Sum Cookin'
"If the wine had been as old as the turkey,
and the turkey had been as young and fresh as the wine,
and the turkey's breasts had been as nice as the waitress'...
the meal would have been WONDERFUL."
-Duncan Hines,
Food critic and namesake of the cake mix
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Sum-Usual Bread
All material in this website (aside from the material which is obviously NOT mine)
This recipe assumes that you have SOME sort of idea as to how bread goes together...you know, where all the little gears and pulleys fit in...how the laces are tied...
If you need to learn some basics, open another window and search for "how to bake bread".
The following is just the magical and genius combination specific to one of my favorite bread recipes.
Hey!...people keep asking for it, so I must have done SOMEthing right.
If ya try this out and end up with a total mess, I guess you can always email me for additional help. When I stop laughing MAO, I will do what I can to explain a few things.
Maybe someday I'll do up a video and post it here.
Until then, get the following stuff together...
9 cups of bread flour
3 cups of corn meal
3 tablespoons of Italian seasoning
3 tblespoons of salt
3 tablespoons of Spanish paprika
3 tablespoons of dry active yeast
1 cup of milk
1 drink-size can of V-8
I can of Campbell's condensed cream of mushroom soup
1.5 cups water
1 egg (If you like a bread that is a bit more "airy" or "fluffy", use two... or even three eggs. But the more eggs, the more delicate AND fragile the bread will be, sometimes being a bit too "fall-apart")
Mix well, all dry ingredients together in a suitable container... a soup/stock pot works well.
Heat and mix well, all wet ingredients except the egg to 110-120 degrees
Add and mix well, the egg, into other wet ingredients.
(If you put in the egg earlier, some of it will likely congeal to the bottom of the sauce pan while warming)
Pour the wet stuff into the dry stuff and start “playing in the mud”, squeezing and squishing the mixture between your fingers, having fun in the proccess.
Have an open container of flour handy, with a measuring cup to dose out a little flour, if necessary, to work into a dough.
When the mixture starts becoming homogenous, dump and drag in out onto the counter which has been dusted well with flour.
I like to use a nice wide straight-edge metal scraper, much like the business end of a large spatula to scrape into and under the dough ball to get it off the counter as it absorbs moisture from the spread-out flour. Keep folding and kneading the dough, sprinkling flour onto and around it until it stops sticking like glue to your hands.
Keeping a little flour on the hands pulls the moisture out of the sticky dough and helps to keep it from sticking to your hands.
Keep that counter well dusted until the dough is taking on its own cohesive body.
When the dough has been worked enough to become homogenous, cut into four equal pieces and work those the same way, dusting with flour if necessary, until cohesive. ( I find it easier for this size of a recipe to break the doughball up for easier working. )
Shape each into slightly elongated balls on baking sheets or press into greased bread pans and put into slightly warm areas to rise. Cover with towels if you like.
Sometimes, I will toss some of them into the oven right away...they WILL rise in the baking.
Baking right away will produce a slightly denser bread which makes a kick-ass toast!
Others, I will let rise for a half-hour to forty-five minutes before baking.
I usually bake for 25-30 minutes, at 350 degrees, starting to watch them closely at 25.
When the tops are starting to brown and the bottoms start getting nice and dark (but not burned, duh...) they are about done. Take one out and thump it on the bottom.
If it sounds hollow, that’s a sign of done-ness.
Lately, I have been baking a little longer at 300-320 degrees.
With the first and largest loaf out of the oven, I will often crack it open, down the middle. IF it is a little under-done in the middle, let the others go another ten-fifteen-twenty minutes and place the cracked one back together and back on the pan and back in the oven, too....it’ll bake OK....
It'll taste good...it just won't be as pretty as the whole loaves; just give that one loaf to the hired help.
(When cracked open, the center will seem very "wet" but not doughy. It will probably be OK when moisture evaporates out. )
Place on racks to cool, so the bottoms don't get all soggy with all that moisture.
Always remember to experiment here and there in cooking...it keeps it more fun and you can sometimes blow yourself away with new flavor-discoveries.
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Copyright © by Sumshee Kirken