Category Archives: Bread

Kolaches

Posted on October 6, 2009 by Veronica

My friend Rhonda’s grandmother, who is a full blooded Czech, learned how to make kolaches from her own grandmother and she passed the recipe onto Rhonda, who in turn passed it on to me after I begged and pleaded for it. As you may already know, I was born in the wrong century and am constantly longing for a butter churn and a kitchen the size of our toilet that barely fits the wood burning stove. Since I unfortunately have a decent-sized kitchen and an electric oven, I try to keep history alive through the food I make by using old recipes. I don’t do it often, but I enjoy cooking and baking so much more when I’m using a recipe like this one.

Kolaches are a Czech dessert and are hard to describe. They’re not really like a doughnut, not really like a danish, definitely not a cookie. I guess the closest I can describe them is “pastry-ish.” The dough is sweet and buttery and they are quite delicious. I changed the method so that the preparation time was cut by half, but they didn’t seem to suffer for it. I still spoiled my dinner by gorging on them.

Kolaches

Adapted from Rhonda’s recipe that was passed down from her Grandmother

1 stick of unsalted butter
3/4 cup of milk
1 egg, room temperature
1/4 cup warm water
4+ cups of flour, divided
1/4 cup of granulated sugar
1 tsp. salt
2 ¼ tsp (1 packet) rapid acting yeast

Melt butter in a small saucepan. Add milk and heat just until warm—about 110 degrees. Set aside.

Beat egg in a medium bowl, then add a small amount of the warm milk & butter mixture to temper it, mixing it in. Add a little more and continue beating, adding all the rest of the liquid in a steady stream. Mix well, then stir in the water and set aside.

In a large bowl, combine 1 cup of the flour and the remaining ingredients. Whisk in the liquid mixture until smooth. Slowly add the remaining flour, stirring with a spoon until it gets too stiff and then using your hands. When you have enough flour, the dough should be soft, but stiff enough to clean the sides of bowl.

Knead dough in the bowl or on a lightly floured surface until smooth and elastic, about five minutes. Lightly spray three baking sheets with Pam. Pull off 1-ounce pieces of dough, about the size of a walnut, and roll into balls. Place a dozen on each cookie sheet in rows of 4×3, evenly spaced. Spray the tops with Pam and allow to rise in a warm place for one hour or until doubled in size.

While the balls are rising, prepare filling(s). Recipes follow.

Make a dent in each ball by pressing finger through to the cooking sheet. Leave about 1/2″ edge around outside of circle. Spoon filling into center. Brush sides of rolls with melted butter.

Bake at 400 degrees until golden brown, 10 to 15 minutes. Remove from baking sheet and cool on racks. Makes 3 dozen.

Apple Filling (my recipe)
1 t cornstarch
2 T sugar
2 T brown sugar
1 T butter
1 t vanilla, lemon juice, apple juice or water
1 ½ cups chopped apples
Cinnamon

Stir the cornstarch & sugar together in a small bowl, then add the brown sugar and stir until well blended. Set aside. Melt the butter in a medium saucepan, then stir in the sugar mixture & liquid. Stir in the apples and cook over medium heat until apples are as tender as you desire and liquid is thick. Sprinkle on as much cinnamon as you wish and stir it in well. You can sprinkle your choice of nuts over the kolaches with this filling if you desire. I used pecans.

Sour Cream Coconut Filling (my recipe)
½ cup sweetened, shredded coconut
2 T sugar
2 T sour cream

Mash all ingredients together with a fork until well blended. Mixture should be thick and creamy.

Coconut Filling (Rhonda’s recipe)
3 T butter
½ cup coconut
½ cup brown sugar

Melt butter and stir in the coconut and brown sugar until well blended.

Other fillings–all from Rhonda:

Prune & Apricot Filling
1 cup dried prunes
1 cup dried apricots
1/2 cup granulated sugar
1/4 tsp. ground cinnamon
1 TBSP. lemon juice

Cover dried fruits with enough water to cover them. Cook on med. heat for about 20 to 30 minutes. Drain. Add remaining ingredients.

Poppy Seed Filling
1 cup ground poppy seed
1/4 cup butter
1/4 cup milk (probably whole)
1 & 1/2 tsp. lemon juice or 1/2 tsp. vanilla
1/4 tsp. cinnamon
1 & 1/2 cup granulated sugar

Blend all ingredients and simmer for 5 minutes. Let cool before filling kolache. Will fill one dozen or more.

