Experience teaches you a lot, patience and to take the time to do it right!  This time, I made the butterhorns as to the recipe, but took the time to let the dough warm and rise after forming the butterhorns, before I baked them – paid off big time!  Large, lovely butterhorns!  Unfortunately, when I baked them yesterday, I didn’t have the camera in the bakery, so I promise to bake them again next week and take pictures. 

In the meantime, here is the recipe.  So try your hand at it and see if they compare to mine when I get the pictures up!!

• 4 cups all purpose flour                                               
• 1 cup sugar
• 2 tablespoons yeast
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1 cup milk, scalded (not boiling, take it off when it’s steaming really good)
• 1/4 cup water
• 3 egg yolks

Scald the milk and cool slightly.  Add the water and egg yolks to the milk and mix well.  In the meantime, put all the dry ingredients and the yeast in the bowl of your mixer.  If you are using yeast that is not instant – you will need to put the sugar in the milk and egg mixture, add your yeast and let it sit long enough so that it begins to work – this is called proofing the yeast.  Turn your mixer on and mix the dry ingredients together and then pour in the liquid.  Mix well.  Dough should be soft and sticky.  Put in a bowl, cover and refrigerate overnight or at least three hours.  Dough will be stiff!

Now, this is the part I learned through patience and experience.  Remove the bowl from the refrigerator.  Lightly flour a counter.  Remove the dough from the bowl and flatten with your hand into a round.  Dough will be stiff.  Turn it over to lightly coat both sides with flour.  Roll out to about 1/4 inch thick.  Spread butter over the dough with your hand (the heat of your hand helps it melt into the dough as the dough is cold), sprinkle with sugar and cinnamon (you can mix to the two together for more even spreading).  Loosely roll up the dough as in cinnamon rolls.  You want to roll it loosely so it will have room to fill out when rising. 

Cut into 12 pieces and place cut side down on parchment paper lined baking sheet (it will take two 11×15) – if you don’t have parchment, lightly grease the sheet with butter.  Use the heel of your hand to flatten the butterhorn.  And I mean flatten – shouldn’t be more than 1/2 inch high, roughly.  Let is rise!!  This is most important.  Let it rise for about an hour.  Then bake in a 350 degree oven (325 degrees convection) for 10-12 minutes or until golden brown.  The butterhorns will rise up in the oven, but they won’t spread out much.  This is what you want!  When you remove them from the oven, glaze and sprinkle with ground walnuts.  Or leave the nuts off if you don’t like them!!

Glaze:  Mix 4 cups powdered sugar with 1/4 cup butter and enough milk to get it to spreading consistency.  Be sure the butter is soft!!  Or you will have butter lumps in your glaze!

So, good luck!!  Let me know how they turn out and I’ll get my pictures posted by the end of next week!!

I was feeling pretty burned out on baking and I definitely got my “fire” back at the show! When we returned – I was so anxious to get in the bakery and instead, ended up having emergency surgery and didn’t get back to work until December – such is life.

So, now that the holidays are out of the way – it’s on to baking using some of the great things I learned in Las Vegas!! Today is pastry – I’ll let you know how it goes!! In the meantime, here is a picture of the sunrise this morning – we’re located in rural Lewis County in western Washington State.

It's good to see the sun coming up!

In 1999, I had the computer built.  In the process, the person who built it for me, also taught me how to use it.  Several other people were involved in various stages of building computers and learning at the same time.  One such person I had worked with previously in an advertising job.   He was in the process of learning video editing via computer, and I was working on graphics.  We got to talking and I said I would like to do a cooking show.  He thought it would be hysterical to call it a cooking show, but in actuality have it be a political commentary (my husband was a local elected official at the time).   And, I think “Hot out of the Oven” was what we had decided the title of the show should be!!  I had completely forgotten about that when I put this blog together.  Thought of it the other day…………possibly because it is another election year and while I’m busy baking and making jewelry, those opinionated political thoughts of mine jump into my head…………it’s tempting to spit them out, but, I’m still in business, so will keep them to myself!!!

I also cleaned out a terrific amount of “stuff” in both the bakery and my “office” and took it to the community garage sale – did very well!!  Glad to see it go.  Got lots more to box and sell!  We’re really fortunate in this area to have a community garage sale at the local fairgrounds twice a year – spring and fall.  It has gotten to be a huge community event, so sales are brisk and it’s a great way to unload stuff without having a garage sale at home – we have very limited parking here, so makes it easier to do it at the fairgrounds!

