New month, new logo! This was made for me by the wonderful Aly, who also designed my banner over at Crooked Acres.
Thanks, Aly – you rock!!!
Speaking of Crooked Acres, I’m pleased to announce that the last four jars of habanero jam sold over the weekend, making it – as I told Fred – a successful jam season. Now I’ll rest up from the jam and hot sauce-making, which will resume mid-summer or so, depending on when the habaneros come in again.
This year, Fred is growing Bhut Jolokia (Ghost) Peppers in addition to the habaneros. For those of you who (like me) know nothin’ ’bout no Ghost Peppers, Fred says that Habaneros have a Scoville rating of between 100,000 – 150,000 heat units. The Jolokia is over one million.
Why such a horrific thing needs to exist, I have no idea.
So that I can finally throw away the piece of paper that’s been sitting on my desk for the past few months, I’d like to inform y’all that from the 40 pounds of pecans Fred picked up in the yard this Fall, we ended up with 16 pounds, 9 ounces of shelled pecans. I bagged them up in 2-cup bags, and currently have over 60 cups of pecan halves in the freezer.
Have I mentioned that toasted pecans are particularly tasty?
March came in like a lion yesterday. I woke up to a snowstorm and actual standing snow on the ground. It was cold and gray and dreary out, and I said “I am NOT even going out in that shit. I’m staying in my pajamas all day!” After I took a shower, I put my pink fleece reindeer pants on, and my pink oversized Big Dogs sweatshirt on, and that’s what I wore all day.
The snow stopped by 8, and had melted off by noon, and it was sunny and pretty out, but still way too cold for me, so I never did get dressed. I did go out in the evening to see the dogs and assist Fred in the job of feeding cookies to the pigs, but I didn’t stay out long, because it was COLD.
8:00 AM.
4:00 PM.
There’s nothing like bright white snow to make your white dogs look dingy and dirty.
Since I usually go get groceries on Sunday and didn’t want to leave the house, I had to decide what to make for dinner, and after some deliberation, I decided to make hamburgers. We hadn’t had hamburgers in a while, and I’d seen that Suzanne McMinn posted a recipe for homemade hamburger and hotdog buns, so I thought I’d give that a try.
I’m pretty sure I’ve never made a loaf of bread by hand (what’s a bread machine for, after all?), so I was worried that I’d screw up the hamburger buns. When I started making the buns and I got to the point where I was supposed to slowly add flour until the dough was too hard to stir by hand, and I added all the flour the recipe called for and more, and the dough still looked like cake batter, I was worried.
By the time the dough was kneaded (Fred took over and did that part, since he’s actually made bread before), I’m pretty sure we ended up using close to twice what the recipe called for. I was worried.
When an hour later, there’d been very little rising (the dough was supposed to double) and I wondered if I’d screwed up entirely, Fred turned the oven on warm and put the bowl inside, then cracked the door open so it wouldn’t get too hot, then turned the oven off and told me to leave it for a while. I was worried.
After about another hour, the dough had pretty much doubled, so I sprinkled flour on it and began kneading, and then I added more flour because it was still sticky and then I added MORE flour and then I howled “HOW MUCH FLOUR DO YOU NEED, DAMNIT?!”, and then Fred came in and we made hamburger bun-sized buns, and put them on the cookie sheets and I put them in the warmish oven and let them rise for another half hour. I was pretty sure these were not going to be tasty, tasty hamburger buns, that I’d screwed it up completely and we’d end up feeding them to the pigs.
Half an hour later, they’d clearly risen, so I heated the oven and popped the buns inside to cook, and twenty minutes later, what came out of the oven looked a lot like hamburger buns
(Fred made that super-size bun on the end)
Fred came in from doing something outside and said the buns smelled good and that we should split one. I was up for that, so I cut one in half. And I have to say – it was really pretty good. BUT it was pretty dense and heavy and I tend to think of hamburger buns as being not quite so heavy. I ate my hamburger on one of the buns and it was really pretty good, but more filling than I would have liked.
So, bread bakers out there, any words of wisdom on what I could do differently next time?
“Here, let me get that for you… ::SLURRRRP::”
“Wha…? What just happened? Did she lick that food off my paw? I WAS SAVIN’ THAT FOR LATER! Give it back!”
Not fond of this cold-ass white stuff.
Previously
2008: No entry.
2007: “Yes, they’re AWFUL. They taste like my grandmother’s attic*!”
2006: I call him Bob.
2005: Bouncing like that just can’t be a good thing.
2004: “DAMN it’s cold in here, give me some ass!”
2003: No entry.
2002: No entry.
2001: Let’s just hope she wasn’t preparing him for the slaughter.
