Cooking Exceptionally With Gin Lee

Baking Perfect Artisan Bread: Essential Ingredients and Their Roles Warm bread right from your oven has a smell that beats anything else. You might think making artisan loaves is hard or requires fancy gear. The reality is that great bread comes down to a few basic items you likely already have. If you have three cups of flour, one package of active dry yeast, seasoning salt, water, sugar, and some canola oil, you are ready to bake. Understanding what these parts do will help you make a loaf with a crisp crust and a soft, airy inside. Let’s look at the science behind these ingredients to help you move from a basic recipe to an extraordinary loaf. The Foundation: Flour as the Building Block Flour acts as the frame for your bread. It provides the bulk of the volume and the physical structure that holds everything together. When you look at a loaf, you are mostly seeing the transformation of flour. Choosing Your Flour Wisely All-purpose flour is a great choice for many home bakers. It has...

Bake Perfect Rustic Bread with These Six Essential Ingredients The scent of bread baking in your oven changes the mood of a home. A crust that crunches when you slice it, paired with a soft center, makes for a satisfying meal. You do not need fancy equipment to create this at home. You only need the right ingredients mixed with a bit of patience. Each item in your bowl serves a specific purpose, from providing structure to encouraging the rise. Understanding these six components helps you master your loaf and consistently get great results. When you know how your rustic bread ingredients interact, you become a better baker. Flour: The Foundation of Your Rustic Loaf Flour acts as the skeleton for your bread. It forms the gluten network that gives the loaf its shape. When you mix flour with water, proteins in the flour link up to create strands of gluten. This network traps the gas produced by the yeast, which makes the bread rise. All-purpose flour is the best starting point for a class...

How to Make Homemade Yeast the Easy Way for Bread A jar of raisins, water, and sugar can get you started on homemade yeast for bread. Given time, wild microbes can ferment the sweet liquid and help raise dough, with no special tools required. This method makes fruit yeast water, a mixed culture of wild microbes. It isn’t the same as a packet of pure commercial yeast, so its strength and results can vary with the fruit, water, and room temperature. The process has two parts: ferment the fruit water, then mix some of it with flour to make a bubbly preferment. Use that flour mixture only when it shows clear signs of activity. Make homemade yeast the easy way with fruit water Fruit yeast water is a beginner-friendly way to try wild fermentation. It uses common ingredients and doesn’t require you to keep and feed a sourdough starter. What homemade yeast actually is Wild microbes on the fruit, along with microbes in the surroundings, can ferment the sugars in the water. The result is a livin...

Homemade Country-style Cheese Bread To make my delicious cheese bread, first you'll need to follow my list of ingredients and instructions that go along with my country-style no-knead bread. No worries, I will do a recap for creating the dough again here in this article since it's the main dough recipe that I used to make my scrumptious country-style cheese bread. The Dutch oven that I prefer to use to prepare my rustic round bread is well loved. I was told that it was an 1851 vintage enamelware Dutch oven manufactured by Asta Fissler, Amsterdam, Germany. From measuring the dutch oven, it appears to be just under 3 quarts and it's 10 inches across in diameter. Here are the country-style no-knead dough ingredients for a recap:  These are the ingredients you'll need to start the dough. 3-½ cups of flour 1 teaspoon of yeast 1 teaspoon of seasoning salt (I use seasoning salt to give the bread more flavor) 1-½ cups of hot water (not boiling) 2 extra tablespoons of flour mixe...

Homemade country-style milk bread If you haven't ever had homemade country milk bread, you're going to be in for a real treat. Milk bread is one of my favorite breads to make and to eat. It's light, fluffy, and easy to pull apart in rich airy layers. Plus, it's absolutely yummy! It's great to serve with breakfast, brunch, lunch, dinner, and even to eat at snack time. With this recipe, there are a lot of steps to take. The dough will need to rest and rise a total of three times altogether. I will walk you through each step the best that I can and place the ingredients within each step as they are needed as we go through each step together. (Hopefully, it will be more helpful for you to follow.) Step one: To start creating your milk bread, you'll need these ingredients:  4 cups of bread flour 3 tablespoons of granulated white Splenda, or regular granulated white sugar 1-½ teaspoons of salt (I prefer using seasoning salt to add extra flavor.) 3 tablespoons of cold ...

Savory Italian cheddar bread This is the perfect bread to serve alongside any of your favorite pasta dishes. It's truly yummy! To create the savory Italian cheddar bread, I add shredded cheddar cheese and Italian seasoning to my dough before the dough's ten hour rest. Ingredients: 2 cups of all-purpose flour 1 cup of whole-wheat flour 1 teaspoon of seasoning salt ¼ teaspoon of active dry yeast 1 teaspoon of Italian seasoning 1-½ cups of warm water, add more if needed 1-½  cups of shredded Cheddar cheese Instructions: In a large mixing bowl, combine the all-purpose flour, whole-wheat flour, and add the yeast. Stir well. Then add the Italian seasoning and the seasoning salt; stir until all the ingredients are incorporated well. Now, add the warm water to the flour mixture; combine with a wooden spoon. Sprinkle shredded cheddar cheese into the dough mixture. Combine well until the dough comes together. Cover the bowl of dough with a clean towel or plastic wrap and allow the dough ...

Garlic rolls This recipe is so simple and fast to prepare. The garlic rolls pair amazingly well with spaghetti, ravioli, rigatoni, lasagna, fettuccine Alfredo, linguine, manicotti, cannelloni, chicken cacciatore, chicken ala king, as well as Italian pizza. I will be making six garlic rolls today. If you need a larger amount just double or triple the ingredients to make a bigger batch. I am also using stale leftover dinner rolls that I have on hand, but you can use fresh homemade or store-bought dinner rolls to create your very own garlic rolls. Ingredients: 6 dinner rolls 6 teaspoons of butter 4 to 6 teaspoons of minced garlic, amount depending on your tastes Instructions: First, cut a deep x-shaped pattern on the top of each dinner roll with a bread knife or clean kitchen scissors. Then smear a teaspoon of butter (or more depending on your preference) inside each dinner roll. Now, add as much or as little minced garlic as you like inside each dinner roll. Place each roll on a baking t...