Thanksgiving Eve

Today is, as Russell desires me to call it “Thanksgiving Eve” since there is a “Christmas Eve” :laugh:

I’m currently making Victoria’s Birthday Cake for tomorrow, a New York Cheesecake. It’s in the oven with less than 40 minutes to go.

I’m seriously thinking about making the Turkey and Stuffing today, but I’m not sure I can. We have some more running to do for Birthday Girl, unfortunately.

In any case, if I can’t do that today, I’ll do it early tomorrow. I’ll be chopping up the celery and onions and nuts and such for the stuffing ahead of time, and the bread too. It’s my signature stuffing: that and apples and raisins and butter, eggs, stock/water. Into the bird it will go. It’s devine!

I have pumpkin pies to make too, and then the other things will be: mashed potatoes, gravy, cauliflower with cheddar cheese sauce, green been casserole, chill the cranberry sauce (I just used the jellied canned variety, I like the smoothness of it: Ocean Spray; a nice accompaniment to the other Turkey Delights) and hmmm. I have to get out my Palm and check out the menu again. Ah, yes, the rolls I’m working on.

I made a French Bread dough yesterday, and saved part of it in the fridge. I’m taking it out on occasion and punching it down, and rolling it out and folding butter into it. By tomorrow hopefully I can affect some sort of croissant-ish rolls.

For the dough it started out as a sponge of “unbleached flour: 4 cups; water to make it a sponge; and 1 Tablespoon of Active Dry Yeast”. Mix that up and cover, allow to sponge for several hours to overnight, or longer. Stir down as desired throughout that time. (Make sure you are using a large bowl!)

When ready to make the dough, just stir 1 Tablespoon of salt, and then also more flour until the dough is formed, using a machine of some type, or by hand, and then knead it in the machine or by hand until elastic, adding in more flour as needed.

Form a round and put it in an olive-oil-oiled bowl to rise, covered

OR

Take the dough and form it into the shapes you want, and let double then bake.

If you let it proof in the bowl you can punch it down as long as you like until ready to make the shapes and baking.

Put it in the fridge and take it out again to slow mature it. The more it sits around rising and being punched down the more French it is and good tasting cultured artisan-y.

Bake it at 400 or 450 (F.) until golden brown. Put a pan of hot water in the oven with it, so that the oven is moist, the way to get crusty artisan breads that is easiest. To do it, put the hot water in a pan, put in oven that is turned on pre-heating. When over hot, put bread in quickly and let it bake for 25 minutes, then start watching it for doneness, as any bread you might. It’ll get a nice crusty thick crust the longer it’s left in. I love it very brown.

So that’s what I’m doing now, messing around with dough for crusty melty rolls with dinner tomorrow, and baking the cheesecake, and wringing through thoughts of what else to cook today or not. 🙂

We have tons of rain, lots the last few days and lots more today. It’s been dreary, but the holiday is keeping me perked up. Usually this kind of weather really punches me down (no sun at all for days and days, just dark and dismal)

Today we had Flash Flood Watch and Tornado Watch, yesterday just Flash Flood Watch. With the stuff today we have Severe Weather of heavy rain expected and gusts up to 60 miles per hour possible, and penny size hail possible too.

We had some big gusts, but not that big. We had no hail. We had tons of rain. We had a river running down the side yard, under the gate to the backyard and forming a small lake that had an outlet beyond it’s vast expanse … water, water, everywhere, no where to go but UP. We are saturated. It’s a good thing though. 🙄