Our KitchenAid 600 Professional 6-Quart Mixer

I'll admit the picture isn't that great. I was making bread the other day and thought "I've never really explained how important this machine is in our lives!" The sun was so bright but you can get the idea.This is a KitchenAid 600 Professional 6-quart stand mixer. It's actually our second and I'll explain that part later.

When we started The Wright Taste in 2007, I borrowed two KitchenAid stand mixers - one from Mom and one from my friend Heather. Each had a 4-quart bowl and I could make a standard batch of bread (two loaves) in each one. We had no idea how popular that bread would become and soon I was making 8 to 10 dozen loaves in one day. Those mixers were on from the crack of dawn until the middle of the night.

One day, Mom showed up and told Harry he needed to go out to her car. She decided we needed a bigger, more powerful mixer so nothing would happen to Heather's. So, Mom's investment in The Wright Taste was a KitchenAid 600.

Suddenly, I could mix FOUR loaves of bread at once. I can't count how many loaves of bread, dozens of garlic & cheese rolls and cinnamon rolls our mixer has made. The other night, we realized that we've had this mixer since around October of 2007. While for a normal kitchen, it's still an infant, our KitchenAid 600 has done the work of at least a hundred home kitchens in that amount of time.

In almost 4 1/2 years, Harry has given it the occasional tune-up (it's out of warranty now) and in 2010, we needed to replace some funky rotor thing that makes the attachments go around. It's due for another tune-up in which Harry takes it apart and cleans all the insides and with a little as we use it now compared to the way we used it then, it will probably last the rest of our lives.

We have practically every attachment available, if not all. We've ground meat, we've used it to make tomato juice and we've made pasta with the extruder.

About KitchenAid's warranty: I broke my first 600. I followed the instructions as to how much whole grain flour it recommended but my Multi-grain bread was too stiff. The KitchenAid started clanking something horrible and I'd only had it a few months. I called the toll-free number for service, hoping to have it repaired.

The rep asked me to turn the mixer on and he immediately heard the awful noise. No problem - we'll send you a new one right away. I had a brand-new in-the-box KitchenAid 600 delivered to my door in 2 days. They included a shipping label for the broken machine and FedEx came back the next day to pick it up. That's why we will continue to buy KitchenAid products that fit our needs - the service and I have proof of how much abuse one of their stand mixers will take.

Is there a tool in your kitchen that you can't live without? Feel free to leave a comment or a link to a post - I'd love to hear about it!

Why my bread didn't rise...

You might remember that I talked about my recent bread failure the other day. As planned, I set out to prove my hypothesis via the scientific method as to what I believed went wrong and why the bread didn't rise.

I was wrong.

Not that I think I was wrong with regards to my hypothesis. But, things kind of turned out differently so I will continue more testing to prove my thought. But, my initial reasoning was not the cause of the Muffuletta bread's failure to launch. And that leads me to a simple Thursday tip:

Always proof your yeast!

I honestly didn't think the yeast would have died in the cupboard. I bought this pound in early June, right before we made the decision to close The Wright Taste. As I always did in the past, I opened the vacuum sealed package and placed it in a container and kept it in the cupboard.

Was it the loss of its hermetically-sealed environment that led the yeast to an early death? I will say that this is the longest time period I've taken to use a pound of yeast in years.

For my experiment, I set up three bowls. In one, I measured a teaspoon of the "old" yeast (which was almost empty, anyway) along with one teaspoon of sugar and one-half cup of 110-ish degree water. In the other two (because I didn't have enough of the old yeast), I set out to prove my hypothesis from Tuesday with a freshly opened bag of yeast, set to expire in November of this year.

Within 5 minutes, the two experimental bowls were going crazy - foamy, happy, that rich yeasty smell you yearn for when you are baking. I quickly gathered the rest of the ingredients and put my Kitchen-Aid to work.

After 10 minutes, the old yeast had not yet begun to bubble. There was absolutely no reaction at all and I can only conclude it was dead.

