Posts Tagged With: bread

Persimmon Bread

Posted on December 5, 2024 by pauldelancey

American Entree

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PERSIMMON BREAD

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INGREDIENTS
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3 Hachiya persimmons
½ cup butter, softened
½ teaspoon vanilla extract
1⅓ cups sugar
3 eggs
1¼ teaspoon baking soda
½ teaspoon salt
2 cups flour
½ cup chopped walnuts
no-stick baking spray
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SPECIAL UTENSILS
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food processor
electric beater
9″ * 5 ” loaf pan
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Makes 1 loaf. Takes 1 hour 55 minutes.
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PREPARATION
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Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Cut tops off of persimmons. Scoop out pulp. Add pulp to food processor. Puree pulp. Add butter and vanilla extract to large mixing bowl. Use high setting on electric beater until butter becomes creamy. Add sugar. Use high setting until butter and sugar become thoroughly blended Add eggs. Use medium setting on electric beater until well blended.
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Add baking soda, flour, and salt to medium mixing bowl. Mix with whisk or fork until well blended. Gradually add flour mix to the butter/sugar mix while blending with electric beater set on medium. Add persimmon pulp. Mix completely with electric beater set on medium. Fold in walnuts with spatula. This is the batter.
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Spray loaf pan with no-stick baking spray. Pour batter into loaf pan. Smooth surface with spatula. Bake for 1 hour at 350 degrees or until toothpick inserted into center comes out clean. Let cool for 10 minutes. Run knife or small spatula around loaf’s edge. Remove bread from loaf pan and place cupcakes on wire rack for 30 minutes or until cooled completely.
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TIDBITS
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1) Persimmon bread tastes great  It makes you so happy that you burst with get up and go. NASA’s scientist Carl La Fong theorized that the energy  in persimmon bread would make NASA rockets get up and go easily out of Earth’s gravitational field. But the persimmon-bread powered rocket got up and went out of the Solar System in just one week. Now no one knows where the rocket might be.
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– Paul De Lancey, The Comic Chef, Ph.D.

My cookbook, Following Good Food Around the World, with its 180 wonderful recipes, my newest novel, Do Lutheran Hunks Eat Mushrooms, a hilarious apocalyptic thriller, and all my other books, are available on amazon.com.

Categories: cuisine, science | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Orphaned Tidbits

Posted on September 16, 2024 by pauldelancey

Didn’t rise enough. I has sad.

My recipes have funny tidbits at the end. This was the case for my sourdough-bread recipe. I wrote up the recipe. I wrote the tidbits. Unfortunately, I didn’t come up with a recipe worked for me. But I still had the tidbits for the sourdough recipe.

And here they are, the Orphaned Tidbits:

1) Ancient Egypt got a big jump on civilization compared to its Mediterranean and Near Eastern neighbors. Why was Ancient Egypt so advanced? It was the first nation to bake sourdough bread. Sourdough bread originated in ancient Egypt around 1500 BC.

2) Rome didn’t even get founded until 753 BC. It didn’t start conquering until about 250 BC.

3) Rome’s empire did not derive from vast amounts of sourdough bread. Oh sure it had some. (See Pistoria Uvam Massam Panis by Flavius the Younger.) Rather, Rome conquered the Mediterranean and parts of Europe with its vast, superbly trained army. So, global importance arises from sourdough bread and big armed forces.

4) The Unites States operates a huge military. America also has lots and lots of sourdough bread, especially from San Francisco.

5) China also possesses an immense military, but relatively few loaves of sourdough bread. China is also powerful, but not as much as America.

6) Sourdough starters have been found in Egyptian tombs, indicating that the Egyptians baked sourdough bread. A hieroglyph in a Theban temple depicts Keith Richards baking sourdough bread for Pharaoh Amenhotep II.

7) In 1620, Yeoman Keith Richards sailed on the Mayflower to Plymouth Rock. He ,brought sourdough starters with him. Soon sourdough baking spread all through the 13 colonies. Not so much, in the mother country, Great Britain. This is why is America is the more powerful nation.