I also take a jewelry class – I’ve been doing this for 7 years and so I’m in the advanced, advanced class – I ususally take my class with the beginners so I answer questions if the teacher is occupied with someone else.  The class for me is like studio work.  In the winter, my studio is just too cold to work in at times.  Now that spring is kind of here (this is the Pacific Northwest – snow, sleet, hail, rain, and sun yesterday!) I’ll be working more in my studio.  But I have accomplished a lot in class over the winter.  I’ve built my inventory up for market sales.  Watch for my flickr site of the same name, hot out of the oven, for jewelry pictures.  Just started the stite, so won’t have pictures up for a week or so.

Today is the first day I start baking again for market – since last fall.  I always look forward to market opening – it’s like spring – everything is new again.  This year I’m selling in one market one day a week and one market one day a month.  Will give me more time to work in the produce and flowers.  And also more time to bake products more specific to the needs of my customers.  I think I won’t feel so pushed as I have in the past.  This is my 25th year in farmers market and I want to slow down a little and enjoy it!!

Farmers Market stall

This picture is from the Tumwater Famers Market.  I’m not selling there this year as it’s on Wednesday and our local market is on Friday.  Just not enough time to bake for the Friday market!!   I’ll have more pictures of market and the farm as the season goes on.

Soooooo…………………off to the bakery!!

In the meantime, I enjoy the time in the winter months to work in my greenhouse and to spend some quality time on the computer devising how I’m going to approach my business this year.

Winter is also the time I read the most books – with the exception of the Twlight series. Thanks to my CuzMF who reccommended the series to me in June! Then I had to try to bake and garden while reading 4 500+ place novels. Well worth the read, but made for a very challenging summer to get all my work done. I definitely prefer short stories in the summer!!

My favorite books are mysteries set in the southwest or western United States – couldn’t be because I’m from Washington State, or that I am enamored with everything southwestern in style – particularly silver jewelry as that is what I do when I’m not baking!

So, we have a typical western Washington winter storm going to day – wind and lots of rain. I’m off to jewelry classes……………while waiting for a new book to come from Amazon!

My mom used to proof yeast from little yeast cakes she bought in the refrigerated section of the grocery store.  I remember being very intrigued with the process.   My first attempts at baking bread were with purchased granulated yeast that had to be proofed before being added to the flour.  I generally killed the yeast in various different ways – mostly overheating it, either that or freezing it into total inactivity!

When I started my bakery I declared I had not intention of baking bread – had been so disastrous for me in the past.  That didn’t last long – we went to our first bakery show and learned the mysteries of instant yeast – add it dry to the flour and add the liquids – mix like heck and you had bread – how easy is that?!!  Over the years I pretty much perfected the process so my bread was very consistent and not too bad!!  Most of the time I had a decent texture.

Back to the granulated yeast I purchased recently.  The minute I opened the package I knew what I had.  And, I knew what I had to do to use it.  And being the baker that I am, I had only this yeast – had used the last of the instant yeast the week before. 

I’d like to think I’ve learned a few things about baking over the past 24 years.  So I set out to use this yeast that had been my nemisis in the past.  I heated the water with the canola oil, added 1/2 the milk to cool it somewhat – added the yeast and stirred it to dissolve and then, this is the hard part for me, waited. 

As you can see in the picture, it wasn’t long before the yeast began to work.  At this stage, it still needed to proof a few more minutes.  I have found over the last couple of weeks using this, that if I let the yeast rise up pretty airy, it works great in the dough.

This batch was for a dozen cinnamon rolls.  After letting the dough rise, I turned it out on the table and rolled it out.  You will actually see air bubbles in the dough from the yeast.  You don’t have this with instant yeast.

After rolling out the dough, I coat is with butter, and cinnamon sugar ((I mix the cinnamon and sugar together before coating the dough – it’s a good way to tell if you have enough cinnamon).  Then roll up tightly and cut.  I place the rolls on a baking sheet sprayed with a release spray.  Then let them rise – about 30-45 minutes.  I bake them in a stone deck oven at 500 degrees for 10-12 minutes.  You have to really watch them if you bake in an oven that hot.  I also bake them in a woodfired oven at the same temperature.  That oven has  radiant heat and everything bakes a lot differently.  You can use a hotter oven with out  burning, but still have to watch what you’re doing.