Prune Filling
Cook 1 pound of dried prunes until very tender, remove seeds and sweeten to taste with sugar. Add 1/8 tsp. full cloves and grated rind of 1/2 lemon, if the flavor is desired. Cook until quite thich. You may add a little vanilla if desired.

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Posted in Bread, Sweets and tagged apple, coconut, czech dessert, kolaches. Bookmark the permalink.

Easy Buttermilk Oatmeal Bread

Posted on October 5, 2009 by Veronica

It started with Red’s white bread and now I can’t stop. Once I realized just how easy making bread with my own hands can be, I haven’t been able to keep them out of the dough! I haven’t had to buy bread at the store for a month now and I really don’t ever want to again. This loaf is my latest bread victory.

Easy Buttermilk Oatmeal Bread
Adapted from http://www.thecookingphotographer.com

Ingredients
1 cup oats (I used old-fashioned rolled oats)
3 cups flour, divided
1 teaspoon salt
1 ½ teaspoons rapid acting/instant dry yeast
1 1/3 cups warm buttermilk
2 Tablespoons honey
1 Tablespoon butter or margarine, melted

Instructions
In a large mixing bowl, whisk together the oats, 2 cups of the flour, salt and yeast.

Measure the wet ingredients over the dry and stir until well incorporated. Slowly stir in the remaining flour until the dough is too thick to stir, then commence kneading in the flour. You can turn it out of the bowl, but I always leave it in the bowl and knead it that way so as not to dirty another surface. Knead for five minutes.

Shape the dough into a loaf, place in a greased bread pan, and spray the top with oil. Cover loosely with plastic wrap and let rise in a warm place for one hour.

Meanwhile preheat the oven to 350 degrees. After the dough has doubled in size, remove the plastic wrap and bake for 30 minutes until browned.

After baking, remove the bread from the pan onto a cooling rack. Brush the top with melted butter and cool completely.

Honey Oatmeal Bread

Posted on September 8, 2009 by Veronica

**Note: This post is an eyesore but I don’t want to change the content because I’m keepin’ it real. This is how the original post looked and read, and I want to be able to read it again ten years from now and cringe as much as I’m cringing now. :) (Although I am adding a new photo of this in rolls-form, and plan to add more next time I make this into bread again.)

I will let you in on the people I’m identifying here. This was back in my MySpace days, where I originally posted this, when I was friends with a couple gals who went by Red (Kim) and Kitchen Bitch (Krista). Red’s white bread was the first yeast bread that required kneading that I’d ever made. This was the second one and it is still my favorite after three years of baking with yeast. It has the best, softest, texture and an incredible taste. I hope you overlook the bad photos and delirious writing and make it!**

Well I’ve made Red’s bread which got me over my fear of making it, so I decided to tackle the Bitch’s bread…Kitchen Bitch, that is! :) Kim can have “Red’s Bread” and Krista can have “Bitchin’ Bread”–am I a great marketing schemer or what? If you guys ever do open bread shops, I want 10% of your profits. Ha!

(It’s after 1 AM and I’m sleep-deprived. In case you didn’t notice.)

OK, so Krista sent me this recipe quite a while back, but since the directions called for a stand mixer with dough hooks (which I don’t have) and I was scared to make bread in the first place, let alone try to modify a recipe to suit my lack of kitchen apparatus, I saved it for a later date.

The date came today. Emboldened by my most recent success with the white bread, I decided I was going to go for the Honey Oatmeal Bread, despite my lack of dough hooks and despite the fact that it was nearly 11 PM. It was a huge success and totally worth staying up for–even better than my first bread attempt! The taste is unbelievable and the texture is crazy soft. I’m in love. I wish I had a good camera to show off the beauty of these loaves, but you can get a general idea from the back-up camera that I’m using.

Honey Oatmeal Bread
from KitchenAid

1 1/2 c water
1/2 c honey
1/3 c butter or margarine
5 1/2 to 6 1/2 c all-purpose flour
1 c quick cooking oats (Krista says rolled oats work fine too)
2 t salt
2 pkgs active dry yeast or 4 1/2 tsp jarred yeast
2 eggs
1 egg white
1 T water
Additional oatmeal for decoration (optional)

Place water, honey, and butter in small saucepan. Heat over low heat until mixture is very warm. (120-130 F)

First place oats, then 5 c flour, salt, and yeast in mixer bowl. Attach bowl and dough hook to mixer. Turn to Speed 2 and mix about 15 seconds.

Continuing on Speed 2, gradually add warm mixture to flour mixture and mix about 1 minute. Add whole eggs and mix about 1 minute longer.

Continuing on Speed 2, add remaining flour, 1/2 c at a time, and mix about 2 minutes or until dough starts to clean the sides of bowl. Knead on Speed 2 about 2 minutes longer.

