Category: cooking

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soft egg pretzels for laura

soft pretzels are best
Laura doesn’t ask for much… but when she does, I like to make it for her. In any event, many of the recipes you find are very similar… but where they differ is significant and there is a bit of a trick to it.

Dad’s  Pretzel Recipe
( a variation of our cracker bread recipe)

3 cups flour ( I prefer Bread Flour )
¼ cup special flour (whole wheat, rye or spelt)
3 tablespoons gluten
2 tablespoons butter
1 tablespoon sugar
1 tablespoon or package yeast
1 cup warm water
1/4 cup ‘special’  flour (whole wheat, dark rye, or your choice)
1 egg ( white for mix, yolk to brush after boiling)

For 1 dozen   

  1. Put yeast, sugar, salt, butter, water, egg white and 1/4 cup of the special flour into a bowl and mix.
  2. Mix in remaining flour, mix and place in greased bowl, cover and place in a warm place
  3. Let dough rise for 1 hour
  4. Divide into 16 pieces and form as pretzels, cover and allow to rest in a warm place for 30 minutes
  5. Prepare the baking soda-water mixture and bring to a boil on stove. 5 tsp baking soda mixed in 4 cups water in a saucepan.
  6. Place them into boiling water-baking soda mixture  .
  7. Preheat oven to 475 F
  8. Let the pretzels boil for on both sides for about a minute a side
  9. Place on greased pan and brush with egg yolk dip in coarse Salt   before baking
  10. Bake for 12-15 minutes until pretzels are colored desired is attained

Oh, BTW… they were good!

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can you spell spelt? it’s taste is delicious

lavash or cracker bread
CLICK on picture for basic cracker bread (Lavas) recipe

Everyone likes to make something enjoyed by those we love and ‘cracker bread’ is one of those things. However, there is always a few ‘suggestions that pop up from the peanut gallery and these have to be taken into account. Some want more of the taste of a ‘pretzel’ while others want a little more ‘flavor’.

This really isn’t hard to do. I roll a little course salt over the bread prior to baking to give it a more ‘pretzel finish’ and interchange the secondary bread to find something a bit more flavorful. I like using ‘Spelt’ for this purpose as it is similar i smoe ways to whole wheat but with a distinctive nutty taste all it’s own…. which is why smoe folks say it is making a comeback. It also mixes better with water than whole wheat and that works for me!

Here’s a brief history of ‘spelt’ that can be found on the web:

“Spelt has a complex history. It is a wheat species known from genetic evidence to have originated as a hybrid of a domesticated tetraploid wheat such as emmer wheat and the wild goat-grass Aegilops tauschii. This hybridisation must have taken place in the Near East because this is where Ae. tauschii grows, and it must have taken place prior to the appearance of bread wheat (Triticum aestivum, a hexaploid free-threshing derivative of spelt) in the archaeological record c. 8,000 years ago.

Genetic evidence shows that spelt wheat can also arise as the result of hybridisation of bread wheat and emmer wheat, although only at some date following the initial Aegilops-tetraploid wheat hybridisation. The much later appearance of spelt in Europe might thus be the result of a later, second, hybridisation between emmer and bread wheat. Recent DNA evidence supports an independent origin for European spelt through this hybridisation”

In any event, it is a nice addition!

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making your own cookbook

Here I am (I need a shave) with my little cookbook for my daughters CLICK on the picture to see how you can make one of your own or save other family memories!
Here I am (I need a shave) with my little cookbook for my daughters CLICK on the picture to see how you can make one of your own or save other family memories!

 One of the things I really would have enjoyed was a cookbook from my grandmother. Alas, she was one of those wonderful chefs that had literally everything in her head. I have to confess to seeing a small address size book that had all kinds of pen scratchings in it… but it didn’t LOOK to my young eyes as a cookbook… but it was! Her book was covered with all the abreviations that frequented some of the wonderful cooks from the ages. I look back and wish I had it today!

So with a lot of proding from my adult children, I produced a mini-cookbook ( primarily to see how it looked and how it works) for them using the tools from mypublisher.com. Fortunately for you, they just updated their software making it much easier.  I will work on a more larger and complete book with all the little details that I omitted from this book… but it will take me a year ladies, so be patient.

flipping through my little cookbook
it's fun to flip through the little book and see all the fun things we have enjoyed over the years.

Obviously, I left out a lot. Laura commented that it contains only manfood… you know, desserts and entrees. Well, I did have one recipe for a marvelous salad dressing. The next book will have much more.

So, before your grandmother or the chef in your life moves on… capture some of those memories in a book!

Roger

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first apple pie of the season

first apple pie of the season
first and maybe only apple pie of 2010!

Here in our part of California we had an early spring followed by a quick freeze. This was problematical for the apples here this year as all the blossums were distroyed and the crop reduced. To be honest, I really wasn’t looking forward to the daily harvesting and prep for pies and sauce!

This goes a long way to say that I made my first apple pie today… with a nice topping. yum!

Here’s the recipe.