Home Made Anyone?

Tigger's Mum

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Last night made a batch of chocolate chip cupcakes. Not many left.

Tonight I made a lemon drizzle cake which is still cooling and mayonnaise.

I make our own food, cakes, biscuits (cookies), ice cream myself as I don't like the chemicals that are in shop bought food. Home made tastes better too. Next venture is to make tomato ketchup. Never done that before so going to give it a go later on this week.

I love cooking, baking and eating it.
 

Nebaug

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Last night made a batch of chocolate chip cupcakes. Not many left.

Tonight I made a lemon drizzle cake which is still cooling and mayonnaise.

I make our own food, cakes, biscuits (cookies), ice cream myself as I don't like the chemicals that are in shop bought food. Home made tastes better too. Next venture is to make tomato ketchup. Never done that before so going to give it a go later on this week.

I love cooking, baking and eating it.
In that case you will love food dehydrator!!! It’s a game changer
 
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Tigger's Mum

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In that case you will love food dehydrator!!! It’s a game changer
I've been thinking about getting one of these. My two most used kitchen appliances are my Kenwood Chef 901 (it's 50 years old and still going strong - similar to a Kitchen Aid stand mixer) and my 6L Instant Pot. Son bought the IP for Mother's Day last year as I'd been going on about getting one and I use it every day, sometimes twice a day. It's brilliant.
 

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I go in phases; when something catches my interest, I jump in with both feet.

I used to have a bread machine that I used for a while, but I was still frustrated that I couldn’t seem to get the hang of making it completely from scratch. So I decided to dive into the mysteries of sourdough made with wild, home grown, yeast. It took me a couple months, but once I got it, I never looked back. I’ve made traditional breads, focaccia, pizza crust, lavash, cinnamon rolls, english muffins, pretzels and more with wild yeast starter. I gave my bread machine to one of my foodie neighbors a few months ago.

I’ve made home made “ginger beer”, where the learning curve included a small bottle explosion 😆

I’ve canned fruit, pickles, jams, tomatoes, chili peppers, and am currently working on kumquat marmalades.

I don’t really make cookies just to have on hand, because I am trying to watch my sugar intake, but I still break out my grandma’s recipes for the holidays. The orange-cranberry bread, soft raisin cookies, and peanut butter balls, are very popular.

As for the Instapot, I haven’t used it as much as I expected to, but I did recently figure out how to sous vide salmon in it. That, my friends, has been a game changer!
 
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Tigger's Mum

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I used to have a bread machine that I used for a while, but I was still frustrated that I couldn’t seem to get the hang of making it completely from scratch.

I’ve canned fruit, pickles, jams, tomatoes, chili peppers, and am currently working on kumquat marmalades.

I don’t really make cookies just to have on hand, because I am trying to watch my sugar intake, but I still break out my grandma’s recipes for the holidays.

As for the Instapot, I haven’t used it as much as I expected to, but I did recently figure out how to sous vide salmon in it. That, my friends, has been a game changer!
I have a Panasonic bread machine. They're good, come with recipes that are pretty much foolproof and make great pizza dough (my son loves pizza - I don't).

I sometimes make my own jam and chutney. Never forget the first time I made jam. My elder brother had an allotment so gave me a load of blackcurrents and strawberries. I made the blackcurrent jam first (1lb berries, 1lb sugar, 1 pint water) and it came out perfect. The strawberries I couldn't get to set so phoned my mother who said to boil them longer. Tried this several times. still no set to phoned my mother again. She asked me to tell her how I'd done it "A pound of strawberries, a pound of sugar and a pint of water". Her reply (she's rolling around laughing) is "You silly girl. You don't put water in strawberry jam!!!!" Live and learn.

I make all our own cakes and biscuits (cookies). My son and I are really lucky. We are both natural skinnies so never have to watch our weight.