If you bake bread regularly, it is so much less expensive to buy it in one-pound or even two-pound bags. Save yourself some aggravation - proof the yeast every single time you bake. I pay $2.99 for a one-pound bag of rapid-rise yeast at GFS Marketplace. I can't even buy three 3-strips for that price that will only yield 6-8 loaves of bread at the most. Even if I have to throw away one-third or one-fourth of my original pound of yeast, I'm far ahead on price.

Proof. Your. Yeast.

It didn't rise...

School work and trying to cram as much Harry time in as possible this weekend led to a delay in his Muffuletta. Last night, almost immediately after he got home from work, I started to make the Muffuletta bread. I started with my usual hoagie recipe from Bread Day and went about my normal thing.

I cut the recipe in half because I didn't want to deal with making hoagie rolls or sandwich buns and I've done it before. I still had close to a pound of dough after I portioned out the 20 ounces for the Muffuletta loaf and just rolled it into a long, rustic loaf.

Four hours later, after an emergency change of dinner plans, the bread still hadn't increased in volume and I gave up and went to bed.

I think I've figured out the problem and I'll use the scientific method to prove my hypothesis this afternoon when I try again. Funny enough, I'm positive it wasn't one of the simple problems I wrote about back in the AC days. In fact, I think I'll need to revise that article.

I just wanted to post to leave it out there: no matter how many times we do something right, sometimes it can go wrong. I've baked thousands of loaves of bread and I've had two failures in less than two months - the dinner rolls for Thanksgiving dinner didn't rise, either.

Sour Cream Zucchini Bread: Most Requested Recipe from The Wright Taste

This is the one. I don't know what it is about this zucchini bread but I can't seem to make enough of it no matter how many gardens Dad raids for zucchini. It's moist, it has a touch of cinnamon and...nothing else fancy.

When we're baking for farmers markets, I have to move as quickly as possible. I know there's a school of thought that you should always sift together the dry ingredients but honestly? We go through flour so quickly that I don't get any lumps. I add the dry ingredients in a particular way that seems to evenly disburse the leavening, giving the dense bread a bit of lightness.

Public Service Announcement regarding sour cream: Have you ever read the label on your sour cream? With the exception of one major brand - Daisy - most of the commercial sour cream you buy in the stores contains gelatin. Why? What's so hard about sour cream? I'll admit to not realizing it until a few years ago. When we switched our supply shopping to Costco, the only brand they offered was Daisy. I realized I would have to change the labels for the products that used it and found it refreshing. Suddenly, I only had three words to type rather than 15 - (cultured cream (MILK)).

Remove a few more chemicals from your life by looking for the word "Natural" on your sour cream. Kroger's Natural Sour Cream is the same price as the others.

3 large eggs
1/2 cup canola oil
1/2 cup sour cream
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract

3 cups all purpose flour
2 cups granulated sugar
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
2 cups shredded zucchini, drained
1 cup chopped walnuts

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees (Fahrenheit). Grease and flour or spray 2 9 x 5 inch bread pans.

In a large mixing bowl, combine eggs, oil, sour cream and vanilla. Beat on medium until well-combined. It will smell VERY good! Turn off the mixer.

Add one cup of flour, the sugar, baking soda, baking powder, salt, and cinnamon. Stir at low speed (to keep flour from flying all over the kitchen) just until blended. Add the other two cups of flour and again, on low speed, mix just until blended.

Fold in the zucchini and walnuts, being careful not to over-mix.

Divide the batter between the two prepared pans and bake at 350 for 45-50 minutes. You need to use a cake tester for this bread - when the tester is clean, the bread is done.

Let the zucchini bread cool in the pans on racks for 10-15 minutes, then turn out of the pans. If you can stand it, let it cool at least another 10-15 minutes before slicing into it and smothering it with butter.

After the bread is completely cooled (and if you have any left!), store at room temperature in a sealed zip bag. Or, if you've invested in the right size containers, use those. The zucchini bread also freezes very well for at least one month.

Bread Day: Hoagie Rolls and Sandwich Buns

After trying this a few times, I'm positive I've finally gotten the hang of it. Sandwich buns have eluded me - too fluffy, too heavy. A bit of playing around and a memory of my torturous night in the Kroger bakery finally put it all together in my own kitchen.

