Thursday, March 18, 2010

For Food and Fun

I don't just cook and experiment with recipes so that my family can eat... I do it for fun! I am playing in the kitchen even more since I got my new Cuisinart stand mixer! I am spending half my day in the kitchen... which makes it terribly hard to get anything else done... especially when I am getting so many dishes dirty!

Anyway, I promised to keep you updated on how the mixer was working out. I have mixed reviews. Firstly, I think it is fabulous! I am in awe of a machine that does all the hard work of bread-baking for me! BUT, I am angry at the machine. The box said that this machine could handle 15 cups of flour! It lied! I cannot make breads that require more that 8-10 cups of flour. Well, I can, but I end up doing the kneading myself. And, well, isn't that why I bought this machine? (The dough climbs the dough hook and starts looking like something from The Blob movie!) So, you see, I have a love-hate relationship with my mixer. So long as I make the recipes found in the mixer's own recipe book, everything turns out perfectly. But, when I try recipes written by people with fancy, schmancy Bosch mixers nothing works out as planned. (I did not get a Bosch, because they cost twice as much. I would have to make a lot of bread before it would pay for itself!)

That said - I am still trying out some of the excellent recipes on the Mennonite Girls Can Cook website. I am loving their yeast-rising bread recipes! The other night I made Health Buns... which required me to do some hand-kneading as the recipe needed far more flour than they say it should. Anyway, I made these buns larger than dinner rolls... we used them as buns. You know, like for cheeseburgers. Very unique flavor with the molasses as a sweetener.

Long story short... if the box did not say that it could handle 15 cups of flour, then I would think that my mixer is the best thing since sliced bread. But, it lied... and that makes me mad.

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