How to make bread...

Going where mortals fear to tread into the dark crevices of the unknown, (cue mournful sobs..) Bread..that dastardly villan of yeast and dough...BREAD!! .. okay..okay I'm done...hahaahaha! Ah..I missed my calling..

  Anyway..in case you haven't figured it out, I'm going to show you how to make bread. Oh yes you CAN make bread, anyone can make bread. And as usual, I like to take the mystery out of the mysterious. There are no special skills needed here. If you can find your way to the grocery store you can make bread. There. Now lets get started.
First of all lets tawk about the yeast. It's alive, (It is ALIVE!!) sorry..Ahem.. Yeast is a living organism, so without getting too detailed. We need to feed it. Sugar feeds the yeast and it grows. It releases gases that make the bread rise. The longer it takes to rise the better the flavor. For our purposes we are going to make a plain old fashioned white bread. ( for you vegans out there I will include a few sentences on how to make a regular white bread recipe vegan friendly).
You will need a good recipe:
No knead Crusty White Bread (www.kingartherflour.com)
3 cups lukewarm (not hot) water
6 1/2 to 7 1/2 cups all purpose flour
1 tablespoon salt
1 1/2 tsp
(2 tablespoons sugar) my addition, this is not included in the original recipe. I like my bread a little sweet.
Now this is a no knead recipe which means you can't hurt it by kneading the dough. Which is what you are going to do. I will give you a couple of bread tips that I use but you must be able to do the basics first.

Well kneaded bread..

Kneading is manipulating the dough until the gluten strands form. Unlike biscuit dough you want to manipulate bread dough because that's how you develop a nice even crumb. Just take a piece of bread out of your cabinet and look at it.  See the nice even crumb? No giant holes. This bread has been kneaded well, no little old ladies kneading bread at the Wonder bread factory, no sir. So, the more you knead or manipulate the dough the better it is for the bread. With scrupulously clean hands lets begin. You will need a big bowl or pot, (I use a pot, it's less cleanup.) measuring cups and your ingredients. Measure your flour into the measuring cup by cupfuls. The best way to do this is to pour the flour into your measuring cup over a big bowl. That way the excess falls in the bowl and not on your counter. Measure your flour and scrape the excess off the top with a butter knife. I know it seems like a lot of work but it's worth it. If you are not careful and just dip your cup into the flour bag, you run the risk of having too much flour. It's not the end of the world if it's just 1/4 cup or so but the more flour you put in, the more liquid you are going to have to put in to compensate and then the more salt....you get the idea. You will change the balance of the recipe. Baking is like exercise, you have to develop good form so consider me your trainer. (Feel the burn!) Okay, where were we? Yes, measuring the flour. When in doubt go for less flour rather than more. So, this recipe says 6 1/2 to 7 1/2 cups of flour. Go with the lesser amount. You may or may not use that last cup of flour when you knead.
Anyway, take your measured flour and add your salt. About the yeast, I just buy plain old yeast in the big packages from BJ's. If you are a newbie, and we all were once. Just buy whatever kind of yeast you want from the grocery store in the flour isle. I would stay away from the yeast cubes because they are hard to measure. A yeast packet is generally about a tablespoon of yeast. That's important for those recipes that say, 1 packet of yeast.
I'm not an instant yeast user by choice, although some swear by it, I just use boring powdered yeast. The longer your bread rises the more flavorful it will be. So quick rise means less flavor, but maybe I'm just a purist. No matter. There are no rules, just guidelines remember? Whatever your heart desires. How do you know if bread is flavorful or not? Here's how, take a piece of that bread you buy for the kids sandwiches, you know the store brand or Wonder or whatever. Hey, I do the same thing, no need to give the kids the good stuff. These folks eat twinkies!
Now take a piece of the more expensive potato bread or whole grain anything. The kind you keep for the adults! Yes it's different, still not homemade but pretty good. That's bread with flavor, and what you make in your own kitchen will be 1000 times better than the best bread in the store. (Darn that soapbox, there it goes again!)

Yeast just starting to bubble..

