white bread – Page 2 – Simply Delicious: The Cookbook Project

18-2: Basic Yeast Dough II

Jamie Martin Group 18: Basic Techniques, Section 4: Cooking School January 1, 2018September 30, 2020all-purpose flour, baked goods, baking pan, bread flour, bread series, breads, cooking school, dough, fail, frozen, granulated sugar, kneaded, loaf pan, lukewarm, milk, proofed, rye flour, salt, scalded, sifted, vegetarian, white bread, whole wheat bread, whole wheat flour, yeast

Happy New Year! 🍾 We’ll start off this year (as I have other years) by finishing up a bit of old business from last year. I had started a Bread Series at the end of 2017, covering the first part of this Cooking School set (18-1: Basic Yeast Dough I) as well as including 20-12: Basic Rolls as a good base recipe to practice with.

Here, we’ll cover 18-2: Basic Yeast Dough II, which includes the fundamentals of the process of bread-making, as well as some tips on how to tell where your bread may have gone wrong. I’ve been making bread for a while, and I still run into trouble–it’s nice to know what I might have messed up so that I can try to fix it for the future.

Bread making is not a quick process–sometimes you can be working on a bread for 24-48 hours between the blooming, kneading, rising, and proofing. When I was being trained to make bread in the restaurant I worked in a few years ago, we would start making bread at 8 AM, and barely be finished by dinner time around 5-6 PM.

That’s not including our starter which had to be fed every day, as well as making all of the other baked goods that our pastry chef made daily. It can be a LOT of work!

20-12: Basic Rolls

Jamie Martin Group 20: Basic Recipes, Section 4: Cooking School December 19, 2017October 18, 2020all-purpose flour, appetizers, baguette, baked goods, bread series, breads, breakfast, brushed, butter, cardamom, cheese, chopped, cinnamon, coarse salt, cooking school, crescents, cumin, curry powder, dried herbs, egg wash, eggs, granulated sugar, grated, herbs and spices, lunch, melted, milk, nuts, party food, poppy seeds, pretzels, proofed, rolls, saffron, salt, scored, sesame seeds, slit, snacks, sunflower seeds, untested, vegetarian, white bread, yeast

Playing a bit of catch-up here since unscheduled interruptions, other non-food-related projects, and massive amounts of holiday baking have put me far behind in terms of keeping up with posts. I had started working on a Bread Series, starting with 18-1: Basic Yeast Dough I which I published back in October. Covering 20-12: Basic Rolls was intended to play off of that concept, giving you an easy recipe to utilize the lessons presented in both that post and its follow-up, 18-2: Basic Yeast Dough II.

Quick review: the last three chapters of Simply Delicious are part of its Cooking School, intended to review basic techniques, ingredients, and recipes with which all aspiring chefs should be familiar. I’ve covered a few bits and bobs out of those last few chapters, but much of it still remains untapped.

5-4: Eggs Benedict

Jamie Martin Group 05: Eggs & Cheese, Section 1: Appetizers & Starters June 4, 2017January 21, 2023breakfast, brunch, butter, butter sauce, Canadian bacon, caramelized, cayenne pepper, creamy, double boiler, easy, egg yolks, eggs, English muffins, fail, garlic, ham, Hollandaise sauce, inexpensive, lemon juice, lunch, MD2017, Mother's Day, Mousseline sauce, pan-fried, parsley, poached, salt, sautéed, sliced, smoked ham, spinach, toasted, untested, vegetarian, vinegar, whipped, whipping cream, white bread, yellow onions

I believe in a couple of things–nobody’s perfect, and all things eventually balance out. My experience with this recipe, 5-4: Eggs Benedict, especially relative to how the rest of the meal went, encapsulates both of those ideas.

In the days leading up to making this Mother’s Day brunch (MD2017), I knew I needed to practice two things before the big day: poaching eggs and hollandaise sauce–I’ve had trouble with both in the past. Guess what I didn’t do?

I procrastinated on practicing both my egg poaching and my hollandaise, and those were my exact failure points on this recipe. After the jump, you can read about what went really well (my homemade English muffins) and what didn’t (my broken hollandaise sauce, for one).

1-37: Savory Cheese Appetizers

Jamie Martin Group 01: Hot & Cold Appetizers, Section 1: Appetizers & Starters May 26, 2017August 5, 2020appetizers, blender, blue cheese, buttermilk, cayenne pepper, cheese, chives, cream cheese, creamy, crème fraîche, dips, easy, food processor, fruit, garnish, Gorgonzola, grapes, herbs and spices, inexpensive, lunch, paprika, parsley, party food, radishes, salt, savory, sherry, sliced, snacks, sour cream, untested, vegetarian, white bread

We can pretend that 1-37: Savory Cheese Appetizers is something fancy and unique, but it’s really just a blue cheese spread on squares of white bread. If you like blue cheese, I suppose this could be an exciting concept–the 1980s were big on both blue cheese and dips (which this recipe can double as).

Simply Delicious has a lot of blue cheese-related recipes–a few I covered just recently include 5-20: Golden Cheese Tartlettes and 1-20: Prosciutto Appetizers. After making all three of these essentially back-to-back, I’m a little burned out on blue cheese for a while.

6-10: Savory Chicken Wings

Adam Martin Group 06: Poultry & Game, Section 2: Main Courses May 21, 2017October 14, 2020American, appetizers, black pepper, bread crumbs, breaded, butter, canola oil, chicken, chili sauce, chopped, coated, creamy, crème fraîche, deep-fried, diced, dinner, dips, dredged, dried herbs, eggs, fairly easy, fried, fried chicken, herbs and spices, hors d'oeuvres, inexpensive, lunch, melted, pan-fried, panko, parsley, party food, piquant, red bell peppers, salt, savory, snacks, sour cream, sriracha, untested, white bread, wings, yellow onions

“Chicken wings are a longtime American favorite.” Truer words have never been written, editor of Simply Delicious. To complement another recent wing recipe that Jamie made (1-1: Orange-Glazed Chicken Wings), here’s 6-10: Savory Chicken Wings.