Place dough in greased bowl, turning to grease top. Cover (I use plastic wrap) and let rise in a warm, non-drafty place (I use my oven with the light on) about 1 hour or until doubled in bulk. Sometimes this takes longer than 1 hour. Let it go until it has doubled.

Punch dough down and divide in half. Shape each half into a loaf and place in greased bread baking pans. Cover (I use a clean dish cloth for this) and let rise again in a warm, draft free place (oven again) until doubled in bulk…usually an hour, sometimes a bit more.

Beat the egg white and water and brush the tops of loaves GENTLY. Sprinkle with oatmeal if desired. Bake at 375 F (preheat the oven so it is up to temp) for 30-40 minutes. Remove from pans immediately and cool on wire racks.

Krista recommends brushing the crust with butter or margarine after removing from pans and so do I.

Yields 32 servings (16 slices per loaf). Nutritional info per slice: 134 cal, 4 g pro, 24 g carb, 3 g fat, 13 mg chol, 162 mg sod

Veronica’s Notes: To make this by hand, mix the dry ingredients together in a large bowl. Beat the eggs in a small bowl. Pour in warm liquid and mix with a spoon until blended, then dump in the beaten eggs and fold the dough over and over until all the egg is incorporated and you’ve got a ridiculously sticky mass attached to your hand. Add the remaining flour 1/2 cup at a time, kneading it in. I just knead my bread dough in the bowl to keep from dirtying another surface. Once you have kneaded in all the flour and continued to knead for a few minutes, follow the instructions on the recipe. I used instant yeast so I was able to skip the first rising and go straight to shaping the halves into loaves and sticking them in the pans. Krista wouldn’t recommend this and she’s probably right that using regular yeast and allowing the bread to rise longer develops a fuller flavor, but I seriously can’t imagine bread getting any better than this. If it’s better her way, the taste would probably give me a heart attack so it’s partly in the interest of my own health that I’m sticking to my own method.

10 Comments

Posted in Bread, My Favorites and tagged Bread, fresh, homemade, honey, oatmeal, recipe, yeast. Bookmark the permalink.

1963 Good Housekeeping White Bread

Posted on September 5, 2009 by Veronica

My friend Kim, aka Red, shred this recipe with me. I keep calling this “Red’s Bread,” because even though it’s an old recipe, she’s the one that introduced it to me! (Besides, I love the way it rolls off my tongue–I think Kim should have her own bread company and name it “Red’s Bread”, don’t you? ) I love trying old recipes, and this one was not only easy, but delicious. I never thought I could turn out a decent loaf of bread that I actually kneaded myself, but I did it! Woo-hoo! My husband is in heaven right now (he’s already eaten half a loaf!) and keeps staring at me with these gushy lovey eyes like I’m some sort of goddess. I wonder if fresh bread does this to all men or if it’s just a quirk of his? In any case, I think I’ll be making this bread a LOT! :)

White Bread
From 1963 Good Housekeeping Cookbook

1/2 cup milk

3 tablespoons sugar

2 teaspoon salt

3 tablespoons margarine or butter

1 1/2 cups warm water

1 pkg. (2 1/4 t) active dry yeast

About 6 1/4 cups sifted all-purpose flour

Scald milk; stir in sugar, salt and margarine. Cool to lukewarm. Measure warm water into large bowl; sprinkle in yeast; stir until dissolved. Add lukewarm milk mixture and 3 cups flour; beat until smooth. Add enough additional flour to make ta soft dough. Turn out onto lightly floured board. Knead until smooth and elastic, about 8-10 min. Form into smooth ball. Place in greased bowl, turning to grease top. Cover; let rise in warm place, free from draft, until doubled in bulk, about 1 hr.

Punch down dough. Let rest 15 min. Then divide dough in half and shape each half into a loaf. Place each loaf in a greased 9x5x3 bread pan. Cover; let rise in warm place, free from draft, until doubled in bulk, about 1 hr.

Bake at 400 degrees F, about 30 min, or until done. Makes 2 loaves.

*Veronica’s Notes:

Many older recipes instruct you to scald milk. That is, to bring it nearly to a boil (185°F, 85°C, or more), preferably in a thick-bottomed pan, and stirring actively, to keep a protein skin from forming on the surface and keep the proteins and sugar from sticking to the bottom. Scalding served two purposes, to kill potentially harmful bacteria in the milk, and to destroy enzymes that keep the milk from thickening in recipes. Pasteurization, however, accomplishes both of those goals, and since almost all store-bought milk in Western countries is pasteurized these days, scalding is essentially an unnecessary step. Therefore, I merely heated the milk with the butter, sugar & salt until the butter was melted and then I cooled it until it was just warm but not hot.

