The beef kabobs had left me with some drippings. Wahoo, drippings!

The thrifty American that I am, I decided to use them rather than toss them. And why not, their delicious … Anyhow so I whipped up some batter for Yorkshire pudding. 

First I started some batter since it had to sit for an hour.

I scrambled some eggs. 

Tossed them into the milk/flour mixture. Stirred in some melted butter. 

Now I could make nice little, fluffy yorkshire puddings with my muffin pan, or I could be lazy with less dishes and do it in the casserole dish.  …. Hmmm, I’ll be lazy. After 45 minutes of letting the batter sit, I tossed the drippings back into the hot oven to get them ready for the batter. After 10 minutes I opened the oven to remove the hot drippings and smoke flew out of the oven. Beneath the smoke I found this abomination of cooking in place of my beautiful drippings. 

Boo charcoal!

Wow. This didn’t happen before.  Thinking back … oh crap. This time I used the corn syrup “thai” sauce from Zea. Grrr the corn syrup must have burned and left me this mess. (I had to scrub the dish with a fork and scotchbrite for a week before I could get the burned mess off.)

Realizing that I had some batter for a possible delicious fluffy vegetarian twist of the yorkshire pudding, I tossed in some veggie oil into my other casserole dish and threw it into the oven. After 10 minutes, I poured the batter and baked it for 20 minutes. 

Instead of getting the fluffy, wonderful bread that clouds in heaven must be made of, I got this. 

A mediocre, greasy, fluffless, not-at-all-savory, wannabe yorkshire pudding. 

This won’t be last time I attempt the fluffy yorkshire pudding. One of these days beef drippings will be mine again … in a delicious bread form.

I say it’s easy because you just mixed things together and then knead it a little, then you walk away. You come back and move it around a bit, then walk away again. Then  come back, put it in the oven and then …. walk away. Your house will have a bouquet of a freshly baked bread. Your roommates will be envious as you devour your delicious … I think I’m going a little off track. Lemme talk about my experience (even though it didn’t turn as well as I hoped). 

A while ago I tried to make some bread … I realized that I have a lot of learning before I can make a decent loaf.

It may look good … and it tasted alright … but it was blobby and didn’t rise the way i wanted it to. I liked the self-contained sandwich idea tho.

I started with some hot water. Doesn’t it look pretty? It needs to be just barely unbearable … or if you’re nerdy like me and have a digital thermometer, then between 110F and 115F. If you hit 140F, then you’re killing your yeast. 

Then I added some yeast to it. 

And some salt. Why salt … too much is bad for you isn’t it? It’s not for you, it’s for your yeast. You want your yeast to grow, and so do they … but they need salt to do their yeasty functions. It’s good for them …. too much will kill them, but that’ll take alot of salt. So just do a little over a teaspoon. 

Then a spoonful of sugar makes the medicine go down … In a most delightful way. Well, it’s actually for the yeast again … sorry. This is some quick sugar for it to grow. You might get some of the sugar, but they yeast may digest it before you. 

I stirred it some. 

And then proofed it some. 

Then I stirred in some flour to get it mixed in well. 

Then I added the rest … holding some to knead into it of course.

I mixed it. 

And I used my hands … it was very sticky. 

I then put it on some flour and kneaded it. 

I finally got it to where it wasn’t so sticky, and then i put it in a bowl and placed some saran wrap over it to keep dust off, etc. I’ve used a wet towel to keep it moist as well, but i felt it was too heavy for the dough to rise. Then a dry towel, but i felt it still was a bit heavy and saran wrap would do better. 

VOOSH! It’s huge! 

This was actually the dough for the whole wheat. I have this thing where I feel bread should be easy. I think that the different stuff in bread attribute to it’s quality. For example adding whole wheat will logically  make it a bit more dense.  Each bread loaf I make is like a science experiment :). 

The whole wheat dough was going to be the olive bread. I smashed some olives in a colander so that the juices didn’t get into the dough. 

So put the whole wheat dough on the counter and flattened it out. I placed the olives on the dough.

I then sealed in the edges. Muahahaha!  The olives are sealed away to away their delicious fate!

Now I rolled it up into a loaf, hiding the seal. 

Placed it on the baking pan for another rise.

Then I worked on the baguettes.

I decided to do a white-flour baguette instead of the whole wheat I used for the olive bread. I stretched out the dough a bit. 

 I filled this one as though it was a sandwich. It has turkey, pepperjack cheese, olives, and mustard. 

I sealed it up and rolled it around a bit to make it look more like a loaf. I put olives ont he one that was stuffed. The rest of the dough I made regular loafs. I sliced a few slits with a sharp knife so that the steam could escape. I put them on the baking sheets and covered with saran wrap to let them rise. 

Blah! It spread outward and not upward. I think that’s why there is the couche. I could have made a couche, but I didn’t realize how important it was …. grr blobbiness. 

Same thing with the whole wheat olive bread. 

So I baked them anyways. 

It turned out well, but I feel it would have been better if I couched them or something.