good morning friends!! it's so cold that I seen just seen a flock of geese flying south with fur parkas on!!!!! now that's pretty cold. how cold is it? let me just tell you, IT'S COLD and I quit!!!!! I'm not doing winter any more. from this moment on, it's beautiful SPRING in my mind. hahahaha yeah right, let's see how that works. we haven't had mail delivery or amazon delivery and I'm missing my "stuff". hahaha hey, I want everyone to be safe and sound, so that was just a joke. I love my mail carrier lady and would never want her to put her life in danger or the delivery drivers for amazon, fedex or ups. with weather like this, they need to be home with their family.
so, how cold was it this morning at 7:15am, you ask? check this out!!
just so you know, that is -8 or -9 degrees and that is BELOW -0-!! yeah,, that's pretty cold for the south, don't you agree?
so you can see why I'm over it!! I'm just over it. and we're supposed to have another night like this, I think. I just don't even want to look at the weather app any more. where we live, it's very close to bottom land and it gets much colder then the anticipated temps by the weather forecasters, so we can't even start to take what they say for granted. they was saying it would be 4 or 5 degrees above 0, but no, not hardly. not for us. I would love to know what the "feels like" temp is.
I may have even lost my fig tree last night. I hope I didn't. I'm hoping that all my garlic survives these temps too. I don't know, time will tell. like I said, I'm over it, I'm moving on to spring. hahaha
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so while it was cold yesterday, we still got outside for a minute. the snow was still fluffy and hubby cleaned a good path on the deck and down the steps and then the sidewalk to the garage. if the sun ever does decide to shine, we want it to do some good. it was pretty easy shoveling since it was a light snow. we had about 6 inches or more before it started settling down. and it was still about 6 or 7 inches on the steps and deck.
while he was doing that, I had to get some food from the freezer in the garage, so I done that and took a picture or two before I got "me" cold self back inside. hahaha
wave and say "HI"! he did!!
I walked around for a minute or two and took a couple of pictures. this was just some tiny bird feathers laying in the snow. they were close to the steps that are at the front of my garden shed and I like the contrast in the picture.
this was another little feather that was just laying randomly on the snow. there was no tracks in the snow at all, other than mine. I figure a hawk was hunting and got a small bird and that's where the feathers came from. if that's the case, it's the circle of life and death that takes place every day. I was just happy to see the feathers such as they were.
well, that's what happened outside.
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so yesterday, I made a "new for us" bread. my really good friend in arizona, Sylvia, had made some brioche bread and sent me the picture of it and I drooled and slobbered over it all day. hahaha we both have bread machines and are always sharing back and forth, any new breads that we try. she had gotten some bread machine mixes and have been making them and sharing the pics with me. I bake a lot of bread and have always wanted to make some brioche, but to be honest, most recipes call for too many eggs. I just can't put that many of my eggs in bread. (YES, I'm a tightwad when it comes to my eggs!!! hahahaha) so, she had made some brioche bread and sent me a pic of it and it was beautiful!!!! it really was, I wanted a bite of it sooooo bad.
anyway, I got to looking around in my saved files on my computer and I found several recipes from years ago. I started examining each recipe and found one that only used one egg, YEAH!!!!! I can do this one!!! hahaha and yes, I really was that excited, maybe even just a little bit more.
so I got all my ingredients together and put them in my machine and really watched the process. one thing I thought I had heard and remembered is that it's a sticky dough. it is!!!! I'm not sharing the recipe at this time, but I will in the future. the recipe did call for 1/3 cup of white whole wheat. I didn't have white, but I had regular whole wheat flour and I used that. and I do love the color that regular whole wheat adds to bread.
so I got the sticky dough from the bread pan and onto my silicone bread mat which had a LOT of flour on it. I weighed the whole doughball in grams and divided that by 4 and ended up with doughballs weighing about 235 to 240 grams each. my bread pans are 2 1/5 by 6 inches. in this picture, I had just gotten the pans filled with the dough and I put them in my big oven with the light on to aid in rising. you can see all 4 loaves, fresh in the pans. so cute. I love these mini loaf pans. they are probably 25 years old or more. note to self, next time, weigh and divide into 5 sections if I'm making loaves. that will help the loaves to be smaller and won't bust the lid from my counter top oven. hahaha
so this is what they looked like when I started baking them. they had risen wonderfully and you can see some of the whole wheat speckling the dough. this was some of the softest dough I've ever worked with and made.
ok, this is the two loaves that we just looked at, now baked. as you can see the, the tops got a little dark, because they kept rising in the oven. note to self, next time, take the top rack out of the counter top oven. giving it more room to rise will be a big plus and they won't get stuck in the oven. hahahaha
this is all 4 of the loaves baked and cooling. they are the perfect size for us. I'll pop most of these in the freezer just to keep on hand. and it will keep them really moist too.
drum roll please, this is what they looked like when they had cooled enough that I could cut into one. it is absolutely spectcular. mind you, my opinion is just based on this batch of bread alone. I've never made it before and I don't remember ever having it before. I did know that it was supposed to be a wonderful bread. this is.
look at that slice of bread. it's great. I couldn't have asked for any better bread.
I actually toasted up the 2 slices that I made and it was really good. my husband was really happy with it. so since I make the rolls that I use for his breakfast sandwich every morning, I'll be trying these for him. the recipe is actually for buns, so it will be perfect. it makes 18 buns, so I'll make the regular 12 and then take what's left and make another loaf. but I may try my hand at freezing raw dough in balls and then thaw and use in my silicone bread pans. if I flash freeze the dough balls, I can just put them in freezer zip lock bags and take out a dozen at a time. note to self, remember to try this. hahaha
I made the bread by the recipe only switching out the white whole flour with the regular whole wheat flour. I did add a little flour as it was mixing, just so I would be able to get it out of the pan without scraping it out of the pan.
I put all the ingredients in my bread machine, on the dough setting, as per my bread machine instructions. wet ingredients first and then dry, saving the butter and yeast for last. I cut the butter up into small pieces and once everything was in the bread pan, I put the butter on top of the flour and then poured my yeast in on top of all that. the bread machine gradually works the butter into the dough, so you don't want to melt the butter, you just want it at room temperature.
***and a word of caution here, if and when I do share this recipe, I would NOT put this in a bread machine and walk off from it to let it bake in the machine. if yours rises like mine did, it will definitely rise and spill out of the pan down into the baking chamber and make one doosey of a mess.
this is such a simple recipe and easy. some of the other brioche recipes that I has was so involved that I just didn't want to get into them. but this was an easy recipe and I'll definitely be using this recipe again.
when I make a new recipe, I always take notes of anything I do and what I may want to try the next time. I would suggest everyone do that. just make the notes on the recipe and date it. I do this all the time. it really helps a lot, especially if you're trying a lot of different breads. it's easy to get the recipes mixed up, if you're not keeping notes.
so once I make this recipe another time or two, I'll share it so y'all can try it if you want to.
now you know what I was up to yesterday. hahaha I have no idea what today will find me doing. the temps are supposed to get up to 29 or 30 degrees today. we'll see. they wasn't supposed to get to -8 or -9 degrees last night/this morning, so who knows whats gonna take place. we'll just have to wait and see.
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blessings y'all and stay safe today and keep God first place in all you do. hugs and love, patty
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