Also, I used rapid rise/instant yeast. If you are also using instant yeast, here is my method for this bread that you can follow–it cuts down on the prep time by a full hour.

Mix 3 cups flour with the yeast in a large bowl, then pour in the warm water and cooled milk mixture until blended. Follow the rest of the directions up until the point when you have kneaded the bread for 8-10 minutes. You will skip the first rising since instant yeast makes this step unnecessary. Divide the dough in half, form into loaves, and put it into the greased loaf pans. Follow the second rising and baking directions. I turned my loaves out of the pan as soon as they were done and brushed them with melted butter. Divine!

https://i0.wp.com/a4.ec-images.myspacecdn.com/images02/20/aa3117dc4a5e49649aca38c4ccf57e16/l.jpg

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Posted in Bread and tagged 1963, Bread, good housekeeping, old-fashioned, white. Bookmark the permalink.

Honey Whole Wheat Cornbread

Posted on September 2, 2009 by Veronica

This is my favorite cornbread and I make it more often than any other kind. Hearty and rustic, it is excellent smeared with butter and paired with chili or stew.

Honey Whole Wheat Cornbread

Makes one 9×13″ pan or 24 muffins
2 cups whole wheat flour
2 cups corn meal
4 teaspoons baking powder*
1 1/2 teaspoons salt
2 eggs
1/4 cup vegetable oil
1/2 cup honey
2 cups milk (I usually use skim)

Combine the corn meal, flour, baking powder, and salt in a large bowl. In a medium bowl, whisk together the eggs, oil, honey & milk. Stir into the flour mixture just enough to moisten the batter. Pour into a greased 9 by 13 inch baking pan or 24 greased muffin cups. Bake in a 375 degree oven for 20-35 minutes or until golden brown.

*Due to the large quantity of baking powder in this recipe, I recommend using an aluminum-free baking powder, such as Rumford, to avoid a funny after-taste. (If you weren’t aware, most brands have aluminum in them.) If you bake often, I’d recommend investing in an aluminum-free baking powder to ensure the best taste in your quick breads and cakes.

5 Comments

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Rosemary Peasant Bread

Posted on May 18, 2009 by Veronica

My friend Krista shared her recipe for Rosemary Peasant Bread with me and I couldn’t resist making it immediately. Both loaves were gone the following day, and after making another two loaves today, only half of the second loaf remains (exactly two hours after removing them from the oven). This is becoming a problem, albeit a delicious one.

Feel free to blame Krista if you find yourself in a similar predicament. I do.

Rosemary Peasant Bread

• 2 1/2 tsp dry yeast
• 2 c. warm water
• 1 T. sugar
• 2 tsp salt
• 4 c. flour
• 2 tsp. dried rosemary, plus more for topping
• olive oil, corn meal, & coarse salt

Dissolve yeast and sugar in the warm water. Add flour, salt, and rosemary & stir until blended. Do not knead!! Cover and let rise for 1 hour or until doubled in size (no need to grease the bowl, just leave it be).

Dump half of dough each into a greased round 8 or 9″ cake pans that have been lightly sprinkled with corn meal. Cover loosely with greased plastic wrap. Then let it rise another hour.

Lightly sprinkle with more rosemary and coarse salt.

Bake @ 425 for 10 minutes, then reduce temp to 375 for 15 minutes more.

As Krista says, “Cool on wire racks if you can stand it. We eat it almost right away.”

Consider yourself forewarned.

Makes 16 wedges.
Per wedge:
116 calories
293 mg sodium
21 g carbs
1 g fiber
3.3 g protein

Veronica’s Notes: I used 1 packet of quick-rise (also called instant, highly active, etc) yeast and did 30 minutes on the first rise and another 30 on the second–saves some time. I let the dough rise in a 200 degree oven and turned it off as soon as the (metal) bowl was in there. And I used foil to cover the bowl and the pans (sprayed with oil) just to prevent any plastic melt-age. I had problems with my bread sticking to the pans when I used olive oil so I greased them generously with shortening the second time. They still stuck a little, but not nearly as bad. Krista never has a problem with this so hopefully it’s just me. And if you’re wondering why my salt looks so weird, I didn’t have any coarse salt so I used some leftover pretzel salt which is white instead of clearish. Shut up and leave me alone.

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Posted in Bread, Lighter Fare and tagged Bread, peasant, rosemary. Bookmark the permalink.