I love having chicken wings as both an appetizer and a snack. The editor of Simply Delicious know me too well.

1-18: Club Sandwich

Jamie Martin Group 01: Hot & Cold Appetizers, Section 1: Appetizers & Starters February 20, 2017January 28, 2020American, appetizers, bacon, chicken, chili sauce, cooked chicken, dairy-free, dinner, dressing, easy, garnish, green olives, grilled, iceberg lettuce, inexpensive, ketchup, layers, lettuce, lunch, mayonnaise, New York, pan-fried, radicchio, restaurant-style, sandwiches, sliced, spinach, Tabasco sauce, toasted, tomatoes, toothpicks, turkey, untested, vegetables, white bread, whole wheat bread

In honor of Presidents Day today, here’s a classic American dish: 1-18: Club Sandwich. Wikipedia claims the club sandwich (or “clubhouse sandwich”) originated in late 19th century New York. It’s not hard to find one these days, and while the Simply Delicious version is not quite restaurant-sized (usually they’re HUGE), it’s still a hearty lunch or dinner option. 🇺🇸

I have no idea what’s going on with their picture or description of this sandwich–their picture only shows one layer (no middle bread) and the order of ingredients they describe above doesn’t match the recipe. I think I’m sticking with the recipe version.

9-5: Modern-Style Hamburger

Adam Martin Group 09: Ground Meat & Sausage, Section 2: Main Courses August 21, 2016October 20, 2020beef bouillon, black pepper, burgers, butter, chili sauce, chilled, chives, condiments, easy, egg-free, fairly inexpensive, fried, green onions, griddle, grill pan, grilled, ground beef, ground meat, iceberg lettuce, lettuce, modern, pan-fried, parsley, pearl onions, salt, sautéed, sirloin, untested, whipping cream, white bread, whole wheat bread, yellow onions

Simply Delicious has provided a plethora of burger recipes for me to try, like 9-15: Peppercorn Beef Burgers and this recipe, 9-5: Modern-Style Hamburger. I like to cook these on the electric griddle because I can cook the entire batch off at once and they all cook evenly.

I tend to prefer burgers that are dinner sized. These burgers are more like sliders or a thin lunch style burger. 🍔

5-9: Swiss Cheese and Crouton Omelette

Adam Martin Group 05: Eggs & Cheese, Section 1: Appetizers & Starters July 14, 2016October 14, 2020breakfast, butter, cheese, chives, croutons, dinner, easy, eggs, grated, herbs and spices, inexpensive, Jarlsberg, lunch, melted, omelette, paprika, salt, Swiss, toasted, untested, vegetarian, white bread

An old proverb states, “If you’re going to make an omelette, you’re going to have to break a few eggs.” 5-9: Swiss Cheese and Crouton Omelette is another Simply Delicious recipe where I had a reading comprehension fail and had to get creative to fix it. I didn’t notice that I was making up two individual omelettes and accidentally tried to make a giant omelette all at once which didn’t go well. 🍳

As the card states, it would be great for our next brunch. We had this dish on a night where we had breakfast for dinner. I made bacon to make it feel more breakfast-y. 🌇

1-4: Ham and Cheese Sandwich

Jamie Martin Group 01: Hot & Cold Appetizers, Section 1: Appetizers & Starters June 23, 2016December 24, 2019appetizers, basil, broiled, butter, Cheddar, cheese, cooked chicken, dinner, easy, egg-free, French, fried, Gruyère, inexpensive, lunch, melted, pan-fried, panini, parsley, party food, salt, sandwiches, smoked ham, snacks, tarragon, tomatoes, untested, waffle iron, white bread, yellow mustard

Hope you’ve been enjoying my husband/co-writer Adam’s posts–he’s having fun writing them. I’m a bit behind on my own posting, so this is one I “cooked” a while ago. 1-4: Ham and Cheese Sandwich is exactly what it sounds like, hence the quotations around “cooked”–it’s basically a grilled cheese with ham in it.

As in 2-24: Parisian-Mushroom Salad, this is a French recipe somewhat simplified–the running theme throughout much of Simply Delicious. The croque monsieur is indeed a well-known French recipe, and lots of different takes on it exist out there.

9-10: Lean Meatballs with Tomato Sauce

Jamie Martin Group 09: Ground Meat & Sausage, Section 2: Main Courses May 13, 2016July 5, 2020appetizers, basil, black pepper, boiled, bread crumbs, canola oil, chicken bouillon, chicken broth, crushed tomatoes, dairy-free, diced, dinner, dried herbs, eggs, fairly easy, fairly inexpensive, garlic, ground meat, ground turkey, herbs and spices, Italian seasoning, lunch, meatballs, minced, olive oil, panko, parsley, party food, salt, sautéed, tomato sauce, untested, veal, white bread, white pepper, yellow onions

Here’s another one of those 1980s attempts at “healthy”. 9-10: Lean Meatballs with Tomato Sauce calls for the use of veal, which doesn’t immediately resonate with me as being “healthy”. A quick and dirty Google search comes up with veal having less calories than pork but more cholesterol than beef. Calories were the enemy in the 1980s, so I suppose that’s part of their justification for deeming veal meatballs “healthy”.

I’m not a huge fan of veal, and considering there’s a whole lamb & veal section to this book that I’ve only begun to scratch the surface of, we’re going to keep these meatballs “healthy” and swap veal for turkey. My mom was (and still is) a huge proponent of ground turkey, so this is probably a swap she or I would have made if we’d made this before.