Steam. No, I don't have one of those fancy-schmancy steamers in my oven. But, a spray bottle filled with cool water gives these hoagie rolls and sandwich buns just the right chewiness in the crust. As soon as I put the rolls and buns in the oven, I sprayed them liberally and quickly closed the door. This built up enough steam to get the right texture.

Only six ingredients and, for the two of us, more than enough bread for a week. A larger family might not have the same issues but I had to freeze some of it.

Make sure you use your digital thermometer to make sure the water is the right temperature. Too hot, the yeast will die an agonizing death. Too cold, it will never make it out of the starting gate.

When you see the phrase "proof the yeast" in a recipe, this is what it looks like when the yeast is ready.

 Yes, this picture is kind of dizzy, but one of the silly little things I didn't understand when I first started baking bread in the 80s was how "clean" the bowl should actually be. It comes with time, the same as learning the feel of the dough in your hands when it's been kneaded enough.

Another bread term "until the dough cleans the sides of the bowl". It's not going to be spotless.

 This is a 2-rise method using instant yeast. Yeah, I'm a rebel that way. After the first rise, in a large bowl, divide your dough. We weighed the different pieces. The hoagie rolls are four ounces and the sandwich buns 2.5 ounces. Shape the rolls into a log, slash the top and place on a sprayed baking pan.

Six hoagie rolls after they've risen. I slashed them before rising to get them into the "groove".

 I made sure to flatten the buns before they rose, then gently pushed down a bit with the flat of my hand after the second rise. They are still going to "pop" in the oven but this way they weren't so tall.

Eight sandwich buns. Harry likes big buns. Seriously - have you seen my hips?

"Amish Bread" was a 25-year quest. I finally got it Wright enough that Mom loves it!

 Each sandwich bread loaf starts with 20 ounces of dough. Use the large bread pans. Below, you see the Muffuletta bread. We've had two problems in the past - too thick of a loaf and a crust a bit too "crusty" for our tastes. So, Harry's idea was to put the dough on a piece of parchment to rise and cover it with a sprayed 10-inch cake pan. The result: It rose perfectly, we left the pan on for the first 10 minutes of baking to keep from getting too much pop. When I removed the pan, I sprayed the loaf with some water.

The Muffuletta bread is crispy on the bottom with a nice solid crust that didn't get soggy from the olive salad but not too much bread OR hard crust.

Beautiful, aren't they? In the back is the Muffuletta Bread

 Golden brown buns with enough interior body to stand up to anything you fill them with!

Chewy crust, firm texture that won't fall apart under juicy cheeseburgers, Phillies, or Meatball Subs!

All of these beautiful pieces of bread art came from two batches of dough - the one below made the buns & Hoagie rolls plus I used my standby white bread recipe for The Wright Taste to make the bread and Muffulatta. While the bread was rising both times, I was making a monstrous batch of homemade meatballs!

No - seriously! Less than 30 minutes "hands-on" time.

I use a Kitchen-Aid Pro 600 - when you bake as much bread in the summer as we do, I need a big mixer. The instructions are easy to adapt to a smaller mixer, or a hand mixer or a spoon. Just make sure to knead the bread properly no matter what instrument you use.

Multi-Purpose Sandwich Recipe:
1.5 tablespoons instant yeast
3 cups warm water (110-155 degrees)
2 tablespoons sugar, divided
1/4 cup canola oil
1 tablespoon Kosher salt
8-9 cups bread flour

1) In the bowl of your mixer, place the yeast and 1/2 cup of the warm water along with one tablespoon of sugar. Allow to sit still for about 5 minutes until the top is foamy.

2) Add the rest of the water and sugar plus the salt and oil and about 4 cups of flour. Mix on low with the dough hook until the flour is incorporated.

3) Increase the speed to medium-low (I go to two) and gradually add enough flour until the dough starts to clean the side of the bowl. Continue to knead at the same speed for 5-6 minutes. Harry read yesterday that Alton Brown says 15 minutes. I'm working on my patience.

