Pumpkin Bread with Cream Cheese Filling
This bread is absolutely delicious. It’s like having pumpkin pie and cheesecake for breakfast…okay okay, and lunch. I didn’t make any changes to the recipe. Just a note – a 15 oz can of pumpkin is equal to 1 and 3/4 cups.
Next time, I’ll try using all whole wheat flour. I might also leave out the walnuts and make a little more cream cheese filling.
Oatmeal Breakfast Bread
I had some applesauce lying around that I wanted to use, so I was happy to find this recipe. It also gave me a chance to use whole-wheat flour.
I used a pretty old, spotty loaf pan – big mistake. When I took it out, there were tiny bits of metal flakes stuck to the sides of the bread. I cut off the sides (pictured below), which is too bad because I love crusts. Needless to say, I threw the pan in the trash.
Bread Machine Jam Rolls
This is actually a recipe for cinnamon rolls that I changed up a little. I filled them with jam instead of the cinnamon filling and I didn’t frost them.
Here’s the part of the recipe I used:
FOR 1-POUND RECIPE
1/3 cup milk
2 tablespoons water
1 large egg
3 tablespoons butter or margarine, cut up
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 1/4 cups bread flour
2 tablespoons sugar
1 1/2 teaspoons Bread Machine Yeast
Add dough ingredients to the bread machine pan in the order suggested by the manufacturer. Select the dough/manual cycle. When cycle is complete, remove dough from machine to a lightly floured surface. If necessary, knead in enough flour to make dough easy to handle. If dough is too elastic, cover and let rest for 10 minutes before shaping.
Roll dough into a 12 x 8-inch rectangle. Spread with jam. Beginning at long end, roll up tightly as for jelly roll. Pinch seam to seal. With sharp knife, cut into 9 equal slices (I cut 8 slices). Place, cut sides up, in a greased 8 x 8 x 2-inch baking pan.
At this point, I covered them with cling wrap and put them in the fridge overnight. When I took them out, I turned the oven on at the lowest setting, turned it OFF, and then put the buns in the oven to rise for 30 minutes. Then, I took them out, preheated the oven to 350F, and put them back in for 30 minutes once the oven was ready. As you can see, I did everything according to the recipe except for putting them in the fridge.
Cover dough and let rise in a warm, draft-free place until almost doubled in size, 20 to 30 minutes. Bake rolls at 350 degrees F (180 C) for 25 to 30 minutes or until done. Cool slightly; remove from pan.
The recipe says to cut into 9 pieces, but I wanted bigger rolls, so I cut 8 pieces.
Ready to rise for 30 minutes or, if you're prepping them the night before, into the fridge overnight. IMPORTANT: cover in cling wrap if they're going into the fridge.
After resting in the fridge overnight, they rose a little.
This is after the final rise. They were in a warm oven (that I preheated to the lowest setting and then turned OFF) for 30 minutes.
Another shot of the rolls after the final rise, ready to bake.
After baking at 350F for 30 minutes.
Soft Giant Pretzels
These were soo easy to make! And they really do taste like the pretzels you can buy at the mall.
The recipe is dead simple and the bread machine does practically all the work. All you have to do is divide the dough, roll it into ropes and then shape the ropes into pretzels. Then, you boil the unbaked pretzels in a water/baking-soda mixture for 10 seconds each, transfer them to a pan and put them in the oven. The shaping part might seem difficult, but it’s surprisingly fun and easy.
There’s a good diagram of the shaping method at the bottom of this page.
Or, you can check out these videos.
I baked them for 8 minutes. The bottoms were a little brown, but they didn't have a burnt taste.
The recipe says to sprinkle water and then coarse salt on them when they come out of the oven, but I skipped that step; I was making them for breakfast and I didn’t want to eat something too salty.
After tasting them, I think that they definitely need some kind of seasoning, like cinnamon-sugar (see below).
I couldn't fit all of them on the same pan, so I did a second round and sprinkled them with a cinnamon/white sugar mix.
These also browned a lot on the bottom.
Half and half - one plain, one cinnamon-sugar.
A great breakfast!
No-Knead Bread
Recipe: http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/08/dining/081mrex.html
Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=13Ah9ES2yTU
Yep, here it is: my first time baking bread without the bread machine! (I still love you, little bread maker.)
This baby is tough to slice! I butchered it a little when I cut it with a normal bread knife. I had to call in for some assistance – my dad ended up using the electric knife.
Oh, on another note, I used a 2.5 quart pot, even though the recipe calls for a 6-8 quart pot. I did some reading on the internet and found that the large pot produces a flatter bread. Lots of people use a smaller pot because they prefer a rounder, higher bread.
Irish Soda Bread
Recipe: http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Amazingly-Easy-Irish-Soda-Bread/Detail.aspx
It’s called bread, but it tastes like a huge scone or biscuit. Great crust and really dense on the inside. The first time I made it and sliced it, my slices were way too thick for the density of the bread.
I make this bread at least once a month. It’s best on the first day you bake it; you can still eat it for a day or two afterward, but after that it gets hard and stale. Then again, if you pop it in the toaster, it might be just fine.
Someday I want to make little mini-breads (well, scones, I guess) out of this recipe. I’m just not so sure how the baking time would change.
Attempts at making Challah
I’ve made Challah twice, using my bread machine to make the dough. The first time, it didn’t go so well. Sure, it looks like everything turned out alright…
…But, the inside of the bread was doughy and raw. Also, the sesame seeds tasted weird, kind of spicy (is that how they’re supposed to be?), so I ended up scraping them off.
It was a few months until I tried making it again, this time with greater success. I baked it at a lower temperature for a longer time and got something that was actually cooked on the inside. (I had to break into it just to make sure.)
No Cupcakes 