Dear Kitchen Saints,
Jill wanted me to write about how I make bread. I thought I had written about it enough that you all would be tired of me writing about it. But I guess for the newcomers I could write it.
My friends get a kick out of how I make bread. One time Aunt Toot was here visiting and drinking Pepsi and I took the can and threw some in my bread, proving you can make bread out of anything.
Dear Kitchen Saints,
This morning I am making bread. I had bought this apple cider at the store on sale? Well, it's gone to hard cider? So it has some of its own natural yeast. This stuff gets my creative mind going. So for my liquid in the raisin bread I am using the cider. I just made up a loaf of bread, and it is rising. I imagine it will rise like crazy. That cider shudda been tied to a post with a strong cowboy rope. But that's beside the point.
Good Morning, Dear Domestic Mothers, Keepers at Home, and Tenders of the Fire,
This morning I am making a Winter Spice Bread. I just made up the recipe as I went along.
Good Morning! Remember how I wrote last night that Jim and I had a quiet day? Well, it was quiet until after supper.
I was in the kitchen doing my dishes. And again I looked at my water I had cooked the corn on the cob in. And again, as I did before, I decided to make bread out of the corn water. Well, it didn't look like as much water as I had used before. Remember how I had written before, a few months ago, that I did this and I had way too much bread? Well, the water looked like about half of that this time.
I had some apple juice that we didn't like, so I threw it in my sour dough pot and, just now, made a loaf of bread. A few days ago, I had made Jim a pan of sweet potatoes. I had a bit of the brown sugar syrup left in the pan, so I added this to my sour dough, too.
Ya know, this idea that you have to have a starter to make a good sour dough is sort of a hoaky idea. I mean, you can get a starter from someone, but ya don't have to. You can just make one yourself. Potatoes and sugar and yeast will make a starter sing in the moon light ... and howl like a wolf. (Just kidding.) But you can get a good starter goin' with potatoes.
Last evening, we had Dan and his sweetheart over for supper. We had B-B-Q pork ribs and mashed potatoes and corn.
Then, I made this bread ... it was so old-timey and Southern. I made it like a white bread, but added 2 cups of mashed sweet potatoes and a cup of brown sugar and cinnamon. It was a yeast bread and not a quick bread, and I put raisins in it, too.
Yesterday, I was cleanin' out the fridge and makin' soup and bread. I made a lovely multicolored chili. I usually just make it with beans and tomatoes and hamburger. But this time, I added a can of drained corn and some cut up cubed pumpkin. Then I had a couple big slices of green pepper in it. Jim doesn't eat green peppers, so I just slice them big and lay them on top. He likes the taste but doesn't want to eat one ... same with onion.
This is how I made bread this morning. Yesterday, I had made corn on the cob for 13 people. In the big pan of water to cook it in, I put in salt, a half a stick of butter, sugar and milk to boil the corn in. Well, I told Jim, "Mercy! I am savin' that water for something ... it has way too much good stuff in it to throw it out."
To me, it is so satifying to make baking powder biscuits. I don't use a recipe; I just go by the feel of the dough. The oven should be very hot and preheated before you put your biscuits in the oven. I bake mine in a cast iron skillet. I get my grease hot in the skillet and I put a teaspoon of butter in with the shortening. So when I put the cut biscuits in, I turn them over so the biscuits have the grease on the top. With the butter in the grease, it causes the biscuits to be brown on the top.
