Mile High (almost) Club - Cinnamon Bread

Mile-high (Club) Cinnamon Bread

This past weekend I took a trip to Denver to attend a wedding with Megan, so I thought it would be a great time to try out a new cinnamon bread recipe – Mile High Cinnamon Bread!  What makes it Mile-High?  A lot of yeast and a lot of flour crammed into a plus size bread pan along with a fun swirl wrapping technique allows the bread to expand directly up to nearly twice the height of the bread pan while baking (at least in theory).

High Expectations:

There are two keys to making the mile high cinnamon bread a success.  The first is patience (although this is a common necessity with most breads).  Patience to wait until the dough has risen enough.   The second key is to score the bread carefully with a very sharp knife.  Once the bread rises up over the edge of the bread pan and you are ready to put the bread in the oven, you must score the bread along the edge of the bread pan – all the way around.  And then score the bread along the top of the bread parallel with the long edge of the bread pan.  The scoring is necessary to control the bread rising in the oven, otherwise the dough will split and rise in a random direction.

Know When to Fold ‘em:

After the ingredients have been combined and the dough has had a chance to rise (1.5x to 2x in size), you need to roll it out.  After lightly flattening the dough, fold over opposite sides to meet in the middle, and then do so for the other two sides.  This should create a square.  Roll this square out into a 12”x22” rectangle. 

Brush on the vanilla water and evenly sprinkle the cinnamon/sugar/cocoa/nutmeg mix over this square.  Now fold the long sides in to touch each other in the middle.  So all the coated parts are now inward facing!

Mile high rollers:

Carefully roll the dough.   Make sure that the dough width is that of the pan so that you can simply and neatly set the rolled dough into the pan to rise! (about 7” in width).

Patiently wait for the dough to rise.  Remember the normal temperature for dough rising is at 71 degree Fahrenheit.  For every 7 degrees warmer you double the rate of rising (until you kill the yeast – I think at 160 degrees).  For every 7 degrees cooler you halve the rate of rising.  The bread usually takes about an hour to rise at this point at 71 degrees.  I was ‘rising’ at 64 degrees and I forgot this so I ran out of time (and my bread did not quite get to a mile high – more like a half mile high…)

What is fancy sounding and comes in 4's? Spinach Pancetta Pizza.

To celebrate Easter weekend, and to provide the Brews Brothers in attendance with something good to eat with their 'religiously themed beers' I decided to whip up some pizza.  After flipping through my many (ok, like four) bread books, I came across a very synergistic recipe.  Spinach Pancetta pizza.

Megan had kindly donated pancetta from Trader Joe's (only one of the greatest grocery store chains on Earth) when she returned from Atlanta and I just had it sittin' in the fridge...plus I had the rest of the ingredients already (usually a strong force it determining what to bake...going to the store when its jsut 'ole H.E.B. can be more effort than its worth.  To top it all off this recipe wanted me to make four 'little pizzas' which would be perfect to dice up for the Brews Brothers crew.

The first thing the recipe calls for is to strain and drain some diced canned tomotoes and sprinkled in a couple of cloves of diced garlic, and to salt and pepper liberally.  After than layer it time to add some greenery (baby spinach leaves)

Finally the shredded mozzarella, because I'm lazy, because the recipe called for real mozzarella slices, and the KEYS to making this all worth it, the pancetta and the sun dried tomatoes in olive oil (so good)

Remember to save some cheese to sprinkle over the sun dried tomatoes because those suckers will dry out on top of these mini pies if not 'protected' by cheese.  Bake for 15-20 at 425 and cut and consume.

Not the healthiest way to make pizza, but its fancy and delicious, makes about 30-36 small slices.

Delicious Spiral: Pecan Chocolate Bread

So this past Saturday the weather in Austin was perfect, Megan was in Vegas, and we (roommates) were recovering from Friday's Brews Brothers (http://scotchbourbonbeer.blogspot.com/p/brews-brothers.html) Extreme Beer theme...which means it was time to grill out.  We had a couple of leftover beers, grilled up some chicken, bell peppers, some "corn" (You know they call corn-on-the-cob "corn-on-the-cob" right? But that's how it comes out of the ground, man. They should call that "corn." They should call every other version "corn-off-the-cob." It's not like if you cut off my arm you would call my arm "Mitch." But then reattach it and call it "Mitch-all-together!" - the late Mitch Hedberg)....and I decided to cook up a new bread recipe.  I looked in my baking pantry (yes, I have one just for baking stuff) and I had pecans, I had nestle chocolate chunks. I had the recipe. Boom! Pecan Chocolate bread.  Kevin was double-fisting it.  He was very hungry.