Now, you've got your dry ingredients in a big bowl, (salt, flour, 2 tablespoons of sugar). And  2 1/2 cups of warm water in a cup and 1/2 cup of warm water in another cup. A word about the temperature of the water. If your water is "ouch" hot. It will kill the yeast. So the water needs to be warm, like baby bottle warm. Put your yeast in the 1/2 cup of water with about 1 tablespoon of sugar and within a few minutes it should start to bubble at the edges. Now get a cup of tea. Your yeast needs to bubble for a few minutes. Those bubbles are the first sign of healthy yeast. In other words yeast that hasn't been sitting on the shelf for a year and is still alive. If you skip this step and proceed and your yeast is dead, your dough will not rise and there is absolutely nothing you can do but toss the whole batch. So do this step every time you make bread, and if your yeast is dead you've wasted a 1/2 cup of water and some sugar and that's it.  Trust me on this.

Happy Yeast!

Now, if you look at the measuring cup on the right you'll notice all the foam, that's thriving yeast. If after 20 minutes your yeast still looks like one up there, it's dead.  No matter, just toss it and try with an entirely new packet. Yeast is so cheap and so vital to bread baking it pays to throw at least one packet in the shopping cart every time you go shopping.
At least that's how I look at it. :-)
Tea done, ahh.. that was wonderful. Now back to the bread.
Combine your yeast water with the 2 1/2 cups of warm water which should probably need a about that long in the microwave to reheat it. Test it before you combine it with the yeast or well you know...
Pour your combined liquids into the dry ingredients and stir. It'll be a sticky unbread looking thing but no matter. Keep stirring. If you do not have a stand mixer your arm will probably fall off before long but

hang in there. A stand mixer will make quick work of the mixing process. But if you don't have one you can still make bread. So you are stirring, stirring until it all gets incorporated into a big blob. At this point the recipe says to refrigerate and leave it for up to 7 days. What? No no, we want bread tonight. We are not going to put it in the fridge (a word about the cold, it retards the development of yeast. In other words your bread will still rise but slower) The fridge is great for "you wanted to make bread but life happened." Yeah, been there, done that!HAAHA!
Alright now, you can leave your big bowl on the counter with a top on it or put it in the fridge. It's a good time to clean up. You've got about 1-2 hours to hang out. Go watch a show, or check your email.

Ok it's about 2 hours later and your bread has risen quite a bit. Dump it onto a floured counter and it should look like a wet sticky blob of dough. Now vee shall KNEAD! (said in my Inga voice) If you stick your finger in the blob it will be covered in dough, Make note of the consistency. Ready. KNEAD!  Shake some flour on the blob and lean your palms down on the center of the dough. Still sticky. Flip one end over toward the middle shake flour, spread flour all over the top, push palms down, flip another side over, shake flour over it smooth flour, push palms down over top. This is not the time to be nice. Put your weight into this palms down thing. Work out your frustration. Stuck in traffic for 40 minutes!!! Grrr... Darned cleaners messed up my dress!! grrrr!! get the picture? Passed over again for that proMOtion!!grrrr!! let it out!. Hey it's cheaper than therapy. The idea is to work the gluten in dough. Now stick your finger in the dough. Not so easy this time right? The dough springs back, in fact the little impression that your finger left is almost gone. Happy dough! Now again the recipe says to put this in the fridge because they are trying to make this as simple as they can for a first time bread baker such as yourself. I however, feel like if we don't conquer the hard stuff now you'll be making no-knead bread forever! So you've successfully kneaded your dough, go ahead and do the dance, go on now you've earned it!
Alright, almost there. Now is when I usually roll my dough out as flat as I can, cut it down the middle and roll into two loaf shaped logs. If your dough will cooperate great. If not just shape it into a log(s) and put it in your loaf pan(s) OR go for that artisan thing and shape it into a ball. Whutevuh!
Alright now leave your bread to rise for another hour or so. This part is kind of important, if you leave your bread for too long it will loose the rise that it will get in the oven. No more than 1 hour. Now put your loaves in a hot oven. The recipe says 450 but I dunno, I would put it in at 375. I think my oven runs hot and I don't like burned bottoms so, yeah 450 is hot for me. Put it in at whichever temperature you feel comfortable with for about 20-25 minutes. Bread bakes super fast so hang around your kitchen.
Tips:
You can put a pan of hot water on the bottom of the oven just under your baking bread for that chewy French bread crust.
You can also brush your bread with a beaten egg for that shiny brown crust you see in the bakery before you put it in the oven.
I brush mine with butter as soon as it comes out. But this takes away from the crunchy crust...but then I don't really care..heehee!
when you get confident;
Go to thefreshloaf.com. that's like bread college!
I substitute milk for the water in my recipes, or i add a cup of mashed potatoes.
For vegans: Use white whole wheat, King Arthur if you can find it. and 1/2 cup gluten flour. You will find this in the health food isle of any well stocked grocery store. It makes for a wonderful light spongy whole wheat loaf. Regular wheat flour cuts the gluten strands that you are trying to build up when you knead the dough. That's why homemade wheat bread tends to be heavy. Not to mention that regular whole wheat does not have any gluten of it's own. White flour has gluten in it. You must use white whole wheat flour (whole wheat pastry flour is wonderful too!) and vital wheat gluten. You can get this on Amazon. Bobs Red Mill makes it for about 7 bucks.
Breads out! Tap it. It should sound hollow, doesn't it smell wonderful?  Now you can brush melted butter on it or leave it. Take it out of the loaf pans and let it cool on a rack. Cut it and enjoy!

