Momma Fry Bread

Today's yummy food sharing I thought I would share a classic that has been a part of my family for YEARS. As long as I can remember growing up for dinner on occasion we would have fry bread. And I am not positive, but I think my Mom also had this growing too, so its been in the family for a while. Then also being a native to Arizona, we also heard people call them "Navajo Tacos," because the Navajos in AZ would make something very similar to these, but much bigger, like a tortilla size. And last but not least, I have also heard of people from Utah call them "Scones" all though I absolutely hate that title, (just a silly pet peeve of mine, nothing against you personally if you like to call them that name), because if you look up the real true honest scone, they are more like a biscuit you eat with jam, don't believe me, google it yourself, or even check out this wikipedia link, and let me rest my case.

Back to the fry bread...

 They are oh so yummy and also very versatile. But the only down side, is yes, they are "fried" thus being called "FRY" bread. So that little disclaimer can make them a little not as healthy as if it was "baked" bread, and I don't know if you are this way, but sometimes fried food gives me heartburn, not fun. But despite all this, they are still very yummy, and I think would be fine on more rare occasions.

One of my all time favorite part about making these is that you can use a regular bread recipe and it will make you yummy fry bread. For many years I used my mom's classic bread recipe, but in recent years or so I have been using a new recipe, which is the one I will share if you would like to use instead of any other bread  recipe you have up your sleeve.

So here it is:

Whole Wheat Bread
(This amount makes about two loafs of bread, one loaf worth is plenty of fry bread to feed my little family of three, so base your making needs off that)
3 cups hot water
1 &half Tbs yeast
1Tbs Salt
1/3 cup oil ( I always like to do half applesauce, half oil)
1/3 cup honey or sugar
1/4 cup Gluten flour
6-7 cups of whole wheat flour

Combine all the ingredients except the flour. Let it set for about 10 mins. Then slowly add the flour till it is well blended in a dough like form. Then knead by hand or in a machine for about 6 mins.

Or I have also used this Pizza dough recipe and it made the pieces of fry bread really extra fluffy and bubbly (Which is my all time favorite, because then you can open it and stuff it with goods, like a pita pocket or something!). So that recipe is here, which I recently found at THIS website. And this recipe is directly pasted from the website.

Basic Pizza Doughyield: 2-12 inch pizzas, approximately 1 lb. of dough
Ingredients:
1 cup warm water
2 1/4 teaspoons active dry yeast
1 tablespoon honey {or sugar}
2 teaspoons salt
2 tablespoons olive or canola oil
3 cups bread flour {give or take 1/2 cup…depending on the heat & humidity}
Directions:
In a large mixing bowl, preferably that of a stand mixer, stir yeast and honey into warm water. Sit for 5-10 minutes or until bubbles form and mixture starts to foam. This tells you that the yeast is alive and kicking. Pour in salt, oil and half the flour and mix. Once that flour is incorporated, start adding flour in bit by bit until you get the pizza dough to the consistency you want: slightly tacky, but when you touch it it doesn’t stick to your hands. Once you reach this stage, turn the mixer on high to knead for 6 minutes. Turn a timer on and walk away! Resist the temptation to stop earlier than 6 minutes! The dough should be smooth and easy to work with. And the bowl should be clean! Lightly grease the bowl & the dough so it doesn’t dry out, cover with plastic wrap and let it rise 1-2 hours. That’s it!

 After you have made your dough, you can let it rise for a little while, or just jump right in to make them (which sometimes I do if I am crunched on time to get dinner going). The next step is to roll out the dough on a lightly greased surface with a rolling pin to about 1/8 inch thick and then cut into strips as big or small as you'd like, I like to make mine about the size above, which is like 2inches by 4 inches or so, but the size doesn't really matter that much. Before or during this part, put your oil in a frying pan and turn it to a medium heat to get it started warming up.

 When the oil is hot, carefully start putting the pieces of dough into the pan. Fry a few minutes on each side till it has a nice golden brown sort of look. I would give you an exact amount of time, but each time I do it, it is different, so you just have to kind of figure out what is best for your and your stove and your dough.

You don't have to, but after they are done I like to let them cool a little on a cooling wrack (with a paper towel underneath to catch the oil drips), to keep it from getting too moist in a bowl, and to also hopefully get some unnecessary excess oil off.

After a few minutes you can load them in a bowl ready to serve.

Now in my recent much lacking of taking better pictures, ideally I would have more pictures to show you how to load up the fry bread and how it looks most yummy to eat, but since I failed I will just explain. For our family these goods taste oh so yummy with a layer of re-fried beans, then diced tomatoes, chopped lettuce, and grated cheese (kind of the same sort of things you'd eat with a regular taco), or you can also add olives, onions, whatever you have on hand or would like to eat that is in that sort of "taco" category. But that is what makes these so great is they can be pretty versatile, so doesn't really matter entirely what you eat them with. Oh and another favorite at our house is to eat them with a little honey or powdered sugar on top. They really are so good!