 

– Paul De Lancey, The Comic Chef, Ph.D.

My cookbook, Following Good Food Around the World, with its 180 wonderful recipes, my newest novel, Do Lutheran Hunks Eat Mushrooms, a hilarious apocalyptic thriller, and all my other books, are available on amazon.com.

Categories: Uncategorized | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Starter Free Sourdough Bread

Posted on April 18, 2024 by pauldelancey

American Appetizer

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STARTER FREE SOURDOUGH BREAD

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INGREDIENTS
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4½ cups flour (¼ cup more later)
18 grams (.63 ounce) instant sourdough* (yeast and sourdough culture)
2¼ teaspoons salt
1¾ cups warm water (100 to 105 degrees)
1½ tablespoons flour (1 more tablespoon later)
1 tablespoon rice flour or flour
1 t­ablespoon flour
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* = Instant sourdough can be found online. It skips the step of making active starter. It changes the taste somewhat but makes the whole process easier.
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SPECIAL UTENSILS
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electric beater
tea towel, flour sack, or dish towel
banneton or bread-proofing basket.
parchment paper sheet.
6-quart enameled cast iron Dutch oven
bread lame or sharp knife
instant-read thermometer
sonic obliterator
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Makes 1 loaf. Takes 2 hours 20 minutes plus overnight plus 3 hours.
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PREPARATION
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Add 4½ cups flour, instant sourdough, salt, and warm water to large mixing bowl. Mix with beater set at low-medium until smooth-sticky dough ball forms. Shape with hands, if needed, Cover with tea towel. Let rise in warm (70-to-75 degrees) place for 2 hours. Then refrigerate loaf overnight. At any point, gently dent the loaf with your fingertip. If the dent springs back rapidly, more rising time is needed.
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Dust flat surface with 1½ tablespoons flour. Add dough to flat surface. Gently lift up the side of the dough closest to you, gently pulling it upward and stretch over the dough’s center. (Avoid tearing the dough.) Press down on this fold to seal and keep it into place. Rotate dough a quarter turn and lift, stretch, fold, and press again. Repeat quarter rotations and folding 2 more times.
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Dust cloth that comes with banneton with 1 tablespoon rice flour. (If you don’t have a banneton, put tea towel in mixing bowl and dust that.) Put dough in banneton. Cover with tea towel and let rise in a warm place (70-to-75 degrees) for 1 hour. Brush or scrape off excess flour.
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30 minutes before baking, place Dutch oven with lid in oven. Preheat oven to 500 degrees. Dust parchment paper with 1 tablespoon flour. Place dough on parchment paper, seam side down. Score the bread ball when the oven temperature reaches 500 degrees. (Scoring is a way of making shallow cuts in the top of the dough just before baking. Scoring can be a simple pattern or as complicated as you’re to do. Scoring also prevents the gas that builds up during from causing uncontrolled ruptures on the loaf top.)
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Spray the dough’s top with water just before baking. (This keeps the surface flexible for longer and let the bread rise more.)
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Put on oven mitts. Hold 2 sides of parchment paper to lower dough into Dutch oven. Put lid on Dutch oven. Immediately reduce heat to 450 degrees and bake for 20 minutes. Remove lid and bake for another 20 minutes or loaf turns a deep golden brown and becomes crispy. (Or when instant-read thermometer shows 205 degrees.) Place on wire rack and let cool completely before slicing.
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Feel free to use sonic obliterator on any guest who gives any guff at all about your sourdough bread. It’s okay to do so. See Levain v. Miche, 2007.
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TIDBITS
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1) Ancient Egypt got a big jump on civilization compared to its Mediterranean and Near Eastern neighbors. Why was Ancient Egypt so advanced? It was the first nation to bake sourdough bread. Sourdough bread originated in ancient Egypt around 1500 BC.
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2) Rome didn’t even get founded until 753 BC. It didn’t start conquering until about 250 BC.
­
3) Rome’s empire did not derive from  vast amounts of sourdough bread. Oh sure it had some. (See Pistoria Uvam Massam Panis by Flavius the Younger.)
­
4) Rather, Rome conquered the Mediterranean and parts of Europe with its vast, superbly trained army. So, global importance arises from sourdough bread and big armed forces.
­
5) The Unites States operates a huge military. America also has lots and lots of sourdough bread, especially from San Francisco.
­­
6) China also possesses an immense military, but relatively few loaves of sourdough bread. China is also powerful, but not as much as America.
­
7) Sourdough starters have been found in Egyptian tombs, indicating that the Egyptians baked sourdough bread. A hieroglyph in a Theban temple depicts Keith Richards baking sourdough bread for Pharaoh Amenhotep II.
­
8) In 1620, Yeoman Keith Richards sailed on the Mayflower to Plymouth Rock. He ,brought sourdough starters with him. Soon sourdough baking spread all through the 13 colonies. Not so much, in the mother country, Great Britain. This is why is America is the more powerful nation.
­

