Homemade Egg Bread

I ventured into trying a different bread today instead of my standby Honey Wheat Bread.  Instead I tried Egg Bread.  I’ve had Egg Bread from an Amish store in my area before and love the light sweet taste of it.  So here’s how it’s done.

Ingredients

• 5 1/2 – 6 cups of bread flour or all-purpose flour
• 2/3 cup sugar
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 2 packages or about 2 Tablespoons of yeast
• 1/2 cup butter
• 1 cup milk
• 4 eggs
• 1 egg white, beaten (optional)

Combine 2 cups of the flour, sugar, salt, and yeast in a large bowl.  Melt margarine and milk together to about 110 degrees F.  (You can microwave it at this step, but keep a close eye on it and make sure it is just melted, NOT boiling or you will kill the yeast)  Pour mixture over the dry ingredients and stir until smooth.  Add the eggs and mix well.

Gradually add in the remaining flour until you have a soft dough.  I mixed with the spatula until it got too difficult then I dug in with my hands.  It took me about 6 cups total to get a dough that wasn’t stuck to my hands and was smooth enough to knead.  Knead lightly on a floured surface for a minute or two.  Place dough in a clean bowl, cover, and let rise in a warm place until doubled.  (This took about an hour and half today, but it’s COLD today) 

Punch down dough and divide into two loaf pans and let rise for another 45 minutes or so until it’s coming up over the top of the pans.  You can brush the top with egg white if you want, I chose not to.  Place the pans in the oven at 350 degrees on a low rack for 20-25 minutes.  Keep an eye on it so it doesn’t burn. 

If it sounds hollow when you tap on the top of the loaf and it’s golden brown, then it’s done!

Slice and enjoy the sweet goodness.  I can’t wait to have a peanut butter and jelly tomorrow…or maybe peanut butter and honey…decisions, decisions.

 

Linking up!

All Thingz Related

Weekly Menu Board

I’ve been a meal planner for years.  I have changed my methods as the situation suits.  Before kids when I worked full time, I would plan for about 3 weeks at a time.  Now that we have kids, are more health conscious, and are buying more fresh foods, I shop about once a week so I plan for about 7 or 8 meals at a time. 

This helps a ton with the shopping.  Execution…not so much.

It seems that I always forget to thaw something or don’t get the stuff in the crock pot early enough on days that I’m planning a slow cooker meal. 

I usually write down a tentative menu and put it on my fridge, but it’s so small, I rarely look at it on a regular business and just try to commit it to memory. 

Big fail this week.  I thawed a whole roaster chicken, a chuck roast, and a sirloin roast all this week and have failed miserably at getting them cooked.  (come on!  The sirloin roast is supposed to take 8-10 hours!  That’s a lot of forethought!)

So I’ve seen different “dry-erase” menu boards across the blogosphere like this one at Under the Table.  So I put my own spin it tonight and it took me all of an hour to make. 

I found this art frame at Wal-Mart for $14.00.  It’s 12 x 16 inches.  Nice and big

It swings open so you can store more kids art behind the frame, but instead I’m going to take advantage of the space and store the recipe cards for any recipes that I need that week.  Then they aren’t being moved all over the kitchen throughout the week after I pick them out. 

I bought a couple different fabrics at Jo-Ann’s.  The red one is like the material of reusable grocery bags that are being sold EVERYWHERE.  I was kind of surprised that they sold this kind of fabric and will have to file that away in my head for future use. 

The white one is some kind of towel fabric.  It’s cotton, has just a little bit of texture, and I was able to fray the edges after I cut the selvage off.  I found them both by the utility/burlap fabric.  That’s all I needed to know.

I bought a half yard of each for $4.00 total.  I could have used my coupon, but I forgot…oh well.  (There was a lot of extra red because it’s 60 inch wide fabric)

I cut the fabrics down to size, the red to fit snug (12 x 16) and the white an inch smaller all the way around (10 x 14).   I frayed the white edges some and glued them both to the paper sample picture that came in the frame.

Then using my Silhouette and Core’dinations cardstock, I cut out letters for the title and the first letter for each day of the week.  I lightly sanded the black Core’dinations to show the dark red through on the edges. 

Space them out where I wanted them (about every two inches down the side) and pop it back in the frame!  Easy Breezy!

I hung it on the blank end of my kitchen cabinets in a highly visible place using a couple of command hooks.  Then just use a dry erase marker on the glass to write down the meal for each day and it is an instant erasable surface!

Now if this doesn’t help me be more organized, then I’m a lost cause!

Pineapple and Chicken Quesadillas with Homemade Tortillas

Last nights dinner was delicious.  The kids even asked for more.  That’s big feat when both of them eat everything on their plate AND say they liked it. 
I used recipes from two websites and brought them together for totally yummy-ness.
First I made homemade flour tortillas from here.  The Homesick Texan blog and this recipe was brought to my attention by a friend of mine.  I have made these a few times now and it shocks me how easy they are. 
Mix everything together with my Kitchenaid.

Let it rest and then cut into 8 pieces.  Let those rest again and roll them out.  (I don’t measure things and I also can’t roll out a perfect circle…they taste just as good in awkward shapes!)

Grill them in a hot, dry pan for about 30 seconds or so each side.  (this one is REALLY not round!)

Then I used these instructions from the Pioneer Woman website here.
Basically you grill pineapple and chicken, chop it up and layer them with cheese and barbeque sauce on one tortilla and top it off with another.  I microwaved them for about 30 seconds to melt the cheese because I didn’t want to burn my tortillas or add a bunch of butter to the pan to toast it more. 
There is nothing like these homemade tortillas, definitely worth a little bit of effort.

