I have my sponge for bread making all up and freshened. I have to double my sponge inventory for holiday visitor eaters this week. I shall make six or eight loaves tomorrow and it will likely all be gone by Friday. If any is left over the deer hunting camp will get it for sandwiches. Our buck season opens next Monday. The usual movement here is the Thanksgiving chef gets a hug and all the men start their pilgrimage to the cabin in the mountains. This is our highest quality male bonding we can muster in any given year. In our family this hunt goes back five generations and now includes all of the male grandchildren. The area schools still close for the first day of buck season. The winter sports including fishing and hunting are a significant source of winter income for all of North Central Pennsylvania small business folks. We also have seasons for elk, bear turkey and all the small game.
Our happy Thanksgiving dinner ends with the last burp and all the guys leaving as early as they can get away with the act of heading up to the mountains. We wish all of you to have a great time with your family traditions of the holidays.
What's cookin'
Let me jog your memory. Lettuce leaves go well in BLT sandwiches. At the worst the leaves hold the mayo to one side of the BLT. Would that be sucking up fat? The bacon sticks out to drain off any grease or other liquid out past your belly and onto your skirt or pants. Your cupped hands around the stacked sandwich are there to dam up the out flow and direct some of it down to your elbows. This includes the slippery matters. That's the long and short of a BLT. Don't forget toasted bread holds up to all this misery ten seconds longer than fresh untoasted bread.
I want a BLT now!
I like to at least trim the carcass of good meat and then store it in the stock pot overnight in the downstairs fridge. Next day just pull it out and simmer. Hey, with my veg prep today can be soup stock veg prep...
afterr doc's last post--
I am rolling now--what a hoot--and so accurate!!
Texas hot Weiners are equally sloppy but ooooooh so good.
Texas Hots....................is that franchise still around? Last time I saw one was in downtown Altoona, Pennsylvania perhaps ten years ago. There were a lot of them around when I was in college. There was still one in Williamsport, Pa until it came down with a whole block downtown removal. The several thousand bricks in my patio deck came from that building at the rate of ten cents apiece. The mud was so loose all we had to do was pick them up for the most part. They were put into that block of buildings about 1865. They are now three years old in our patio floor and starting to moss up. All that biology came with them. The original source of course was red clay from the oceans. They make pretty good trace mineral dust if someone wanted to beat them up and make dust or fine meal Bricks always grow dandy mosses unless poisoned to not grow anything. We like the moss.
FIRST SNOW! It's nearly a perfect bear tracking snow. Bear season ended Tuesday evening at sun down. Ha. Our men folk harvested three bear this year. They are hanging in cold curing rooms. A bear weighing well over eight hundred pounds was harvested in the mountans by an archery hunter a few hours East of my home. Early estimates suggest that it is a new state record black bear.
Wow.
What will they do with the bears?
Our camp group for bear hunting includes some twenty five active hunters. The total harvest for this season was five bears and one left for seed. This is a camp record. Our bears are professionally skinned and butchered. The total meat mass goes into saussage, ring baloney summer baloney bear hot dogs and a lot of jerkey. In the middle of the winter we hold a dinner meeting in the mountains where the meat is shared to all who want some. The closing meal is breakfast where it will be bear saussage and pancakes for all. The successfull hunter always retains the rights to the skin some of which get mounted. Bear rugs are popular. There is an Indian market for some parts used in cermony, clothing or assessories and medical elements. The gall bladder is a very prized doctor's item for some reason. Everything gets used including the innards left for other mountain animals and birds to clean up.
How interesting. I had no idea that bear hunting and use was alive and well.
I can't imagine bear sausage tasting good though -- do you like it? I'm sure I'm just being squeamish. Some 'in the wild' guy on TV today raved over his delicous porcupine liver breakfast.
A neighbor gave my dad some meatballs made from bear meat one year... pretty tasty, and Dad got a kick out of serving "bear balls."
"Here, have some bear balls."
