Bread Dough rolled out, oiled and sprinkled with sugar and cinnamon and ready to be rolled up
It’s telling that a whole franchise – and a rather successful on at that – can be built on one very narrow product – cinnamon buns. I guess, upon further reflection I guess that isn’t so unique, but it may be a bit telling as to how easily many of us part with cash that we’d be willing to pay such a premium for what is really a very simple bread product.
If you haven’t made cinnamon buns at home you should. The process is really very simple – and the bread machine takes all of the real effort out of the process.
This is one more case where silicon bakeware really shines. Cleanup of any sugary “leakage” from the buns is easily snacked on or washed up.
Cinnamon buns ready for second rise before going in the oven
For soft sided buns put the dough into a pan so that when doubled in bulk the buns contact each other, if you want harder outer crusts place them on a baking sheet with separation between the buns.
I always find it cool how changing even a single variable can significantly change the outcome. That is as true in baking as it is in many other domains.
English muffins are a great example of this. They are just regular bread dough that is cooked on the griddle rather than baked in the oven… simple enough right – but would you have guessed how easy their preparation was before now?
Certainly they are sold in stores at a premium – but you can turn them out easily at home.
Whole wheat English Muffins in the frypan
English muffin rings are certainly not necessary, and personally I would never have purchased them. Rather I have two dozen that I made up from salvaged stainless steel sheets. They are nice in that they give uniform muffins, but the real reason I enjoy using them is that I get a kick out of having fabricated them myself from scrap.
Kids and cookies – a great way to get them hooked on baking
The “Bigger is better” school of thought isn’t always true, but at least where cookies and kids are concerned it carries a pretty strong appeal.
While a lot of cookie recipes have difficulty scaling up from the average to the jumbo to the ginormous this one is perfect for building the bigger cookie – so big in fact that you should be using pizza pans to bake them in.
Wedges of the giant whole grain cookie – before gobbling
This basic cookies is great on its own – or toss in a cup or two of chocolate chips, smarties or chopped nuts.
If you’ve got kids who are baking with you this is an easy recipe to get them excited about playing around in the kitchen. If your junior baker has trouble mixing the batter with a wooden spoon consider picking up a danish whisk which speeds mixing while reducing the effort required to a fraction of that a wooden spoon.
Using either whole wheat or whole barley flour is a great option for these cookies. Give them a try with your junior baker or to satiate your own inner junior baker.
These whole wheat sugar cookies can be whipped up in a few minutes, no fuss no muss – and they are great cookies. The combination of the nutmeg with the nuttiness of the whole wheat flour makes for a great combination. In fact, because of this no-nut nuttiness flavor they add great variety to the school lunchbox – and I’m assuming that if you have kids their schools is likely a nut free zone too.
Junior Baker engaged in cookie fabrication!
Quick easy recipes like this are an awesome way to introduce the younger members of the family to the joys of cooking. Get them hooked on this and other skills and you’ll probably give them a better foundation for a happy life than those “nut free” schools.
Combined with letting the kids go from whole grain to whole grain flours on the home built grain mill – that they can take apart and adjust – to cookies that go into their lunches and get offered up to friends and family with pride is such a cool way to demystify food.
Mocha cookies made with barley flour – together with milk!
There are requests, there are pleas and then there are demands. These cookies demand a tall glass of ice cold milk. In fact the dairy farmers should be handing out these very cookies to folk approaching grocery store cashes who don’t have milk in their basket! They are frankly awesome.
Now, some chocolate cookies have loads of oooey gooey good chocolate in them. These by contrast don’t overwhelm you with that taste – but they are addictive!
If you want to have folks rethink baking with whole grain flours – these might just be the way to win them over.
Whole Wheat tortillas are a snap to make at home. While I really enjoy corn tortillas in order to make them you really should have a good tortilla press – such as the homestead tortilla press you can build for yourself. Whole wheat tortillas don’t require a press – only a rolling pin.
Homemade Whole Wheat Tortillas
There are two “tricks” to making whole wheat tortillas;
Once you’ve kneaded the dough let the dough sit covered for at least a half hour
Don’t use a seasoned or greased cast iron skillet – it will smoke. I keep one cast iron skillet that is used just for the production of tortillas – corn and whole wheat.
It really is that simple to make great tortillas – and fresh tortillas are great in addition to being cheap to produce in your own home.