Busy-ness and Recipes

I’ve really wanted to have something to blog about.  And I could blog about the busy-ness of life.  But I haven’t had time!
Last week was a crazy busy week for me.  I’m not sure why it seemed so chaotic, but it did.  Looking back, I’ve forgotten half of what I did last week.  That’s probably a good thing. 
I am working on the laundry room shelves and am nearly finished, but the drying time is slowing progress.  But they will be done hopefully tomorrow and I’ll have a post to add then.
In the meantime, I have been in the mood to try some new recipes.  I require that half my recipes be easy and this past week they were ultra-easy.  Spaghetti and meatballs, hot dogs with mac and cheese, kielbasa, sloppy joes…you get the picture.
So last night and tonight I’ve been printing out recipes from http://thepioneerwoman.com/ and http://mealmakeovermoms.com/
We bought a half a beef a few months ago, and I’m at a loss of what to do with anything besides ground beef since I rarely buy other “hunks” of meat.  Pioneer woman is helping with that.  The other link I was directed to by a podcast that I found yesterday called Manic Mommies.  It’s very funny and great to listen to while cleaning up the house.  They interviewed the ladies behind Meal Makeover Moms, and I checked out there sight this evening.  There were several recipes that I thought sounded easy and tasty, so I printed them out as well.
Now, my recipe collection is totally out of control and unorganized.  It is such a daunting task that I am trying to start from the point forward with being more organized and then slowly working through the older stuff I have. 
So to start I purchased some postcards/index cards made by Avery.  They come 4 to a sheet with perforations on them to make 4 X 6 cards.  I found a template on their website and then copy and paste the recipes to them using Microsoft Word.  It takes a little bit of editing to get them to fit right, but this way I don’t have a million full sheets and no way to organize them!  I can easily pop them into either a 4 x 6 index card box, or even a photo album to keep them protected from messy hands.
So this begs the question…are your recipes organized?

Greatest Pizza Crust–Take 2

Well today was slightly better than yesterday.  That is until I tried to make pizza again for dinner. 
I buy bread flour in bulk at Sam’s Club.  It’s a 25 pound bag and isn’t easily managed, so I dump some into a large square container and refill that as needed.  So today before I started the crust, I needed to refill the container with flour. 
I know you’re thinking there was a problem when I dumped flour from the giant bag to the smaller container.  Well you’re wrong.  The problem came when I temporarily lost my mind, forgot what I was doing, and started measuring my ingredients.  Instead of putting the oil in the bread maker pan, I dumped it into the container of flour. 
I ruined about 3 cups of flour trying to scoop out all of the canola oil I accidently dumped into the wrong place.
Anyhow, the crust came out fabulous, as it does when you use bread flour.  Just remember, if you want to make this healthier, don’t use more than half whole wheat flour.  Unless you like eating a brick.  (see my post from yesterday if you’re confused)
So here’s the recipe to make two pizza crusts.  Add the ingredients to the bread maker in the following order. 
You can also mix this with a mixer with a dough hook, or by hand (I’ve done all three methods, and there is something to be said for kneading dough by hand.  It’s quite therapeutic)  If you choose one of the latter two methods, just let the dough rise for about 30 minutes after it’s kneaded.

• 1 1/2 cups warm water
• 2 Tablespoons of oil (I use canola)
• 2 teaspoons of lemon juice
• 1 teaspoon of salt
• 2 tablespoons of sugar
• 2 Tablespoons of dry milk powder (a must have)
• 4 1/2 cups bread flour
• 2 teaspoons of active dry yeast

Let the bread maker do it’s thing on the pizza dough cycle and when you’re done dump it out on a pizza pan and cut it into two pieces (or tear, whatever) and it should look something like this

Start rolling out each piece on separate pans (I only have one round and one square stone, so that’s what I use, dough is dumb, it doesn’t care what shape it’s in!)

You may get to a point where the dough springs back and won’t stay rolled out.  Relax!  Just let it sit for 5 minutes and think about how it’s misbehaving while your roll the other one out.  When you come back, I promise it’ll behave and roll out smooth.

If you look close, you can see I stabbed the crust with a fork before I bake it, otherwise it tends to get air bubbles and blow up like a flying saucer.
Prebake your crusts at 350 degrees for about 12-15 minutes.  The tops don’t get really brown, but a little tan and not sticky anymore.

Top it any way you like.  I used pizza sauce, mozzarella cheese, and real bacon pieces for this one.  Pop it bake in the oven for 5 minutes to melt everything into ooey-gooey-goodness, and there you have it!

I finished the partial jar of pizza sauce I had on this pizza, so the other I made with alfredo sauce (I prefer Newman’s Own brand; all natural and really tasty!) and cheese.  I didn’t take a picture because my hubby took it out of the oven and by time I got upstairs it was cut up and half gone. 
Anyhow, hope you give this a try and top it any way you like…barbecue sauce, grilled chicken, bacon, pineapple, and onion
or add crumbled hamburger to the one I made today and have a bacon cheeseburger pizza.
You could also brush the crust with butter and sprinkle with parmesan cheese.  Or do the whole thing like that and cut into bread sticks.  
The possibilities are endless, but the crust is always a hit.  My kids say there’s no reason to go to a pizza place anymore because “mom’s crust is the best-est”