Notes from Enrichment--Crock Pots

Thank you to everyone who made the crock pot recipes!

Recipes to be posted soon:
Lynette Mills' Mud Pie (yum!!!)
Verlene Green's Rice Pudding
Lee Fleming's Apple Sauce

Other notes:

Successful flavor combos:

Russian Dressing
Apricot Jam
Dried Onion

Lipton Beefy Onion Mix (powdered)

BBQ Sauce

Chile Powder
Cumin
Chicken

Dry Italian Dressing Mix
Cream Cheese
Chicken

Sour Cream
Cream of Chicken
Chicken
Grated Parmesan

Favorite Recipes (hopefully to be posted soon!)

Creamy Italian Chicken (Katie Erb)
Pot Roast (Verlene Green)
Enchiladas (Lyndsi Stock)
Chili (Jo Nebeker)
Show You Chicken (Kaitlin DiMartini)
Green Chile Soup (Brandy Tuutau)
Salsa (Holly Yates)

No-Knead Bread

Adapted from Jim Lahey, Sullivan Street Bakery
NYTimes.com 11/8/06

Time: About 1½ hours plus 14 to 20 hours’ rising

3 cups all-purpose or bread flour, more for dusting
¼ teaspoon instant yeast
1¼ teaspoons salt
1 5/8 cups water
(Cornmeal or wheat bran as needed.)

1. In a large bowl combine flour, yeast and salt. Add 1 5/8 cups water, and stir until blended; dough will be shaggy and sticky. Cover bowl with plastic wrap. Let dough rest at least 12 hours, preferably about 18, at warm room temperature, about 70 degrees.

2. Dough is ready when its surface is dotted with bubbles. Lightly flour a work surface and place dough on it; sprinkle it with a little more flour and fold it over on itself once or twice. Cover loosely with plastic wrap and let rest about 15 minutes.

3. Using just enough flour to keep dough from sticking to work surface or to your fingers, gently and quickly shape dough into a ball. Generously coat a cotton towel (not terry cloth) with flour, wheat bran or cornmeal; put dough seam side down on towel and dust with more flour, bran or cornmeal. Cover with another cotton towel and let rise for about 2 hours. When it is ready, dough will be more than double in size and will not readily spring back when poked with a finger.

4. At least a half-hour before dough is ready, heat oven to 450 degrees. Put a 6- to 8-quart heavy covered pot (cast iron, enamel, Pyrex or ceramic) in oven as it heats. When dough is ready, carefully remove pot from oven. Slide your hand under towel and turn dough over into pot, seam side up; it may look like a mess, but that is O.K. Shake pan once or twice if dough is unevenly distributed; it will straighten out as it bakes. Cover with lid and bake 30 minutes, then remove lid and bake another 15 to 30 minutes, until loaf is beautifully browned. Cool on a rack.
Yield: One 1½-pound loaf.

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This is much easier than it looks! Takes a little planning ahead to make this but is sooo worth it. My white Pyrex dish isn't quite 6-quarts, so I just cut the fully risen dough in half and make two loaves to prevent the bread from popping the lid off. Baking it covered makes the crust so incredibly crunchy while the inside is soft-- yum!

What a Crock!!!

Hola hermanas of the GV Chefs!! Our next meeting is on April 21st and the theme is slow cooker recipes. So easy peasy, just get up in the morning and throw some random stuff into your crock pot so we can taste your creative creations by evening time.

Also I am going to go ahead and throw the themes out there for the rest of the year:

May: Green Salads
June: Fruit (should we narrow it down?)
No cooking for July or August due to busy summers!
September: Pastas
October: Pumpkin
November: Cookies
No cooking club in December because of the holidays but hopefully the cookies we make in November will last through until the end of the year!

Any other topics you would like to see?

Alexis Dorny's Cinnamon Rolls

Cinnamon Rolls

1 tablespoon yeast

1 cup warm milk

½ cup sugar

1/3 cup butter, melted

1 teaspoon salt

2 eggs

4 cups flour

Dissolve yeast in milk in large bowl. Mix in sugar, butter, salt and eggs. Add flour and mix well. Knead dough by hand or with a mixer with a dough hook (or use the dough cycle of a bread machine).

Dough should be smooth and elastic after 5 to 10 minutes of kneading.

Put in a bowl, cover and let rise in a warm place 1 hour or until doubled in size.

Roll dough out onto a lightly floured surface. Roll into a rectangle about ¼ to ½ inch thick.

Spread dough with softened butter. Sprinkle with 1cup brown sugar mixed with 2 ½ tablespoons cinnamon. Roll up the dough. Slice dough into 1 to ½ inch slices using dental floss. Place on greased baking sheet.

Cover and let rise 30 minutes. Bake at 375 for approximately 15 minutes. Watch carefully! Do not burn! The cinnamon rolls should just be beginning to brown.

Frost rolls as desired while still warm.

Overnight method:

After placing cinnamon rolls in pan, cover with a greased piece of plastic wrap greased side down (touching rolls). Cover with a cloth. Refrigerate overnight.

Take out of refrigerator and place in oven. Fill a pan with boiling water and put in oven under rolls.

Let rise for 30 minutes. Remove rolls and pan of water from oven and preheat to 400. Bake as directed above.

Lynette Mills' Refrigerator Rolls

Refrigerator Rolls

1 cup Crisco shortening

1 cup boiling water

2 packages of yeast

1 cup warm water (put the yeast in to start growth )

½ cup sugar

6 cups flour

3 eggs

1 ½ teaspoons salt

Melt shortening in hot water. Add sugar, salt, beaten eggs and yeast mixture. Hand mix. Add flour one cup at a time, stirring until smooth and elastic. Cover and put in the refrigerator overnight. ( 6 hours minimum or 4 days maximum )

When ready to make your rolls, knead the dough down for a few minutes, then shape into rolls….three small balls to one cupcake space is a good way to shape them. Let the

Kaitlin DiMartini's Zuchhini Carrot Bread

Zucchini Carrot Bread

From: Cherry Field

2 c. sugar

3 c. flour

1 t. salt

1t. baking powder

¾ t. nutmeg

1 ½ t. baking soda

1 T. cinnamon

1 c. vegetable oil

3 large eggs

2 c. finely grated zucchini

1 c. carrots finely grated

1 c. pecans or walnuts finely grated

Combine all ingredients in large bowl, mix well. Pour into two ungreased 9”x5” loaf pans. Bake at 350 F for 1 hour. Cool slightly. Remove from pans. Cool on Racks

*This bread freezes well. If you want to make it fancy for dessert you can cut into layers and frost with your favorite cream cheese frosting. Yum!

Kaitlin DiMartini's Honey Whole Wheat Bread

Honey Whole Wheat Bread

2 cups warm water
2 tsp yeast
1/4 cup honey

add:
2 cups wheat flour
let sit for 10 mins or so.
add:
2 tsps salt
1/4 cup oil
white flour 1 cup at a time, mixing in between.
add flour until you reach a workable consistency, but still a bit sticky.
you can also add powdered milk and an egg if you're feeling fancy.

let rise until doubled (about 1 hour)
punch down.
form into 2 loaves
let rise until doubled (about 1 hour)
bake at 375

25-30 mins

Bread Night (sorry so late!)

Thanks to Ingrid for running our bread night! I heard that fun was had by all and that the demonstrations were wonderful.

We don't have any notes on this evening but I will be posting recipes from that night. I will also post this again but our upcoming meeting is on April 21st. The theme is "What a Crock!" and we will be focusing on slow-cooker recipes.

Gear up your crock pots ladies!