A List of things I want to learn how to bake from scratch…
And I do mean from scratch!
– granola bars, and granola bars with fruit
– whole wheat bread (check!)
– crusty white bread (check!)
– cornbread
– graham crackers
– chocolate pudding (check!)
– vanilla pudding and banana pudding
– pasta
– pound cake and angel food cake
– cheesecake (and not from philly cream cheese!)
– dutch chocolate cake (check!)
– white vanilla cake
– fig newtons from fresh figs
– biscuits (check!)
– flaky biscuits
– pie crust (tried and tried but cant get a good one)
– jams and jellies
– nut butters
– fruit butters
– butter
– cheese
– yoghurt
– sour cream
– sough dough starter and bread
– pumpernickel and rye breads
– scones
– english muffins
– ice cream
– baby foods
– house cleaners
– pancakes
– maple syrup
– fruit syrups
– condensed milk
– evaporated milk
– sausage
– applesauce
– caramel (and other things like this, toffee, butterscotch…)
– other candies, taffy??
– croissants
Ok that is my humongeous list of things I want to learn how to bake. HAH, and just imagine all the things I want to learn that don’t have anythign to do with baking!
Mrs. Meg Logan
August 29th, 2006 at 10:41 pm
I have a great recipe for granola bars! Am planning to make crock-pot yougurt this week. Have had good luck with various sourdough and sponge based breads. Also with croissants and their sweeter cousins, danish pastries. Toffee is a snap to make (my 12 year old makes it all the time complete with chocolate and almonds on top). I make a coffee ice cream without an ice cream maker. Have not made scones in years, but used to make them all the time…I need to start again. I love them! Have been making almond butter in the blender these last two weeks. Cheesecake is pretty easy, and every recipe I have seen calls for cream cheese. Pie crusts are my big failure. My 12 year old makes them effortlessly! Pound cakes are pretty easy, egg noodles I make for chicken soup all the time, at least once a week. Cornbread is pretty easy, the trick is to cook it in a heave clay or cast iron pan that has been heated and buttered before you put the batter in.
Can’t wait to see your progress!
August 30th, 2006 at 9:58 am
If there is an alternative to philly, I want to know about it! I’d boycott them just because of their stupid ads.
I’ve made yogurt and it turned out well.
Baby food is as easy as cooking, mashing and freezing anything you want. Freeze in ice cube trays so it’s easy to thaw small amounts. Later, transfer the cubes to freezer bags if you like.
August 30th, 2006 at 10:18 am
Is there a political or moral reason reason to not use Philly cream cheese, specifically - or something about cream cheese in general? I don’t watch television, so any ads, I don’t know about.
August 30th, 2006 at 11:18 am
I would love to learn how to make a good pie crust too. I’ve tried several times aswell and it always turns out wrong.
August 30th, 2006 at 1:52 pm
I actually thought (in my ignorance) that you could make cheesecake without cream cheese… but I did a little research and see that just isn’t true…
Samantha, You are going to have to give me some of the recipes you have, eggnoodles!! wow! cool… and cornbread, and crockpot yogurt!! I thought you could only make that in a “yogurt machine” do i need a thermometer? Do I need milk that hasn’tbeen pasturized or homogenizeD? (i don’t have access to that at this time.) And granola bars and and and…. oH Im so excited.
When I figure out a good pie crust I will try to post it here.
Thanks ladies,
Mrs. Meg Logan
August 30th, 2006 at 2:50 pm
There are lots of good recipes in organic and natural foods cookbooks and websites. Let us know if you find any that you recommend!
August 30th, 2006 at 10:31 pm
Twinklemoose, my father boycotts Kraft (who make Philly) because they managed to convince an entire continent that Kraft Singles are cheese, and that’s just wrong!
Meg, I find that the pie crust recipe on the Crisco box actually works really well. Have you tried it? I mean, I know Crisco is super bad for you, but there’s no pie crust recipe that’s going to be *good* for you. Also, I have a super-awesome cornbread recipe. Just say the word and I’ll put it up. I also love making things from scratch. It’s such a satisfying feeling. I hope to one day have a little subsistance farm, and maybe even live off the electrical grid? How cool would that be?
