Guest Post: Grandma Erickson's Bread Recipe

This post about bread was sent to me by my childhood friend Sarah. I love that it is a family recipe, that it calls for yeast cake (explanation included), and that the loaves can be referred to as bread without distinction.


the bread before the second rise

the bread baked


The recipe is from my Great-grandma Erickson. The nice thing I noticed about this recipe is that the ingredients are all things that we're suppose to have in our food storage. Also, I have a wheat grinder but no wheat, so I just used regular flour.

Grandma Erickson’s Bread

1 yeast cake

2 cups warm water (110-115 degrees)

3tbsp oil

4-5 cups flour

2 tsp salt

3 tbsp sugar

Dissolve yeast in warm water. Mix with oil. Mix salt, sugar and 2 cups of flour and beat in the water/yeast mixture until smooth. Continue to add flour until you get a moderately stiff dough, knead until smooth. Let rise until double in bulk. Punch down and shape into two loaves and place in greased pans. Let rise until double in bulk. Bake at 400 degrees for 35 minutes or until golden. Remove from oven and allow to cool.

As for the yeast cake. What I understand is it's how they measure/divide fresh active yeast. Anyway, it's equivalent to one packet of dry active yeast, which is what I used. I had to call my mom to figure that one out. My bread baking skills are not much, and usually I kill the yeast when I proof it in warm water. I really have to take the temperature of the water to make sure I'm not going to kill it. Now it's going better. Anyway, it's a decent bread recipe if you just want bread without distinction.

Matthias' Bean History and Recipes

It's time for our first guest author: Matthias from mmwhitney.blogspot.com. Matthias is an optical engineer, and he has a great wife (who I owe my PhotoShopEditor skills to, THANKS MEGAN!). In this post, Matthias delves into the wonderful world of Beans. His bean experience follows, along with his recipes for some Yummy Beans. I've compiled his recipes at the end of the post. Enjoy.

I bought a big five pound bag of beans once at Costco, and it was great fun. However, I soon learned that five pounds of beans is ALOT. I did the initial boiling in our big pot (about 2 gallons) but then I soon realized that I would have to split the beans between the 2 gal pot and the crock pot, our only large cooking pot type thing. I also added a little bit of oil with the initial boil.

I'm not sure if that was from a recipe I found or if it was ingenious thinking on my part, but it led to a boil over with my super full two gallon pot which subsequently led to my stove catching on fire! Yikes! But still fun! I ended up making a pork and beans type thing by adding ketchup, BBQ sauce, brown sugar, onions, hot sauce, and other things (I don't often follow recipes to the T). Also, I used leftover boneless country style pork ribs as the "pork" in my pork and beans.

My most recent bean experiments have been a little bit more controlled, with only cooking about a pound of beans at a time. I roughly followed a recipe from Cook's Country magazine for Smokey BBQ Beans, only I didn't follow the smokey instructions. The recipe strictly calls for:

4 slices of bacon
1 onion
4 garlic cloves
(put these ingredients in pot together to simmer flavors, then add:)

1 pound of pintos, soaked overnight
6 cups of water
(simmer until soft, then add:)

1 cup of bbq sauce
1/3 cup packed brown sugar
2 tablespoon mustard
1 teaspoon hot sauce

The final step is to put them in an aluminum pan with foil over the top and set them on open coals with a grill full of meat over the top (see crude drawing 1), but I didn't do this step.

Crude Drawing 1


Also, instead of bacon, I used leftovers from a Christmas ham which was a delicious use of our resources. Also we cook with dehydrated onions and garlic for ease, so really, I just boiled the first stuff with the beans for three+ hours until they were tender (I didn't soak overnight) and then added the other good stuff and simmered them until they were the desired consistency. The outcome was a success and even the wife liked them!

My second experiment with beans was refried beans (total misnomer, not only not doubly fried, but not even fried in the first place!). I boiled the beans for several hours until soft (with some onions and garlic for fun), then put them in the blender to "refry" aka smoosh them. I'm told a potato masher works well too, but I don't own one. I had to blender the beans in shifts so that I didn't overfill my blender and make unnecessary mess, but this required clever coordination of more than one pot. Care should taken to add enough water with the beans in the blender and to not over blenderize, unless you want a refried bean smoothie.

