Here’s this month’s batch:

• Dog biscuits from your bread machine- The Smiling Setter has a bread machine recipe sure to please man’s best friend.
• Mrs. Fields Secrets – I love this blog!!!  Melting snowmen cookies.  Tortilla snowflakes.  Kitchen organization tips.  Cancel today’s appointments.  I’m going to be reading this blog all day instead.
• Sourdough on Wikepedia – I love sourdough.  In fact, I’ve got a sourdough bread mix review in the works.  That should be coming to you soon.   But I digress, the point is that I was doing some research on sourdough.  Wikepedia states that, “Some care must be taken since the rise time of most sourdough starters is usually somewhat longer than the average for typical baker’s yeasts. (As a result, many sourdough starters are unsuitable for use in a bread machine.) “  Good to know.
• What are “Apron Britches”?  Check out my friend Jennifer’s JW Giftware Etsy shop to find out about this super cute item for the kitchen.
• Recently I’ve spent more time looking at retro cooking sites.  A Cake Bakes in Brooklyn is one of my favorites.  It features wonderful recipes from about 1919 to 1955.  We’re talking red velvet cake, Queen Elizabeth cake, gingerbread waffles and more.  Great recipes.  Great photos.  Great site.

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Related posts:

1. Bread Mix Review – Alaskan Sourdough Yeast Bread
2. Sourdough Starter
3. Five Links – October 2011

Despite my reluctance to mix bread making and politics, on January 18th I’m blacking out this site in protest of the Internet censorship bills, SOPA & PIPA.   You can watch a video on the topic and/or learn more at the protest site.

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Wishing You and Yours the Happiest of Holidays!

I don’t know about you, but I’m going to do some baking over the holidays.  So I thought I’d share some of my favorite recipes:

Egg Nog Bread – I’ll be making a loaf (or two) of this today.  It smells great while it cooks and tastes even better when it’s done.  I love it for breakfast as toast or French toast.

Sour Milk Bread – This is the bread that we use for sandwiches.  I probably make a loaf of this every week.  You don’t even need to use sour milk in the recipe.  Regular milk works fine too.

Bread Machine Pizza Dough – We’re going to have pizza over the holidays and The Man of the House is going to use this recipe for the pizza crust. Have you ever had homemade pizza?  To be honest, I like it better than restaurant pizza.

Cheese and Onion Bread – Cheese and onion bread smells great when it’s cooking.  (It always reminds me of Thanksgiving for some reason.)  The bread is savory and is great for sandwiches.

Raisin Bread – Forget about the raisin bread you buy in the store.  The raisin bread that comes out of a bread machine is so much better.

Coming Soon! – I’m working on a a post about pepperoni rolls.  I’ve got the recipe and the method down.  I just have to shoot the photos.  You’ll love this one!!!  UPDATE 1/21/12 – I just posted the pepperoni rolls recipe.  I think you’ll love it!!

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Before we get to the links, I’d like to give you an update on my egg nog bread.  Today I used it in French toast.  I think it was the best French toast I’ve ever had.  Loved it!!!

OK, here’s today’s batch of links:

Dry Fresh Herbs in 30 Seconds Flat – This handy hint from King Arthur will have you wondering, “Now why didn’t I think of that?”

Make Your Own Play-Dough – I love this blog post.  What a great money-saving tip!

How to Make Pumpkin Pie Spice – This blog post and video show how to make pumpkin pie spice with things you probably already have in your kitchen.  With Thanksgiving coming up next week it could be a real life saver!

Bacon Peanut Brittle – Yikes!  Are you as horrified as I am?  OK, maybe not as the Seattle Times calls this a “classic recipe”.

Best Cookbooks of 2011 – Here’s Amazon’s list of the best cookbooks of 2011.

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Related posts:

1. Five Links – October 2011
2. Kitchen Table Talk – November 2011

As I write this I’ve got a loaf of egg nog bread sitting the kitchen waiting to be sliced.  I’ve also started a loaf of sour milk bread.  I want to be ready for all those lunch-time sandwiches next week.

In addition to making bread I spent some time today changing the layout of the home page.  What do you think?  Do you like it?  Do you miss the old layout?  Either way is fine.  Just let me know as I want to make it easy for you to find the information that you want.

And if any of you tried to visit the site last week and found it down, my apologies.  The website server had some serious issues on Wednesday and Friday.  Over the weekend the site was moved to a new server that should be more reliable.

I hope you all have a great week!  Be sure to let me know your thoughts on the new layout!

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Related posts:

1. Website Redesign
2. Five Great Cooking Related Sites

Recently I received a great tip in response to my bread machine pizza dough recipe from Karen B.   I always make enough for two pizzas–then cut the dough ball in half, use one half, stuff the other into a plastic baggie, and freeze it. When I want to make pizza again I take the dough out of the freezer the night before and move it to the fridge. Then the day of I take the dough out of the fridge around 1 p.m., let it sit in a warm place all afternoon, and then make pizza in the evening as per usual.

David M. had another solution to add to Bread Troubleshooting – Bread That Rises and Then Falls Revised. My understanding is the Big Valley is usually caused by too much, or too rapid of a rise. The expanding CO2 from the yeast overwhelms the glutens ability to stretch (rise) and contain it. Note most all of your solutions are aimed at slowing yeast activity. Limiting food (sugar, qty/quality of yeast) or increasing salt which inhibits yeast or the quality (gluten) of the flour. One other thing I have tried with success in addition to those mentioned is adding, or adding more gluten. A couple teaspoons is usually enough for a 1.5# loaf.

In my flour for the bread machine post I show a photo of how we store bread flour that we buy in bulk from Costco.  Cheri asked where we get the five gallon buckets.  My significant other makes mead, so one of our buckets was originally a honey container…I asked my in-house winemaker where a person could get more of those buckets. He said, “US Plastics is a great place to buy all kinds of buckets, and other plastic containers. These white 5-gallon buckets meet FDA requirements and are $4.26 + $1.36 for the lid. Don’t know about shipping though.”

Laura found a name for the weird looking loaves of bread that happen when a one or one and a half pound loaf is made in a two pound machine.  (This happened was on my review of Classic Hearth Hawaiian Bread mix.)  Long live the hippo loaf!!  The flavor is really good, but the second loaf we tried just seemed to have issues. The bread is rising more on one side of the machine than the other and we aren’t sure if it’s the arrangement of the heating coils, or the kneading paddles or what. The bread tastes good but this last loaf looks a bit like a hippo…big rear, and smaller head!

My raspberry bread recipe for the bread machine made a great tasting loaf of bread.  It was also a hippo loaf.

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Here’s today’s batch:

• A bunch of new cookbooks have come out this fall.  If any of you get Advanced Bread and Pastry let me know what you think of it.  It looks great, but it’s a little too spendy for this Diva.
• The Rhubarb Compendium features a plethora of rhubarb recipes.  Mackerel with rhubarb?  Who knew?
• The Man of the House, otherwise known as the Washington Winemaker, has a great post on making your first apple cider.
• Saving Pennies or Dollars? Grinding Your Own Flour – Trent at The Simple Dollar analyzed the cost of grinding your own flour versus the cost of buying flour.  Interesting!
• And speaking of flour, take a look at this photo at King Arthur Flour.  Have they lost their minds?  That’s what I thought, but then I read the article and discovered a great tip.

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