Thanksgiving sandwiches for lunch today... turkey, stuffing, and cranberry sauce between 2 slices of white bread with a smear of miracle whip. *slurp!*
The trick in serving any good food at any skill level is to have professionally prepared parts from a source you like and trust. Bear sausage is well seasoned as is most sausage. If the meat has been poorly cured and amateur butchered of course it will not be delightful. Since it can be very good the very small amount of it available is a delicacy. Like an excellent beef steak one needs to know the source. Over the past thirty years a camp choice flavor from long curing, careful butchering and evolving seasonings has become part of the hunting experience. Everyone helps as training is on going. It has not changed much if any in the past twenty years. Everything is done in house at shared expense to maintain consistency. Everything except the curing. We rent cooler space from a butcher shop specializing in wild game.
The whole porcupine done up like pulled pork or any bar-b-que method handles and tastes like pork.
Over the years I have tried a little of almost all wild game. There is none I totally dislike yet there are favorites I sometimes go out of my way to purchase. Venison is to me as good as any beef and better for me. We butcher and we eat two deer a year when we can legally get them. It is very expensive farm raised and does not equal wild quality.
Pennsylvania has become the largest bear hunting and harvesting state. The harvest will be between twenty fine hundred and three thousand bears taken in our three day season yearly. My county is always a leading count county in the state. Almost every county in the state has a bear population.
In North Central Pennsylvania more so than any other area in the state counts fishing, hunting and trapping as a most valuable industry. Just in our Sproul Mountain area there are over four hundred camps where members come in to and stay for extended periods of fishing, hunting and a little trapping. The dollars in circulation are real income dollars for the locals who live in the mountain or mountain villages. Those four hundred cabins are the largest taxable property in the Sproul Mountain area. Our Cabin's township has about a hundred homes, one multi purpose gas station, a couple mom and pop greasy spoons and one large mom and pop really nicely run restaurant. A half dozen or so beer garden restraints top it off. That's our mountain. There are more bears than people.
Of all the land North of Route #80 about seventy five percent is big mountain of which a large percentage of is one way or another state owned. This is where the bears are in the highest numbers. If you never fly over it is unlikely you can concieve the size of this land mass. The mountains continue North up to the Southern edges of the Finger Lakes in New York state.
Bear meat is quite tasty, and properly made sausage is just ... YUM! I agree with Doc, most people do not know what wild game tastes like. Proper handling, butchering, curing, and preparation make it some of the best tasting, healthier meat available. You don't get a prime NY strip from a fresh cut, burned out, dairy cow. Some of the best game I've eaten was at a very good restaurant in Zell Am see, Austria. They've had a lot more time to prefect the art almost to a cult status. Call me a carnivore, I don't mind. LOL Ric
Ric............no disrespect what so ever but by jingles the quality of wild game food at our hunting cabin is right on the cutting edge of being gourmet. We have quite a number of families that are in their fifth to seventh generation of hunters and wild animal handling. The skills get handed down from father to children. The results of such training and fellowship brings out the very best on our table at the yearly hunts and cabin weekends. Most of the seniors like myself go up for the seasons opening banquets.
We have notes on a fifth generation Philadelphia Gipe chair maker indicating that he and his father prepared a venison as well as wild turkey for a Thanksgiving dinner. At that time the wilderness would have not been far North and West of Philadelphia city lines. He was German Dutch. Most families were large by today's standards. The wood stove was his pride and joy. Most of the land between Philadelphia and Lancaster was farmland to support the city populations.
Last week I made spaghetti and meatballs, needed some fresh bread, so I baked these 2 loaves. We had one for dinner and the other we ate with home make beef vegetable soup 2 days later.
I love home made bread, warm from the oven with butter on it. I tend to over indulge when I am around it so I don't bake often.
Yum yum!
I am trying my hand at hamburger buns, right now they are on the pan rising. We are getting a blast of Lake Affect snow and I didn't want to venture out in it. I made a cabbage salad, and pulled out some frozen hamburger patties from the freezer.
