Homemade Bagels

I've been living in the outback of Australia for about 10 months now.  While there are loads and loads of great things to eat, from time to time I miss a certain food from home.  Today I decided to try my hand at homemade bagels.

 

3 c plain flour
3 tsp yeast
1 1/2 c warm water
3 Tbsp sugar
1 tsp salt
extra 2 Tbsp sugar
Sesame Seeds (optional)

In a large bowl, combine 1 cup of the flour, yeast, 3 Tbsp sugar, salt, and warm water.  Beat with an electric mixer. Add the remaining flour and mix on low for 1 minute.  Raise mixer speed one or two speeds higher and continue to mix for 3 minutes using a spatula to get the dry ingredients off the side of the mixing bowl.

Sprinkle some flour on the counter top.  Knead the dough for about 10 minutes.  The dough should be smooth and elastic.  Cover the dough and allow it to rest for 15 minutes.

Divide dough into 12 portions.  Shape the dough into smooth balls. Poke a hole in the center with your finger and gently enlarge the hole while working the bagel into a uniform shape. 

 

 

 

Cover the dough and let it rise for about 20 minutes.

 

 

While your dough rises, bring 4 liters of water to a boil.  Stir in the remaining 2 Tbsp of sugar.  Reduce to a simmer.

 

Put 4 or 5 bagels into the water and boil for 7 minutes, turning the bagel once.  Drain.  If desired, dip boiled bagel in sesame seeds to make 'em fancy.  Place on a greased baking tray and bake at 375°F (190°C) for 30-35 minutes.  Remove from oven and allow to cool a bit.  Eat hot or cold.

 

 



I served these bagels with cream cheese and chives as well as smoked salmon.  Allow the cream cheese to come to room temperature.  Mix in chopped chives.  Store in refrigerate until needed.  The smoked salmon came prepared, but I rolled the salmon and added some chives for a lovely presentation. Yummo!  It was a hit!

 



Bubba's Beer Biscuits

This is a recipe that I got from a southern lady sitting in the waiting room of a gymnastics studio when M was a two years old. When she said "Bubba's Beer Biscuits" it sounded like an invitation to tea. Believe me, they sound way cooler with her light southern draw than with my harsh northern cackle.

4c Bisquik
1/4-1/2c sugar
12 oz beer (Honey, could you go buy some more beer? Please and thank you.)
2 Tbsp butter


Preheat oven at 400°F. Mix the ingredients well. Spray a muffin tin with PAM. Spoon batter into muffin tin. Serve with honey butter.

I make honey butter by adding honey to soft butter. I don't really measure it, but it's about a 1:2 ratio of honey to butter. Feel free to add more (or less) honey depending on your taste.

Three Leaf Clover Dinner Rolls

Three Leaf Clover Dinner Rolls is not their official name. I actually have no idea what they are really called. My mother made these rolls every Thanksgiving when I was growing up and my sisters and I LOVED eating the "Three Leaf Clovers". We actually fought over the rolls with four "Leaves".

Ingredients:
Pillsbury Hot Roll Mix
2 Tbsp Butter, melted
1 egg, beat
water
Crisco


Dissolve the yeast packet in 1 cup of hot water. Do not use boiling water. The water should be about 130°F. If it is boiling, it will kill the yeast and your rolls will not rise. In a large bowl, add the roll mix, 2 Tbsp melted butter, and one egg (beaten). Mix the ingredients and knead the dough until it is elastic. Spray the inside of your bowl with PAM (or grease with Crisco) and put the dough back in the bowl.



Cover with a towel. Allow dough to double in size.



Punch down dough and knead for a few minutes. Then halve the dough with your fingers until you have about 42 little bits of dough.




On a clean counter, smear a little Crisco on a circle. This will be the circle that you use to work your dough.




With the tips of your two pointer fingers, fold the dough over on itself a few times.




Then place the little ball of dough in a greased muffin pan.



Repeat about 42 more times, placing three balls in each muffin cup. If your dough balls are larger, you may only be able to fit two per cup. Sometimes I make the ball smaller, so that I can fit four balls in each cup...you know, you give my kids something to fight about.