2000: No entry.
I mix all my dough in my bread maker. I hit the dough option. I check it when it has begun to make sure not too wet or too dry. Let it rise once in the machine. Then I take it out, shape it and let it rise the 2nd time. So much less work.
Did the chickens come out in the snow much?
Am I the first poster-probably not. We are having a blizzard here well almost. At six AM the snow was almost up to Ollie’s package. It will probably cover it now but the dogs are refusing to go out at the moment. They dove and frolicked at six but they don’t like when flakes are falling-it had stopped for a while earlier. How wonderful to have a man who bakes bread. I have never tried it because I LOOOOOOVE bread so much I’m afraid the fresh stuff would be the crack for me. Howevwer I am wierd because I like my bread thin -a pita or a sandwich round when I’m having a burger because in that situation the meat is the star of the show.
I’m glad I live so far away because I love Samba and she would tempt me to break my one cat resolve (have had litter box sharing issues last time we had 2 and I refuse to put a second box in this little house). Those two are such cuties.
I’ve only made buns by hand once. I made my Mom’s (which was a grandma’s recipe). I absolutely loved them – they tasted just like mom’s. My roommate went ehh – tastes like regular buns to me. I remember the dough being sticky when you first start kneading them, but having a little flour on the board and my hands seemed to do the trick after a minute or so.
Yum! Pecans! Not sure if you like peanut brittle….but I saw this episode of Peter Perfect (which is actually kind of cute) and he was helping a woman get her business back on track….the business? Pecan brittle! And apparently everyone they met on the streets thought it was much better than peanut brittle. Might be something to try.
The boys got back from Cayman last night, at 2 am, only 4 hours late. They flew through Charlotte and sat in the plane for 4 hours or so. Perfect way to end a carribean vacation. Of course when they got here it was 20 degrees and the poor angles were cold. Bah.
I could of taken the same pics of the snow one day and then the next day! Our local news did the same, funny what a difference a day makes especially in the South!
That bread “looks” good but that is my issue with a lot of homemade bread, it looks better than it tastes/comes out. I hate Panera bread too unless I needed to break a window or something. Guess I will have to stick to store bought fresh bakery bread because I have no luck with homemade bread either.
Long, long time bread baker here. I know some bread bakers will disagree with me, but here goes. You can’t follow a bread recipe *exactly* because there are too many variables. How damp/dry/warm/cool is the ambient temperature/humidity? How damp/dry is your flour? How old is your yeast? how warm is your water blah, blah, blah?
It sounds to me as though you might have added too much flour and then didn’t let the dough rise enough. Sometimes, I’ll let my dough rise a second time before I shape it if it “looks like it needs it.”
You said the dough was sticky, but that could have been from the heat from your hands instead of not enough flour.
Bottom line–instinct and experience makes good bread, so keep at it and one day you’ll just “get it.”
I don’t know a thing about baking bread, but I just wanted to say those buns looked DELICIOUS!
BTW – Because of you and Fred I’m starting a vegetable garden. I’ve been breaking my back clearing an area in the backyard for it. Ya’ll are also the reason we think it’s perfectly OK and normal to have “only” 4 cats. See what you are doing to the world?! 🙂
I wonder how many cats have been adopted because people could use the “At least we don’t have as many as Robin and Fred” justification? 🙂 (That would be 2 of ours)
I also make the dough in the bread machine and then shape it into the buns. They come out great!
I agree with Maxie, there are a lot of variables. Too much flour, too much kneading, not enough rising is my guess. If you have a KitchenAid mixer with a dough hook, that might help you get it kneaded without adding more and more flour. And check the age of your yeast.
Mmmm. Pecans. I used to heat up pecans in some butter on the stove and when they were a little toasty, salt and eat. OH MY GOD. Delicious.
This is bizarre timing, because I tried Suzanne’s recipe for Pepperoni Rolls yesterday and boy, what a disaster! I followed her recipe exactly and created a sticky, gloppy mess. I understand about the variables (which she mentions in her bread recipes) and added twice the flour – no joy. Still sticky and gloppy and no rising whatsoever. No pigs to feed them to, so into the garbage. Sad, that.
The recipe still makes me want to try again and I lurve the idea of using the bread machine <smacks head and says “d’oh”)so pepperoni rolls are in my future. ?;p
We went to the Fiery Foods show this weekend. (The guy from Man vs. Food was there!!) Anyhow, there was someone giving samples of Lethal Injection hot sauce, which has bhut jolokia peppers in it. I was too scared to try it, especially after watching my boyfriend and his best friend suffer for 10 minutes. My boyfriend said he’d never tasted anything so hot in his life — he eats habanero peppers like they’re fruit!