Bread Baking Beginnings

Notes to self for the next batch or bread:
-Use the dough hooks of your mixer instead of mixing w/a wooden spoon. You’re not strong enough to stir in enough flour to get it to pull away from the bowl.
-When neading, go till it looks smooth with blisters–at least 10 minutes, maybe 12. You already tried 8 min., but it wasn’t smooth at that point.
-Add more oil/butter to the rising bowl next time. Last time, you didn’t have enough and it still stuck to the bowl when you turned it out onto the pastry cloth.
-For a nicer, crispy crust next time, add steam or a little water for the 1st 5 min. of baking the loaves. Spray the sides of the oven w/water or pour a cup of water on an already-hot metal baking dish beneath the unbaked loaves, and shut the door so the steam goes onto the loaves.
-Success: this time, you greased the loaf pans only halfway up, and now the loaves are finally rising higher above the level of the pans (unlike last 2 times)!
-Measure water exactly next time. Too much water=sticky dough. Too little water=dry loaf.

Why is this the 2nd batch of bread where my dough is still so sticky after neading? Not enough flour still???? Oh. I know. I put a little too much water in the dough. I fudged on that knowingly. Though it’d be no big deal. Change that next time.

Mmmm, it smells good right now. My two lovely loaves are in my lovely brick toaster oven right now!!

Woops–they’re rising so high!! That must be because I followed a crazy recipe that says to add 2 packets of yeast, not 1. They’re getting way too dark–better put foil over the top to stop that.

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Pumpkin Pie Report

Despite its sub-standard appearance, my first pumpkin pie was a success with the family tonight at Thanksgiving Dinner! Everyone liked it. Whew! Mom thinks it was so good because I used sweetened condensed milk instead of evaporated milk. My sister said “So that’s what it was,” when I told her it has molasses in it. I’ll post the recipe later if I have time.

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Male Fertility and Longevity?

Interesting article here on men with many children being much more likely to live to 100! The study necessarily isolates that to men with 4 or more children by age 30 (due to the draft cards they analyzed being just for men age 30 at the time of writing the draft card), but I wonder if the chance of longevity remains high for those who have many children by, say, age 40? Of course, the chances of my husband and I having three more by the time he’s forty appear slim at this point, since he’s going to be 36 in January, and we’ve only had one child in the past 3 years that we’ve abandoned birth control. Alas, we started too late. We thought we could decide when we were “ready” better than God could. That’s definitely the biggest regret of my life thus far. I think we decided several years late of the mark. Lesson: when you sense God leading you in a certain direction but you hesitate out of fear, DON’T LET THE FEAR GUIDE YOU–Be guided by the good yearnings placed in you by God. Just look at the Pilgrims. If they had given in to their fear when they were in dark times, would they have seen the joy of the first Thanksgiving? But those in their party that trusted God despite the harsh circumstances around them were, in the end, able to glorify God for His kindnesses to them. That’s what we missed out on for the first five years of our marriage. Wasted years.

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My two favorites playing before bed!

Here’s my sweet husband and our Little Coconut having a hoot before putting her to bed.

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My First Real Pumpkin Pie

I could look at this as preparation for those days in the distant future when I host Thanksgiving Dinner at my own home with my own children and grand children. I have this lovely hand-made pottery deep dish pie dish my mom got me years ago at the Sawdust Festival. I rarely use it, but I admire it alot. I used a pie crust recipe from the little cookbook that came with it. After checking my own small collection of cookbooks and coming up empty, I went to cooks.com for a deep dish pie recipe. It uses molasses in addition to the sugar. It called for evaoprated milk, but I haphazardly got sweetened condensed milk instead, and couldn’t fix that at 10:30 last night when I was cooking this, so that’s what I used. Well, I had to run with the pie crust un-formed to my mom’s to have her roll it out (the dough was sticking to my un-covered, un-floured rolling pin and pastry cloth) and place it properly in the dish. Then I drove back home with the raw crust to blend the filling ingredients and put them into the crust. Well, I thought this was supposed to be a deep-dish pumpkin pie recipe, so why didn’t the surface of the filling come up to the edge of the crust? There was about an inch between the crust edge and the top of the filling. That would look silly on the table. So, with the filling all wet and raw, I rolled the crust over onto it like a gallette I saw in a newspaper photo once. I got nervous initially when I saw the crust drooping deeper into the filling in the first five minutes of putting it into my brick toaster oven. By the way, that’s a great toaster oven. So, here’s the picture. It looks darker than most pumpkin pies, and I think that’s the molasses. That huge crack wasn’t there when it came out of the oven. I think when I tested it by inserting a knife in the center, then the crack grew as it cooled. I’m afraid it might be a little overdone. We’ll see if it tastes any better than it looks.

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I’m new here.

So, I decided to finally join the blogosphere. Funny how ever since I actually got a real blog up and running, my mind is suddenly up and running with all sorts of bloggy thoughts! I’ve got lots of ideas that should keep me blogging for awhile. We’ll see if it gets me any readers.

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Hello world!

Welcome to WordPress.com. This is your first post. Edit or delete it and start blogging!

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