So that's all I have for today except to announce that we've finally decided the lovely prizes for the 100th Venture giveaway, April will be making a lovely adorable Apron, and I will give $10 worth of Bare books to the winner to pick anything they'd like from this wonderful Bare book website. The giveaway will start Monday,  March 19th, and I will have a new separate tab at the top of the page that you can go to for the details on it. So don't hesitate to join in on the fun!

Until next time!

Homemade Bread

Hello hello- on this lovely Money Saving Monday(sorry for being a day late!)! Today my lovely topic is bread- the homemade kind.

Growing up my mother would make bread on occasion (and from what I've heard from my older siblings she made it more frequently when they were little, but over time she made it less and less), and I love homemade bread! I was the culprit that would sneak in the kitchen after a freshly baked loaf was cooling on the counter, dig a hole in the back or the bottom of the loaf and dig out as much as yummy goods from the insides as I could, while still allowing it to look like a normal fresh loaf...until someone would cut into it (maybe that's why my mom stopped making it so much, cuz she was sick of hollow loafs?).

The kneading, the aroma of the kitchen during and after of the lovely bread baking smell....mmmmm- all oh so good!

When I got on my own I started making my own personal bread, I figured it was cheaper than buying bread, so every Sunday evening or so I would make a new loaf to last me the week. Well this little habit has carried over into my married and now mommy life and I love it more and more. When I started making it in my single days I would just make regular white bread, but as the years have progressed of making it more I have made lots of different experiments to get the kind of bread that I really love today.

 About a year or so ago our church put on a self reliance fair and there was a lady that showed how to make whole wheat bread- it was so yummy I wanted to eat everything that came out of the oven that day! Luckily she handed out recipes for everyone and this is the recipe that I have been using now (with some of my own adjustments to fit our own needs). She grinds all her flour with an electric grinder- so it was a lot easier for her to do the whole thing that way, but since our grinder is a hand one- I kinda needed to make some adjustments.

 See the lovely grain mill we got for Christmas!? (ignore the big awkwardness of me being super huge and preggo :)

 After my first rounds of grinding wheat ( I was hoping it would help me get into labor, oh well :)

 My first 100% whole wheat loaves all from flour that I ground up....phew...it was the work out!

 But it was oh so yummy!!

Sorry for the random thoughts and now to get to the whole point of this post. Here is the recipe that the lady gave everyone, and then with blue words I will insert things that I have changed to fit our own family needs. As much as I would love to make it just the way the lady suggested, it would be super hard to fit in grinding all the flour required, so I do about half wheat (home ground, but doesn't have to be, I am sure store bought whole wheat flour works great too) and half white flour with about a cup and half of wheat bran to help compensate and make it still more 100% wheat like.

Whole Wheat Bread

(this recipe makes 4 loaves, one of the loaves can be used for pizza, for fry bread, for rolls- for whatever, or it also freezes well for future loaves)

6 cups hot tap water

3 table spoons yeast

2 tablespoons salt

2/3 cup oil (we do half oil, half applesauce to make it a little healthier)

2/3 raw honey (we use regular sugar since honey can be pretty pricey)

1/2 cup gluten flour (because we do half with white flour, we don't use this part)

13-15 cups of whole wheat flour (like a mentioned earlier, we do half wheat, half white, and we use about 13cups total)

(Also, like mentioned earlier- we add about 1 and half cup of wheat bran)

For addition nutrition, we add lintel or black bean flour that we ground up with the above grinder, we added about a half cup of each

Combine all the ingredients except for the flour. Stir well for about 2 mins or till blended well. Then continue stirring and adding flour slowly till it is more firm and dough like and then knead the dough for about 5 min. Let sit for about 10 minutes. Pour dough onto a oiled counter or dough mat. Cut into 4 equal pieces and shape into loaves and placed into greased loaf pans (or you can use each loaf for the different things I listed earlier). Put into a preheated 150 oven and let rise until double in bulk (about 20 min). Increase the oven temp to 350 and bake for an additional 30-40 mins or until golden brown on top and bottom of loaf. Remove bread from the pan and cool on a rack. Slice when cooled. Freezes well in an old bread bag.

And I also did some recent experiments this last week with trying to make it more nutritious. I discovered with this grinder I can grind just about any grain and I can grind rice, beans, and lentils (thanks for the brilliant idea Maria!). So for this weeks loaves I added a half a cup of black bean flour and lintel flour to give it some extra nutritiousness (yeah for lots of fiber and protein!!), and I must say, it now has hit its amazing yummy taste limit for me!! Oh so good- oh so healthy and even better- oh so saving us some good mula!

 In my begining experiements of it, I just put them in baggies as seem above

 This little guy will be a wonderful friend throughout the years!! (oh P.S. if you are curious about where we got the grinder, we bought it at a local food storage store, but their main supplies come from Basic Living. If I remember right, this grinder was about $50, and we will defineatly get its use out of it!! :)

Here is the end product from just this last week with the black beans and lintels. I couldn't taste them personally, but overall it made it taste oh so yummy! Another thing I love about this recipe is it also works really great as pizza dough, thus making the pizza a little more healith too!

Yeah for yummy homemade goodness! Thanks for stopping by and I hope you have a wonderful rest of the day!

Until next time!....