Category Archives: Health

Homemade Soft Pretzels Today

Health, Kitchen,

DSC01129  Our first efforts at soft pretzels.

DSC01131 Two of the nicer ones.

Our unbromated flour, bread machine dough soft pretzels came out well enough for a first trial.  We shaped the dough made with the dough setting.  They rose nicely as they baked, so we can see that to get a real pretzel form, we have to leave a lot of space between the pretzel loops.

This only used 1 1/2 teaspoons of yeast, whereas a packet of yeast contains 2 1/4 teaspoons of yeast, so we could probably increase the amount of all other ingredients by 50%.  That would remain within the machine flour limit of 4 cups of flour.

The pretzels  were very tasty, served with garlic butter, and Parmesan cheese, and were slightly crunchy.

We generally eat at home for weight and health reasons, so these may be healthier than purchased ones.  Besides that, it was a meatless meal for us.

My better half says it is bread!  Give us this day our daily bread, in this case pretzels!

 

 

 

Flu Shots Are Available Through Many Pharmacies, Often No Extra Charge

Health

DSC01020 Coupon that I got with my flu shot.

Definitely I do not want to get sick for the  holidays, and so I got a flu shot.  Since my Primary  Care Physician did not address it when I had my check up the day before yesterday, I got mine quickly and easily at CVS, to where I had to go anyway.  I did have to wait while some paperwork was processed, but overall it went very well,  and I will get a discount on some future purchases.

Unbromated Bread, Recipe #2

Health, Kitchen,

DSC00770  A bread machineDSC00771 The bread pan which make up to a 2 lb loaf of  bread.

This time I mostly  used my bread machine recipe  for Country White  Bread from the  Kitchen Pro Regal Collection Recipe Book.

Add these ingredients (all at room temperature) in order to the bread pan:

  • 9 ounces milk
  • 1 1/2 teaspoon salt
  • 1 large egg
  • 1 1/2 tablespoons butter
  • 4 1/2  cups unbromated bread flour
  • 3 teaspoons sugar
  • 1 packet active dry yeast

Assembly:

Use the recommended setting if you are using a bread machine.  This recipe used the setting #5 for sweet bread, even though it is not sweet, because this setting bakes the bread at a lower temperature, which the writers wanted, because it contains protein in the egg and milk.

This made a firm, fine-grained loaf quite unlike Unbromated Bread Recipe #1.