Thursday, March 14, 2013

Homemade bread & garbage soup

Last night my sister Kassie and I tried our hands at making homemade bread. The first time we have ever made bread, but it turned out pretty well I must say!  We made two loaves and went through an entire loaf with dinner (which was garbage soup, we'll get to that soon ;)  We took the other loaf to my Grandfather and Uncle who ended up eating half the loaf before we left the house!  We have two more loaves in the oven today.  It's a really easy recipe with only 7 ingredients, here is how we made it.  Add 3/4 cup of warm water to a bowl.  Slowly mix in one pack of active dry yeast until it is dissolved.  Add 1 tsp of salt, 1 1/2 tbsp of sugar, 1 tbsp of vegetable shortening and 1/2 cup of milk to the mixture.  Mix in two cups of all-purpose flour, after that is mixed in, keep adding flour by the tablespoon until the dough is chasing the spoon around the bowl.  Turn dough out onto floured counter/board and knead, adding small amounts of flour until the dough is soft and smooth, not sticky to the touch.  Put dough in buttered bowl, turn it over so the top is greased, cover and let rise for 1 hour in a warm spot.  Punch down the dough, turn out onto floured counter/board and knead again.  Form dough into loaf and put into buttered bread pan, cover and let rise again for 30 minutes in a warm spot.  Score the top of the dough with a knife and put in preheated oven at 375 degrees F.  Bake about 45 minutes or until golden brown.  Take it out and turn out onto a dishcloth or cooling rack.  VERY easy, I think we'll try our hand at some rye bread soon!
Waiting on it to rise
Fresh out of the oven
Warm slices of bread for dinner

Now on to the garbage soup I was talking about, it's never the same soup twice.  Basically you throw anything into the pot that you have in your fridge and/or pantry.  This one was really good, I probably can't remember everything that was in it (my father made it and he probably doesn't even know as Kassie was throwing a few things in as well ;)  Started with a box of beef broth and a can of chicken broth as that is what we had.  We had two left over sausage patties from breakfast so he broke those up into little pieces and threw them in, we threw in a big jar of Italian stewed tomatoes we canned last year and mom had some left over Chinese food in the fridge - General Tso's chicken and some fried rice - that went in as well (chicken was chopped up in little pieces), and we tossed in some chicken left over from our Chicken & Rice dinner the other night (also chopped up little), might have tossed in some of the rice as well, we had 2 heads of cabbage in the fridge so dad chopped up half a head of cabbage and threw it in.  We had a couple of fresh mushrooms left in the fridge so we chopped those up and threw them in too.  We had leftover sauteed peppers and onions from the other night when we had fajitas - threw that in too.  I'm sure there was more stuff in there but can't remember it right now, all I know is it was tasty ;)  The rule is just to throw stuff in there until you have a full pot.  We took our fresh bread and dipped it in the soup and had a wonderful meal. Here is a picture of garbage soup below, might not look all that appetizing but it tastes a lot better than it looks!

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