I let the kitchenaid stand-mixer knead the dough. After it was all keanded, the bowl was cleaned and oiled. The dough went back in the bowl to rise.

An hour later, it had doubled. 

And then tossed onto a clean, oiled counter. 

Then cut into 8 pieces. 

Check out those arms. Their dough rolling machines! Check out the minutes of experience that they have!

Rolling out the fatter end will make the dough ropes more even. 

All rolled out. Even lengths and thickness is essential! jk

Started some water and baking soda boiling. 

Some rolled dough formed into knots. Pressing down the joints will keep the pretzels formed into knots. It will puff back up in the water.  

Tossed in boiling water for half a minute. The white stuff around it is the baking soda. It’s ok, it’ll come off easily. 

I just used a slitted spatula to pull out the pretzels. 

Placed onto some parchment paper and salted with some sea salt. I skipped the egg washed, it was fine without it. Make sure you use good parchment paper, otherwise they will stick to the parchment paper and you’ll have to cut off the bottoms. 

After they baked in a 425F oven for about 10 minutes, they came out incredible. 

You could eat it with some mustard. 

Or make a pretzel sammich (I suggest making some pretzels without salt for this). It’s alot like a bagel sammich, but fancier. 

I made one for lunch the next day. 

These pretzels are made from the same dough used in simple bread, pizza dough, bagels, or whatever.

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 took out the Chicken and 40 Cloves, still in the casserole dish from the day before. The drippings had become a little bit … gelatinous. 

I had to fix the gelatin issue before I started. I put everything on the stove on medium-low until it become more liquid. Then I took out the chicken, potatoes, and garlic  into a separate container in order to focus on the gravy.

I heated the gravy until it was bubbling and then spooned out a little into a coffee mug with some flour. 

I mixed this up, and kept adding drippings until I got more of a liquid than a dough. 

I then added it back into my drippings in the casserole dish. 

I mixed this up and added some salt and pepper. Then I put the stuff back in to warm up with the gravy as the gravy thickened.

Then I plated it and added it to my food collection … in my stomach. 

It was pretty good although Iliked it better the night before as Chicken and 40 Cloves. I want to cook more whole quartered chicken. It’s so much cheaper than buying chicken breast. It only cost me like $5 for a quartered chicken and 3 chicken breast cost $8. Outrageous! They are charging you more per chicken to take out the wings, legs, and thighs, but those are the good parts. (Sure they’re also charging for the deboning and convenience of boneless breast, but still … it’s outrageous).

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.