Stuffed stuff Whole Wheat Rolls with stuffing

Was just practicing some bread making skills this fine Sunday afternoon and thought I would make some of these stuffed rolls, sort of a practice for the Stuffed Stuff Class this Saturday the fifth.  I have been making these little rolls for about twenty years now and am always amazed at how fun they are, and how delicious.  These have two different stuffings, one is caramelized onions, black forest ham and swiss cheese.  The other larger ones are for me and they are onions, jalapenos, thinly sliced cabbage, diced tomatoes, lots of my Roasted Garlic and Italian Spices.  I start with just a regular all whole wheat bread dough and then go from there.  I find that lately I have been making a sponge a couple hours before I actually start the bread and that seems to make a much softer loaf of bread.  So, to that end, here is the recipe.  In a large bowl, place 3 cups warm water.  Add a teaspoon of yeast, a tablespoon Organic Evaporated Cane Juice and 3 cups freshly ground whole hard white wheat.  Mix well and set in an out of the way place.  Let stand at least two hours.  Dump the whole bowl into your mixer along with a 12 ounce bottle of warm beer, I just happened to have some 1554 in the fridge, so took one out and let stand awhile.  Then add a teaspoon sea salt, 1/2 cup olive oil, and enough of the whole wheat flour so that it begins to pull away from the sides of the bowl.  Let knead for 9 minutes and it should look sort of like the picture.

Throw the dough into an oiled bowl and cover it, then let it rise for an hour.  Now, cook the ingredients, certainly you don't need to use the same things I did, I have made these with scrambled eggs, italian sausage, strawberry preserves with almond butter, taco filling, spicy black beans, use your imagination.  Now, take out about an ounce and a half of the dough, and onto the oiled surface of your counter, press it out into a circle.  Pile on some of the filling, then pull the edges over and press together to seal

Stick them on a sheet pan with an inch between them and let them rise until they are doubled in size and touching each other.  Bake in 425 oven until browned.  Take them out and enjoy. 

Artisan Bread Class on Saturday the 8th

Well, waited a while to add this to the blog.  We did have some fun though with this class.  Some very nice people came, we drank some wine, we talked food, and we made a bunch of different breads and i made a nice Chipotle Linguine pasta dish with some chicken breasts that I demonstrated how to cook in a pressure cooker so that they are really tender, really delicious, and really fast.  But don't take my word for it, check out what Julia had to say about the afternoon. http://juliagulialivesinaustin.blogspot.com/ 

Mozzarella Cheese making class

Tuesday the 11the, a fine day indeed.  It was 01,11,11.  A weird day to make cheese.  I have made my own mozzarella back in Arizona on a number of occasions, but for some reason, the stars, the planets, the world around me and life itself conspired to make my foray into cheese making  on this day and at that time, difficult.  First off, getting the milk was a problem.  I bought organic milk from Whole Foods, and the dairy manager assured me, after looking at the label, (a process that I had already done) that this milk was not homogenized.  I still have no idea what happened, but lets just say that the cheese we made, did indeed form curds, but that the melting process that I normally use to melt the cheese to form the balls, did not work at all.  These curds stubbornly refused to melt even when we dunked them in boiling water and we attempted to form the balls, but the curds remained dry and crumbly.  As my technique hasn't altered, my age and memory may have, but I still think that it has something to do with the milk we used.  I will try to get some raw milk this week and make some more before classes on the 22nd.  Anyway, all of the lovely young and luscious ladies that were here still told me they had a good time, we made a mess, got our hands heated up to hot, and then ate some delicious pasta with the rather dry mozzarella balls on top. All in all, with some very nice wines, we had a great time.  The guys did not like washing all the dishes this morning, but hey, that's what they get paid to do.