The IP. Use it all the time. I've made meals in it, pineapple upside down cake, yogurt, Dulce de Leche, egg bites. It's my most used kitchen appliance. Since I got it just over a year ago, I hardly ever use the stove top now. My go to YouTube channel for recipes and inspiration is Pressure Luck Cooking - Jeff. His recipes are good. I sometimes have to look up equivalents in my country - e.g. cornstarch we call cornflour here. There's only myself and my adult son (I'm a widow) so anything leftover is put in the freezer for the days when I can't be bothered cooking. I also have pot-inpot inserts for my IP which are great. You can defrost/cook a frozen for example chilli in the bottom pot and make fresh rice in the top pot. 25 minutes later, meal is on the table. I hardly use the microwave these days. I could wax lyrical about the IP all day :biggrin:
 

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I have been a homemade cook forever. I make most of our meals, make our own breads and rolls, our own cookies, cakes, and pies, etc. In the summer, we freeze everything we can from the garden to use during the winter. I make a ton of peach pies and apple pies and dumplings for the freezer, so that we can enjoy pie year 'round. The only foods I can are pickles, relishes, and chutneys. I don't make jams and jellies because we rarely use them. And when we do, it's because my sister is a strawberry jam master and I get some from her. She also makes an outstanding chili sauce.

No bread machine here. Mom got me one and I never used it. Rick may have used it 3 times. We got rid of it. I don't even use a mixer to make bread. I love kneading dough. It's therapeutic for me and good for my hands.

I do love my food dehydrator. It's usually out all the time once the garden starts to produce.

My "thing" is the Ninja Foodi Grill. I could talk all day about them. I do not have an IP, but do have an electric pressure cooker. Since we retired, though, I don't use it that often. I have found that I don't use my crock pots that often either, although they still come in handy every once in a while. With the pandemic, we don't go much of anywhere (although we are starting to get out and about more), so I'm usually home to make dinner.

Did you make your ketchup? Rick's aunt used to make her own ketchup and it was quite good. I tried years ago and it wasn't bad, but I couldn't get it thick enough. I used a recipe from Carla Emery's The Encyclopedia of Country Living. If we get enough tomatoes this summer, maybe I'll try it again. I'll stick with tomato ketchup, though. There are all kinds of ketchups out there.

Nice "talking" with you!
 
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Tigger's Mum

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I have made bread by hand in the past but 10 years ago I had a nasty accident and badly broke my wrist. The hospital should have pinned it but didn't so the bone set in the wrong position. Result is I have limited movement in that wrist, it is weak and even after 10 years is still painful if I overuse it.

There's nothing nicer than the aroma of home cooked meals and baking. One of life's pleasures. Over the course of this summer, son and I are going to be making raised beds for the back garden. Hope to get some up and running for autumn planting. There's only the two of us and my freezer isn't that big so will be growing some of the veg. we like. Next year I'll be planting some fruit bushes. I love blueberries so at least a couple of them will be planted plus some raspberry canes. I'm trying to buy as little as possible now from the supermarkets. Recently we've got a local farm coming round with potatoes and fresh free range eggs. £7 ($8.83) for a tray of eggs (20) and 4 kg of lovely potatoes. The supermarket is cheaper in price but I end up throwing out most of the potatoes as they are poor quality and often rotten. The eggs are large and they're really nice plus all delivered to my door for no extra cost. I'd rather pay a little extra and get quality and it helps our local farmers. I'm hoping they extend their range to include carrots, onions etc.

Now I'm getting hungry...
 
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Tigger's Mum

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Do you have farm co-ops in your area?
localharvest.org is an interesting site.
I have an account with Bountiful Baskets, but one basket is usually too much for hubby and I. I’m always tempted when they have cases of stuff, but you have to get a “regular basket” before you can get the case.
No, unfortunately. I'm in the UK. We do have some farm shops but they're a good distance away and my car is still waiting for parts (older parts are difficult to find - my car's a 20 year old Peugeot 206 convertible and needs a new back axle) so I have to shop local at the moment. We do have a farmer's market in one of the large shopping malls on a Sunday called The Outlet Village but it is a nightmare to get to. It was built in completely the wrong place. People living nearby raised objections to it but as usual our Council didn't listen. People living in the surrounding streets can't get their cars parked or sometimes even access their own homes especially in the run up to Christmas and New Year. It should have been built on the outskirts of the town but Council employees aren't known for intelligence!
 

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Tigger's Mum Tigger's Mum Absolutely fabulous bread can be made with no kneading. Two caveats: you must plan ahead as it requires a long, slow rise. And is baked in a lidded heavy pot.