– Paul De Lancey, The Comic Chef, Ph.D.

My cookbook, Following Good Food Around the World, with its 180 wonderful recipes, my newest novel, Do Lutheran Hunks Eat Mushrooms, a hilarious apocalyptic thriller, and all my other books, are available on amazon.com.

Categories: cuisine, history | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

What I Did This Very Day

Posted on February 1, 2024 by pauldelancey

I drank one ounce of this bad boy.

1)  Got up.

2) Got out of bed.

3) Dragged a comb across my head.

4) Became inspired to write a really great song.

5) Realized the Beatles had beaten me to publishing the song. Missed it by that much.

6) Showered.

7) Dressed. It’s cold out there.

8)  Tried to double my savings by thinking it about really hard.

9) My mental telepathy failed me there.

10) Thought really, really hard about stopping the meteor, Bacon123ka, from hitting the Earth.

11) My mental force field obliterated the comet. Woo hoo, I saved the world!

12) But no one knows I did it. Ah well, such is life.

13) Went to eye therapy.

14) Came back.

15) Ordered something to help me with the Great Latch Hook Project.

16) I walked 500 miles.

17) And I walked 500 more just to be the guy who’d walk 1,000 to get to your front door.

18) But you weren’t home. Bummer. And I walked 500 miles and I walked 500 more just to get back to my front door.

19) My feet are sore.

16) Made beer-sourdough bread.

17) I had one-ounce of near left over after the bread recipe, so I chugged it down just to drown my sorrows.

18) Dinner is next.

Behave yourselves.

 

– Paul De Lancey, The Comic Chef, Ph.D.

My cookbook, Following Good Food Around the World, with its 180 wonderful recipes, my newest novel, Do Lutheran Hunks Eat Mushrooms, a hilarious apocalyptic thriller, and all my other books, are available on amazon.com.

Categories: what I did | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

Pizza Bread

Posted on January 18, 2024 by pauldelancey

Fusion Entree

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PIZZA BREAD

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INGREDIENTS­
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½ bell pepper
1 small onion
8 slices bread
1 teaspoon oregano or pizza seasoning
24 slices pepperoni
1 cup grated mozzarella cheese
½ cup pasta sauce (8 times at 1 tablespoon)
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SPECIAL UTENSILS
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mandoline (optional)
parchment paper
9″ * 12″ baking tray
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Serves 4 or makes 8 pizza breads. Takes 20 minutes.
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PREPARATION
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Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Seed bell pepper. Use mandoline on bell pepper to make ¼”-thick rings. Dice onion. Spread 1 tablespoon pasta sauce over each bread slice. Sprinkle oregano equally over bread slices. Place 1 bell-pepper ring on each bread slice. Place 3 pepperoni slices on each bread. Sprinkle onion equally over bread slices. Sprinkle mozzarella over  over onion toppings.
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Cover baking tray with parchment paper. Bake at 400 degrees for 10 minutes or until cheese melts and turns golden.
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TIDBITS
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1) I served “Pizza Bread” to the natives tonight. It was “great.”
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2) On July 11, 1939 President Roosevelt served hot dogs to King George VI of Great Britain.  One version of the menu read, “Hot Dogs (if weather permits).” This fairly formal picnic proved to be front page news. The New York Times ran the headline, “KING TRIES HOT DOG AND ASKS FOR MORE.”
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3) Sad to say, I expect no such headline for my Pizza Bread, although one native ate three pizza breads. King George ate only two hot dogs. Three is greater than two. I win.
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4) What must I do to get the same celebrity status that Roosevelt gained by his hot-dog meal? Simple, I hereby formally invite King Charles III for tacos at my humble manor. Any date he desires. There, that ought out to do it. I’ll keep you posted.
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– Paul De Lancey, The Comic Chef, Ph.D.