A few words for the dearly departed... or how to make soup from scraps

the aftermath...

Wow...what time is it? That sure was a great meal. Really? Was I asleep that long.? Is it 4th quarter already! Gee 12 nothing huh? These are the musings from a  tryptophan stupor. What is tryptophan? Actually it is a naturally occurring amino acid that is found in turkey. And truth be told there really isn't enough of it in turkey to make you sleepy. The reason most of us sleep after eating on thanksgiving is the reason we fall asleep after eating on any day; we eat like we are storing fat for the winter! But that's another blog entirely.
Back to the bird. Now that everyone has eaten and you are left putting the food away and  cleaning the kitchen all alone( and muttering to yourself. Mutter..mutter.. I sound like Yosimite Sam when I mutter..rasm..rasm...lily livered..two bit..long horned...HAHA!( If you were born after 1980 you have no idea what I'm talking about!) So you're cleaning up and looking at the pieces you know no one is going to eat and wondering what on earth you are going to do with them? Well, you my dear are going to make soup! Yes you can do this. Forget all of those folks who try to add mystery where there is none. It's not hard and you don't need any special skill. They're just trying to scare you!  Now before you tackle making soup, try to get everything else put away. Wipe your counters down and then attack the bird. Now remember, once you can make this soup, you'll be able to make any soup out of almost any combination of ingredients, because they all start out the same.(Well almost) Pretty tall words I know, and I mean to back them up. Are you ready?
You will need:
Sparkling clean hands and..
-1 turkey, chicken, duck (poultry) carcass. In other words what you have left after dinner is over. It's called a carcass.
-Onion
-garlic
-Salt
-oil
-carrots, celery, potato, whatever veggies you feel like cutting up and throwing in the pot
-and your imagination!
Okay..round one
Start taking the meat off the bones. There is no science to this. Just grab a piece and  pull all the meat off of it.
Throw the pieces of turkey in the pot. Take the meat off the turkey back. ( in other words turn the bird over and pick the meat off.) Making this soup is not a glamorous job. You won't win any prizes for beauty. In fact, you'll pretty much look like a halloween version of June Cleaver with your apron and big knife! But who cares as long as the soup gets done right?
Keep taking the meat off the bones and don't forget the pieces in the pan. No skin, just meat. Now if you have a lot of tiny pieces don't bother with them. Just let them be part of the broth.
What you're going for is a fair amount of light meat and dark meat, you probably won't fill the pot, but no worries just keep going. No questionable pieces please. If you wouldn't eat it than toss it.(as in throw it away)
So now you are going to take all the bones (hereafter to be known as "the carcass") that are left and put them in a pot large enough to hold them. All of those scraps are going to be used. Put a colander in the sink in a large bowl, now dump all of whats left from the turkey pan in the colander. This can be a total mess if you are not careful. I have had the whole thing fall on the counter, or on the floor! (ugh!) Just make sure you have a good idea of where the pot is and where the sink is. In case you haven't figured this out, this soup making thing is a solitary endeavor. Don't start it unless you have time to finish it, or you will be overwhelmed. And don't have any chatty Kathy's hanging around in the kitchen while you are trying to do this. This does take some concentration and you just don't have the time to talk about how you got that turkey so tender so, If you're still entertaining guests, wait until they all leave..I'm stepping down off my soapbox now!
P.S. if you don't want to do all of this work than you can just put all the food in the fridge and go to bed. I like that idea too! Also, clean up is way easier if you use aluminum baking pans for EVERYTHING)
Now back to our regularly scheduled programing..