...now seriously considering how to combine my law degree and breadmaking to make a living...

Advice?

Feta and Spinach Pine Nut Rolls - Who wants Kings Cake now?

So earlier this March I had the opportunity to stop in New Orleans by way of Birmingham and Hattiesburg on my way back to Austin, accompanying Megan back from Atlanta, and I thought it would be a good plan to make her favorite bread to snack on during the car ride back. I have made the Feta Spinach Pine Nut bread before, but it was as a twist.  This time I decided to do them / it as rolls

 

Well we eventually arrived back in Austin, but it was a good thing we had those rolls (and Megan's excellent collection of assorted Trader Joes snacks...) because crossing into New Orleans we hit literally a wall of water. No, the levies were still up, but the sky dumped rain down so hard we had to put on the emergency lights like all the other drivers in order to see, regular lights were actually impossible to see without the flashing...after that, and after a crazy night in New Orleans, we were stuck in hours of extra traffic thanks to TxDOT deciding to close a key bridge on I-10 near Beaumont down to 1 fricking lane the Sunday before Mardi Gras.  But we had our food and our bread so no one got too cranky.

On a side note:  bought a box of beignet mix after my trip to Cafe DuMonde.

Not Shown - side of insulin.

The (bis)quick and the bread part 2 - Honey Mustard Bacon Garlic Muffins

Every once in a while I get a last second improvisational urge to bake something with dinner, and do not have the time or patience to knead or breadmachine something out, wait for it to rise, etc etc etc

Bisquick is the answer.  This time I started playing around with the ratios of bisquick to milk and adding some new awesome ingredients.  My parents, who I love mind you, think its hilarious to respond to the question "What's in this?"  My dad: "ingredients, really good ingredients"  He's so funny. ahem. so.....

but there is a kernel of truth in that.  who can resist honey mustard, bacon, and garlic in a recipe?  so this is an approximate sketch of what I ended up doing.

the new ratio of more liquid makes the batter smoother and less 'tacky' therefore harder to shape onto a piece of parchment paper to be free standing so I employed some muffin tins.

1 1/2 cups bisquick (the heart healthy kind)
2/3 cups milk
2 strips turkey bacon, cooked then crumbled
1 tbls honey
1 tbls smokey brown mustard
1 tsp garlic salt
1 tsp cayenne pepper

mix the batter together, spray a muffin pan (i used a 6 muffin pan, but 12 would work, you'll only fill 7-8 at the most...this batter doesn't rise much so you can fill all the way up to the top)

then bake at 450 for 10 minutes.  again I used a stone to retain heat in the oven and placed the muffin tin right on top of the stone.  bake until the muffins look like this (below) and are 'hollow' sounding when you tap the tops.

Feel free to perhaps add more honey, mustard, or garlic salt depending on what flavor you may want to feature more...just be aware the more honey or mustard you add you may need to add a little more bisquick so as to not make the batter too soupy!

UPDATE: Added new information to the Troubleshooting your Bread Machine page

Boom. Posted. and happy Thursday.

Chocolate Cream Cheese Bread - to all the fussy eaters out there

FUSSY EATER (George Carlin)
I was what my parents used to call a fussy eater, which is, of course, a euphemism for big pain in the ass... I would say "I don't like that.  Did you make that? Is there a picture of it in the cookbook? I bet it don't look like that!"


I was certainly a fussy eater for a couple of what must have been frustrating years to my parents.  All I would eat was peanut butter and jelly and cheerios.  I have a feeling even my fussy eater self all those years ago would've put down a good amount of this bread.  Chocolate Cream Cheese Bread is by far the most well-loved recipe I have ever baked.  My friend Jill (she loves books like I love bread  http://abookofadifferentcolor.blogspot.com/) gave me my first bread book and this was the first recipe I made out of it.

I have probably made this recipe at least two dozen times since, and because I opened my big mouth at work  and people wanted something to try...I went back to it.

