Happy Birthday, Little Sister

In related news, I'm going to have to make sure I only make a batch of these for special occasions. I made these at 10:00 am and over half of them are gone now.

Well, it ain't Kentucky...

...but it is my second foray into making fried chicken.

I can hardly believe it myself, but when I made a batch of fried chicken late last year because I was running short on time before dinner and had a whole chicken to cook, it was my first batch of fried chicken, ever. It turned out really well. The chicken was moist, the outer coating was crispy and satisfying. Obviously, it's not the sort of main I want for every meal, but once every few months can't be too bad, right? Right?

Well, I've been sick for the last several days; sick, with 6 chicken thighs thawing in the refrigerator. So — with time running out on what to make before the chicken spoiled and little interest in an elaborate and time-consuming preparation — I made another batch of fried chicken last night.

I've been using vegan buttermilk as a wash. Once that's done, I've been dredging in a mixture of flour, salt, pepper, paprika and panko. I didn't quite get the salt content as high as it ought to have been; the chicken was a little bland. Also, I've discovered that adding panko to the breading just results in scorched panko. So I'll be omitting that step for tonight's batch.

Still, with a little tweaking, I think I've got a quick and easy recipe for a lot of chicken.

Definitely one of my more successful yeast breads

Happy New Year! At certain times of year, I find myself draw to season-specific recipes. This is seems to be a time of year that I equate with baking bread.

I found last year's iteration of this bread recipe was sweeter than I would have preferred, so I modified things this time and found the results were spectacular!

I used a half and half blend of unbleached all-purpose flour and whole wheat all-purpose flour, 1 ½ tablespoons of sugar, 4 ½ tablespoons of yeast, and all other ingredients in the quantities listed.

I used a dough hook to knead the bread, and didn't bother with a second rise; instead, I proofed the dough in the greased loaf pan which I baked the bread in. Once it had risen, I popped it into our toaster oven, on the convection setting, for about 20 minutes.

The bread turned out really well and not sweet at all. I'll have to try making this again.