Snow always makes me want to bake
I read a recipe for burger buns here in DG coupla yrs ago.
Sally--
Couldn't you just use any bread recipe and make mini round buns--which can then be used for burgers?
Does one need a special recipe for burger buns????
Just wondering.....G.
I guess it was a white bread dough recipe, and some said they made buns with it, and that idea stuck with me.
I have not been very successful with bread anyway. No machine, and don't like to practice.
Many folks do not like sourdough or sponge type breads because they were born and raised on soft commercial white and whole grain breads which are more advertising than truth. We tend to eat what we have learned to like often overlooking the true flavors of whole grain breads done with sourdough or sponge type yeasts. True they range from crisp crusted breads to heavy and chewy multi flavors of the added length of time for the yeasts to mature and render their flavors. It takes eight to twenty four hours of working with the yeast and then first rise and a second rise to a nicely proofed true whole grain loaf of bread. Then it can be baked filling the home and entire outside too with the aroma of a fine loaf of baking whole grain bread.
You can do anything with any bread dough. The texture and flavor comes from the type yeast one uses and the time required to let that sourdough or sponge develop. Once you develop a loaf you commonly end up with extra dough to make pizza shells, sweet sticky buns, hamburger and doggie buns, soft pretzels, flat breads and all kinds of loaves shaped to one's fancy....even hoggie rolls.
I took one lesson about six or seven years ago at a "Now We're Cooking" store taught by a local chef. He introduced me to sour dough or sponge processes. I have never looked back. There are few weeks that I do not make up a six to seven cup of flour and other ingredients bread. That is enough for two one pound loaves and one two pound loaf with enough left for something else like pizza shells or a scrumptious dish of sticky buns. Sometimes I just make all the extra into garlic and sea salt finger breads. Whatever.......the dough will freeze and hold well for a couple of weeks if play time is not available on any given bake day.
King Arthur flours and additives are of the best available. I stop just short of saying the employee owned King Arthur is the best in America...period. They are in part in almost every big box store and solidly on line. They also have from one evening to several day classes for the interested student. They go out and move about the country running demonstrations in the major cities. See these dates on line.
I like King Arther products also, I have a package of their "Bread Shine" it gives the bread a nice finish and helps the poppy and other seeds stick to the loaf. Also their Garlic Bread Seasoning, love using it on top of my beard sticks.
The buns turned out great, nice and firm, soft on the inside and a nice crunch to the crust.
My father was a baker in Pittsburgh, that was when they used fresh eggs, butter and milk. He was permitted to take home what was not sold the day before. Sometime he would bring home a large flour sack of sweet and dinner rolls that they saved for a few days, Mom would pick out the sweet rolls from the top and warm them up in the oven, we feasted on these for a few days. The rest we fed to the birds all winter.
Sometimes he would bring home a Chocolate cream pie, it was out of this world! The chocolate was top shelf, there were chocolate curls on the top and I would try to sneak a few off the top before dinner.
I like your free form rolls. To me it makes a nicer table presentation. The only thing my roll pan does is provide a little better thicker consistant proofing. My teaching chef rarely used pans of any type. At his restrurant one sees all kinds of shapes and forms appearing at the table with a little bit of order and a scoop of real salted butter. His restrurant trade has grown to the point where he has a baker working from a wood fired brick oven. I need one of those too. :) The baker has to much time to make things look commercial. His product is otherwise excellent.
We use King Arthur, too. Our ShopRite carries it. I'm wondering whether the white whole wheat and regular whole wheat are actually higher in fiber than plain white flour, since they're all milled. Anyone know?
I just got done reading a few sites on the web. The white whole wheat is just lighted in color and milder in flavor. They are 2 different grains but have the same nutrients.
Just Google: white whole wheat flour vs whole wheat flour
I learn something new everyday.