Here are the details:



Tuesday, 2 January 2007

Yeast: No-Knead Bread


It's been circling through the blogsphere faster than Phineas Fogg circling the globe. Perhaps not at the speed of light, but certainly like Internet lightening. "What's that?" you ask. Why, it's Mark Bittman's article and the recipe for no-knead bread, which first appeared in the New York Times on 8 November 2006, and then showed up on more foodie blogs than this world ever dreamed of. The Secret of Great Bread: Let Time Do the Work is about Jim Lahey, owner of the Sullivan Street Bakery on West 47th Street in Manhattan. His technique: use just a smidgeon of yeast in a very wet dough. Let it rise for a long time, and bake it in a preheated, covered pot.

I've made bread for a long time, decades, in fact. It's good bread, and my family has enjoyed it. But I never made bread as excellent as this, fantastic crust and superb crumb.



No sound effects, so you cannot hear the bread talking to us, little pings and crackles as it cools. You cannot smell it either. But look at it, in all its bread-y perfection.



Here's the real deal:
Scoop up 3 cups of bread flour.
Add 1/4 teaspoon of instant rise yeast - that's right, just 1/4 teaspoon.
(A package of yeast is more than 2 teaspoons!)
Add a generous teaspoon of salt, and 1 5/8 cups of water.
Stir it up with a spoon or spatula until it looks shaggy.
Cover with plastic wrap, and go away for 18 hours.
That little 1/4 teaspoon of the yeast beast will slooowly get to work, and the dough will rise.

After 18 hours, a little less, somewhat more, whatever, floop the dough mass out onto a floured work surface. Turn one end over the middle. Turn the other end over the folded first end, cover with the plastic wrap and let the dough rest from this wild activity for about 15 minutes. The original article directs you to flour a dish towel (not, emphatically not, terrycloth with all its little dough-holding loops) and upend the dough onto it. Since you'll later be quasi-pouring the dough into a pot this seemed rather hazardous to me. My technique: put a Silpat mat on a cookie sheet. Flour the Silpat mat, and put the dough on that. Cover with a floured dish towel, and let it rise, slowly, slowly, for 2 hours.

Then comes the baking, 30 minutes covered, 15 to 20 minutes more uncovered, in a lidded cast iron or enameled cast iron pot that will hold up to the pre-heated 450 degrees Fahrenheit baking temperature.

Note, please, that this was actually the most difficult part of my bread baking journey. For the first two loaves I borrowed a pot from Jerry. It was 2 1/2 quarts, rather smaller than the 4 to 5 quarts suggested in the article. However my loaves rose to just about fill the pot, higher than would be the case with a larger pot. Three quart size, I decided, would be ideal. So off I went to buy a pot, never realizing I was entering into a Quest.

I tried Wal-Mart and T.J. Max and Cracker Barrel, Marshalls and Linens 'N Things, Crate and Barrel, on-line at Ikea . . . it's difficult to believe how many pots there are out there, completely unsuitable. Many contemporary pots have glass lids, nice if you want to peer in at what you're cooking but only oven-safe to 375 Fahrenheit Fahrenheit. Cushion-grip handles that wouldn't take the temperature. Non-stick coating, and I wasn't sure what pre-heating empty would do to the finish. There was one that was the right size, right material, but the handles were U-shaped metal held in place with set-screws. And Paul, by now accompanying me on this search, was concerned that repeated heating and cooling would, over time, loosen things up. (Besides, it was ka-ka brown, ugly, ugly. By now I wanted not merely a suitable pot, but a good looking one.) On 30 December we went to Liberty Village, an outlet center in Flemington, New Jersey. Le Gourmet Chef, nothing. Le Creuset . . . success. At a price, Le Creuset is not cheap, or even inexpensive. But it's a great pot, nice complement to the two larger Le Creuset pots I have, and useful, I'm sure, for more than baking bread.




Home we went, pot in my lap as I wouldn't turn loose of it even for the ride home.
And started a batch of bread before I even washed the pot.





Doesn't this recipe and this pot make beautiful bread?





A perfect winter lunch - leek and potato soup, and home-made bread.​
 
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Tigger's Mum

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Tigger's Mum Tigger's Mum Absolutely fabulous bread can be made with no kneading. Two caveats: you must plan ahead as it requires a long, slow rise. And is baked in a lidded heavy pot.