After the rolls come out of the oven, I glaze with powdered sugar, butter, and milk.  Then enjoy!! 

So, the proof is in the yeast – by proofing the granulated yeast and using it in place of the instant yeast, I had better texture to my bread with a finer crumb.  The dough had more spring and air to it which also adds to a better texture.  As a proponent of the slow movement in cooking, I highly recommend you try the granulated yeast over the instant.  Yes, it takes longer, but oh, it’s so worth it!!

Just Peachy - my favorite dahlia

I bought a lot of my dahlias from a woman who grows them in Tenino, Washington.  I’ve traded some and bought the others in various other places.  There is just nothing like seeing new ones bloom for the first time.  This year I added a bunch of new dinner plate dahlias – they live up to their name in being the size of dinner plates!!

New dinner plate this year - Kidd's Climax

This one is just breath taking when bloomed out!  And so big – you can put one stem in a vase or make a huge, huge bouquet out of several.  A few years back I splurged and bought an oversized glass vase that the dahlias look great in.  I also grow glads, statice, and zinnas.  I use the mix of all these to make bouquets for the farmers market I sell in.  Not to mention, bouquets for me, too!!

Now we are waiting for a killing frost.  In our part of the country we have to dig the tubers as they won’t winter over in the ground – either rot from the rain or freeze out.  It’s also a good way of controlling the size of the tubers we plant.  I usually sell the ones I don’t need to pay for my new ones!  Works for me!:-)

Do we have you drooling yet?

Party munchies - our way!

You can see the mix we use – the Chex cereals, Cherrios, Golden Grahams, and lots of pretzels.  You can tailor the mix to what you like.  I put in lots of mixed nuts, cashews and peanuts.  I have also seen the mix made with Gold Fish, Rice Crackers – just about any little munchie you like. 

The secret is in the sauce – use the basic recipe on the back of a Chex box and then customize it to your taste – you can add sugar, tabasco, chipolte seasoning, soy sauce, whatever strikes your fancy.  Be careful not to totally mask the taste of the worcestershire sauce as this gives it the distinctive
“party munchies” taste.   I use real butter for that extra special taste!

After mixing all the sauce together and heating, pour into cereal mix in large bowl.  Stir to coat all the cereal well.  You want the cereal to look a little greasy as it will absorb the sauce while cooking.  If your cereal is too dry before you cook it, it will not have a lot of flavor as there is nothing to absorb.

I spread the mix out on a baking sheet and bake for 1 hour, stirring every 15 minutes.  It will appear to stick to the sheet the first couple of times you stir – that’s one way to tell it is getting done – it quits sticking to the sheet pan.  I don’t grease my pan to start – you don’t need to.

When it is done, let it cool and then store in large ziploc bags until ready to eat or repackage. 

I would definitely recommend making this a family or friend project – using small boxes of cereal, I had about 5 gallons of the mix when I finished!!

Enjoy!

I put them in boiling water to make slipping the skins easy.  Then cut out the cores and removed the seeds and juice.  Put the rest in a large pot (I put a wire on the burner under the pot so they wouldn’t scorch), brought them to a boil and have now reduced the heat to low and put on a lid so they can cook down.  I’m hoping for a nice tomato sauce.  I usually make marinara, but have a lot in the freezer already. 

The rest of the ripe tomatoes will become another batch of fresh salsa.  Chop all the tomatoes into a bowl.  Add chopped onion, cilantro, and minced garlic.  Add enough tomato juice to cover the chopped vegetables.   Squeeze the juice of one large lime or two small ones into the mix.  Depending on how spicy you like it, fine chop a few jalapeno pepper rings.  I don’t use fresh jalapenos as they can sometimes be bitter and ruin your salsa.  If you are brave, add a couple shakes of chipolte seasoning – very spicy!  Put salsa in containers with lids and refrigerate.  It will keep quite a while because of the lime juice.

For your very best nachos, put tortilla chips in a 9 x 13 cake pan – cover with fresh grated cheese and bake for 15-20 minutes in a 350 degree oven.  You can’t believe how much better they are than using the microwave.  Enjoy with your fresh salsa!!

Speaking of salsa, did anyone watch the Latino concert from the White House last night on PBS?  Where was Carlos Santana?  And I can think of a few other great Latino artists who were missing too!