Month: February 2021

Homemade White Bread

The Sunshine Inn Blog2 Comments

Homemade White Bread

  • Servings: 8-10 ( 8, 3 oz or 70 gr slices)
  • Difficulty: Easy
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I must confess that making bread has been a fear of mine. I never seem to make yeast work for me. I’ve made bread in my bread machine, successfully, I might add. Time to step up my game. I went looking for a simple recipe that a child can make. Found one and here it is.

Ingredients

  • 3 cups of all purpose flour (I use unbleached) a little more for your counter
  • 2 tsp of salt
  • 1/4 tsp of instant or rapid-rise yeast
  • 1 cup plus 2 tbsp of warm water (120-130 degrees Fahrenheit or 50-55 Celsius)
  • 1 tbsp white vinegar
  • vegetable oil spray

Directions

  1. In a large bowl, whisk together flour, salt and yeast. Add water and vinegar. Use rubber spatula to stir and press until dough comes together and no dry flour is visible, 2 to 3 minutes.
  2. Cover bowl with plastic wrap and let dough rise until bubbly and doubled in size, at least 8 hours or up to 18 hours.
  3. After rise time, spray an 18×12 inch sheet of parchment paper on counter with vegetable spray. Set aside.
  4. Sprinkle clean counter heavily with extra flour and coat your hands with extra flour. Transfer dough to counter and use your floured hands to knead until smooth about 1 minute. (see kneading instructions below)
  5. On clean counter use your cupped hands to drag dough in small circles to form smooth ball.
  6. Transfer ball to centre of greased parchment sheet. Use parchment to lower dough into Dutch oven (let extra parchment hang over pot edges) Cover pot with lid and let dough rise until doubled in size (1-1/2 to 2 hours).
  7. Adjust oven rack to middle position. When dough is ready, place covered pot in preheated oven at 425 and back for 30 minutes.
  8. Remove lid and back until golden brown, 20 to 25 minutes.
  9. Place on cooling rack to cool.

Nutrition Per Serving

  • Calories 171
  • Fat 0.45 g
  • Sugar 0.1 g
  • Carbohydrates 35.67 g
  • Protein 4.92 g
  • Fibre 1.8 g

Kneading (for those of us who don’t usually knead bread)
– Place heel of your hand in centre of dough ball & press down & away from you.
– Fold dough over.
– Rotate dough and repeat steps 1-2 until dough looks smooth about 1 minute.
– On clean counter, use your cupped hands to drag dough in small circles to form smooth ball.

Trick for yeast
Make sure your water is hot enough but not too hot. Yeast is a living organism. Also got to find out that one of my issues with yeast was that I stored it in the cupboard next to the stove. Guess what, big mistake. I was killing it with the heat. Lessons learned.

After I made this bread, I found out that its even lower in calorie than the bread machine one. The only down side is the waiting 18 hours. I have to admit that this one tastes better, looks better and I walked around like a proud peacock that I got a bread to rise. I sure had fun and made it my own, your turn.

Money Saving Tip – Economical Pork Chops

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Boneless pork chops are great. We love them. Versatile. The other white meat. Low Fat. You can bake them, grill them, pan fry them, the possibilities are endless.

The price of a boneless pork chop is not always affordable. This week, the boneless pork loin was on a sale for $4.14 a kilo or approximately $1.89 a pound. The chops were on sale for almost twice the price. The only difference was that the same roast was cut for you.

All you need is a sharp knife, about 5 minutes of time and be ready to package them.

I have a food saver machine as I’ve lost some food in the past to freezer burn or was surprised to what is in the package. (I did a post recently on shredded coconut pork)

As you see in the picture, my roasts costs 6.88 and 7.07. Totalling 13.95.  We serve 3 to 4 ounce pork chops in our house. This is usually sufficient for most people. I was able to make 24 chops out of the two roasts. This turned out to be $0.58 per chop. Where can you get 4 ounces of any meat for $0.58? I packaged mine 4 per package. I calculated that with the “sale” price on the chops, I saved approximately $7.00. On regular price I saved about $14.00. If serving a large group, or a large family or you just want to save a little money, this is the way to go. You can cut them to the thickness you need, larger if your diet demands more protein due to a very physical job or training. 

Saving money doesn’t have to be hard or complicated. You don’t need insane knife skills for this little hack. Hope you found this little tip helpful.

Coconut Shredded Pork

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Coconut Shredded Pork

  • Servings: 6
  • Difficulty: Easy
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Oops, that is not a package of pork chops. Every four months or so, we thaw out our freezer. We rotate the meat and such and make sure to use the older stuff. In the last few months, I’ve been using a vacuum seal method which helps prevents ice formation in the packages. Well this week, when we did our freezer, I came across an older package that looked like pork chops. Upon thawing, I realized, oops, that’s not pork chops but a chunk of pork. Now what do I do with it? This is what I came up with. Coconut Shredded Pork.

Ingredients

  • 1-1/2 lbs of pork chunk or shoulder
  • 1 cup of light coconut milk
  • 1/2 cup of unsweetened shredded coconut
  • 4 tbsp of blacked cajun sauce (I use Cool Runnings)
  • 2 tbsp of flour

Directions

  1. Cut pork into small pieces.
  2. Place in airtight container with the coconut milk and cajun sauce.
  3. Put in fridge for a minimum of 3 hours.
  4. Place everything in a dutch oven or thick pan. Add shredded coconut and flour and mix well.
  5. Cover with foil.
  6. Place in preheated oven at 275 for 4 hours.
  7. When you remove from heat, shred pork with two forks.

Nutrition Per Serving

  • Calories 280
  • Fat 12.55 g
  • Sugar 3 g
  • Carbohydrates 7.5 g
  • Protein 32.6 g
  • Fibre 1.6 g

You can serve this over pasta, rice, couscous. That is all up to you. The veggies are up to you. I did mine over jasmine rice and canned peas. The choices are limitless. Have fun and make it your own.