Bread Machine - an investment that's worth the dough

When bread machines first came out, people thought that they were the best thing since sliced bread. But now, it's quite common to see at least one or two at the local thrift store for only 8 to 15 bucks, depending on which shop you frequent. If you get a new one, they're anywhere between $50 to over $200, depending on brand, whether it's stainless steel or plastic, size of loaf, etc. This is the kind of thing a frugal person would want to try out by getting a used one first and then deciding if it's really going to be used on a regular basis before spending big bucks on a new one.

In my latest youtube video, I showed the whole process of baking bread, using a bread machine to mix the dough and a toaster oven to bake it. I included a short section on what the bread should look like while it's mixing in the bread machine. If it's too moist, add a little flour at a time until it looks right. If it's too dry, add small amounts of water until it starts rotating properly. This video has been featured on http://largetoasteroven.net/

The machine itself is not a complicated contraption. There's a loaf pan with a paddle that is connected to a peg in the pan, which is placed in the machine. The motor in the machine moves the paddle, which agitates and mixes the dough for set times, depending on which mode you choose. When the dough is mixed, you can either take it out to rise and bake in a regular oven or keep it in the machine, which will bake the bread in the shape of your loaf pan. Personally, I like to use the dough function, take it out and bake it in either a toaster oven or regular oven because my machine's loaf pan creates a vertical loaf, which is just a little weird and awkward to cut. The paddle also makes a hole in the bottom of the baked loaf. Furthermore, the pan is very difficult to wash if you bake the bread in the machine. It's much easier to just wash the bits of raw dough.


The basic recipe is:
1 cup water
1 Tbsp oil
1 tsp salt
1-2 Tbsp sugar/honey
3 cups flour
1-2 tsp yeast


It's important to get flour that has a high gluten content because it will help your dough rise properly. When I started using my bread machine, I made quite a few dense bricks because I was using the regular all-purpose flour from the supermarket. Then, I tried the flour from BMS Paper company and I was finally able to make a nice fluffy loaf. The Pillsbury brand flour works well too. If you want to use whole wheat flour or any other type of flour, start experimenting by replacing only 1/4 cup of the white flour with the non-white flour. Eventually, you'll get a feel for how much of the white flour you can substitute before the bread starts coming out too dense or falling while it bakes. If you can find unbleached white flour, that seems to work better than most other flours.


The main advantage of letting the dough rise and then baking it in a regular loaf pan is that you can let it rise as much as you want. The bread machine's mixing and baking cycles are timed so that the dough only has a certain amount of time to rise before the machine automatically starts baking it. However, there is such a thing as letting it rise too much (see picture below). If this happens, just knead it by folding it a few times and then let it rise again. No big deal.

This is what happens when the dough is allowed to rise too long!

As a poor student, using the bread machine to mix saves time and allows you to do your homework while the machine does all the hard work. The only time you need to get your hands dirty is when you dump the dough into the regular loaf pan. Hopefully you have a toaster oven with a timer so that you can just set it and get back to your books. Baking your own bread also allows you to control what goes into your bread. If you read some ingredient labels, you'll notice that some companies still use high fructose corn syrup, which is just a tasteless sweetener. Why use that when you can use honey or molasses? It's also fun to try adding other flours like hemp flour, coconut flour, or whole wheat flour. When it's baking, it also makes your whole house smell good.

Pike fish in the toaster oven

I was at haymarket last week and found some pike fish in the store where I usually buy tuna and salmon. Here's a video of how I prepared it:

The reason I chose the pike fish steak was because it looked very fresh and I had never tried it before. The tuna looked good too but I had that the previous week. In this video, I marinated it quickly with soy sauce, Frank's hot sauce, and some black pepper. It was simple because I wanted to taste the fish and adding more seasoning would just overpower the delicate flavor of the fish, I assumed. It was the first time I had ever cooked pike. Then, I chopped up some mushrooms, basil leaves, and chili peppers to create a "bed" for the fish on the toaster oven tray.

Cooking process:
I put it in the toaster oven for 8 minutes using the bake function at 350F. Then, I flipped it over and broiled it for another 8 minutes at 350F. However, when I took it out, the fish was still a little raw on the inside. So, I put it back in the toaster oven for 5 more minutes on the broil function. After that, the fish was perfectly done. So, the total cooking time was 21 minutes. Perhaps 10 to 11 minutes on each side would be the formula for cooking this fish.

