Crusty Italian Rolls

Had some of the best Crusty Italian Rolls I have made yet this morning.  Made two big enough to make full steak sandwiches with them.  The steak was not frozen, but instead was from a nice sizes steak that I sliced as thinly as I could.  The other good thing.  While I could have let the rolls rise a bit longer, I was at least able to go from start to finish in less than 2 hours.

Now I am considering offering some homemade bread for the student assembly auction.  I figure, one homemade recipe a month for the rest of the school year after the auction on Dec 10.  I could do, Crusty Italian, Wheat, Lion House Rolls, Naan Pockets, and something else.  It would be fun.  And I like helping the student assembly at the School of Public Health as the travel funds have benefitted one of my advisees.  My advisee is also the president of the student assembly this year, so she can appeal to me directly.

Baking for teachers

Today's baking adventure?  In some ways it is not much of an adventure.  Making Lion House Rolls, although not quite as early in the morning as I usually do on a weekday.  With teaching, I put in some pretty long hours, and I was not out of bed before 5 this morning.  Of course, my 4 year old was up already  so he helped and that always adds to the adventure (in a good way)!

Today's baking is not for us.  We have parent-teacher conferences at the kids' school today.  They have a tradition of asking parents to provide potluck dishes for the teachers.  So this is our contribution.  All good fun.

Otherwise, food for the day is just "whatever".  Cereal for breakfast.  Not sure what others will have for lunch while I'm at work.  Pasta for dinner.

Brief updates

Crepes for my 4 year old yesterday (and for the rest of us as well, although they were at the request of my 4 year old) and Lion house rolls made this morning which are serving as lunch for most of us (maybe Sherry) and as part of dinner with slow cooked ribs for the family this evening.  Good days for cooking.  Slow cooked ribs for dinner on a soggy day will be just right this evening.

A productive Sunday & Monday

On Sunday we had a great day in the kitchen.  We made a batch of mozzarella in the morning.  It turned out okay but not great.  It was not as soft as the best one I've made so far.  I did, however, leave the whey afterward to sit for 12 hours (as I'd found as a suggestion on a website by a chemistry professor somewhere) and then I cooked the whey a bit longer than usual as I set it cooking while reading bedtime stories to my 4 year old.  I used a reusable coffee filter to filter the whey and ended up with a great output of ricotta that tasted great. One of these times I'll get both the mozzarella and ricotta right.  Used milk from Chambersburg this time.  Comes in thick glass bottles with deposit and return.

Today, we made pretzels at breakfast time for lunch.  Served them with cream cheese or ricotta and jellies of various sorts.  Even made a braided soft pretzel or two.  Then, for dinner made pizza.  First time in a while that I was able to make the pizza with dough made at the time rather than making the dough early and refrigerating.  Made my kids happy with the quality.  Use the mozzarella and ricotta from Sunday on the pizzas and an organic pepper on one of the two.

Two great days in the kitchen.  Going to try to keep it up with my boys while teaching over the next eight weeks.

Soft pretzels--boiled and baked

Serving soft prretzels hot off the pan after boiling and baking has won my sons over.

Crepes and Pizza

Well, we have had a number  of adventures since my last post.  I tried cheese again on the morning of the half marathon.  Of the three recipes of cheese I've made so far, the one that I made at 4 in the morning on the day I ran the half marathhon was the best by far.  Perhaps I need to make it early in the morning again.  My 3rd attempt turned out a little soft, but my ricotta turned out better.

Today, we had cocoa crepes for breakfast.  Those were fund and also served as lunch for my older two boys.

For dinner, we had pizza.  I had made the dough this morning.  I could have cooked it thir morning too, but I have been generally unhappy with the consinstency of the pizza at dinner time if a cooked pizza is quickly putt in the fridge for the day.  So, I made the dough into the right shape, had Joshua a relatively small amount of sauce on, had Daniel put grated Parmesan on, and put our "spreadable mozzarella on and wrapped it in foil.  Since it took up the entire middle shelf in the fridge, Christopher used his Sharpee to write on in "Please don't crush me" and the pizza turned out to make a thick 16" pizza that fed my family of five for dinner.

What a blessing.

Biscuits, cheese, and corn bread

Yesterday morning it was biscuits for breakfast.  Yesterday evening we made mashed potatoes with bacon and crab meat cooked mixed in.  Wow, was that good, especially with Old Bay sprinkled on top.  Last night the boys and I tried making cheese.  It turned out okay.  Main lesson--don't use ultrapasteurized milk.  We may try again today with just me and my four year old.  Finally, this morning making corn bread.