Monday, January 6, 2014

On a scale of 1 to 10...

...I'd give this storm a -8!

Get it?  -8...like the temperature today in St. Louis. 

Ha-ha!  I'm so funny!

But seriously folks, have you had enough of this storm yet?  I know that the weather reporting folks are in hog heaven right now, and I'm happy for them, but I'm already getting spring fever.  Anyone with me here?

G has dug us out, and I am very thankful he is capable and strong to do this for us.  I am also very thankful that I was able to work from home - that we have power and food on hand.  And we got to watch Downton Abbey last night.  (However I still need to see Seasons 1 and 2 plus most of Season 3.  I am SO late to the DA party!) 

Speaking of scales though (back to the post title), I used my new scale from Santa to measure the flour in the bread I made yesterday.

Wait, back up a minute.  What bread did I make?  I made this Harvest Grains Bread from King Arthur Flour...
...except mine looks like this for a couple of reasons...
This is because I don't have any of the Whole-Grain Bread Improver (I used 1 T. of cornstarch instead) nor do I have any of the Harvest Grains Blend (I used 2-5/8 oz. of all-purpose flour instead).

Did you catch that?  I used 2-5/8 oz. of flour.  Not a measured 1/2 cup but 2-5/8 oz. of flour. 

Which would really be 2.625oz. of flour, however Santa's scale doesn't go out to 3 significant digits, so I had to simply stop at 2.6 oz. 

It was pretty fun to measure the dry ingredients.  This particular piece of wax paper weighed about 0.1oz., so I had to "tare" that out before measuring the flour.  (I felt very scientific, I promise you!)

One interesting (to me, at least) discovery is that when measuring larger quantities, such as the 10.5 oz. of the bread flour called for, I have to do it in a couple of measurements, because the surface area of the scale isn't large enough to accommodate 10.5 oz.

So I did 6...
 
...and then 4.5.
 
Isn't math wonderful??!!!
 


Of course, now that I think about it, if I "tared" a container with sides, then I could measure all 10.5oz at one time.  Hmmm...I can be so blond sometimes, can't I?  But hey, I have a couple of those flexible cutting boards, so that just might do the trick...allowing me to measure larger amounts while also then allowing me to "funnel" the board to pour the ingredient into the mixing bowl.  Yes, I have to try that next time!

Otherwise this was an easy, regular loaf of bread.  Dump all of the ingredients in your mixing bowl - no, I didn't bother to soften my yeast first - and start mixing.  If you have a powerful mixer like a Kitchen Aid, then let it do the kneading for you. 

Here is what it looked like when it first came together...a ball of dough, but still not smooth..
But let your mixer keep kneading while you empty the dishwasher, and after another 4 - 5 minutes, you have this beautiful, smooth batch of dough ready to rise.
And here's my dirty little secret.  I don't move it to a greased bowl for rising.  I just toss a towel over the top and walk away.  Once the first rising is done, I turn the machine on for a quick "pulse" and let the machine deflate it for me, and it's ready to shape.  I do this all the time with rolls and breads, and I have never had any trouble with the dough sticking to the bowl or not rising or baking up well.  I may toss a bit of oil in the bowl if the dough seems a bit on the drier side at the end of kneading, but most of the time, I just cover the bowl with a towel and let the yeast have a party.

I did one other thing with this dough that I'd never done before.  Santa also brought me an instant-read thermometer.  Since the recipe said to bake it to 190 degrees F and since Santa was good to me this year, I thought "Why not?"  Sure enough at the end of 35 minutes, it only registered 167.7, so I put it back in for about 10 minutes.  At the end of that 10 minutes, it registered about 191.1, so I took it out.  And it baked up just about perfectly!  I would consider this recipe a repeater - a keeper.  We had some with our minestrone soup last night, for toast this morning, grilled sandwiches for lunch and we'll have more with our beef stew for supper tonight.

And ya just can't beat the smell of fresh bread in the oven.  Period.  I feel calmer just remembering how it smelled yesterday.

Don't you?  Maybe I'll raise my score of this storm to a +8 since it gave us some good bread.  Yes, I will. 

No, make that an 8.3.  It seems only right since this post has been all about decimal accuracies for scales and thermometers. 

Stay warm!

1 comment:

  1. Ahhhh...... so you have finally come around to the Abbey!!! And that bread looks so comfy!

    ReplyDelete