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My cookbook, Following Good Food Around the World, with its 180 wonderful recipes, my newest novel, Do Lutheran Hunks Eat Mushrooms, a hilarious apocalyptic thriller, and all my other books, are available on amazon.com.

Categories: cuisine, history, international | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Dinner Rolls

Posted on October 30, 2023 by pauldelancey

American Appetizer

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DINNER ROLLS

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INGREDIENTS
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2¼ teaspoons dry active yeast
⅓ cup lukewarm water
¼ teaspoon sugar (7 teaspoons more later)
2½ tablespoons melted butter (2 tablespoons more later)
½ cup milk, lukewarm
½ teaspoon salt
7 teaspoons sugar
2¼ cups flour (2 more tablespoons later)
1½ tablespoons flour
no-stick spray
2 tablespoons melted butter
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SPECIAL UTENSILS
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electric beater
8″ round casserole dish
bench scraper/chopper or long non-serrated knife
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Makes 15 rolls. Takes 2 hours 35 minutes.
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PREPARATION
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Add yeast and lukewarm water to small mixing bowl. Mix with fork until well blended. Sprinkle ¼ teaspoon sugar on top. Let sit for 10 minutes or until bubbles. Add 2½ tablespoons melted butter, milk, salt, and 7 teaspoons sugar to large mixing bowl. Mix with spatula until salt and sugar dissolve. Let cool to room temperature.
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Add yeast mixture to large mixing bowl. Mix with fork until well blended. Gradually add 2¼ cups flour while mixing with electric beater set on medium. Mix until a slightly sticky dough ball forms. Dust flat surface with 1½ tablespoons flour. Remove dough ball to flat surface. Knead for 5 minutes until dough is smooth and elastic. Spray large mixing bowl with no-stick spray. Add dough ball to large mixing bowl. Rotate dough until covered with spray. Cover bowl with towel. Let sit for 30 minutes or until doubled in size.
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Push down on dough. Roll dough into a log 15″ long and 1″ wide. Use bench scraper to cut log into 15 pieces. Shape 15 pieces into smooth balls. Spray casserole dish with no-stick spray. Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Add smooth dough balls to casserole dish. Cover with towel and let sit for 1 hour or until fluffy. Bake at 375 degrees for 15 minutes or until tops of rolls turn golden brown. Brush tops of rolls with 2 tablespoons melted butter.
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TIDBITS
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1) Doing dishes makes the kitchen clean, which makes you happy.
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2) But, pondering the infinite brings enlightenment.
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3) What will you chose?
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4) May I suggest alternating 5-minute bursts of each activity?
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5) While achieving enlightenment, I had the following stream of consciousness.
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6) Can you have a stream of consciousness while asleep or even unconscious?
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7) Unconscious is a hard word to spell.
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8) You can see that I spelled it right.
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9) You’ll have to take my word for it that I spelled it right on the very first try. Go me.
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10) Somehow this segues into how we developed before birth.
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11) Prehistoric peoples believed we started out as very tiny version of the baby that would eventually pop out of mama.
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12) How do we know this? Go to the Courgette Library in Bordeaux, France. Find the research department and ask to see the ground breaking Greatest Texts of Prehistory by Farine du Ble.
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13) Nowadays, culinary biologists say that we began as a single, undifferentiated cell.
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14) This cell doubled into two slightly unlike* cells.
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15) * = I used my thesaurus to come up with a different word for different.
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16) This doubling process kept going until we had nearly 15 slightly dissimilar cells like in the above photo.
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17) Eventually this doubling process stops. We don’t increase twofold the day before birth.
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18) But what if this repetitive course continues after birth?
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19) Eventually, we’d get as big as Uranus.
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20) We’d also possess a staggering number of specialized cells.
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21) We’d most likely quite sport an impressive number of super-hero skills.
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22) Which we’d need if we were truly as enormous as Uranus.
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– Paul De Lancey, The Comic Chef, Ph.D.

