Thank you, Betty Crocker!

Saturday is baking day as I prep for church coffee hour. Today I tried a new coffee cake. It is titled Sweet Bread Wreath. It is from Betty Crocker and it came out looking great.

I like to do something new every week. That is the game! Ideally it is something that teaches me some new technique or makes me do something different. In this case it was making a braided wreath. I had not done that since I made a braided Christmas Stollen a long time ago from the Monastery Cookbook. Now that was a project. One day I will have to revisit that.

That was not a wreath. Today's bread was.

You had to divide the dough into three pieces and roll them into 26 inch ropes.

Then you braided them loosely and shaped them into a wreath. It was all easier than I thought it would be.

The wreath was kind of rough at the bottom edge where the ends of the ropes were pinched together. However, I figured, that is where I can cut into it when it is on the coffee hour buffet. If you do not cut into a cake nobody cuts into it and it just sits there. That is what I have learned!

Likewise if you do not take the cover off something, be that cover foil or plastic or whatever, experience teaches me that nobody takes the cover off. They might reach under the plastic or foil and take a slice but they do not remove the covering, oh no.

Got to love it!

Back to the Sweet Bread Wreath which, by the way, you can find the recipe here.

I put it in the oven to proof at a balmy 100 degrees and here is how it was after maybe an hour and a half. Eventually it emerged.

So pleasingly plump! I gave it a lot of time because I used white whole wheat flour. I was out of plain white flour and too lazy to go to Albrecht Discount.

Before it bakes you are to brush the Sweet Bread Wreath with beaten egg and then sprinkle it with spices. Here is where I did not read, and I mixed the spices in with the beaten egg. Oh no. Oh no!

I brushed the mixture on as it was, fingers crossed, and into the oven it went.

Ta da!

I think I will sprinkle powdered sugar on it immediately before serving. Another lesson I have learned is people like a bit of sweetness but not a load of it. Well, the kids like a load of it, which is why I made brownies as well. But most people don't want anything with too much sugar. Still they like some. They do not want no sugar. You must strike this happy medium.

Which I hope I do with the Sweet Bread Wreath. I will try to take a picture tomorrow before Mass so we can see how it looks with its pious dusting of sugar.

Meanwhile I have nothing but praise for this particular Betty Crocker cookbook. It is "Come Home To Dinner" and it utilizes your appliances like the bread machine and the Crock Pot.

Its bread section is the greatest. I have done a bundle of the recipes and they all work out great.

As opposed to this other bread machine cookbook -- this series of cookbooks really -- that I used to use. Here, I found this picture of them. I had three of these books.

The breads on the cover look yummy! And they usually came out well. But not after an eon of fussing and tweaking. I would look in the machine and they would be too crumbly or too wet or too heavy and the machine would be huffing and puffing and finally just stop.

I was always adding something or amending something but somehow I never blamed the books. I always blamed myself. And at the end when the breads came out well I would write "VG" or "Made for church everyone ate it up" or something like that, and forget about all the work I went through.

Whereas with this Betty Crocker book, the dough always comes out of the machine perfect and easy to work with, no muss no fuss. I marveled at it for several weeks until it finally dawned on me: Those cookbooks I used to use were just plain bad.

Fie on them! I do not think I will even give them to Amvets. I do not want some other cook baking for her church coffee hour to be pulling her hair out. I think I will just throw them away!

Betty Crocker is my new best friend. Sometimes you need someone who has been around since your great-grandparents' era, you know?

She knows her stuff!

In the Wee Small Hours of the Bread Machine

My church coffee hour baking adventures continue.

I was worried that I would not be up early enough this morning to make a dessert for the, ahem, congregation. On Saturday night Howard and I and our friend Andy were going out to hear Jackie Jocko. And so I decided that when I got back that night, I would program the bread machine to make Coffee Spice Bread.

It is out of the Bread Machine Cookbook which I bought at Savers last week. It calls for one cup of brewed coffee which, I did not have leftover coffee, so I brewed a cup and sat it to rest while we went to hear Jocko.

When I came back I mixed up the bread. I was trying to push the buttons to have it ready by, say, 7:30 a.m., when I get up to go to Mass.

But oops, I did not push the buttons right. Because the thing starts kneading right there and then. And I could not figure out to correct it. Long story short, here it is 4 a.m., and the cat wakes us up, and I awaken to this aroma in the air. It was unbelievable. Like cookies only better. It was the Coffee Spice Bread!

I had to go downstairs and see what was the deal. I padded downstairs in my pajamas. The bread was done. How long it had been done, I had no idea. But I knocked it out of the bread machine pan. The cat came out of nowhere and sat there on his haunches watching me.

I set the bread to cool on a rack and went back upstairs and went back to sleep.

It was almost like a dream only in the morning there the bread was, cooled, done.

And very good if I may say so myself. And at the coffee hour after Palm Sunday Mass it was gone in 60 seconds, as they say.

