Lazy Saturday Morning to ya....

     Good Morning all, I am trying to get my butt going this morning after getting home last night late, and finding dog 2 (Brandy) crapped in her kennel, and got it all over herself.  So, we ended up cleaning that up, and her before bed last night.... Not fun.
    I rolled out of bed at 8am, staggered out to make coffee and let the dogs out to do their business.  I then looked around in the kitchen and decided it needed to be worked on, and did nothing about it.  
    Did I mention that we went to an SCSU B-Ball game last night?  Well, we did, and I actually had a good time after thinking that I would not like it as I am not much of a B-Ball guy.  I did tweet a bunch of smart-ass comments last night about B-Ball from the game, even though I had fun.
   We are having Sherri's sister Amy over later this afternoon.  The menu is as follows.  Grilled steak, honey and soy marinated kabobs with a variety of vegetables.  Amy is in charge of a desert, which I think is brownies.  Oh, and I'm also going to do that flat bread that I did yesterday since I have a couple of dough balls just waiting patiently in the refrigerator.  I'm not sure, as I think about it that the bread with pizza seasoning really goes with the kabobs, so I will think about it as the day moves ahead, and may do some research on the net today to find a more suitable topping.

Have a great one today.

The Dough and cooking in general

      Now, to understand Tony cooking, you have to understand that I believe all recipes, including dough recipes are a guide and not an absolute.  But keep in mind that it is also my belief that if you deviate too much from dough recipes, you may have issues, but to me experimentation is fun, although you can't fix a loaf of bread after it goes into an oven.   It's put it in the oven and pray.  
 
    This morning I made a dough..  3.5 cups of flour (the all purpose cheap stuff from the Sam's Club 25lbs for $6.xx) 2.5 tsp SAF yeast (I have not had good luck with the individual packets) 1.25 cups of water, 2 tsp salt and a little olive oil.   The dough ball cleaned the bowl, and lightly stuck to the dough hook. After I turned it into a dough ball with the kitchenaid, I oiled the kitchenaid bowl with olive oil, rolled the dough to cover it completely in oil, and let it rise for a couple of hours.  The dough more then doubled.  I then punched it down, cut it into 3rds, made littler dough balls, 2nd rising here we come.

    After the 2nd rising, I took one of the dough balls and rolled it out on a floured surface, and let it rest a little bit, maybe 20 minutes while it was covered with a damp towel.

     The dough has rested now so I put some pizza topper (spice) and shredded some Parmesan Cheese on top of it and put it in the oven at 425 on a hot pizza stone, baked it for 20 minutes or so until it looked right (a lovely dark brown).

   After it cooled a tiny bit, I cut it with a pizza wheel and dipped strips of it with pizza sauce.  Man it's good.

See you later

Happy Friday in January Everyone

     Good Morning from Rice, MN.  I have a day to myself until the kids are done with school.  Sherri is working and I am doing the laundry and watching Mike and Mike on ESPN.  I made a dough this morning for later, which will most likely be like a flat bread with pizza spices on top sprinkled with parmesan cheese, and most likely we will dip the "flat bread" in pizza sauce.  Yum.  I want to make sure I have some good recipes down for this type of "appetizer" as I would like to use it in the future.

     Later today, I am going to work on menu costing and descriptions for a class I am taking in MPLS.  We had to find actual cost for for menu items, then put what we should sell them for.  In the American cuisine class I am taking we worked on Southern foods, Carolina's, Virginia, in that area of the country. I thought it was interesting that the BBQ sauces change so much as you move even a little bit across a state.   Eastern Carolina type sauces are very thin, spicy and vinegary, which I don't know if that is really a word, but as you move to Western Carolina vinegary with tomatoes, Alabama is mustard sauces etc...  I still prefer Memphis style sauces, but I also enjoy KC BBQ.

    I hear the dryer buzzer, means I'm off to work on that, I hope you all have a great day.

Hey Everyone

     I am new to blogging, but let me start out by giving you a little of my background...  I am a former IT/Telecomm leader and Bar/Grill owner, who decided that the IT/Telecomm world was not what I wanted to do anymore, so I am now in the middle of Chef school in MPLS at the Arts Institute and plan on either opening another restaurant, or "Cheffing" for another for a while.  I realized after some time off that I was working for 20 years doing something I did not enjoy.  So here I am today, back to school for something that I love, cooking, baking, bbq'ing, etc...
    I am the father of two awesome boys, 16 and 14, and the best wife a man could have.  We have a great time together, and best of all, she is able to put up with all of my faults.
   I will try to update this as much as possible.  The kids are fighting downstairs, so I am off.