Christmas in November....or....a New Toy

Theresa gave me one of my Christmas gifts early and I am stoked!
 

The Beast

 I've talked about getting a stand mixer several times but never taken the plunge.  Costco made the decision very easy by taking a good deal and then sweetening it by mailing out a $50 coupon. 

So what to do with the new toy?  I decided to avoid sweets and start with bread and tortillas.  I love fresh tortillas, both flour and corn.  More flavor, better texture, delicious.  I mixed up water, flour, baking powder, shortening (traditional tortillas usually add lard instead), and salt and rolled up individual, golf-ball sized bits of dough.  I rolled these out thin and cooked them in a large saute pan. 

The Results

The verdict?  Failure!  I made several and they all had problems:  Too thick, almost like an unleavened flatbread.  Too crispy (think stale tortillas).  Not crispy but still not very pliable.  These were the best of the batch, not too crispy where they could have been wrapped around filling but they still lacked the softness of a proper tortilla.  We tried them that night with pan seared jerk tuna soft tacos but the tortillas just didn't work (I had a back up plan of store bought;).  Even the crispy ones lacked the flavor of good tortillas so I have to grade this experiment a solid F.  After the fact I found a nice blog post here about making fresh flour tortillas that I may try later.

After the tortilla experiment I moved on to bread.  Warm fresh bread is one of the best things ever but I've never made it completely from scratch.  I decided to start with something easy, an Amish white bread, which is yeast, flour, sugar, salt, water, and a little bit of oil. 

My thoughts on bread making?  With the new mixer it's pretty painless.  It does almost all the kneading for you so the actual amount of time spent working is 10 minutes or so.  It does take a long time overall though, with two separate rising periods of an hour and half hour each.

The results?  Very very good.  The bread is a dense white bread, think sandwich bread but with more crumb and a nice crust.  It's slightly sweet which I really like and takes great by itself with butter or with other flavors.  I made a ham and cheese sandwich with the bread right out of the oven that was delicious, warm crusty bread with good sharp cheddar and a nice spicy mustard.  The sharpness of the cheddar, the kick of the mustard, and the sweetness of the bread played very well together.  We also used it last night as garlic bread with pasta that was also great.

Fresh From the Oven

So Good!