Your colander is now full of just... stuff, dump the whole thing in the garbage. Not the broth, just the stuff in the colander. Remember the pot with the carcass?  Put this on the stove and fill it halfway with water and two chicken cubes. (Don't waste your good broth on this, you really just want a hint of flavor) Cover and turn the flame to medium and let it come to a boil. Once it comes to a boil turn your flame down to low and let it simmer. You are going to add this to the broth you just poured out of the pan which is in the bottom of the sink. (But not yet...I know trust me, there's a method to my madness) Depending on how much liquid you put in the pan when you roasted your turkey, you may or may not have more broth. Whatever, more broth is a good thing, but we can work with less broth too. Cover this bowl and put it aside. This is the start of your soup.
Here's what we are going for: 
The secret to any good soup is good broth. You can add stuff to it but creating it takes flavor from a source. Like bones or meat or vegetables. We are building a broth.
So..
-The bones and carcass need to be on the stove in a medium pot with water to cover and 2 chicken broth cubes. You are not going for super strong flavor here because the bones are already cooked, you just want to use whats left with no waste. Boosting it with a few cubes helps.
-The broth  from turkey pan needs to be in a covered bowl until it is needed. This is like found gold! It is what gives the soup it's homemade flavor because well.. it is homemade.You are going to use this in the next step.
-The pan that the turkey was cooked in needs to be washed and put away and everything cleaned up.Or if you used a disposable aluminum pan just throw the pan away!! It's not very green I know. Okay now, go get a cup tea, and put your bunny slippers and sweats on. Your  turkey carcass needs to simmer for about 1 hr.
Round two.
So far we have used the colander a pot and a bowl. Grab another pot, last one I promise! Put about 1 tablespoon of oil and 1 tablespoon of butter in it and turn your flame on medium. You should be smelling  the carcass cooking by now.
Once the butter is melted, Use your imagination. You can put in red pepper, parsley, or whatever your heart desires. Flavor it anyway you like with whatever spices you want to add.  At this point I add celery, garlic,salt, onion powder, pepper, potatoes if I want. No rules just guidelines remember? So, take a big spoon and dip some of the carcass broth in the pot. This helps the veggies in the pot not to stick or burn on the bottom. Turn your flame down and get your bowl of broth, the one from the turkey pan, pour it in, taste,correct seasonings and simmer for about 1 hour. Long enough to let your potatoes cook.  Now you have soup! That's all it is.. good broth and veggies. If you need more flavor go ahead and add a bouillon cube.
What about the broth from the carcass?
Well...turn your carcass broth off, and let it cool. Give it a taste. watery, but not water right? Good. It's just meant to correct your pot. It's not the soup. When you want to correct the seasonings in your pot of soup you don't want water and you don't want full broth yet. Full broth will overwhelm the flavor and water will..well water it down. You just want something  to correct the pot and add balance. Now that you know why we have the carcass broth you can choose to skip this step entirely and still have a pretty mean pot of homemade soup. Go for it. No rules, just guidelines remember? :-) Once you are done correcting your seasoning you can toss the carcass broth. OR if you are like me you can use it to boil chicken wings (bony pieces make better broth) and veggies and make more broth! yeah. Hey the more broth you have the more soup you have for later. Make a lot and use it for everything except like...pudding!
Alright now, stir your soup and taste it. It probably needs more of everything. Trust your instincts here. I can't tell you what it should taste like. But you'll know. If you still have thanksgiving veggies leftover, you know like corn or peas you can add them at this point. You could put noodles in right now too. But if you decide to put noodles in be mindful that they have a tendency to soak up a lot of liquid and get mushy..there's no other way to describe it. SO...if you want to put noodles in there's an alternative way you can do it.  Cook your noodles separately, not in the soup. I know it's so tempting to cook them in the soup but you will lose all of that yummy broth you worked so hard for. (Well maybe not all but you get the general idea). You can make enough noodles to refill the pot if you need to. People tend to eat all the noodles and leave the broth when they get soup! So there you have it. You've just made soup! Yeah..do the happy dance! You are incredible!!
Extras..

