Cooking from Scratch

Today is Sunday. In our world, that means, pizza night. Homemade from scratch pizza night. Well, ok, I don't make the sauce or monzerella cheese from scratch. But the dough yes.

Since it was a rainy Sunday, I decided that today I would also make some bread from scratch. The oven was going to be on anyway, so might as well make the house smell good and all that. And I love kneading bread. I won't even try a yeast bread recipe that doesn't involve kneading. What's the point in that?

So Jupiter and I mixed the bread dough. We kneading the bread dough. We let the dough rise and it was beautiful bread dough. Then we watched part of Cool Runnings while the dough was rising. We put it in the bread pans and watched more of Cool Runnings while it rose again. Then we returned to the kitchen.

I put the oven on to preheat and we mixed the pizza crust dough. We're experts at pizza crust dough by now, so that went pretty quick. Then I opened the oven to put in the bread pans.

I forgot to remove the broiler pan and baking stones that live in the oven. AND...the two plastic containers of peanut butter cookies that were also living in there. The plastic was melting. So I quick turned off the oven, removed the oven residents and plopped the melting plastic dishes into the sink. Then I popped the bread pans into the oven, set the timer for 45 minutes, and left the kitchen. Anybody see the issue yet???

45 minutes later the timer dinged, I went to the oven to remove my bran bread. And, well, they looked a little bit funny, since I forgot to turn the oven back ON after removing the plastic peanut butter cookies. I turned on the oven again and let them bake a little more, but that didn't really work either. Jupiter's bit of cinnamon bread came out alright and she ate it. But as for the rest of it...well...better luck next time I guess. Or maybe I shouldn't store plastic bins of cookies in the oven. But I have good luck with Jupiter NOT sneaking cookies when I hide them in there. Maybe if I write a note to myself....but then she would teach herself to read the word cookie for that purpose....



Pizza Crust recipe.....Anabel Karmel's recipe



Mix 1 1/2 tsp dried yeast with 3 tbsp warm water. Set aside for ten minutes ( I let it sit while mixing the dry ingredients and it's long enough.)

Sift 2 3/4 cups flour (I use 2 1/4 cups unbleached white flour and 1/2 cup whole wheat flour.) into a bowl and add 1 tsp sugar, and a little salt. Make a well in the center.


Pour yeast, 2 Tbsp olive oil, and a little less than a cup of warm water into the well. (recipe calls for a cup but take out 3 TBSP for dissolving the yeast.) Mix everything together. Sprinkle flour over a clean work surface and knead the dough for 8 minutes, until smooth and elastic. Oil a large bowl, put in the dough, and cover. Leave in a warm place to rise until double in size. About an hour works well in our house. When you poke holes in the dough and the holes stay, it's ready. Spread on your pizza pan or stone. This recipe will give you enough for a little extra to make into a treat such as cinnamon sugar bread if your child loves cinnamon sugar.


We finish our pizza with a small can of Hunt's tomato sauce with basil, garlic, and oregano, and a package of monzerella.


Pancake batter from scratch.... Fannie Farmer Cookbook

discovered this recipe when Jupiter requested pancakes one day (as a vehicle for large quanties of maple syrup) and I had no pancake mix or bisquick. Jupiter loves them and they are very easy to make.

Beat lightly in a mixing bowl 1/2 - 3/4 cup of milk (amount depends on how thick you like your pancakes. If you like thin ones, use more milk) with two TBSP melted butter and one egg. In a seperate bowl mix 1 cup of flour (can mix whole wheat flour in here as well, I use half white and half whole wheat), 2 tsp baking powder, 2 TBSP sugar, and 1/2 tsp salt. Add flour mixture to wet ingredients and mix just lightly enough to dampen the flour. Cook over a moderate griddle.
Serve with large quantities of your favorite maple syrup.