This is the way to go, I am thinking now. The bread machine does the work, I have more time to work on the Pennario book. I am always trying to think of ways to make things work better and more smoothly.

So here we go. Coffee Spice Bread from "The Bread Machine Cookbook," by Donna Rathmell German.

Mix up, as your bread machine manufacturer intended (I do it in this order, because I own a Welbilt):

2 teaspoons yeast
3 1/2 cups bread flour (I used whole wheat flour from Price-Rite)
1/2 tsp. allspice
1/2 tsp. ground cloves
1/2 tsp cinnamon (I used one teaspoon because I am wild and crazy)
1 tsp salt
1/4 cup sugar
1 egg
3 tbs. vegetable oil
1 cup coffee

Set the machine to do its thing. Go to sleep.

Get up in the morning and go to church, or synagogue, as the case may be. Take the bread with you.

Eat up!

Onions and poppy seeds

The bread machine has been going great guns in this subzero world and today I made Onion Poppy Seed Bread. We are getting really esoteric!

Onions and poppy seeds are a classic Jewish combination. I am a big fan of Jewish breads. Having poppy in it, perhaps gleaned from the field pictured above, this might prove the opium of loaves. It will be irresistible and we will be sitting there in a comfortable haze, eating slice after slice.

You know my philosophy about leaving the food photography to the pros, however, here goes anyway. It is so beautiful and homemade looking.

And here it was when it was but a bun in the oven.

I know this is a stretch but I have been thinking a lot about Leonard Pennario the last few days. I just put the finishing touches on this important draft, congratulatimi mihi. And just now I thought, I do not think I ever baked bread for him. He ate pasta but he did not eat bread as a rule.

He did take this snapshot of me trying to entice him with a fresh-baked loaf.

Alas, he did not eat it.

It must not have been Onion Poppy Seed Bread, is all I can say.

No one would be able to resist this!

The ultimate bread machine

I could not help it, I bought a new bread machine.

But this one is the ultimate!

Literally! It is a Breadman Ultimate. I have a Breadman already, on semi-permanent loan from my brother George while I experiment with it. I like and admire George's Breadman. It is vertical and does not take up much room on the counter.

But this new one is the ultimate.

I found it at the North Tonawanda Goodwill where I went with my friend Tracy after we went to a Zumba Master Class after I put in three hours on Pennario and cross-indexing his endless discography. We went from class to Goodwill where it was immediately announced that the store was closing in 15 minutes. Then they started sounding bells the way they do at the Philharmonic to warn you that the time was short.

So I headed to the checkout with this brand-new Calvin Klein dress with the tags still on it. No time to try it on. If it did not fit me it would fit someone. Then my friend Tracy laughed at me because by the time I got to the checkout somehow this huge bread machine was there too.

I work fast, when I have to!

Howard inspected it eagerly the way he inspected the Welbilt. The Welbilt was so last week, you know? This new Ultimate, we do not think it was ever used. The manual was still in there and nothing seemed touched. Imagine the scene. "We've never used this. Get it out of here."

"But my mother --"

"I want it gone. Take it to Goodwill."

Anyway. End result, as we say here in Buffalo, the dress fit. And the bread machine will fit, too.

It makes a horizontal loaf. That is something new. Most of these machines make vertical loaves. It will be fun to see what this machine can do.

Tomorrow I will fire it up!

Welbilt at full tilt

I love Saturdays! I have two bread machines going at once plus the Crock Pot! It is like having a kitchen full of servants as in the 1889 painting above by Anders Zorn.

Recently I acquired a new Welbilt. I picked it up at Goodwill where I had stopped to drop some things off, go figure. I could not help it. The Lord taketh away and the Lord giveth.

The new Welbilt is this deluxe Model 8200 that makes two-pound loaves! I sprang $11 for it, that is how intriguing it looked. The day I bought it, I did not think to mention it to Howard until after dinner. I don't know how that happened, that at dinner we had been discussing something other than the Welbilt. But anyway I told him about it later.

"Why didn't you tell me before?" he said.

Immediately everything else is shoved aside so he could explore the Welbilt and its capabilities and removable parts.

To welcome the Welbilt I had sprung another $2.50 for a vintage edition of Bernard Clayton's New Complete Book of Breads. I was sort of second-guessing myself because the book didn't have any pictures and seemed kind of dense. But Howard applauded my purchase.

"There might be something interesting in it," he said. And lo, reading the Amazon description, it does appear that it is much valued by bakers.

Long story short, the Welbilt is in action for the second time, this time making Egg Bread.

Next to it is a Breadman which is actually on loan from my brother George. It is making Jewish rye.

The only idle bread machine is the Magic Chef. Perhaps I should load it up with something! Meanwhile the kitchen is rocking. Well, the counter is rocking. These machines are no joke!

Now it is back to Pennario. I have to make good use of my Saturday.

Activity all over the house!