Copasetic Flow

Eight year-old Tawnse made beer bread a few days back, and through a mishap, we wound up with a smoother, easier to cut version of the bread we take on camping trips. Here's the recipe: Ingredients 3 C  Self Rising Flour which can be made with: 1 cup all-purpose flour + 1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder + 1/4 teaspoon fine salt 3 Tbsp  Sugar 1 Warm Beer Steps Mix Grease loaf pan Bake at 350 degrees for 1 hour It's really, really simple to make, and it comes out as a pretty rugged loaf of bread that you can wrap in foil and throw in your backpack. Usually—for us—it comes out pretty tough with a craggy crust, and that's ok because it travels well, and it's for camping. On Friday though, the Tawnse—the eight year old's alias here—picked up my beer which I'd taken a few sips from and poured it in. So, we didnt' have enough beer in the bread. I opened the bread intended for the beer, and poured in what seemed like enough to make up the difference. We wound up with ...

 It's gorgeous outside over the Bay this morning, and? We're baking! Recipe! Ingredients 1/2 cup warm water   2 (1/4 ounce) packages active dry yeast   1 1/2 cups milk , lukewarm  1/2 cup sugar   2 teaspoons salt   2 eggs   1/2 cup shortening   7-7 1/2 cups flour   Directions Mix water and yeast in large mixing bowl.  Stir until dissolved.  Add milk, sugar salt, eggs, shortening and 1/2 of the flour.  Mix until smooth and pour out onto floured surface. Knead while adding the additional flour. Knead until smooth and elastic( about 5 minutes).  Round up in greased bowl with greased side up. Cover with damp cloth.  Let rise in warm place until double (about 1&1/2 hours).  Punch down; let rise again until almost double.  Dough is ready to to make into cinnamon rolls or dinner rolls now.

 Daize and Tawnse made apple pie! It was delicious! But wait! When they started, they didn’t have flour or sugar. Did they come to me to ask if they had the requisite materials, and could I get them? Nope.  The first I caught any wind of this pie business at all was this morning when Tawnse appeared in the doorway to ask where one might find shortening. I replied that rather than looking for shortening one should simply use butter. As she walked away, I heard Tawnse holler to Daise—across the house—”Daize! Can you use butter?” Later, as my partner and I were planning what to do about various things in jobs, with kids, and for dinner, Daize, Tawnse, and Mota appeared again stating that they’d planned their day. I commented that kids-plan-adventure-day was actually scheduled for Thursday mornings.  They stared at me blankly—I haven’t told them about that part of our new schedule yet, but the blank stare gave me the moment I needed to collect my thoughts, realize that my par...

My mom's cinnamon rolls have been a hit with my family and our friends for decades.  Every semester just before finals, my college dorm-mates and I eagerly awaited the arrival of a Banker's Box full of them.  Now, the kids and I have taken over the roll baking duties.  No. 1: 5 y.o., No. 2: 4 y.o., and No. 3: 1 y.o. all help with different steps of the baking process.  Today's post contains the steps for making the roll dough.  In future posts, I'll include instructions on how to use the dough to make cinnamon rolls and baked Christmas trees! My payoff for writing this post :  As I outlined the baking steps below, I realized that the kids can almost completely take over this job!!! Ingredients 1/2 cup of warm water 1-1/2 cup of room temperature milk 2 (1/4 ounce packet)s of yeast 1/2 cup of shortening cut into 1/4 inch cubes 2 tsp salt 1/2 cup of sugar 2 eggs (the larger the egg, the more moist and sticky the dough) 7 - 7 1/2 cups of flour T...

The gang and I made beer bread last night!  The recipe is easy.  The kids get to dump in all the ingredients, and grease the loaf pan.  I just have to run the mixer, and sample the other beers in the six pack.  If you'd like to try it, here's the recipe: 3 cups self-rising flour 3 tablespoons sugar 1 room temperature beer Pour into a greased loaf pan, and bake for one hour at 350 degrees Fahrenheit. After an hour, you'll get a loaf of crusty bread, perfect for eating with stews, or slathering with butter, and honey on a cold day. We used New Belgium Pmupkick beer on a lark to see if we'd get pumpkin flavored bread.  Sure enough, there's a slight tang of pumpkin flavor, and the bread came out a little bit orange!  It was also a little shorter than usual, so now we have an experiment to work on for a few weeks.  Was the bread short Because we used the large loaf pan? Because of the pumpkin beer?  We normally use cheap beer like Pabst ...