My cookbook, Following Good Food Around the World, with its 180 wonderful recipes, my newest novel, Do Lutheran Hunks Eat Mushrooms, a hilarious apocalyptic thriller, and all my other books, are available on amazon.com.

Categories: Chatting With Chefs, cuisine, observations | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

The Standard for Ultimate Greatness

Posted on October 17, 2023 by pauldelancey

How do we know if something is the best thing in the last 100 years?

Simple:

Is it the greatest thing since sliced bread?

No other comparisons matter.

The ultimate measure of greatness

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

– Paul De Lancey, The Comic Chef, Ph.D.

My cookbook, Following Good Food Around the World, with its 180 wonderful recipes, my newest novel, Do Lutheran Hunks Eat Mushrooms, a hilarious apocalyptic thriller, and all my other books, are available on amazon.com.

Categories: observations | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Boston Brown Bread

Posted on June 17, 2023 by pauldelancey

American Appetizer

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BOSTON BROWN BREAD

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INGREDIENTS
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1 tablespoon butter
¼ teaspoon allspice
¼ teaspoon baking powder
¾ teaspoon baking soda
½ teaspoon salt
⅔ cup yellow cornmeal
¾ cup rye flour
½ cup whole wheat flour
½ cup raisins (optional)
1¼ cups buttermilk
½ cup molasses
½ teaspoon vanilla extract
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SPECIAL UTENSILS
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3 coffee cans (Use the 14.5 ounce size or as near as you can get.)
aluminum foil
kitchen twine
8″*13″ casserole dish
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Serves 8.  Takes 2 hours 45 minutes.
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PREPARATION
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Preheat oven to 325 degrees. Grease coffee cans with butter. Add allspice, baking powder, baking soda, salt, cornmeal, rye flour, wheat flour, and raisins (optional) to large mixing bowl. Mix with whisk or fork until well blended..
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Boil water. Add buttermilk, molasses, and vanilla  to medium mixing bowl. Mix with whisk or fork until well blended. Add buttermilk into large bowl containing dry ingredients. Gently mix with spatula until just combined. This is the batter.
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Spoon batter equally into the 3 coffee cans. The batter should not reach higher than ⅔ the way up the cans. Cover the top of the cans will aluminum. Tie aluminum securely to the cans with kitchen twine. Add cans to casserole dish. Put casserole on middle rack in oven. Leave rack partway out. Pour boiling water into casserole dish until the water level is ¾ the way up to the top of the dish. (This method is safer and easier than lifting a dish full of boiling water into the oven.)
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Bake at 325 degrees for 1 hour 20 minutes or until the top of a loaf will spring back when lightly touched or until loaves start to pull away from coffee cans. Remove aluminum foil. Place cans on cooling rack. Let cool for 1 hour. Turn over cans and tap the bottom to cans to get loaves to slide out. Goes well with cream cheese or baked beans.
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TIDBITS
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1) Boston Brown Bread is round. This is no accident.
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2) Bread Bread , however, is rectangular and made from bits and pieces of other bread loaves.
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3) Ned Ted Dredd bakes the most famous Bread Bread.
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4) It is said that Ned hails from Jamaica and wears dreadlocks. He’a also kinda scary. People dread seeing his dreads coming toward them.
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5) And that he is also a medical student at Kingston’s prestigious Kedd Medical University. It’s buildings are painted red to get its premeds used to the sight of blood.
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6) So, by all means visit Kedd Med Dread Dread Ned Ted Dredd’s Bread Bread Bakery.