The nuts and bolts of good soup...

Good soup starts out with a good chicken, turkey, beef or vegetable broth. So, once you've got the broth down you can do anything! The more time you take crafting the broth the better your soup will be. So when you make broth make a lot of it and freeze the rest.
You don't need to tie up the whole kitchen when you want to make soup. You can start a quick soup with broth from a can or cubes. (cubes yes cubes! heehee) The thing to remember is that the cubes have a lot of salt and you may have to doctor the broth up a little to give it that homemade flavor. I find that if I'm going to make a soup with canned broth or cubes I try to stick with a cream soup or bean soup. (split pea works too!) because then the broth isn't the main attraction. So I might make a potato soup which is....leftover mashed potatoes stirred into your wonderful broth with a little pepper, and milk. Beyond that you can add whatever you like. (Ham? Bacon? oh yeah this is getting good right?) CHEESE?? hmmm..
or you could make a vegetable barley soup which is your wonderful broth with about 1/2 cup of barley added to it. Adding turkey makes it a turkey barley soup. What's barley? It's a grain. High protein and yummy. You can find it in the dried bean section. Cook it just like rice. I would cook it separately in some salted water or remember the carcass broth? Use it to cook the barley in your rice cooker..ahem. Anyway twice as much liquid as barley. (1 cup pearl barley to 2 cups water or liquid)
Feel better about this soup thing?
What about beef broth or veggie broth? Beef broth is cooking a roast with a fair amount of liquid, some lipton beefy onion dry soup mix, seasonings, cut up carrot, celery, potato and whatever else you want to add AND an oven bag. You can use the same kind you used for the turkey. Cook it on 325 for like 2 hours. Or crock pot it. No bag needed, just put everything in a crockpot and go to work. 8 hours later you have a delectable roast. The liquid in the pot is your gold!. Take it and add it to a smaller pot in which you have cooked some onion,celery and garlic down in some butta and a little oil.Throw in the cut up beef and some peas and carrots. Now a word about veggies that live in broth. They tend to lose their flavor. Here's a tip if you have time. Roast them in a 400 degree oven for about 15-30 minutes. Peas, carrots, potatoes all do well if you roast them in a little garlic and oil.  Even the canned stuff. Stir them about halfway through the cooking process. Then add them to your pot.  It makes a world of difference. You don't have to do this, only if you want to give it a try. Veggie broth is cooking stock veggies, Onion, carrot, parsley, garlic.  And whatever else. If you look in the vegetable section of the grocery store you can find stock vegetables in a styrofoam package. I get these and just keep them in the fridge. They are really handy to put in my broth to give it some muscle. Sometimes they have parsnips ( fancy carrots!) and turnips in the package. Just rinse these and put them in a pot. Or better yet roast them first and put them in a pot with veggie broth from a carton. The reason is the vegetable broth from the carton has so much more flavor than you can get from just veggies and your limited amount of time. Simmer this on the stove for about 1 1/2hours and then pour it into a colander in a bowl. The liquid you get will be what you build your soup with.
How to thicken your soup.
Add about 2 tablespoons of flour to the pot where you frying your onions garlic and celery in butter. The trick is to have equal amounts of flour to oil. In other words two tablespoons of oil to tablespoons of flour. Let the veggies cook down a bit, then sprinkle in your flour and stir. Eventually the flour with mesh with the oil and it will look like a uniform paste. At this point slowly stir in about 1 1/2 cups of hot broth keep stirring until it's all together than add more hot broth. (No more milk) Until you get it to where you want it to be. Correct your seasonings add whatever else you want to the pot and there you go!
Split pea
Peas cooked in good chicken broth and blended till smooth. Add in some ham pieces and you have split pea soup.
So now that the mystery is gone, go make some soup!