LOGIC
"How do you know you don't like it?"  They wanted reasons.  Sometimes you don't always have a reason.  "I know I don't like it, and if I ate it I'd like it even less.  You like it? YOU eat it." - George Carlin

The downside to chocolate cream cheese bread is that it is very hard to get to present correctly.  The recipe calls for folding and joining strips of dough across the top (pictured below)  and the problem is the dough doesn't always meld and then the bread looks like an alien chest-buster just exploded out of it (but still tastes delicious - the bread, not an alien chest-buster thing, come on now).  Fortunately after two dozen attempts or so I figured out that gently wetting the ends of the strips with a little water almost always prevents this!  I know I know, after twenty some odd times I finally catch on?  I'm not as clever as I look sometimes.

Fortunately with this bread recipe I don't need to be clever - I mean its got cream cheese in the dough.  

And to add to the Video Techniques section (the videos are ready I'm just having trouble converting them to mpeg format and posting them) I'm going to start  How Do They Do That and Troubleshooting your Breadmachine pages as well.  More posts and page updates to follow!

Southern French Rosemary Rolls and Oscar Hosts - Very Disappointing

I suppose it is sad when the best thing about an Oscarcast is the Oscarcast pick'em pools (not to brag or anything but I made out like a bandit with dinner and free movie tickets - thank you Tom Hooper for winning Best Director and putting me over the top!).

But for the most part it was a night of disappointments...Ann Hathaway stayed clothed (although I noticed she changed outfits plenty), James Franco still had an arm (no wonder he didn't win Best Actor for 127 hours...total lack of commitment to the role) and the always 'wild and crazy' Brits picked up the lion's share of the significant Oscars.

To celebrate the Oscars I made a honey mustard encrusted/braised pork tenderloin.  (two parts honey to one part French's mustard and one part smokey mustard with healthy dashes of cayenne pepper and garlic salt thrown in for good measure).  To go with the pork tenderloin I made Southern French Rosemary Rolls.

The pork was to the nominees at the Oscars as the rolls were to the hosts.  Solid and excellent to bland and very disappointing (boom. analogy. eat your heart out SATs...)

I thought the rolls would be a bit more robust, after all the recipe called for rosemary and a good dash of hotsauce!  But instead they pulled a Social Network - it looked like a sure winner before it all started, but in the end fell short.  Couldn't taste any of the favor enhancing ingredients. So instead of posting the recipe (unless I get a specific request because it was really poor) I brief discuss finishing a roll by brushing on egg.

Brushing an egg wash onto dough before baking it will cause the dough to look more golden brown and appear 'slick' and 'shiny'  The secondary function of an egg wash is to hold down some poppy seeds or other topping you are sprinkling over buns or rolls.  I used liquid egg here in these pictures, but a regular egg and add a little salt or just a little milk and the shine/color will be even more pronounced!  This is a great technique to get your bread to look like 'bakery quality stuff

Brushed on the left, non brushed on the right

Nonbrushed after baking

Brushed after baking!

I'll see your cheese/meat dip and raise you Basil Butter Garlic Bread(sticks)

This past Friday was the second meeting of the Brews Brothers beer club, and it featured the first ever Cheap Beer Challenge!  (which is a lot like James Franco and Ann Hathaway hosting the Oscars...it sounded like a decent idea when it was first proposed, but when you get into it you ask - why the f#ck did we decide to do this???? Its not that funny and I'm a little annoyed/sick to my stomach that its still happening) My roommate Chris also decided to role out his new crockpot for its first public offering and he cooked up some cheesy, meaty, dipping sauce.  Not to be completely outdone I whipped up some basil butter garlic bread to dip in to the dipping sauce.  Basically anything to not taste the cheap beer (which, as it turns out, pretty much all looks and tastes the same anyways...)

the basil butter garlic bread(sticks) recipe is one of the easiest to make and one of the most delicious (and they make a great first impression...I think Megan can attest to that :p ).  This particular bread is even easy to make by hand.  After combining all the dry ingredients and then mixing in the wet ones you basically knead the dough for about 8 minutes, let it rest for an hour, and then roll it out, cut it, bake it, dip it, eat it.  The trick with this recipe is to cut the dough in the above finished pattern BEFORE lathering with melted butter and topping off with garlic salt, kosher salt, and dried (or fresh) basil.  This allows the butter to coat the insides of the cuts, as opposed to just resting on the surface (although its freakin' butter...it tastes good either way).

