I'm bored and tired of being home all the time and earlier today was made aware of this website.

I did a search and didn't find this mentioned before, so here goes.

I was made aware of a very interesting website, it's Open Culture dot com. I'm not yet providing a direct link as I'm looking to make sure it's a legitimate thing as opposed to a scam or spam or rip off site. It seems to have been around since 2006 and an internet search showed no issues with them.

It offers adult learning, entertainment, kids stuff, lots of things. I "think" everything is free, if not the majority of things.

Is anyone familiar with this website and recommends it? In light of that, do your own diligence.


Since we've got this far, I'll provide a link to their FAQ, seems like a great site with so much to offer.

Link

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I don't know anything about that website, but one thing I learned recently which was surprisingly easy. Home baked bread. Came out delicious and was fun to make. Kneading by hand is a bit annoying, but not that bad.

I'd highly recommend this for you if you have kids at home, if I had kids I imagine it would be a great family activity.

^^^^^ Check out No Knead Bread, good and tasty, simple and easy, few ingredients.

quote:

Originally posted by Skins2881:
I don't know anything about that website, but one thing I learned recently which was surprisingly easy. Home baked bread. Came out delicious and was fun to make. Kneading by hand is a bit annoying, but not that bad.

I'd highly recommend this for you if you have kids at home, if I had kids I imagine it would be a great family activity.

If you make "rustic" bread (crusty, chewy bread with big air bubbles inside), you don't have to knead it. The dough is much wetter and instead of kneading, you pretty much just let it sit there and mess with it for a minute a few times.

The best bread cookbook I have ever seen for this type of bread is "Flour, Water, Salt, Yeast."

It's explains EVERYTHING in detail, doesn't assume you know anything about baking, and covers three broad categories, breads you make in one day all at once, bread where you start with part of the ingredients the day before (a "preferment" - more flavor), and sourdough (most flavor, most effort, some people don't like it).

It's a beautiful cookbook but I actually bought it on Kindle (ebook) a couple years ago when I was trying to figure out bread and didn't want to wait on shipping.

Soda bread and beer bread don't have to be kneaded either. They're stupidly simple to make. No yeast or rising involved. They just use flour, baking powder, salt, some kind of sugar (usually either brown sugar or honey), and then either soda water or beer. Mix it into a bowl, pour it into a loaf pan, bake, and eat. The baking powder and carbonation in the soda/beer causes the leavening.

Not the greatest sandwich bread, but it works well as a side dish bread with butter on it alongside dinner, or especially to soak up soup/stew/chili/pasta remnants.

Here's my usual recipe:

3 cups flour
4.5 teaspoons baking powder
0.5 teaspoon salt
0.25 cup loosely packed brown sugar
12 ounces of beer (I usually use a quality German hefeweizen... You could get fancy with flavored beers too, like a pumpkin ale to make the bread slightly pumpkin-y.)

-Preheat oven to 375.
-Spray 9x5 loaf pan with nonstick spray.
-Add flour, brown sugar, baking powder, and salt into mixing bowl.
-Pour in beer and stir with a mixing spoon or spatula until combined. (Don't go overboard with the stirring.)
-Pour batter into loaf pan.
-Bake for 45-55 minutes or until the top is lightly browned and a toothpick inserted in the middle comes out clean.
-Remove from oven. Let sit for a couple minutes. Then remove from loaf pan and place on cooling rack for 15 minutes before serving.

We cheat.....we have a bread machine....it’s awesome!

Next up: bread-maker panic-buying.

Cuisinart with a dough blade, it's Tits, for making homemade breads. I never saw a bread machine that ever made good bread.

Sorry OKCGene. I completely derailed your thread. I am going to start a new bread thread, because I like where this is going, but not anywhere on topic.

quote:

Originally posted by whanson_wi:
Next up: bread-maker panic-buying.

I bought a bread maker and 100 lbs of flour a few weeks ago when the virus was kicking off. I’ve made fresh bread several times already. Good buy.