May 10, 2013

Another week and no great recipes to post!  Argh!!!!  We tried a new dinner, but it wasn't voted a keeper.  I turned my attention and kitchen time to graham crackers.  My youngest loves graham crackers.  We used to get them a lot, but now not as often.  I saw a recipe to make graham crackers a few weeks ago, and finally tried to make them this week.  The first batch came out decent, and the kids loved them, but my oh my, they were very time intensive.  Cube and freeze the butter.  Make the dough, shape it into a disk, chill it 2+ hours.  Roll it out, cut the cookies, refreeze.  Finally bake - then add the cinnamon sugar and bake a little more.  Clearly not a quick recipe, and although it wasn't hard, it wasn't really worth it.  Plus, the recipe called for quite a lot of honey, so it wasn't going to be a thrifty recipe.  All in all, these graham crackers will be enjoyed, but not made again.

When I determined that graham cracker recipe wasn't quite a keeper, did I throw in the towel?  Heavens no!  I found a second recipe, similar ingredients (so I assumed it would taste pretty close), but no chilling, freezing, etc.  So I gave it a whirl.  It was definitely easier, but didn't taste nearly as good.  I would have been bummed, but instead a peaceful feeling washed over me.  I had thoughtfully and intentionally tried my hand at homemade graham crackers, and am now saving you the trouble.  Don't try to make graham crackers.  It isn't worth your time. Instead of a keeper, I am helping you keep your time so you can put it to better use!

I did learn something fantastic this week - use cold bread flour when you make pizza dough!!!  Why do I know this, you ask?  I buy AP flour and bread flour in bulk, split it into gallon size bags and put it in my freezer.  This helps keep my freezer full so it runs more efficiently, and also guarantees I rarely run out of flour.  As I was making the dough for our pizza this morning, I was running low so I grabbed more bread flour out of the freezer and used it in my recipe.  The dough came together so much easier, and was incredibly easy to work with, but I feared that I had killed the yeast because the flour was so cold!  I continued on and put my dough blobs in the fridge, and later in the day saw they had risen just as they always do!  Now I think I will pre-measure my flour and toss it in the freezer the night before I will make dough and hope for the same result. I'll let you know if it works again!

And on Sunday - happy Mother's Day!!!