One final note about this recipe - yah gotta really toast it!  For the bread sticks to be effective at the end you must make sure to really get a good and golden brown crusting on the bottom of the bread.  I used a stone for  maximum heat retention/minimum heat recovery for the oven this time!  The top of the bread sticks won't toast up as obviously because of the salt and butter lathered on top of it...so check the bottom.

On a non bread related note...recovering from a cheap beer challenge is not pleasant.  Its cheap for a reason - all the delicious basil butter garlic bread cannot remedy that!

Recipe to follow!

Rosemary Olive Bread - here, bake that (and other troubleshooting tips)

Prince John: What can you tell me about Robin of Locksley?
Witch Latrine: Raven's egg! Blood of a hen! A little more blood, yes! Eyeballs of a crocodile! Testicles of a newt! I bet he's a transsexual now! Robin of Locksley is handsome and brave. He seeks to regain his family's honor. Little sod could be trouble.
Prince John: Are you certain? 
Witch Latrine: Certain? You want certain, hire yourself a witch! Me, I'm just your cook. Here, eat that.

- Robin Hood: Men in Tights (1993) 

So if you are curious, yes, I do requests.  Megan requested that I try out a Rosemary Olive bread and found me a good recipe for it, which I have converted to use in a bread machine.

Requests using a non-bread machine recipe and doing it in the bread machine can be tricky, and what you get may not be what you were expecting. When converting a recipe from a 'by hand' to a 'by machine' you need to make sure that: 

(1) the amount of ingredients fits in your machine;

(2) the bread dough type can stand the prolonged and more aggressive kneading cycle of the machine (so if you are trying to make artisan bread, which requires the only the very minimum kneading this is not a good option and you must do it by hand...otherwise it would be like trying to fit ten pounds of crap into a five pound bag - it will be messy, it won't work, and you won't be happy when it goes all over the place);

(3) moisture containing additives are accounted for. the blade in my bread machine isn't sharp enough to slice...um...well...bread, but it will pummel the crap out of things like strawberries, blueberries, grapes, olives etc - which of course releases extra liquid into the dough, which in turn makes the dough a pudding esque batter of bizarreness....the best way to account for this is to make sure that you add extra flour, slowly, tablespoon by tablespoon, the first time you make the recipe, to account for the extra released liquid. 

The rosemary olive bread recipe that I used accounts for the extra flour necessary after the bread machine pummels the olives into chunks...its not exact, so the first time you make it I would keep an eye on the dough and make sure its forming like it should (especially if you use different types of olives...)  I'm not certain if an extra 1/3 cup of flour will be enough or too much but... 

Certain? You want certain, hire yourself a professional. Me, I'm just your source of bread recipes. Here, bake that (rosemary olive bread).

Note: I baked this bread on a stone in the oven and it was fantastic! Megan and I highly recommend you try some of this with an olive oil/black pepper dip or a piece of goat cheese spread on it.

The Quick and the Bread

Most of my postings have been about standard bread making, but standard bread making usually takes a fair amount of patience and time - somethings not everyone has or wants to spend.  A good healthy fast way to 'cheat' at baking something tasty is to use Bisquick Heart Healthy.  I usually make biscuits/buns but there are plenty of alternative ways to use Bisquick if you do a little digging online. Or you can do what I do, just make it up.

Bisquick is fairly forgiving stuff as long as you don't overmix/overknead it.  When you work with dough it is important to first (a) combine the ingredients and then (b) knead the dough enough so that the gluten organizes and is sturdy enough to become bread.  With Bisquick you really only need to do part (a); there is no reason to worry about part (b) since you will be working with batter rather than dough.

The trick is to add flavor enhancers you think will work well together.  I used garlic salt, mozzarella cheese, and dried basil, but any number of combinations would be intriguing...I think my next experiment will be bacon bits with honey and cayenne pepper - a sweet salty hot combination sounds pretty tasty...or in all reality the flavor enhancers are usually a hodge-podge of whatever I have around the kitchen...

So I made Mozzarella Basil buns and I've posted the recipe on the Recipes page.

"Hot!" Pizza Dough

I am not the most precise baker and I constantly tinker with recipes, and I usually try to use the power for good but sometimes it turns evil.  Reminded/inspired by the dark chocolate peanut butter cups I received from Megan for Valentines Day, I decided to spice up the dough (the dark chocolate cups are from Trader Joe's, which we sadly do not have in Austin, and at Trader Joe's they have different flavors of pizza dough available for purchase...).  If that didn't make sense, don't worry about it. my brain is just hyperlinking.  Although there seems to be something amazing (disturbing?) about food inspiring more food...