Two different processes entirely. One is whole vegetative all parts of the grain while the other is pure starch and carbs with the vegetative grain content removed. If you want the technical low down I believe the short course is on their web page. One problem figuring out today's advertising is the fact that a small amount of whole grain in a commercial loave a whole grain loaf doth make. Two spoons full of whole grain flower and two drops of honey makes a healthy sounding and looking loaf. :)
OopS..........................I may have misread and missed the words white whole grain.
I was talking white processed flower and whole wheat either white whole wheat or brown whole wheat.
An interesting question would be what portion of normal whole wheat is white flour anyway...Most whole wheat's are about one cup of brown whole wheat and five cups of nearly white whole wheat flour. What I then use is ground fine ten grain meal 1/2 cup, one cup of large cold rolled oatmeal, a dollop of honey, a tablespoon of oil and at tablespoon of sea salt. The yeast is one cup of sourdough yeast or sponge and two teaspoons full of dry yeast. With the yeast add a tablespoon full of brown sugar to feed the critters. I also use a lite loaf additive...one of three suggested in the catalog but not more than one of the three. To me they all work about the same. Want more or high calcium they have that too. That's it... turn on the stand mixer and add water at lowest speed until the mix crawls the mixing arm easily and drops down when you turn it off. Time is not as important as physical condition. Today's trend is to kneed very little. Experiment with your water more or less. Soon your way will evolve and not change much there after. The presence of the oatmeal and crunchy fine ground ten grains demand a bit more water than usually called for in the books. Watch how it is acting and pay little attention to someone else's water content. I do use bottled water to eliminate the rat poison and chlorine from the loaf.
This dough is twice raised before the bake. About an hour for each raise. To use the oven as a proof box turn on the light when you start making the bread. When putting the second raised dough in the oven add a pan of water below the bread and turn on the heat set at 400 degrees for one minute. Stay awake. One minute!
......keep your face back away from the door when opening during the baking process. Your oven should be full of steam from the boiling water.
Bake at 425 about twenty minutes for one pound loaves. If brushing on butter for butter top crust do that at about the fifteen minute point and add a few minutes. You have to learn your oven. If it wants to brown to quickly tent it until you do the butter topping.
I use a heating pad to proof my bread. With all the new appliances the kitchen is not as warm as it used to be. The best place was on top of the refrigator, we took advantage of heat rising and the frig giving off it's own heat. When we did our kitchen makeover I went from a gas oven to electric, even that is so well insulated that not much heat and cooking smells excape. In the winter I pop open the oven door slightly after baking to leave the heat and smells into the kitchen.
Doc, you have quit a few tips in your posts. I'm taking notes. LOL
It is time again for me to do my annual baking of Latvian Pirags.
They are quite different from the Pierogis (usually Polish) that everyone is familiar with.
I also have to make a fragrant years dough from scratch.
It contains a lot of shortening (Crisco and good margarine) as well as sugar and cardamon and the yeast.
I basically resign a whole day to do these. It is a long, pleasant, intensive labor of love.
Our "Pirags" are filled with finely diced ham, bacon, onion and generous amounts of black pepper.
Each one is filled by hand--on tsp. of mix per a small round of dough.
It is pinched shut, turned over and shaped into a crescent.
When a cookie sheet is full of these--egg is smeared over the tops and they are baked.
OHHHH--the aroma!!!
I am posting to see if you think that King Arthur Flour will produce the same results as
regular white flour I have been using. it is on sale right now--$3.49 a 5lb, bag at Super Fresh.
I had coupons too--55 cents off each.
Is K.A. Flour white? I have not looked yet...I hope so--as I do not want any wheat flour for these....
Please don't ask me for a recipe to our "Pirags". They are an old, cultural tradition,
and short-cuts people may want to make would not produce the same results.
These are just too time consuming to make--akin to home made ravioli....
But the dicing of pounds of ham and bacon and onion to make a
few hundred of these is also included in the time it takes.