4) Lightly sprinkle your surface with flour - I mean just a couple of tablespoons. Give the dough a few turns of manual kneading and it should have the right "feel". Not too dry and not soppy-sticky - maybe a little tacky. Speaking of tacky, I always give my dough a smack kind of like football players slapping each other on the butt. Just for luck.

5) Place the dough in a large bowl with just a teaspoon of oil in the bottom. Turn the dough ball all around to coat it. Cover with a clean towel and let rise for about 45-60 minutes until it's double in size.

6) After the dough has risen, punch it down. That's right - make a fist and push it down and squish all the gasses out that built up over the last hour. Now it's time to shape the buns and Hoagie rolls.

7) I use a scale to measure all of my dough and even have a fancy-schmancy dough blade that I use to cut with. Divide the dough in half.

8) With one half of the dough, cut it into six equal pieces. Shape each into a log, keeping it on the long and thin side. Place the logs on a sprayed baking sheet. With a sharp knife, cut a diagonal slash across each log. Cover with a clean towel and let rise until doubled, about 30-40 minutes.

9) With the other half of the dough, divide it into eight equal pieces. Shape each roll into a kind of flat disc - something like a donut without a hole - but not too flat. Place them on a sprayed baking sheet, cover with a clean towel and they will rise to double in 30-40 minutes. Using the flat of your hand, gently press down on the buns so they don't rise too high to eat.

10) Bake the rolls and buns in a preheated 350 degree oven for about 18-20 minutes, until golden brown. To give the rolls a chewy crust, spray them with cool water as soon as you slide the pans into the oven.

11) Allow the buns to cool completely before sentencing them to a storage container. These freeze well for at least three weeks. That's all I know because that's how long I kept ours in the freezer before using them.

Another pumpkin shortage? Not really!

A lot of people might remember last year's shortage of canned pumpkin in the stores - the entire 2009 Libby's harvest was processed, delivered, stocked and sold by Thanksgiving. Heavy rains in Illinois prevented the tractors from getting in and out of the fields and the pumpkin disappeared from store shelves faster than you can bake a pumpkin pie.

We always process real pumpkin - you know, those big orange things you cut funny shapes into every Halloween and stick a candle inside? My frozen supply ran out early during this year's farmer's market season and I was a little worried. No fears - I've been buying #10 cans of pure pumpkin puree at GFS Marketplace since July. In fact, I've never seen the shelves empty until my friend and fellow vendor Denise mentioned the store we both buy supplies at was out last week.

Part of this is because of memories of last year's shortage. People are panicking and buying more than what they normally would "just in case". Libby's has assured everyone the pumpkin harvest is fine this year, but it takes a little time to process those orange beauties and get them into the stores. E-bay sellers are scoring should-be-illegal prices. I'll admit to feeling more than a little bit of glee at seeing the price on a listing I was watching for research drop by over $20 since Libby's made their announcement - especially because the seller stated "They are already predicting a pumpkin shortage" in the listing.

So...I did rant a little bit:

The Great Pumpkin Shortage of 2010?

On to how to...

It really doesn't take any special skill to process your own pumpkins at home to use to baking anything pumpkin - pumpkin bread, pumpkin rolls, pumpkin pies. Canned pumpkin IS one of the few products out there that really is nothing but - no fillers, preservatives, additives, just pure pumpkin. But, with some time you can save a lot of money by buying pumpkins at the farmers market and making your own frozen pumpkin puree.

How to Make & Freeze Homemade Pumpkin Puree

Plenty of pumpkin in 2010 - Photo courtesy www.sxc.hu/dbgeorge

Yes you CAN make homemade bread!

For years, I battled bread dough. I could never get it to rise properly and it made me crazy. I would put the yeast away, refusing to attempt something I would fail at. Then, one night it just clicked. I don't know if it was just finally "my time" or I found the proper descriptions over at The Fresh Loaf but I finally got a beautiful loaf of artisan-style bread.

This is the base recipe I use to start all of The Wright Taste's crusty artisan-style breads. I change a few ingredients around when I want a different flavor.

Play with it - see what kind of success YOU can have!

Bread Making 101 - Easy Artisan Bread

Good luck!