I have also recently become a huge fan of the 'new' (how long does something have to be out to not be considered new anymore?) Dominoes buttery garlic crust.  So in an attempt to get as much garlic flavor into the dough I substituted garlic salt for granulated salt.  I also used beer instead of water in the dough; left over from the Brews Brothers meeting the Friday before...(used the El Salvador 100 if anyone is curious but any light-ish beer would do)

After I (the bread machine, which needs a nickname at this point, it kind of looks like R2D2 from Star Wars...maybe RDoughD2?) created the dough I rolled it out into about a 14 inch diameter circle, brushed the top with olive oil, and then sprinkled about a 1 teaspoon of additional garlic salt and then, to give it a pretty decent kick, about 1-2 teaspoons of cayenne pepper (there are red pepper flakes in my moms secret pizza sauce recipe...but not enough to notice any heat).  Topped it off with some Parmesan and Mozzarella cheese and some chopped up smoked turkey sausage (its what I had left in the fridge...trip to the store tonight!)

Baked it at 425 for about 35 minutes - and the heat was just spicy enough to be called medium/mild with a good strong garlic taste complementing the sauce.

Recipe Posted.


PS - I knocked over my stapler at work today and notice that it read "Stapler #4" on the bottom in big black lettering. . The first three are dead. I am #4.  Hopefully that movie is decent, I think it comes out this weekend... I am stapler #4.

Babka Giving Day Massacre

Latrine, French Resistance: Oh, we never had a chance. It was a slaughter.
Deja Vu, French Resistance: We must put a stop to these afternoon football games. 
-Top Secret

First runs at recipes usually provide the most entertainment and unpredictable results.  Babka was no different.  It probably didn't help to have the first inaugural meeting of Brews Brothers over at the same time (although the meeting was also cause for the babka being made) to distract me.

I prepared the dough the night before and also did the shaping so that all I had to do was pop the babka in the oven and bake it for the party.  Turns out that part was very straightforward and simple.  As the pictures show just roll the dough into a 15x15 square, sprinkle the chopped chocolate and butter crumble, roll up from one side creating a tube, then roll the tube into a ram's horn shape and then plan into a standard loaf pan.

Friday afternoon people began to arrive for the Brews Brothers inaugural meeting, and I hurriedly tossed the babka into the oven at 350 for 25 minutes.  After 25 minutes the bread looked nice and brown on top and made a hollow sound when tapped.  This typically means bread is done!  However, not when there are layers of chocolate and butter bubbling in the middle of it.  Here is where the trouble began...Peter Reinhart's directions are in paragraph form and he often bolds the bake time and temperature.  350 for 25 minutes.  However...in normal print two sentences later...something like 'it will take about an hour total to bake completely, after you check the bread at 25 minutes".  I did not read that part until it was far too late...

So, thinking the bread was done after the initial 25 minutes, and very pleased with the chocolate buttery smells wafting through the apartment (and with the delicious Belgium brew I had just finished - Kwak is one of my favorite beers of all time, well, at least of my time.  All time would be pretty ambitious...I've only been here for 28 years...beer has been around much much longer)  I flipped the loaf onto a cooling rack.  

Man 1:Wait, you forgot your phony dog poo!
Man 2: What phony dog poo?

oops

The loaf held form for about five seconds, and then with a puff of delicious smelling steam, collapsed into itself.  It was quite literally deflating.  Fortunately most of my guests were otherwise occupied with beers and chips and cheeses and did not hear my brief but violent swearing and calling the bread a See You Next Tuesday (thanks mike). 

So there were two options, dump it or keep baking.  I am not so easily defeated.  I scooped up the cooling rack and redeposited the Chocolate Cinnamon Babka sinkloaf back into the loaf pan.  Spent the next 30 minutes baking it to normal consistency (and having a beer or two...let you decide if thats an understatement...to re-inflate my ego). 

Nick: UGH (spits) What is that Stuff?
Chocolate Mousse: HAHAHAHA. Gasoline.

