Crackers and Buns

An odd title, no?  It is, however, what I have been up to this week in the world of eliminating processed foods from our diet.  The first part, the crackers, refers to the homemade cheese crackers that I baked off mid-week for the kids' snacks.  Feast your eyes upon these little beauties:

The original recipe was for goldfish crackers (http://www.cupcakeproject.com/2010/03/homemade-goldfish-crackers.html), but I didn't have a cute little fish cookie cutter, so I just made mine odd squares and rectangle shapes.  For a recipe that was essentially butter, flour, and sharp cheddar cheese, these were pretty delicious and really quite easy to make.  I used my jacked up old food processor (which makes the loudest grinding noise known to man) to cut the butter and cheese into the flour, which created a really silky dough with a very lovely, light orange color.  (Side note: I am angling for a new food processor, but I feel it necessary to break......I mean, to make mine completely non-functional before we sink another couple of hundred dollars into yet another kitchen appliance for my personal use.  The more I use mine for doughs of any kind, the more noise it makes, the more smoke it sometimes exudes and the closer I get to legitimately earning a Kitchenaid with a lower decibel level.)  Anyway, after I made the dough, I chilled it for a day (you can chill it for as little as 20 minutes just to allow the gluten to relax) - mostly because I was being lazy and I didn't feel like rolling and cutting everything out.  (At that point, I still had aspirations to use one of my mini cookie cutters to create cute little hearts or something like that.  I lost the need to make them cute when it came down to actually cutting everything out.)  When I pulled it out of the fridge the next day, I started whacking it and rolling it out almost immediately, which I quickly found was a bit of a mistake.  It took WAY more effort than was actually necessary, had I let the dough come completely up to room temperature.  (There is really no reason why you should sweat while rolling out a very pliable dough, but sweat I did.)  Once I had it rolled to approximately 1/8 of an inch thick, I decided to use a pizza cutter and cut them into bite sized pieces as quickly as possible.  I managed to use all of the dough up this way (though we did end up with some weird triangular end pieces) and placed them on two parchment lined baking sheets (see, I can follow directions).  I popped them in the oven and let them bake for about 15 minutes.  Here is where I stopped following directions.....I got a little impatient and, when they were just very lightly golden brown, I removed both sheet pans from the oven.  The crackers had puffed up gloriously and looked so pretty with their pepper flecked, cheese laden orange-y hue that I thought they would be delicious, if not completely crisp.  I popped one in my mouth almost immediately, enjoyed the warm, flaky, sharp cheese flavor and the soft, biscuit-like texture.  The kids all wanted one as well, so I doled them out and received stamps of approval all around (two verbal, "those are good" and one non-verbal, hand out, grunting demand for more).  I think, if I make them again, I will roll the dough a little thinner and I will let them bake a little longer.  They were amazing right out of the oven, but seemed to lose a little bit of their charm the next day, served from a Tupperware container at room temperature.  They still got eaten and were a good first experiment with snack cracker baking.

So, the second part of the title comes from a little experiment last night (and sadly does not have a picture to accompany my writing - sorry about that): I bought ingredients to make hamburgers and fries (a staple of our family's menu) yesterday at the grocery store.  I have probably mentioned this before, but I really dislike grocery shopping, especially when the store is as crowded as it was yesterday.  I originally intended to buy hamburger buns (just because I was feeling lazy and thought it would make a weeknight meal that much easier to deal with), but the bread aisle was ridiculously packed, not to mention being stocked at that moment, so I, in typical frustrated fashion, mentally said, "*&^% this!  I will just make the damn buns later in the week."  A couple of different factors came into play late yesterday afternoon which eventually led to my decision to serve the hamburgers and fries, and which required me to make my own hamburger buns.  So, one Google search later, I found a pretty decent recipe: http://lynnecurry.com/2012/05/whole-wheat-hamburger-buns-recipe/ and created some pretty delicious hamburger buns.  Let me just say that, usually, hamburger night in our house yields very few leftovers, despite the fact that I usually make enough for each person to have one or two burgers, in addition to a serving or more of baked fries.  Now, we had some extenuating circumstances, including one child feeling sick to her stomach prior to the meal, but we actually had three whole hamburgers left over.  Our oldest daughter could not even finish her hamburger, claiming she was already too full to polish off the last three bites.  I am going to attribute most of that to the buns.  They were light enough and fluffy enough (despite being made with 1/2 whole wheat), but they were so much more filling than the grocery store buns.  As I made my way through my own burger (with sauteed mushrooms and melted Swiss cheese.....yum), I pondered what exactly is (or rather, what is not) in those store bought buns that leaves you empty even after eating one filled with a homemade burger and toppings.  I guess, if there were any lessons learned from last night, it would be that this whole bread experiment is really worthwhile.  I mean, I knew that from the sandwich bread that I have been making for the past few weeks, but I think the hamburger buns have really driven it home for me.  Homemade breads, made with whole and unadulterated ingredients, are so much more satisfying, so much more filling, so much more nourishing.  I know it takes a lot of time - time that I don't, in fact, really have to spare, but despite that, I am really starting to commit to this idea.  I feel like I am very near that point where the bread making comes naturally to me and will be completely integrated into my processes for the week.  That is how you make time for something, right?  You MAKE the time and then, once you do whatever it is you need to do for a while, it just becomes another thing that somehow gets done.  Well, I hope so, at least.  For now, I have a couple of hamburgers to serve for lunch to whomever wants them and I have some sandwich bread proofing on my stove top.  My family is still eating all of my "experiments" and I am feeling pretty good about what I am feeding them.  Now, if I can just get the baby to stop "sharing" all of my hard work with the dog during mealtimes, I will be nearer to complete happiness.  Until next time....