1 tsp Sugar (out of 4 tbsp sugar), 2 tbsp warm milk (90F to 110F), let it froth for 5-10min.
2. Heat 1 cup of milk, rest for the sugar with butter until butter melts in the milk and keep aside until it cools down just "warm to touch" temperature. Add 1 egg (optional) and beat well.
3. Sift 3 1/2 cups Plain flour with Salt. Make a well in the center, add Yeast mix, mix. Add the milk mixture, mix, knead it well until you get a soft dough, not sticky. Add more flour if you want if you find the dough sticky or use the mixer with kneader and adjust the flour.
4. Keep the dough wrapped in the fridge for 2 hours to let it rest and relax. Take it out and divide the dough into 15 balls. Place them on a lightly oil or butter sprayed cookie sheet as shown, cover with a clean towel, let it double in size for 1-2hrs.
5. Preheat the oven at 425F. Uncover the rolls, brush it with beaten Egg glaze for the best dark reddish color or with melted butter if you want and then place the cookie sheet in the middle rack.
6. Bake for 12-16mins or until they are puffed up and baked, depending on your oven efficiency. Take them out, cool them on a rack. Once cooled, you can store them in Zip lock bag.

Ready for Jam or Jelly!!

Artisan Bread (no kneading at all)

This one is even easier than the soft bread just looks like more! SOOOO yummy

Artisan Bread

3 c. warm water
1 & 1/2 Tbsp salt (kosher or sea salt is recommended, but not necessary)
1 & 1/2 Tbsp yeast
6 c. flour
cornmeal

Supplies You Will Need

pizza stone (or overturned baking sheet)
cutting board or rimless cookie sheet (or pizza peel!)
broiler pan or shallow pan
2 c. water
serrated knife
extra flour

Combine warm water and salt and yeast, stir to combine. Add 6 c. of flour and stir either by hand, food processor, or mixer until mixture is evenly combined/moist. Dough will be sticky. DO NOT KNEAD; just make sure the dough is moist throughout and that's good enough--it doesn't take long at all. Cover LOOSELY in a large container or bowl (I used saran wrap, but make sure you grease the top of the saran wrap as mixture can rise high and stick to the plastic wrap...don't ask how I know! ;)), leaving a little space for the gases to escape. Allow mixture to rise for at least 2 hours, up to 5 hours. At this point you can work with the dough, but it will be REALLY sticky. A better method is to refrigerate the dough for 2 or 3 hours and then it is MUCH easier to work with (again, don't ask me how I know! ;)).

Now is when things get easy. The above mixture will make about 4 1-pound loaves of bread, so when you're ready to bake, take a small handful of flour and sprinkle it on top of the dough mixture. Then remove 1/4 of the mix, which will be about the size of a grapefruit. It'll look really small, but it really bakes up. You'll want to dust the chunk of dough with a little bit of flour. Remember, don't KNEAD the dough, all you have to do is pull the dough from the top and kind of fold it under the bottom so you have a round loaf. Then set it on a rimless cookie sheet that is liberally sprinkled with cornmeal. Now you let the bread rest for 40 minutes.

But WAIT! Put the remaining mixture into the refrigerator--it will last for up to 2 weeks. Just continue the same process in the future--when you want a chunk of dough, sprinkle all the dough with a bit of flour, then remove a grapefruit-size chunk, and refrigerate remaining dough.) After 20 minutes, preheat your oven to 450 degrees and put a pizza stone (or an upside down cookie sheet if you don't have a stone) on the middle rack. Place a broiler pan or shallow pan on the very top rack of the oven, making sure there's enough room for your bread to rise while it bakes. (I actually had to move my bread-baking rack to the bottom rack, which worked out just fine.) Allow the pizza stone to heat up for 20 minutes. After the 20 minutes, your bread has now had a chance to rest for 40 minutes. It won't necessarily look like it's risen at all. No big deal. Now you sprinkle the top of your loaf of bread with flour--be generous. Then take a serrated knife and slash the top of the bread, about 1/4" in depth. I just slashed it like a cross or an "x." The flour allows you to slash the bread even though it's very sticky.

At this point you are ready to put your bread in your hot oven on the hot stone. Taking your cookie sheet, with a quick forward shake of your wrist, the dough should slide off and onto the pan. (It takes a little practice...my first loaf had one section where it stuck to the cookie sheet, so my loaf was slightly oblong rather than round...still tastes good no matter what shape the bread is though! That's why you want to be liberal with the sprinkling of cornmeal!) As soon as you get the dough on the stone, pour 2 cups of water into the shallow pan you have on your top rack and shut the door quickly so the steam stays in the oven. Now you bake your bread for 30 minutes. Because this is a high-moisture bread, no matter how dark the crust gets (and mine got to be a very deep golden color--not brown, nice and golden), the inside will remain super soft and you don't have to worry about it drying out.

When the bread is finished, take it out of the oven and let it cool on a cooling rack. (We did not let it cool last night--couldn't wait!) The crust will be super crispy. As it starts to cool, some of the crispiness might decrease, but once it is fully cooled, the crispy crust returns.

Once you try this, you will realize how flavorless other breads are that you have made. Not necessarily dinner rolls, but breads--it's the crust that gives it so much flavor and crunch, yet the inside is so amazingly soft, you won't believe it!

Soft bread (no kneading involved at all)

OK once you make this bread you will never buy store bread again! SOOOO easy and so good!! My friend got this from a bread book! Looks like a lot of steps but honestly it only takes about 10 minutes to make

3 c. warm water
1 & 1/2 Tbsp yeast
1 Tbsp salt
2 Tbsp sugar
1 stick butter, melted (plus additional for brushing the top crust)
7 cups flour

Mix the yeast, salt, sugar, and melted butter with the water in a 5 qt bowl or lidded (not airtight) food container. Mix in the flour with your stand mixer, just til all the ingredients are combined--you don't need to knead it. Cover (not airtight) and allow to rest at room temp until the dough rises and collapses (or flattens on top), approximately 2 hours. Refrigerate dough for at least 3 hours (it is MUCH easier to handle when it's been refrigerated!!!), keeping it covered, but not airtight. Dough can remain in fridge for up to 7 days.

On baking day, lightly grease a non-stick loaf pan with butter (it will stick to any other kind of pan, so use non-stick pans and make sure you put a thin coating of oil or butter on it so you don't have any problems). Dust the surface of the refrigerated dough with flour and cut off a cantaloupe-size piece. Dust the piece with more flour and quickly shape it into a ball by stretching the surface of the dough around to the bottom on all 4 sides. Elongate the ball into an oval. Drop the dough into the prepared pan. You want to fill the pan slightly more than half full. Allow the dough to rest for 1 hour and 40 minutes. Dust the loaf with flour and slash the top, using the tip of a sharp knife. Brush the top surface with melted butter. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Bake the bread near the center of the oven for about 45 minutes, or until golden brown. Remove from pan and let cool on a cooling rack. Allow to cool completely before slicing, or it will be nearly impossible to achieve reasonable sandwich slices.