As it turns out, if you get your guests drunk on craft and microbrews and put plenty of chocolate and butter into your bread, it doesn't matter what the loaf looks like...It was like Gone in Sixty Seconds, except not an annoying waste of money starring a collection of actors that generally cannot act their way out of a crackerjack box, and Robert Duvall, who must have lost a bet.

Lesson for the Day #1:  Read the entire recipe and baking instructions all the way through instead of line by line.  Turns out you may end up with a mushy hole where the center of your bread is supposed to be.

Lesson for the Day #2:  Any bread that has a layer or layers of something delicious inside whether it be cheese, meat, olives, chocolate, etc probably will pass the tap test and carmelization (browning) test and still not be done.  It is important to follow recommended baking instructions to the letter the first time you attempt the recipe.

All in all it was a success,  and it passed the only test that matters...people ate it and liked it.

German Capt: Well let me know if his status changes:
German General: How is he?
German Capt: He's dead!

Fennel Beer Bread

"I hear they recently added more...hops" - Fogell

Whenever I am flipping through a recipe book its safe to assume that "beer" in the title of the recipe will usually get me to stop and give it a once over.  Last night the fennel beer bread recipe was no different.  The deciding factor was that I had already opened a beer to marinade the steak that I was cooking for dinner, and this recipe seemed like a perfect place for the rest of it.

The titular flavors are beer (which, unless you use a very hardy or aggressively flavored beer, just causes the bread to be incredibly soft) and fennel seeds.  I had only previously used fennel seeds (crushed) in my mom's secret pizza sauce recipe so I wasn't sure how whole fennel seeds in dough would turn out.  Interestingly the fennel, while detectable, is fairly overpowered by the mustard the recipe calls for (that and the garlic salt).

Lesson for the day: never assume you have all the ingredients.

I thought, after the NFC championship game, a day that will forever live infamy, that a friend of mine brought over a big bottle of dijon-style mustard to go with all the bratwurst and polish sausages he grilled. I couldn't find it...and spent a good ten minutes wandering around the kitchen muttering "why is the mustard gone." So I had to substitute in half of the mustard requirement with yellow mustard instead.

Anyways, as usual, the recipe is for a loaf of bread and I broke it out into rolls.  I did video several of the roll making techniques (not as easy as it sounds with a camera phone in one hand and trying to one-hand the dough in the other...)  I'll clean those up and post them this evening (maybe) in the Video Techniques section of the blog.

I've added Fennel Beer Bread to the Recipe page in case anyone has the same desire to incorporate beer into anything edible.

Mozzarella and Oregano Superbowl Buns

For the Superbowl between who could care less (Steelers) and who I couldn't dislike more (Packers) I decided to cheer myself up by baking a new recipe from More Breadbakers Bounty.

I have a habit of turning loaf recipes into non-loaf products and this endeavor was no different.  The trick to this is having a decent handle on how your oven works, and having a decent amount of roll/bun baking experience (or now reading my blog?!?).  Basically take your generic loaf of bread recipe (usually calls for 3 cups of flour worth of dough) and knead it yourself or run it through the bread machine.  Instead of tossing the dough ball into a standard bread loaf pan and letting it rise, roll the dough out on a cutting board into a circle or rectangle, cut the dough into the desired number of pieces (key here is to make sure these pieces are very similar sized otherwise you will end up burning the small pieces or under cooking the large ones...).  I prefer to cut the dough into 12 to 16 triangles and then roll them from the large flat (non-pointy end) forward to make 'horns'  (a method that is the inspiration behind the title of my dad's "cheesehorns" recipe).

Set the horns out on parchment paper (or a nonstick baking surface/cookie sheet).  Preheat the oven to 400.  Let your rolls/horns rise for about 30 minutes... and then bake them for 12 minutes and check to see how they are doing.  This is a good basic failsafe approach as some ingredients mixed into bread (like cheeses) may increase or reduce baking time...but usually they won't burn or dry out in 12 minutes and then after that point you have to play a little with the time or temperature). If they are browning nicely but not hollow sounding to the tap...take the temperature down to 350 and continue to bake, otherwise you're done!  Trick is not to burn or dry out the rolls.

Anyways, the recipe called for a generous amount of mozzarella cheese and oregano to season the dough...and the buns went perfectly with ranch (or by themselves)

I will post the recipe on the Recipe page soon.  Meanwhile I have posted the cinnamon rolls recipe! Enjoy!

UPDATE: The recipe has been added to the Recipe Page.