August 30th, 2006 at 10:39 pm
Oh, I didn’t see the rest of the list below the fold:
Yogurt is pretty easy. You start with…. yogurt! I’m serious. You take a spoon full of yogurt (using a sterile spoon), stick it in a sterile tub with a bunch of milk (from a newly opened carton - no excess bacteria) and leave it covered in a warm (not hot) oven overnight. You can make yogurt with store-bought bacterial culture instead of just yogurt, if you want, but this way you never need to buy anything but milk, because when you start to run low on yogurt you just add a dollop to a tub of milk and, voila!
You gotta make sure that the yogurt you start with has LIVE bacteria cultures in it, though, or it won’t work. You can even make it with powdered milk, if you want to do it cheap. And check out about.com or something like that for other safety tips. You don’t want other funny bacteria growing in your yogurt.
I made a sourdough starter once, and it seemed fine, but I killed it when I tried to make bread out of it. I’m determined to try again.
August 31st, 2006 at 9:18 am
Jake,
I have heard that you can do this same process with yeast cultures for bread. That having made bread once if you save a small piece of it you can make a dough starter from that, and just keep on going, never having to buy more yeast… It is my goal to get to this point, since yeast is pretty expensive.
I think I will try to make some yogurt…Maybe next week. You are saying I can use milk from the store right? It doesn’t need to be straight from the cow? Does the yogurt I start with have to be plain? or can it be flavored, especially vanilla since I usually buy that kind?
Cool… I would love to live off the grid too, not necessarily all the time, but at least to have the ability to. I would like to use less electricity in general, and be able to live on what I can get from solar panels or wind turbines or better yet, hydropower (but you need a strong stream on your property for that.)
What got you interested in this sort of living?
Also, what do you do for a living, are you a teacher? (Asking because I am still befuddled about that word ‘pedantic’ and your grammar rules.)
Mrs. Meg Logan
August 31st, 2006 at 12:14 pm
I have heard that you can do this same process with yeast cultures for bread. That having made bread once if you save a small piece of it you can make a dough starter from that, and just keep on going, never having to buy more yeast
Yup. That’s sourdough. My favourite reference for sourdough is here.
For yogurt, yeah, you can (and should) use store-bought, pasteurized milk. And you do have to start with plain yogurt. Of course, after you make it you could always set a little aside for making the next batch, and then add some honey and vanilla extract to the rest.
My interest in living off the grid and from the land has several sources. Jean M. Auel’s Earth’s Children series of books (Clan of the Cave Bear and its sequels) got me interested in pre-industrial living practices, firstly. Plus, the environmental impact of coal and oil electricity (and most cities do still use coal and oil) made me want to use as little as possible. I just kind of like the idea of being self-sustaining, and of knowing that I’m not contributing to the coming climate disaster. Of course, one thing that’s very clear is that it takes a community to live fully off the grid. It’s not something one family can do alone. And a hunter-gatherer, or even subsistance farming, level of production is not something that can sustain us any more. The yields that those lifestyles produce are simply not big enough to feed the 6.5billion population of this planet. But it seems like a nice, simply, quiet home life, and that appeals to me.
I gotta get back to work now, so I’ll answer the rest of your questions later.
September 3rd, 2006 at 12:22 am
Sorry it took me so long to get back. Being in the middle of a move means that my internet access is very spotty right now.
What I do for a living. I am not a teacher by training or profession, although I think I am by nature. When I refer to myself as a pedant, though, I mean more the OED definition number 2:
2. A person who excessively reveres or parades academic learning or technical knowledge, often without discrimination or practical judgement. Hence also: one who is excessively concerned with accuracy over trifling details of knowledge, or who insists on strict adherence to formal rules or literal meaning.
I know it’s an obnoxious trait, but I can’t help myself. It’s a neurosis.
No, what I do for a living has nothing to do with teaching. I am a linguist by training, and currently by trade, although that job will end at the end of next week, and at the beginning of next week (yes, you read that right, there will be one week where I am working two full time jobs, oh joy!) I start my brand new job in my brand new city. It’s not a very exciting or long-term job - just answering phones in a call centre - but it will pay the bills and just about anything will beat the interminable boredom of the work I do right now. Besides, this is only for a year, until I go back to school to persue a career in health care, which is what I’ve always wanted.
And that’s all.