How did it taste?
This fish is a flaky white fish and has a delicate flavor. The soy sauce enhances the flavor a bit. It's very tender when cooked like this and the mushrooms were also done nicely. However, I might not prepare the mushrooms in the same way next time. They would probably be better if they were sauteed in a frying pan with the peppers and basil leaves in some olive oil and soy sauce.

If anyone has any other ideas of what to make in the toaster oven, please leave a comment!

The humble toaster oven - broiling tuna steaks

If you go to a restaurant, having fresh tuna is often expensive and looks like it takes some skill to prepare. At home, if you have a toaster oven, it's possible to make a delicious tuna steak without much effort. The tuna steaks at the supermarket are quite expensive so if possible, check out the store below the cheese/deli store at Haymarket on Friday or Saturday to see if they have any tuna available. They usually sell it for about $4/lb, which is significantly less than the supermarket price.

Here is a video of the whole process:

Even though my "secret sauce" is Frank's hot sauce, soy sauce, cumin, and black pepper, you can always use whatever type of sauce you like to marinate the tuna. The advantage of using the toaster oven instead of a frying pan is that you can set the timer and go away while it's cooking. You can also control the type of "crust" you want by varying the temperature of the toaster oven. I set it at 350 F and that resulted in a very soft crust. If you would like a firmer outside part, you need to turn the temperature up and reduce the cooking time.

I also put basil leaves under the steak to add some extra flavor. The leaves needed to be under the tuna because they would have burned on top of the steak. Another way to use herbs is to add them after you finish cooking.

Roasting your own coffee - part 3

After I got a Poppery II from the Goodwill store, I tried roasting a batch of Sumatra beans. Initially, I thought it would be very similar to the Popcorn Pumper because the two machines looked similar on the inside. However, it was a little more difficult to determine the right amount of beans to use at first because the lower wattage of the Poppery II meant that the beans would spin slower in there (than in the Pumper). So, I ended up having to finish off the first couple of batches of beans in the toaster oven. Unlike the previous experience of using the toaster oven, this time I used my GE convection toaster oven. The results were much better because the heat was evenly distributed this time. You can see in the picture below that the beans were a uniform color. If you compare this to the results from the previous post on coffee roasting results, it's obvious that the convection oven helped to create a more even roast.

Sumatra light roast, finished off in the GE convection toaster oven

Previous uneven roast finished off in the Black & Decker toaster oven

The Light Roast is actually more flavorful!

I prepared the coffee using my espresso machine and the crema was very thick. That was already a good sign. The surprise was that this light roast actually has more flavor than the darker roasts that I had been drinking since I figured out how to create dark roasts in the Popcorn Pumper. I was able to taste more of the bean and taste the "hint of fruit" that was mentioned on Sweet Maria's site. There was also a little more earthiness in the lighter roast. With darker roasts, the smokiness often overpowers the subtle flavors of the coffee bean. While I like the smokiness sometimes, I figure I might as well taste the coffee bean too if I'm going to pay a little more for the "better" beans. Otherwise, I might as well buy the cheap beans to do dark roasts because most dark coffees taste very similar. If you plan on drinking only dark roasts and want cheap beans, go for the "Poor Man's Blend" on Coffee Bean Direct (5 lbs of green coffee beans for only $23).

To combine the smokiness with the flavor of the bean, try blending the light and dark beans. This might give you the best of both worlds.

In the end, this was a very happy accident. It was a good thing that I wasn't able to create a dark roast with the Poppery II because I can now enjoy Sumatra coffee more and taste all the flavors that are hidden in that bean.

In the next coffee roasting post, I will do a comparison of the Popcorn Pumper and the Poppery II.

The humble toaster oven (continued) - making pizza

In the last post on the humble toaster oven, I made bread. In this post, I'm going to show you how easy it is to make pizza in whatever size toaster oven you have. If you have a small toaster oven, you can make a small round pizza or medium rectangular pizza. It doesn't matter if you don't have a pizza pan because you can just make one out of some aluminum foil.

The toaster oven I used to make pizza was the GE convection toaster oven that I got from the Goodwill. The pan that I used barely fit in there so I would probably use a slightly smaller pan or a rectangular pan the next time. To make this pizza a little healthier, I used a bean and tomato sauce puree instead of a regular tomato sauce. The advantages of doing this was that I could use up my leftover red beans, get some extra protein in my pizza without adding meat, and the bean puree was less watery than tomato sauce. If you've ever made homemade pizza and ended up with a soggy crust, it was probably because you put too much tomato sauce on it. The bean tomato puree had just enough moisture in it to moisten my dried mushrooms, which were the main topping on the pizza.