Bread for the Bread Gods! (or cinnamon rolls...)

It snowed in Austin today.  No, thats not the beginning of a joke or a sign of the apocalypse.  It actually snowed an inch, which is enough to shut down the town.  My friends in Chicago still went to work in and after a blizzard.  Here, what would generously be called a 'dusting' or 'lake effect snow' is a three day weekend!  I knew I moved to Texas for a reason...

I decided to celebrate by making cinnamon rolls.  My roommates and cardiologists everywhere can celebrate :)

Like all future postings I will be adding the recipe which I use and instructions on how to make the recipe by hand and by bread machine (for the lazy of us out there....and yes...that would be me as well!)

Recipe added!

Laminated Breads

Cherry, Cream cheese, Apricot, or some of the above Danishes and Chocolate filled and regular croissants

NOTES:

I pulled the 'de trampe' (starter dough) out of the fridge. It consisted of a bit over a pound of bread flour. Then I proceeded to create the butter block (pictured below). It is literally three sticks of butter blended into a paste.

The butter block went smoother than expected, but was starting to melt a little so I tossed it into the fridge to harden up.

Next, pulled out the de trampe and flattened the sucker into just over twice the area of the butter block. Again, so far so good. Checked the butter block, still needed time. I proceeded to mix up what I can only describe as a heavenly almond flavored cream cheese filling to knock into the center of the Danishes.

Butter block was now solid enough. As Peter did in class, I plopped it down on one side of the de trampe and then proceeded to fold the rest over and seal it in.

Here was the first of many impatient acts that probably got me in the mess (literally) that I found myself in at the end. I tri-folded it right away. Now (of course now) I recall Mr. Reinhart letter this seal develop for a few minutes. Ha. Not I. (sigh). So, then I rolled out the first rectangle / base layer. No trouble yet. I set the timer for a few minutes and proceeded to knock out the fondut glaze that would make the buttery danish sweet.

Rolled out for the first laminating layer. Going from three layers to nine. Did the requisite trifold and floured generously, so that the damn rolling pin did not stick to the dough (there are fewer things that drive me into a rage than the dough tearing and sticking to a rolling pin even if it has been generously floured...I'm not sure why...probably because I had just done something to make sure that it didn't happen and it did anyways...)(no tearing and sticking this time though). However, the dough is getting pretty feisty due to all the rolling and stretching...so I let it set for about 12 minutes.

At this time there is flour and towels and baking equipment EVERYWHERE.

Enter the dishwasher repair guy. A very friendly soft spoken Mexican fellow. Guarantee he did not expect the state of the kitchen (look on his face alone was priceless) I am covered waist down with flour dust and probably had some on my face, there is a giant pillow sized thing of dough on the counter-top, and I have AC/DC blaring on the mp3 player.

He was very efficient (or freaked out) and fixed the dishwasher (which currently still works)

So about this time I noticed that there was some butter leaking out of the top of the dough pillow. As Peter did in class, I liberally sprinkled with flour and patted to close up the holes.

What did not happen in class, and what DID happen to me was that butter also leaked from the bottom.

The surface area was floured underneath, and mores the pity. Imagine butter filling leaking onto and mixing with flour. Yeah. What a mess! So this gooey disaster greeted me what I lifted up the pillow to turn it.

Swearing followed. I was a bit nonplussed at this point. It was leaking on the top and bottom (much like the dishwasher had been..although I'm fairly certain the dishwasher guy had NO idea how to fix this problem). So I did the only thing I could. Threw as much flour as I could at the problem.

Repeat this step several times and I had very stubborn, marginally laminated dough.

As with all complex baking, a small problem snowballs (or flour and butter balls) into a bigger issue at the end.

Today it was that the dough was too 'thick' to make the flat type danish. Also leaking all over the place was butter.

SUMMARY:

When the laminated bread 'leaks' butter paste on the flour surface – you get paste. The paste gets everywhere

Ended up with between 3 and 81 layers, depending on how many layer causalities occurred in various sections of the bread.

Speed is not a virtue, however, my first time making it I was very excited to get to the end.

I'm certain I have never used so much butter in my entire life.

LESSONS FOR THE DAY:

A – laminated bread requires extreme patience

B – don't start the recipe about 45 minutes before the dishwasher repairman arrives

Practice makes perfect. And fat roommates.