Here are the details:



Tuesday, 2 January 2007

Yeast: No-Knead Bread


It's been circling through the blogsphere faster than Phineas Fogg circling the globe. Perhaps not at the speed of light, but certainly like Internet lightening. "What's that?" you ask. Why, it's Mark Bittman's article and the recipe for no-knead bread, which first appeared in the New York Times on 8 November 2006, and then showed up on more foodie blogs than this world ever dreamed of. The Secret of Great Bread: Let Time Do the Work is about Jim Lahey, owner of the Sullivan Street Bakery on West 47th Street in Manhattan. His technique: use just a smidgeon of yeast in a very wet dough. Let it rise for a long time, and bake it in a preheated, covered pot.

I've made bread for a long time, decades, in fact. It's good bread, and my family has enjoyed it. But I never made bread as excellent as this, fantastic crust and superb crumb.



No sound effects, so you cannot hear the bread talking to us, little pings and crackles as it cools. You cannot smell it either. But look at it, in all its bread-y perfection.



Here's the real deal:
Scoop up 3 cups of bread flour.
Add 1/4 teaspoon of instant rise yeast - that's right, just 1/4 teaspoon.
(A package of yeast is more than 2 teaspoons!)
Add a generous teaspoon of salt, and 1 5/8 cups of water.
Stir it up with a spoon or spatula until it looks shaggy.
Cover with plastic wrap, and go away for 18 hours.
That little 1/4 teaspoon of the yeast beast will slooowly get to work, and the dough will rise.

After 18 hours, a little less, somewhat more, whatever, floop the dough mass out onto a floured work surface. Turn one end over the middle. Turn the other end over the folded first end, cover with the plastic wrap and let the dough rest from this wild activity for about 15 minutes. The original article directs you to flour a dish towel (not, emphatically not, terrycloth with all its little dough-holding loops) and upend the dough onto it. Since you'll later be quasi-pouring the dough into a pot this seemed rather hazardous to me. My technique: put a Silpat mat on a cookie sheet. Flour the Silpat mat, and put the dough on that. Cover with a floured dish towel, and let it rise, slowly, slowly, for 2 hours.

Then comes the baking, 30 minutes covered, 15 to 20 minutes more uncovered, in a lidded cast iron or enameled cast iron pot that will hold up to the pre-heated 450 degrees Fahrenheit baking temperature.

Note, please, that this was actually the most difficult part of my bread baking journey. For the first two loaves I borrowed a pot from Jerry. It was 2 1/2 quarts, rather smaller than the 4 to 5 quarts suggested in the article. However my loaves rose to just about fill the pot, higher than would be the case with a larger pot. Three quart size, I decided, would be ideal. So off I went to buy a pot, never realizing I was entering into a Quest.

I tried Wal-Mart and T.J. Max and Cracker Barrel, Marshalls and Linens 'N Things, Crate and Barrel, on-line at Ikea . . . it's difficult to believe how many pots there are out there, completely unsuitable. Many contemporary pots have glass lids, nice if you want to peer in at what you're cooking but only oven-safe to 375 Fahrenheit Fahrenheit. Cushion-grip handles that wouldn't take the temperature. Non-stick coating, and I wasn't sure what pre-heating empty would do to the finish. There was one that was the right size, right material, but the handles were U-shaped metal held in place with set-screws. And Paul, by now accompanying me on this search, was concerned that repeated heating and cooling would, over time, loosen things up. (Besides, it was ka-ka brown, ugly, ugly. By now I wanted not merely a suitable pot, but a good looking one.) On 30 December we went to Liberty Village, an outlet center in Flemington, New Jersey. Le Gourmet Chef, nothing. Le Creuset . . . success. At a price, Le Creuset is not cheap, or even inexpensive. But it's a great pot, nice complement to the two larger Le Creuset pots I have, and useful, I'm sure, for more than baking bread.




Home we went, pot in my lap as I wouldn't turn loose of it even for the ride home.
And started a batch of bread before I even washed the pot.





Doesn't this recipe and this pot make beautiful bread?





A perfect winter lunch - leek and potato soup, and home-made bread.​
 
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Tigger's Mum

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I watched a few videos last week on YouTube about this very bread. One I will try - looks like it would be lovely with a bowl of homemade soup. I have a Le Creuset pot just like yours except mine's orange in colour. Looking forward to trying this one.
 
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