June is busting out all over ...and Coffee's up

[Major 2]

High of 85°, currently 74°,  thunder storms expected 

Cornflakes and blueberries as I ponder my day....probably my habitual LGS/toy store visit and grab something for the noon repast.
Its something my late pard and I enjoyed doing.
Quite often we discovered something different consigned, we wanted     

[Silver Creek Slim]

Morning y'all.
Coffee and iced tea are ready.

WI Muster will be postponed due to rain. Hopefully, it is not raining in Sargent.

'Tis 63 and rain. "Humid. Showers and a chance of thunderstorms. Patchy fog. Some thunderstorms may produce heavy rainfall. Highs in the middle 70s. East wind 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 90 percent."

Slim

[Silver Creek Slim]

Still raining. So, we took the SS 7.5" Vaquero .45 Colt out and shot up some BP loads. The smoke really hangs.

Slim

[Delmonico]

Up and getting ready to head to Sargent for supper.

[Major E A Sterner]

Today - Cloudy with a high of 83 °F (28.3 °C). Winds from SSW to S at 11 to 12 mph (17.7 to 19.3 kph).

Tonight - Cloudy. Winds variable at 7 to 12 mph (11.3 to 19.3 kph). The overnight low will be 71 °F (21.7 °C).
Cloudy

    Feels like
    81°
    Humidity
    66%
    Visibility
    10.00 miles
    UV Index
    3 (Moderate)

[Silver Creek Slim]

Still raining.
Gonna watch "Captain America".

Slim

[The Trinity Kid]

Afternoon all.

88 here today. Not too bad, but still supposed to get over 100 next week.

Had anyone heard from Roo recently? I was putzing around on YouTube a minute ago and happened across a comment he had left on a video from a while back.

—TK

[Delmonico]

Afternoon all.

88 here today. Not too bad, but still supposed to get over 100 next week.

Had anyone heard from Roo recently? I was putzing around on YouTube a minute ago and happened across a comment he had left on a video from a while back.

—TK

I see him on FB a lot, he's doing OK.   

[Delmonico]

Still raining.
Gonna watch "Captain America".

Slim

This Captain America?

[Delmonico]

Made it to Sargent and back,  had a good time, right at 400 miles round trip.

[Major 2]

Looking forward to some action photo's from the muster....

Thunderstorms with a high of 87 °

[Silver Creek Slim]

Morning y'all.
Coffee and iced tea are ready.

This Captain America?

No.

'Tis 55 and light mist. "Cloudy. A chance of showers in the morning. Patchy fog in the morning. Highs in the middle 70s. North wind 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 40 percent."

Slim

[pony express]

Arrived back at home from Muster. Had a good time, weather was good, a few showers but not as hot as it sometimes is. Good to see Delmonico again, and meet Rita, missed Slim and Micah, though.

[Silver Creek Slim]

Arrived back at home from Muster. Had a good time, weather was good, a few showers but not as hot as it sometimes is. Good to see Delmonico again, and meet Rita, missed Slim and Micah, though.

Missed seeing everyone. But, the first GAF Division of Wisconsin Muster was held today at the Silver Creek Ranch.
https://www.cascity.com/forumhall/index.php?topic=65697

Slim

[Silver Creek Slim]

Morning y'all.
Coffee and iced tea are ready.

'Tis 73 and overcast. "Mostly cloudy. A slight chance of showers in the morning  then a chance of showers and thunderstorms in the afternoon. Highs around 80. Light and variable wind becoming south 5 to 10 mph in the afternoon. Chance of rain 30 percent."

Slim

[Delmonico]

Hate to say, I just got up but it was getting fairly light when I went to bed, got an eye of round I cooked for samwhiches, wanted some good bread to go with it and invented a Red Neck Artisan bread I named Herbert W Brioche bread, nothing political about it, just similar names do to the herbs, the whole wheat and me finally deciding to find out what is this brioche bread the fast food places are telling you they will shove out at you.


Anyway the draft for the recipe is done, will post it later it is one of my best pieces of work.  Of course I had to let it cool enough to slice and sample.

[Silver Creek Slim]

Looks good.

Slim

[Major 2]

It do...real butter I'm guessing ?

[Delmonico]

It do...real butter I'm guessing ?

Of course.   


Herbert W. Brioche Bread


Heard an ad for some place that serves window food advertising a chicken sandwich on something called Brioche Bread, something I keep hearing about.   Well figuring it's something kinda Yuppie I decided to use Google and find out what it was and if it was something an old long haired redneck could make.   


Well to my surprise it wasn't something using rare and exotic ingredients I had to go to some specialty store to buy, but just a plain old egg and milk based bread shortened with butter, with a fancy French name, dang, I've made that before, nothing new here. 