Whole barley flour works wonderfully in a host of baked goods – in most cases I prefer it to whole wheat flour for cookies and sweet quick breads – and so does my junior baker.
You might have a bit of trouble finding whole barley flour unless you mill it yourself, but that is one of the advantages of having your own mill.
Barley flour peanut butter cookies ready for the oven
While I know that these could be scaled down to bite sized if you engage the junior baker the cookies are always going to be jumbo sized. It’s not every cookie that will scale up nicely – but these do just fine, and you can adjust the baking time to suit the level of chewiness you desire – from wonderfully chewy to crisp.
Cookies are probably the greatest reason to get and use silicon baking sheets – they practically banish cookies with burnt bottoms, so don’t waste your ingredients or effort by forgoing its acquisition.
So, whether you have a junior baker or not these are great PB cookies so make yourself a batch.
I think one of the most common afflictions that touch our society is not obesity – though that is certainly a concern, but rather “over-complication-itis”. OK, so maybe the medical community won’t be adding this affliction to their standard list of diagnoses but that doesn’t mean it isn’t prevalent, nor that it isn’t serious. So, how would you diagnose someone suffering from “over-complication-itis” – well it’s simple… or rather it is an individual who lacks the ability to see simplicity. More precisely, an individual who lacks the ability to examine and break down processes that lead to final products into their simple components.
Brunch – fresh whole wheat bagels with smoked salmon accompanied by asparagus
These bagels provide a case study. Bagels are awesome, but I bet if you asked most folks who buy them – even those who purchase them from shops that make them right in front of the customer if they could make them – they’d balk at the suggestion. The complexity exists only in their minds.
If you’ve been following these posts we’ve shown our favorite tried and true bread recipe, we then showed how to take the same recipe and use the dough to make some awesome buns – by forming the dough and baking it in the oven, bagels just add one step to the buns – boiling the formed dough before baking. That’s it. Really, no need for a wood fired oven, no need for a food science degree or even to convert to Judaism. Those things might help but if you make them personal prerequisites you might as well check yourself into an institution with “over-complication-itis” because you won’t be checking out all of the opportunities that exits out here in the real world.
For those of you that haven’t dialed 911, click on the headline for the simple recipe instructions.
Oh, and the solution for obesity – eat reasonable amounts of good food – like these fresh whole wheat bagels and engage in physical activity.
Growing up my parents had a pretty leave-it-to-beaver division of roles. My father brought home the bacon and my mother cooked it. They were both pretty happy with that division, and it’s only been since his retirement that my father has started baking. But, like most rules there were exceptions – two in this case. When camping my father did all of the cooking, and when pancakes were on the weekend menu – well those were his too. He got pretty good at making pancakes.
Maple syrup from our own trees to complement whole wheat pancakes
Those pancakes were always made with plain old white flour and smothered in syrup – often pancake syrup rather than real maple syrup. Now, I’m not exactly up for the division of roles that suited both of my parents but, I still love pancakes and so do my kids. That said, in my home pancakes are made with freshly milled whole grain flour – usually whole wheat, and the syrup is real maple syrup.
I love how the richness of the whole wheat combines with sweet maple flavor. It’s interesting too, how four good sized pancakes with a drizzle of syrup forms a meal that satisfies for hours whereas it took a pile of white flour pancakes in a sea of syrup to fill me up at the table.
Shifting from producing loaves of bread with a tried and true recipe to hamburger buns (or dinner rolls for that matter) is as simple as can be. Fundamentally we are only reshaping the dough and then baking it in the oven rather than allowing the bread machine pan to define the shape and the machine to do the baking for us.
The taste of summer – a burger with all the fixings piled high on a toasted whole wheat bun
Whole wheat buns are a great combination with burgers – instead of squishing into thin disk of wheat paste they hold their shape without being too dense and add a heartiness to a burger that just isn’t there with store bought fare. Baking your own not only provides unrivaled freshness but also allows you to determine the size of the buns… Baby buns for the wee folks, mama buns or even the papa buns that hold the largest burgers.
The process is so easy that you can’t go wrong and after you’ve had these you won’t want to return to store bought fare so get some fresh whole wheat flour and get baking.
Here we are using the standard Baler-Twine bread recipe, but setting the machine on the dough cycle instead of the bread cycle. If your machine’s dough cycle stops after the first rise reset it to the dough cycle and let the machine kneed the dough again before shutting it off and removing the dough.
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