I will dice this week--and bake next Thursday or Friday....
Just wanted an answer on the flour.....
Thanks, Gita
Sounds like an empanada
King Arthur flour is just regular flour, but it's of a very good quality. You can buy it in white, whole wheat, white whole wheat, organic, bread, rye, etc.
Mine was "All Purpose".....so it must be the white one....
FlowAjen--
I really do not know what an empanada is......Not into Mexican food at all....
Gita, I know what you mean about shortcuts... but am wondering if a food processor would save you time and effort while producing similar results with regard to all the dicing and mincing... ?
I've come to prefer King Arthur flour -- I get more consistent results with it. Their "unbleached white" is pretty much the equivalent of whatever "all purpose" flour you might have been using. (and "unbleached" doesn't mean it's some brown color... it's pretty much white)
I'm really enjoying being back in the kitchen at least some days again. Tonight I made one of our favorite Paul Prudhomme recipes -- Red Eye Chicken -- and I've got the steak strips marinating for his "Sweet Beef with Chiles." His recipes tend to have really long lists of herb/spice ingredients, so when we find one we like I make up a big batch (2 cups or more) of the seasoning mix. That really cuts down on prep time!
Red Eye Chicken has a lot of paprika in the mix (both sweet and half-sharp, or hot paprika)... toasting the seasoning mix with the onions it in a fairly dry pan gives it a wonderful roasted flavor. I add red bell peppers and green peas to simmer with the chicken stock, and at the end the sauce gets finished and thickened with sour cream. We ate it over egg noodles. Yum!
Tomorrow's dish is very different... hot/sweet spiced beef with green beans, corn, peppers, and onion, and the sauce is finished with coconut milk. I'll have enough of both dishes to put a few dinners in the freezer. :-)
Red eye Chicken reminds me of basic Chicken paprika from Joy of Cooking. Thanks!
speaking of spices--I blinked when I saw the tiny McCormick spice jar of sage at $4.19 in the store!!! (.6 oz) Heck, its worth ordering from Penzey just for that one thing! Theirs is 1.79. I need kosher salt too, and might get black sesame seeds for fun. And chili powder, don't know why I ordered just the small one, when you use couple TB at a shot.
I used to get these cookie/cracker kind of things at Asian store with black sesame in them, but they aren't selling them anymore. They were sorta like shortbread.
Those who believe King Arthur flours are just about like any other flours need badly to get into the web page and truely find out why their beliefs are unjustified. Several comments here in this thread are dead wrong. From an emotional stand point if they were not significantly better the higher cost for quality professed and not included in the produce would fail to attract attention and the company would fail.
Doc, by "equivalent" I mean you can use the KA unbleached white in place of whatever "all purpose" white flour you've used before in a recipe. Obviously I think the quality of KA is better!
Sally, don't forget to get some of their cocoa (natural for baking, dutched for hot chocolate)... and if your pocketbook can take the splurge, their double strength vanilla is out of this world!
Oh! And cinnamon... they have a vietnamese cinnamon that you have to taste to belive... YUM
Then after all the goods are evaluated you can call in for help if the need is genuine.
I called in one time. There were nice words which are expected. Then low and behold I was on line with a company baker who really took care of business. There is not to much of that going around these days. I might add that my question was one of better understanding something in their book, Whole Grain Baking.
I second Critters Cinnimon note. If there is any better out there I would not have the ability to taste and smell the difference. I bowled over the first friends who tasted my sticky buns made with my home ground KA Cinnimon sticks. Fact! I cut the cinnimon twenty five percent in the next batch I made.
Doc, How did you grind your cinnimon sticks ? I grate whole Nutmeg but I don't need much of it at a time.
I am getting the urge to place a KA order. Thatnk for the tip on the double strength vanilla and cinnimon. I buy my cinnimon when I go to Holmes county (Amish bulk foods ) that cinnimon if way better then the grocery stores, but I want to try the KA cinnimon.