This was disappointing because I was all ready to try something new and modern so I started searching the kitchen to see what I could find to make something a bit more fancy.   First idea was whole wheat is popular among the in crowd, problem is that the whole wheat flour I had the old kind of red wheat whole wheat flour and not the new improved white whet flour that doesn't look like or taste like traditional whole wheat, but more like white bread.  (Don't ask me, I don't start these trends.)   Well there is the "I was doing it before it was cool" so I decided to add a bit of hipster to my Yuppie bread. 


With that solved I decided to make it an herbal bread and started checking my leaf supply.  Found some thyme, some oregano, some dill weed, some dried onion stuff and a whole new bottle of rosemary, cool, I'll do heavy on the rosemary and use the others to accent it.  That will sound cool in a recipe.


I started by scalding around 2 cups of milk, this kills an enzyme in the milk that interferes with the yeast growth, pasteurizing should take care of it, but not always, so I always scald to be sure.  The milk was put in the big bowl and covered with one of my large bread covers, these are large and colorful, the color because they look good in my camp pictures and big enough to cover a dishpan and tuck under to keep the wind from blowing them off.  The scalded milk is let cool off to a bit over a 100F or about body temp with a good fever.


When cooled enough I get out my jar of yeast and shake out enough on top to just cover the top of the liquid used no matter what type of bread I am making.  This is stirred in with a little white flour a little brown sugar(white sugar ain't cool.) and then covered till it is nice and bubbly.  This activates and excites the yeast, excited yeast works better, this is called proofing.   


When the yeast is going good I added the herbs and the butter and stir it in, this gives the herbs time to rehydrate with out getting soggy and allows the butter to soften a bit more.  I then add about 5 cups of the whole wheat flour and stir it in, this makes a soft dough called a sponge and this is also covered and let to rise while I make supper because the wife and I are hungry.   


After about an hour I check on it and see not only has it risen nicely but I also forgot the egg in my hurry to make supper, leaving me with two choices, one is forget my fancy French named bread or add the egg now.     Since it is still a soft sponge I chose to add my egg and stir it in. 


Going to the refrigerator I grab a carton of eggs and open them,  and find I have just brown eggs in it, sometimes they have blue green ones or white ones or a mix of all three.  This is good because brown eggs are in style today despite the shell color not making the egg inside different than a white one, at one time white eggs were considered better, now for some reason brown is considered better and cost more.   Sadly in the ultimate search for cool they were not "Free Range Organic" but just regular old farm eggs from yard birds since they run around in my brother in laws yard.   But they were free instead of $5 a dozen so I went with cheap. 


I decided to just use the yolks since they are richer and me hoping this compensates for not having the desired free range type.  They were easy to stir in and then I added about 3 cups of white flour because I want real good loft in this loaf, something even my high gluten whole wheat won't do with out help.  This is kneaded well and allowed to rest and rise about an hour, it should double in size.   


I got out a skillet to bake it in because even though I have used cast iron for the almost 60 years I have been cooking, cast iron wasn't cool till recently when it was rediscovered by the in crowd.  This skillet is a 10 inch and I used aerosol olive oil on it to keep the bread from sticking, but I didn't have no fancy main brand, just the cheap store brand.   I probably should have sprinkled the pan with cornmeal but bread won't stick to an oiled skillet that's well seasoned.   Although it don't say it on the front label the olive oil has not even had a naughty thought, that's what the extra stands for.


I also got another of them brown eggs and cracked it into a cup but this time used the whole eggs.  I added a couple tablespoons of water and beat it well and found my food grade paint brush.   I then kneaded the risen dough well and formed a loaf and put it in the skillet and painted the bread with the egg wash while the oven was warming to 375F.   Had I made more dough I would have divided it for more loaves.   I chose 375F so I would have a softer crust and there would also be less chance of the egg wash burning.   


Because of the size of this loaf it took one hour to bake and was then removed from the oven and removed from the skillet and then I had to let is cool before I cut a piece of and covered it with butter, just to see if it was ok.
   


Looking at it I may have failed and have just an ordinary instead of the artisan bread I was trying to make, if you look at the finished product it does not have that cracked and ugly appearance true artisan bread is supposed to have based on the pictures I see as well as no big holes to let stuff drip out.  I will say it's good bread and I have a whole eye of round I cooked up for sandwiches, it should go well.


Since everything also has to have a fancy name anymore I have named this Herbert W Brioche Bread, any resemblance in name to a former President is accidental.   

[Delmonico]

That is going to be part of my teaching how make yeast breads, the proper kneading makes good looking bread with out holes, making crappy bread and calling it artisan makes me think it belongs in a modern art museum hung upside down because nobody knew.