Toppings:
bean tomato puree (use blender to puree cooked beans and tomato sauce)
minced garlic
dried mushrooms
grated swiss cheese
tomato sauce (for the smiley face)
olive oil (so the dough didn't stick to the pan)

Pizza about to get baked

This is what it looks like when it's done.

The dough was from Oggi Gourmet in Harvard Square. Their dough is much better than mine. The bean puree was actually very good on the pizza! Initially, I put it on there just because I was trying to put more beans in my diet and wanted to create a less watery sauce but it also adds another layer of texture to the pizza. I'd put it on pizza again just because it tastes (and feels) good. The dried mushrooms were more flavorful than fresh mushrooms and had a nice earthy flavor. However, I dried those mushrooms in a dehydrator, which means that they might not be as dry as the shitake mushrooms at the Chinese supermarkets. If you want to try adding dried mushrooms, it might be a good idea to soak them for at least 15 minutes before putting them on the pizza.

Here's a video showing the baking process:

The humble toaster oven

The humble toaster oven, which is smaller than a regular oven, can do almost everything the regular oven does and in smaller batches. Because of its smaller size, the toaster oven is also good for saving on your electricity bill. In the summer time, your kitchen will stay cooler if you don't fire up the regular oven. You would be surprised to know what you can make in the toaster oven. I've made ribeye steaks and salmon steaks by using the broil function on my cheap Black and Decker toaster oven. My new acquisition of a GE convection toaster oven from the Goodwill store has enabled me to cook even more things because it's bigger and can fit a pizza pan. As long as you can control whether the heat comes from the top, bottom, or both, you can make a great variety of tasty things in whatever kind of toaster oven you own. Since there is less space in the oven, it takes less time to pre-heat (sometimes no pre-heating is required). The toaster oven is perfect for students because it takes less space, saves time and money, and does most of what a regular oven does.

Oven basics

For those of you who don't know the difference between broiling and baking, it's basically about which heating coils are being turned on. If you want only the top coils to be on, choose the broil function. Toasting is when both the top and bottom coils are on. Baking is usually when the bottom coils are hotter than the top coils. It might vary from brand to brand so check your manual. I used to have a Bella Cucina toaster oven that made things very simple - the dial had only 3 settings (top, bottom, or both). For most toaster ovens:

Baking
When the heat comes mainly from the bottom, your pie crust will get more heat than the top. This is a great thing because your topping would most likely burn if this were not the case. The top coils might be on but the bottom coils will be hotter.

Broiling
This is the setting for a very quick searing of the top of your food. Only the top coils will be on. In case you don't have a mini torch around the house (really, who does?), the broil function is what you can use to make the top crust of a creme brulee.

Toasting (or all coils on!)
This is the fastest setting because both the top and bottom coils are on. This setting is good for toasting your bread or bagels and reheating food. Be careful with this one because you might burn your food if you're not careful about setting the right temperature. To prevent accidental burning, you might want to wrap your food in aluminum foil.

Convection toaster ovens
This is a relatively new thing in the toaster oven world. Convection ovens have a fan that blows the air around while the oven is on so that your food cooks more evenly. If you've ever baked anything that came out uneven, it's because most ovens are not the same temperature in all spots. The fan evens out the temperature in a convection oven.

Recipes
Now that we have the basic ideas of how the toaster oven works, let's make some food! The first thing I'm going to show you is how to bake bread. In subsequent posts, I'll show you more recipes that you might not consider doing with a toaster oven. After a while, you might end up using the shelves in your regular oven as extra storage space because you'll be doing most of your cooking in the toaster oven!

Ok, so let's get back to the bread. Most bread recipes include yeast (1 or 2 tsp), flour (about 3 cups), sugar (about 1/4 cup), salt (1/2 to 1 tsp), and water (about a cup). These are the basic ingredients and you could use the same ingredients and approximate measurements for making 2 balls of pizza dough. If you eat a lot of bread, go get a bread machine from the Goodwill for about $8 and use the mixing function to mix your dough. That will save you a lot of time and energy. Then, put the dough in a bread pan (or any pan) to let it rise. When it's big enough, set the toaster oven to the bake function at about 325-350F for 30 minutes and go away. When the timer dings, check the bread by tapping it. If it sounds hollow, you're done. If it's not done, bake it for another 10 to 15 minutes. When it's done, let it rest for about 20 to 30 minutes before cutting into it. Here's a video of my "new" GE toaster oven from the Goodwill store:

This video has been featured on other websites such as Large Toaster Oven and Bravetti Toaster Oven.