Fork each ball with a kitchen fork. This allows the air to escape so you don't have pockets of air in your dinner rolls. (At this point, you can put your rolls in the refrigerator until later in the afternoon. They will not rise while in there.) Otherwise, allow the dinner rolls to rise a second time. They should be about a 1/2 inch above the muffin pan. The roll on the left is about right. The roll on the right rose a little too high.



Bake in a preheated oven, at 375°F for 15-20 minutes.



If they begin to brown too quickly on the top, you can place a sheet of aluminum foil (shiny side up) across the top of your rolls. You only need to worry about this last step if your oven runs "hot".

Rosemary Garlic Bread

3c whole wheat flour
2c white flour
2 pkg dry yeast
2 tsp salt
2 tsp ground pepper
2c hot water
1/4c olive oil
3 cloves garlic, minced
1/4c finely chopped fresh parsley
3 Tsp minced fresh rosemary (or 1 Tsp dried rosemary)
course salt and rosemary to top loaves

Mix 1c of whole wheat flour, 1 c white flour, yeast, salt and pepper until well blended. Add hot water and olive oil. Use hot water, NOT boiling water. Boiling water will kill the yeast. Beat with a wooden spoon until smooth. Stir in garlic, rosemary, and parsley. Mix in the remaining 2 cups of wheat flour, 1/4c at a time. Then mix in the remainder of the white flour (1/4c at a time) until the baytter becomes dough. Knead by hand for 8 minutes, occasionally slamming the dough on the counter. Put the dough in a greased bowl and cover with a clean kitchen towel (or plastic wrap). Allow the dough to rise until it has doubled in size. (This is about 30-60 minutes depending on room temperature.)

Punch down the dough and shape into two balls. Let the dough rest for five minutes. Press each ball into an oval and place in the bread pan, seam side down. Cover with kitchen towel until the dough doubles in size. (about 1 hour) The dough will reach the height of the bread pan. Brush the dough with olive oil and sprinkle with rosemary and course sea salt.

Bake in a pre-heated oven at 400°F for 35-40 minutes. Place the bread on the middle shelf for even baking. The bread is done when the loaf sounds hallow when tapped on the bottom. The crust will be hard.

**This bread can be eatten with stews or as a snack with butter. It's also really yummy toasted for breakfast with a cup of tea.

Zucchini Bread

We recently bought our daughter a bunkbed that we found through a craigslist ad. We really enjoyed visiting with the couple selling the bed while we took it apart and loading it into the truck. As we were herding our children toward the truck, Brenda asked if we'd like a zucchini picked fresh from their garden that morning. Well, I have a personal policy against turning down home-grown produce. We took our zucchini home to make some bread

Ingredients:

3 1/4c flour
1 1/2tsp salt
1tsp ground nutmeg
2tsp baking soda
1tsp cinnamon
3c sugar
1c vegetable oil
4 eggs, beaten
1/3c water
2c zucchini, grated
1tsp lemon juice
1c pecans, chopped

Preheat the oven to 350˚F. In a large bowl, combine flour, salt, nutmeg, baking soda, cinnamon, and sugar. In a separate bowl, combine the eggs, water, zucchini, oil, and lemon juice. Mix the wet into the dry ingredients. Fold in nuts. Divide the dough between two bread pans. Bake for 1 hour or until a toothpick comes out clean.

Blueberry Banana Bread

A girlfriend of mine was talking about this recipe on Facebook this morning. It sounded really yummy to me so I pulled up the recipe. Oh...my...this bread is really good. I made two loaves, but the kids ate up the first loaf in one sitting. I think the blueberries really make this recipe. Plus they just make this bread look so pretty when you slice it up.

The recipe was a total win for me. My kids like to ask for blueberries in their pancakes, and then they like to pick them out. Nobody picked out the blueberries this time around. A small win, but I take the wins where I can get them.

Ingredients:

2 cups of All Purpose Flour
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1/2c shortening
1c sugar
2 eggs
2 tsp vanilla extract
2 medium ripe bananas, mashed
1c fresh blueberries

In a bowl, combine the flour, baking soda, and salt. In a large mixing bowl, cream the shortening and sugar. Add eggs and vanilla and mix well. Beat in bananas. Gradually add the dry ingredients, mixing just until combines. Fold in blueberries. Pour into two greased loaf pans. Bake at 350˚F for 30-35 minutes or until a toothpick inserted near the center comes out clean. Allow to cool for about 10 minutes before removing from pan.