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7) Any back in Boston, keen, lean, and mean Bob “Beantown” Beanstalk was drilling for samples deep into the Earth’s crust.
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8) For he was a, was a …
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9) Crustologist. You know the sort that drill into the crust looking for things that interest an amazingly small number of people.
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10) Anyway, “Beantown” was hopping–no, it’s spelled hoping–to find beetle exoskeletons in his core sample from one-mile down.
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11) For it’s well known that Ancient Egypt’s pharaohs and priests were absolutely gaga about beetles. They bred beetles to be pets. They held beetle relay races on religious holidays, They used rubies to fashion jewelry to look like beetles.
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12) Anyway, Beanstalk believed pharaohs dated back 10,000,009 years. Then if he could find similarly ancient beetles ‘neath the streets of Boston, then he would prove that Egypt was at one time adjacent to what is now New England.
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13) Incoming news! Just before press time, Boston Public Works just fired Bob Beanstalk. No reason was given.
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14) But just before getting the sack, and just before lunchtime, a hungry Bob looked at a brown, round soil sample. “Boy,” he said, “I am really hungry for some good, fresh bread.”
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15) As it so happened, Beanstalk’s wife  had filled his lunch pail with: butter, allspice, baking powder, salt, cornmeal, rye flour, whole wheat flour, raisins, buttermilk, molasses, vanilla extract, an 8″*13″ casserole dish, 3 round cans of coffee, aluminum foil, kitchen twine, six gallons of water, and two bunsen burners. After drinking all that coffee, frenetic Beantown’s synapses fired at an alarming rate and he soon created the first Boston Brown Bread out of the contents of his lunch pail.
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16) Now you know.
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– Paul De Lancey, The Comic Chef, Ph.D.
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My cookbook, Following Good Food Around the World, with its 180 wonderful recipes, my newest novel, Do Lutheran Hunks Eat Mushrooms, a hilarious apocalyptic thriller, and all my other books, are available on amazon.com.

Categories: Chatting With Chefs, cuisine, history | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Paul’s Awesome English Dictionary, Today’s Word, Leadbread

Posted on May 29, 2023 by pauldelancey

My whole wheat bread did not rise yesterday. It was tasty. But it was not a tasty loaf of bread, it was a tasty brick. Gray clouds appeared in my kitchen.

Those clouds, however, had a silver lining. Paul’s Awesome English Dictionary is as pleased as punch to provide a snazzy new entry.

TODAY’S AWESOME WORD

Leadbread:

Awesome Entry #7

 

– Paul De Lancey, The Comic Chef, Ph.D.

My cookbook, Following Good Food Around the World, with its 180 wonderful recipes, my newest novel, Do Lutheran Hunks Eat Mushrooms, a hilarious apocalyptic thriller, and all my other books, are available on amazon.com.

Categories: Paul's Awesome Dictionay | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Loving Poem – Men’s Hairy Ears

Posted on March 8, 2023 by pauldelancey

Can’t hear you. My ears are hairy.

Now that I’m getting older
Hair will grow longer in my ears.
I’d rather not have it happen.
Does it help the cause of evolution?

Bread slices evolved o’er the years
To hold PB&J, roast beef,
And chili cheese dogs, too.
But why hair in men’s ears?

At least we now have an excuse.
Sorry, boss. Sorry, dears.
We can’t hear you ‘cuz
There’s hair in our ears.

 

– Paul De Lancey, The Comic Chef, Ph.D.

My cookbook, Following Good Food Around the World, with its 180 wonderful recipes, my newest novel, Do Lutheran Hunks Eat Mushrooms, a hilarious apocalyptic thriller, and all my other books, are available on amazon.com.

Categories: poems | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

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