Copycat Panera Bread Broccoli and Cheddar Soup Recipe Review and Gluten Free modification

I found this recipe online for a copycat homemade version of Panera’s broccoli cheddar soup. I pretty much followed the ingredients list except for rice flour to make it gluten free and using Trader Joe’s caramelized onion cheddar on hand. There’s already onion here so the TJ cheese didn’t alter the flavor too obviously and the rice flour made the soup more translucent than all purpose flour. The recipe turned out pretty good especially on a blustery fall day. Now all I need is a bread bowl or crust baguette….

Rye Hearth Bread Recipe Review

Have you ever felt that feeling when sometimes when your taste buds get a little bored and they’re looking for some variety? This week I decided to try some rye bread. I found a recipe that used mostly bread flour with maybe 25% rye. There were options to add some deli flavor and other additives but I decided to leave the dough plain for the most part and put the seeds on the crust (sesame, black sesame, and caraway seeds). I found I don’t like caraway seeds in the bread, but on the crust, it’s not bad.

Hamburger Buns Recipe Review and Smash style Wagyu Beef Burger Recipe

I was able to get a pack of Wagyu ground beef at Costco the other day and had a hankering for burgers. I had time last night to make the recipe for KA’s beautiful burger buns (love the alliteration btw). They are brioche like in that it’s an enriched dough with egg and butter.

These are delicious!

I liked how the buns turned out. They were soft and fluffy and tasted really rich and buttery. I probably would have let them rise a bit more to get a fluffier bun. I made 10 buns instead of 8 and baked it for 15 minutes. Brushing it with melted butter gave it an extra yum!

Portuguese Rolls or Papo Secos (Pap secosh) Recipe Review

I decided to take a break from my somewhat unsatisfying baguette obsession and moved on to a local northern New Jersey favorite. The recipe has similar ingredients to most breads: salt, bread flour, water, yeast but you add sugar and butter.

From my experience, the best Portuguese rolls I’ve had to date are made in Newark. I don’t know if other states make them like this. They are just so good. The rolls have a very short shelf life which makes me think they don’t add preservatives.

I used this recipe from Leite’s culinaria. I used slightly less than 1 Tablespoon of coarse sea salt because I’m sort of watching my salt in take but bread really needs it. The recipe takes a long time to rise and shape, reshape. The shaping was trickier than expected, so I got weird ball looking things, but the bread had an excellent crumb, almost like a sponge cake with a fine crumb that was also soft. However, it didn’t quite achieve the feathery cotton like texture on the inside, but it was super close definitely more tender and satisfying than all my previous attempts put together! No gummy bread here, folks, so that’s what I call a win!

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French Baguettes Take 4: It’s the Flour and the pan!

French Baguette Batch 3

Batch 3, using a bit of bread flour, but mostly all purpose. Shaping needs work, but I’m more concerned in preserving the air bubbles from the over night rise. Crumb texture is soft, but overall the loaves feel heavy for their end size. I feel like a baguette should feel like and airy and these are more like bricks…

Preheated oven to 450, Let the dough rise for about 45 minutes post shaping and lowered oven to 375 and baked for 30 minutes, along with a tray of boiling water for steam. I used scissors to cut the slashes this time around.

French baguette recipe and King Arthur company baguette pan review

While I’m waiting to be able to travel to France and one day try authentic French baguettes, I’m on the search for a recipe that mimics Zabars lighter than air baguettes. So I’m trying a bunch of things from what’s posted on the internet. I previously tried King Arthur Company’s recipe for classic baguettes using all purpose flour and kneading in my bread machine and didn’t have much flavor. The result was a dense tough bread with more chew than I wanted and a flat bottom. This post is for a different recipe.

King Arthur Hawaiian Rolls Recipe Review

Just tried this recipe using gold yeast and apple cider since I didn’t have any pineapple juice. I couldn’t tell the difference except it slightly smells of cider when baking. I got a tender and fluffy soft roll. When I initially rolled out the dough after the first rise, I worried it wouldn’t get fluffy but after about an hour and a half of rising, it worked. Press slightly into the roll and an indentation should stay when it’s ready to bake. I got something a bit smaller than the baked result but it puffed even more with the baking. I had to lower the temp to 325 because the rolls were getting too dark towards the final 10 minutes. Also used a trick of placing a small pan with some boiling water on the bottom rack to help with the rise on baking.

Pre rise

Jewish Rye Bread Recipe Review

I tried this recipe.

Bagel Ventures via King Arthur Baking Co Recipe Review

I used the Bagel with pate fermentee recipe. Bagels take time and patience. No joke. I started the preferment on Saturday morning. Made the dough Saturday night for an overnight proof. Then 3 more hours on Sunday morning. At the end of it all, I will be having a bagel for Sunday lunch… So that’s what? 36 hours to eat a bagel? Patience, grasshopper.