Cheddar Twisters

These are great rolls to serve with soup. The combination of the cheese, green onions, and garlic really complimented the Broccoli Cheese Soup. I'll bet it would be delicious with the Pumpkin Soup, too. These were so good, but I had to push away from the table because one of these rolls uses the dough of two cresent rolls. Yummy, but easy to overindulge.

Ingredients

2 cans (8 oz each) Pillsbury cresent dinner rolls
1 1/2c shredded sharp Cheddar cheese
4 green onions, chopped
1 egg
1 tsp water
2 tsp sesame seeds
1/2 tsp garlic salt mixed with 1/2 tsp dried parsley

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees F. Lightly grease a large cookie sheet with PAM. Unroll both bans of dough, separate the dough into 8 rectangles. Firmly press perforations to seal. In a small bowl, mix cheese and onions. Spoon this mixture evenly onto the middle of the 8 rectangles of dough. Fold the dough over lengthwise to form a long strip. Firmly press the edges together and twist the strip 3 or 4 times bringing the ends together to form a ring. Place on the cookie sheet. In another small bowl, beat egg and water together until well blended. Brush egg over the dough. Sprinkle dough with sesame seeds and garlic/parsley blend. Bake for 20 minutes. Cool for about 5 minutes. Best when served warm.

Olive Bread

One of my favorite things to do in Germany was to visit the local bakery. All their bread was yummy, but my favorite was olive bread. It was snack when Kaitlyn and I would go grocery shopping on the German economy. Like every toddler, she knew the routine. As soon as we finished at the cash register, she'd start asking to go to the bakery. Now that we've been back in American for a few months, I'm starting to jones for some olive bread. Olive bread is an amazing snack, I'm sure you could serve it to compliment another dish, but it never lasted that long at my house. We eat it up too fast.

Ingredients:
3 cups bread flour
1 packet of active dry yeast
2 tablespoons white sugar
1 teaspoon salt
1 cup olives, roughly chopped*
3 tablespoons olive oil
1 1/4 cups warm water
1 tablespoon cornmeal

*The original recipe calls for black olives, but you can really use any kind of olive. The olives in the bread in German were big green olives that were bursting with flavor. For this recipe, I used Tassos Mediterranean Olives.

Directions
1.In a large bowl, mix together flour, yeast, sugar, salt, black olives, olive oil, and water.
2.Turn out dough onto a your floured kitchen counter. Knead until smooth and elastic, 5 to 10 minutes. Set aside, and let rise about 45 minutes, until it doubles in size. Punch down. Knead well again, for about 5 to 10 minutes. Let rise for about 30 minutes, until it doubles in size.
3.Round the dough on your kitchen counter. Place upside down in a bowl lined with a lint-free, well floured towel. Let rise until double in size.
4.While the bread is rising for the third time, put a pan of water in the bottom of the oven. Preheat oven to 450 degrees F.
5.Gently turn loaf out onto a sheet pan that has been lightly oiled and dusted with cornmeal.
6.Bake loaf at 450 degrees F for 15 minutes. Reduce heat to 375 degrees F. Bake for 30 more minutes, or until done.

Corn Bread

This is my mother's recipe for corn bread. I thought this was real corn bread my whole life, but when I was living in Georgia I had some of their corn bread and this is nothing like it. This corn bread is moist, sweet, and really yummy. It dissolves on your tongue. It's a little sweeter than traditional corn bread. I love it! Tonight I made it into a bread bowl and served the chili inside. Here's what you'll need:

2 1/2 c corn meal
1 c sugar
1 tsp salt
1/2 c flour
1/2 c butter
2 c milk
4 c water

Mix all the ingredients together in a large, heavy pan. I use my Dutch oven because I'm my mother's daughter. Cook over medium heat on the top of the stove until thick, stirring constantly. Put the mixture in the greased Edible Bowl muffin pan. (Or, if you don't feel like running out to Bass Pro Shop, you can grease a 9X13 baking dish). Bake at 400 degrees until it starts browning on top about 25-30 minutes.

If you use a regular baking dish, test your corn bread using the clean toothpick trick. The middle of the corn bread should be soft, but not mushy. This corn bread is even better when reheated in a microwave for breakfast the next morning.