Easy Bread Recipe

I make this the night before a Sunday brunch...Just nuke each serving for
10 -15 seconds. Or nuke the whole thing on a plate for 30 seconds...Yum!

Apple Raisin Breakfast Yummies

1/2 cup butter

1/2 cup brown sugar

1/4 cup molasses

1/4 cup honey

1/2 cup raisins

1 large apple, peeled, cored and diced

1/2 cup chopped walnuts

2 cans refrigerated rolls, or 1 can of the "Grandes" size

cinnamon sugar, 1 part cinnamon, 1 part granulated sugar

Place a 12 inch Dutch oven over 7-8 coals and melt the butter. Stir in brown sugar, molasses, and honey. 

Add the raisins, diced apple, and the nuts.

Snugly place as many rolls as you need to cover the brown sugar mixture edge to edge in the oven.

Sprinkle the rolls liberally with cinnamon sugar.

Add 14-16 coals to the lid and bake for about 35-40 minutes.  Check and when the rolls begin to turn

golden brown remove from the heat. Let the oven cool to room temperature and flip it over onto a trivet. Remove oven and serve from the lid.

Serves 8-10

Enjoy!
Bruce & Vickie

Recipes

I'll start to publish a few recipes next week...If you have a favorite let me know though the comments section of the blog. And, do you want the backyard variety or the super high end recipes? Or in between?
Bruce Tracy
The Dutch Oven Baker

Liquids, sweeteners, salt and fats

Liquids...Water and milk are the most commonly used liquids. Water gives bread a crispier crust; milk provides a velvety texture and a bit of milk fat.
Sweeteners...Sugar, honey and molasses provide food for the yeast and encourage faster growth. Each enhances the flavor of the bread in it's own way and helps brown the crust.
Avoid artificial sweeteners as they don’t provide the sugar the yeast needs to do the job.
Salt...Salt inhibits the yeast and prevents the dough from rising too much too fast. Forgetting the salt may cause the bread to collapse if you let it rise too long. If you reduce the salt in a recipe, you’ll need to decrease both rising times, too.
It also seasons the finished bread.
Fat...Butter and vegetable oil make bread tender.
In addition to tenderness, butter adds flavor.

More bread stuff...

You can juggle the basic ratio a bit for different results. For example for flat bread or pizza dough you don’t want as much rise so you drop the yeast amount and add some oil.

You can shape the dough a hundred different ways. Braid it, make rolls, or make a boule, a round ball perfectly suited for your Dutch oven. After the last rise score the top with a few slashes to help it expand and pour the coals to it.

Another nice thing about Dutch ovens...If you want a hard crust like on a loaf of French bread or sourdough bread the Dutch oven provides the steam because the oven with a tight fitting lid keeps most of the water.

Proofing/Rising

Most bread recipes call for letting the dough rise twice. If you want bread with larger bubbles after it is baked, like pizza dough, let it rise just once but to more than double in bulk. If you want a very fine textured product, let it rise three times to less than double each time.Although most recipes tell you to let it rise until it doubles, for most white bread I limit the first rise to less than that in a warm draft-free place. This helps keep the whole bowl at the same temperature. 

For the second rise I spray the Dutch oven, put the lid on, and let it double. 
When I put the dough ball in for the first rise, I spray the bowl first with Pam, put the dough in the bowl and spray the dough as well. Then I put a piece of plastic wrap over the dough itself and cover the bowl with the traditional towel.

Wheat Flour

What distinguishes wheat flour from other flours like potato or oat flour?
It contains gluten. 
Without delving to far into the chemistry gluten is a protein that provides bread dough elasticity, making flour stretch without breaking. This enables the flour to trap the carbon dioxide bubbles that yeast releases. When you knead bread dough work it long enough to cause plenty of elasticity, i.e., the dough ball will be a bit rubbery. This causes the dough to rise. Voila! Bread!
When I make bread, I use bread or, better still, bread machine flour, it has higher gluten content.

Basic bread

Baking bread is as easy as starting with five parts flour and three parts liquid.

The only other things it needs are yeast and a bit of salt. That’s all you need to make basic bread.

When making bread, the one thing worth remembering is that yeast dough is hard to overwork. It is very forgiving. When you bake in Dutch ovens don’t worry too much about how stiff your dough is, just make sure the loaf is a bit rubbery and smooth.

The fun begins when one decides what to do with this basic of bread recipe.

Should I substitute milk for water? Or cream? Or some other liquid?

What can I add to change the bread? Basic things like sugar or honey, eggs, oil or butter; or more exotic things such as herbs, garlic, chopped fruit/nuts, cheeses or chopped meat. Other flours like whole wheat, rye, potato, and oat flours add wonderful different flavors to bread baking.

The list is endless.

More next week.