Can you really make homemade bread in an hour?

The answer is yes!  And I don't mean by thawing some frozen bread dough!

I came across this recipe and just had to try it.  It works!  Now is this "oh my god this is the best bread I've ever tasted" bread?  No.  Is it a decent white bread, yes. 

It makes great toast, fantastic grilled cheese, yummy french toast and, oh yea, a pretty darn good turkey sammich!  And it really is done in about an hour.  And even better the recipe makes two loaves so you can throw one in the freezer.

Here is a link to the recipe.  The author also has a cute video to go with it.
Simple One-Hour Homemade Bread

It's a pretty simple recipe, some bread flour, sugar, salt, instant yeast, oil and water.  That's it.  Yes, get the bread flour, you'll be happier with the results.  Bread flour has more gluten in it and it creates a more chewy bread.  All-purpose flour has a mix of high and low gluten wheats and has a bit less protein than bread flour.  You can use all-purpose in this recipe, but you might be disappointed in the results.

It's also important to use instant yeast.  This is what makes it possible to only have one rise for the bread!

I added the full 4 tablespoons of sugar to mine to get some nice browning!

There's nothing fancy about the mixing.  Mix the dry ingredients then add the oil and water.  The recipe says to make sure the dough is "wet" and "sticky."  The stickier the dough, the softer the loaf.  I added a tablespoon of water the first time I made this, a little more than that the second time.  The dough, after the first minute of mixing, should be somewhat wet and pretty sticky.  This is how it stuck to my mixer paddle!

Mix the dough for an additional 5 minutes.  I was surprised to see the author used her paddle attachment rather than a dough hook!  So if you don't have a dough hook this is the recipe for you!

Spray your board with cooking spray (you don't want to add any more flour to the dough) and kneed 8 or 10 times until you have a nice smooth dough.

Cut the dough in half and shape it into whatever shape you like.  I love my bench scraper for cutting the dough.  Place it on greased (or parchment lined) pans, cover with a towel and go do something else for 25 minutes while the dough rises.

Yes, just 25 minutes!  Yes, it only has to rise once! 

Slash your dough and place it in the oven and in about 25 minutes you have homemade bread!  The recipe says bake until golden brown which was about 25 minutes in my oven.  I always check the temperature of my bread with an instant read thermometer, it should be about 200 degrees.

Like I said this isn't an amazing artisan bread but it is good.  It makes a great sandwich, toast or even French toast!  Next time I think I may do a little egg wash to see if I can't get that crust a little prettier!

Braided Cinnamon Bread

Want to impress your guests?  Make this bread!  It smells wonderful when it's baking, it looks pretty and tastes fantastic!  And guess what, it's easy to make!  Yes it takes a little over an hour and a half but an hour of that is just letting the dough rise.

Here is a link to the recipe:

Braided Cinnamon Bread

The bread sounded good, of course.  But what really drew me to this recipe was the vessel in which it's baked, a (Lodge) cast iron pan!  I love my cast iron.  I love Lodge.  I bake bread in my Lodge dutch oven and make just about anything in my Lodge cast iron pan.

I have a 12" pan.  The recipe called for a 10"  but I wasn't worried that mine was "too big."  I also love that the pan has such high sides.  This is great for things like fajitas or other dishes that require a lot of stirring, things stay in the pan!

Don't have a cast iron pan?  No worries.  A cake pan will work just fine!

The dough is simple, a little yeast of course, sugar, milk (the recipe called for whole milk, I only had skim in the house - it was a last minute decision to make this - and it worked fine), an egg yolk, flour, salt and butter.  The dough is kneaded just a little then put in an oiled bowl to rise for an hour.

Once risen the dough is rolled into a large rectangle and topped with a mixture of butter, brown sugar, cinnamon and the scrapings of a vanilla bean.  

If you've never worked with an actual vanilla bean you should at least once.  The aroma is so much better than vanilla extract.  Speaking of which, if you don't have a vanilla bean, or some vanilla bean paste in your cupboard, you can just substitute vanilla extract for the bean, 1 teaspoon of extract per bean in the recipe.

I also love this Vietnamese cinnamon from King Arthur Flour.  Ingredients make the dish!

Roll the dough up and pinch the ends.  Then the fun part!

Slice the dough down the middle, length-wise then twist it, making sure that the cinnamon filling 

Bring the ends together and place the dough in your cast iron skillet then brush it with an egg wash and sprinkle it with sugar.  I used a little vanilla sugar I picked up at Penzey's.

Pop this in the oven for about 25 minutes and out comes this beautiful cinnamon bread sure to impress your friends and family!

But wait, we're not done yet.  Frosting!  The recipe includes a recipe for a simple butter cream frosting.  Note, it makes A LOT of frosting.  I maybe used a quarter of it.  You could definitely half the frosting recipe and still be fine!

This was delicious!  Everything you would expect from cinnamon bread.  Crunchy on the outside, melt-in-your mouth on the inside.  I could have eaten the whole thing!

Chorizo-stuffed Pork Tenderloin

We love pork tenderloin in our house.  We eat it probably weekly, sometimes more.  We mostly love pork tenderloin because of the source of our pork, Otis Family Farm.  Bob Otis is a great guy and a great farmer, and sadly won't be farming anymore.  It's a long story, not a sad one by any means, just a change for the Otis family.  He, and his pork, and his chicken and his turkey and his eggs, will be sadly missed by us!

Bob's pigs are a cross between Duroc and White pigs.  He says that Duroc are fat but not good mama's.  The White pigs are skinny but are good mama's.  So his cross gives him fat pigs that are good mama's.  At least that's the theory.  All we know is, they are delicious!

This recipe was emailed to me from my friends at Kitchen Daily and seemed worthy of my precious Otis Family pork tenderloins.  I only have five or six left!

Here is a link to the recipe:
Chorizo-stuffed Pork Tenderloin

The recipe called for Spanish Chorizo or salami.  Salami?  Really?  All I could think was Ewwwww.  Spanish chorizo is a "seasoned, fully cooked smoked pork sausage."  We couldn't find that in the grocery store we went to so we bought some Aidell's apple sausage.  We thought it would go nicely with the pork.

The recipe also called for smoked or extra sharp cheese.  I wasn't sure I wanted cheese in my pork but since it was the first time making this, I followed the recipe and used a sharp cheddar cheese.

This was easy to put together.  Mix up some spinach, cheese and the sausage in a bowl and set it aside.  Then mix a little fresh chopped garlic and olive oil in another little bowl and set that aside.  To prepare the pork, butterfly the tenderloin, open it up and pound it to about an 1/8 of an inch thickness.

Spread the filling on the pork, roll it up and secure it with string.

The tenderloin is then seared before it is brushed with the garlic and olive oil mixture and popped in the oven to finish cooking.

As this finishes in the oven you can not only smell the pork, but the garlic roasting all over it.

It is a beautiful dish and pretty tasty as well.  I think I would chop the sausage a bit larger next time.  I found I liked not only the flavor of the sharp cheese but also the creaminess it added to the filling.  And the little pieces of toasted garlic added great flavor and texture. 

I served it with a little farro risotto and we had cherry pie for dessert!