Orange Biggie Buns

Posted on March 22, 2009 by Veronica

Marina recently posted a recipe for her “Orange Bitty Buns” and I could neither resist making them ASAP, nor the impulse to turn those “bitty” buns into giant-sized monster rolls so that I couldn’t even call them by their intended name when I was finished with them. Sorry, Marina, but I’m all about BIG when it comes to fat and sugar. :)

I’m going to post the recipe as Marina originally intended since I’m sure they will turn out better for you that way. Doing it my way (rolling out a large rectangle of the dough, layering on the filling and rolling the whole thing up to slice with floss/thread, like cinnamon rolls), was messy and difficult and didn’t make the rolls very pretty. Course, they tasted divine and the glaze covered up the ugliness so who cares? Either way, they’ll be great!!!! I think I actually like them BETTER than cinnamon rolls, even Aunt Becky’s (which are the best cinnamon rolls in the world). I hope you like them too.

MARINA’S ORANGE BITTY BUNS

Biscuits:
2 1/2 cups flour
1 tablespoon baking powder
1 teaspoons salt
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/3 cup shortening
1 cup buttermilk

Filling:
1/4 cup butter, softened (1 teaspoon per biscuit)
1 cup and 2 tablespoons orange marmalade (1 1/2 tablespoons per biscuit)
1/4 cup brown sugar (1 teaspoon brown sugar per biscuit)

Icing:
2 1/2 cups powdered sugar
1/4 cup orange juice
1 teaspoon butter, softened
2 tablespoons cream cheese
Dash salt
1/4 teaspoon vanilla
2 tablespoons orange zest

Preheat oven to 425 degrees F.

Biscuits: Combine dry ingredients for biscuit. Cut shortening into dry mixture. Add buttermilk and blend. Roll out biscuit dough on floured waxed paper until about 3/4 of an inch thick. Cut with a round biscuit cutter as if you were making biscuits. You’ll get approximately 10 to 12 biscuits. Roll out each individual biscuit until it is 5 inches in diameter and 1/4-inch thick.

On each biscuit, layer butter, marmalade and brown sugar. Roll up each biscuit and slice into 3 pinwheels of equal size. Place rolls in 2 (7 by 7-inch) baking pans. (You can also use other dimensions of pans. The key is to keep the rolls close together). Bake for 10 to 12 minutes or until golden brown. Let cool for 5 to 10 minutes before icing.

For Icing: Mix powdered sugar, orange juice, butter,
cream cheese, salt, vanilla, and orange zest until smooth. Drizzle over rolls.

Makes 3 Dozen

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Beer Bread

Posted on January 13, 2009 by Veronica

Update: I have revised this recipe twice since posting this. For the best version, which stores well, click here.

I hate beer. Short of vomit and diarreah and possibly gasoline, I find it to be the most vile substance on the planet. I truly believe that the only reason anyone actually likes the taste of beer is that they repeatedly forced themselves to drink it in order to get drunk and/or be social and then the taste grew on them. Am I wrong?

Anyway, when I got a beer bread mix for Christmas, I was actually excited, despite my aversion to beer. I don’t like drinking it, but suddenly I was willing to try eating it. (Which implies a lot about my relationship with food but I’ll ignore that for the time being.) The resulting bread was mildly disappointing so I decided to make another loaf from scratch and found a recipe that only had a few ingredients and didn’t require rising time, so it was quick and easy to make.

I was beyond full when I tried the first slice, but it was difficult to keep from taking another to see if the second would taste as good. It has a thick, crunchy and buttery crust, it’s center is hearty and rich with a yeasty and slightly sweet taste. Eating a loaf of this stuff may be the only way I’ll ever consume an entire bottle, and that may be happening by the end of the day. If I can wait that long.

Whether you enjoy beer or not, I think you’ll like this bread, too.

Beer Bread

3 cups sifted flour
3 tsp. baking powder
1 tsp. salt
1/4 cup sugar
1 (12-oz) can beer
1 stick (1/2 cup) melted butter

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees. Spray a loaf pan with cooking spray and set aside.

Stir the dry ingredients together in a bowl with a whisk, then stir in the beer with a spoon. The batter will be thick, like bread dough (at least mine was). Dump in into the prepared pan and spread out as evenly as possible. Pour the melted butter over the top and bake for 1 hour. (Some reviewers reported that the butter boiled up and over the pan during baking, making a smoky mess. This didn’t happen to me, but I would recommend putting a baking sheet on the rack below the pan just in case.) Remove from pan and cool on a wire rack for at least 15 minutes.