From here, I put the bean goo back in the pot with grated cheese, hot sauce, and salt (I added everything to taste) and simmered it until they were the right consistency. Super easy! And we had bean and cheese burritos for the next few weeks as quick meals and snacks. With just the wife and I, we can't eat a whole pound of beans at once, so we freeze them in cool whip containers and they thaw just fine.

----
RECAP:


Smokey BBQ Beans, Matthias Style
[Editor's Note: The flavor of these beans is AMAZINGLY GOOD! If you like your beans mushy (as opposed to somewhat firm), then boil just the beans and water, then let the beans soak for an hour. Then cook them for 3+ hours in a slow cooker, adding the seasonings to the slow cooker.]
In a large pot add:
Meat (ham or bacon, equivalentish to 4 slices of bacon)
Dehydrated onion and garlic (equivalentish to 1 onion and 4 garlic cloves)
1 lb.pinto beans
6 c. water

Boil those ingredients for 3ish hours.

Add 1c bbq sauce, 1/3 c. brown sugar, 2 T mustard, 1 t. hot sauce
Simmer until beans are desired consistency.



Refried Beans, Misnomer Style
Boil 1lb of beans, onions and garlic (in water) for several hours (until beans are soft)
Put the beans in a blender to "refry" them. NOTE: add water as needed AND don't over blend.

Mix the now blended, I mean, Refried, beans with cheese, hot sauce and salt in a pot and simmer until they are the right consistency.



BEAN STORAGE TIP:
store extra (cooked) beans in the freezer until needed.

Beans! Demystified

I avoid dry beans. Cooking them filled me with dread.

Last week, though, I buckled down and did an experiment. I'm finding that cooking is easier...or less threatening...if I call it "experimenting." In experiments the result is important--but not for the same reasons the result is important in regular cooking.

(got to love those upside down hands!)



It turns out beans are easy. They take some time to cook. But the cooking part isn't difficult. Mostly you set a timer and when it beeps you change the temperature or location of the beans. And guess what....my beans tasted great. Good great. Great enough for me to want to serve them to you when you come over. Yeah. That good. And it was my first time. Ever. The maiden voyage and I'm already boasting about my skills. This could be you. I'll show you how:

I tried two recipes: the one on the can* and the one from the internet* (see bottom of post).


What I started with: beans, recipes, and an open bag of animal crackers (seriously. the cook needs snacks when cooking something that takes more than an hour).



Rinse your beans (check for stones and whithered beans)

Pull out any undesirables, then put the beans in a pot. Cover with water. Turn on the heat and get the beans boiling for a few minutes. Turn off the heat and let em sit. (Isn't that so easy! Easier than pasta which has to stay cooking and at my house seems to constantly boil over the sides of the pot).


(don't you love the tin foil tag I put on that front pot? I was worried I'd confuse which pot contained which recipe)

When the timer goes off--start cooking the beans again (this is where one pot of beans went into a slow cooker and the other stayed on the stove). Add in some spices and bacon (yum!) and then let them cook (I used 2 slices of bacon, 1tsp. of salt, 1/8 tsp of pepper, 1/4 tsp of garlic powder).



The can recipe asks you to have the beans cook for 2 hours on the stove. The internet recipe put them in a slow cooker on high for 4 hours. I started cooking both at the same time, seasoned them the same--and the slow cooker won hands down. Better flavor. Slightly smooshier beans. The flavor though...wow! It was tasty.

I also liked the slow cooker because I didn't worry about turning it on and leaving the room. The stove method made me nervous.


So...that's it. I'm kind of sad that I haven't been doing this before. All of this time I could have had amazingly good beans for so little effort.

Give it a shot and tell me what you think. Or if you have a good recipe for mexican food style beans--I want it.


Recpies:

Can Recipe (from LDS food storage can) (I halved the recipe):
1 1/4 c beans
boil for 2 mins in 4c. of water
cover and set aside to soak for 1 hour
drain water, rinse beans
Add 3 c. water and seasoning and simmer for 2 hours.

Internet Recipe (I'm writing it out below in case the link goes bad)
1 1/4 c beans
water to cover
boil
sit for 1 hour
DON'T DRAIN; put in a crock pot
add water to cover
add seasonings
Cook on high for 4-5 hours

Seasoning: 2 slices of bacon, 1tsp. of salt, 1/8 tsp of pepper, 1/4 tsp of garlic powder