this guy on the Great British Baking Show tried to make bagels and they went really flat, so he’s being gently kidded at about having invented bagel/flatbread hybrids, “flagels”, and I’m just over here genuinely wanting to try that. I like the outer part of the bagel the most, a flat bagel would be ALL outer part.

Somebody make me the flagels!

Also, I learned that bagels are made by poaching the dough shapes before baking, which is why they have that skin and the texture. I’m a fan. Bagels are the best possible bread component of a peanut butter sandwich, IMO.

A very good cookie recipe:

1 cup peanut butter

1 cup sugar

1 egg

1 tsp vanilla extract (they work fine w/o, but this adds an extra bit of tasty)

Couple cups of anything you want to add in (optional). We’ve used Hershey’s kisses, chocolate chips, and mini Reese’s peanut butter cups (dough around cup), and you could probably also use things like M&Ms, nuts, and such.

1: Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

2: Mix your base ingredients, plus add-ins if you prefer to add them that way.

3: Roll into 1-inch balls and set on cookie sheets. Wax paper is good but optional, these don’t really stick.

4: Flatten them gently into cookie shape with a fork or cookie stamp- these don’t expand. Tip: if you use small add-ons and stick some on the bottom of each ball at this stage, you can have a pattern on top of the cookie without the pattern being full of add-ons. Especially good w/ cookie stamps.

5: Bake for 10-12 minutes if plain or 13-15 minutes if add-ons are involved.

6: Let cool. These freeze and keep great that way if you wait for them to get about room-temp before freezing.

And that’s it! Good w/ kids, it’s hard to mess up. You can multiply it very easily, as you can see. One batch makes about 15 cookies depending on rolling size, so I like to do a double batch. Just don’t put stuffed ones on the same sheet as plain ones, they cook differently.

These are really good basic cookies to experiment with adding things into, and they’re great as plain cookies. You wouldn’t think it’d work this well, but it does.

thebibliosphere:

I was at our local bakery recently and came across a loaf of bread quaintly branded as a “Peasant Loaf”. It was selling for over $6—the irony of this was not lost on me.

In retaliation I have decided to post what I actually think of as a peasant loaf, but with the luxury of finely ground modern flour which is less likely to break your teeth because actual peasant loaf bread is like chewing rocks unless you’re soaking it in soup or stew.

This is a very simple loaf, it requires no special tools and is a fairly forgiving dough for beginners to work with. Also it has the added bonus of looking like an expensive artisan loaf, but costs literal pennies to make once you invest in the basic ingredients.

So what do you need?

Ingredients:

Plain flour (or wholewheat if you prefer)

One sachet of active dry yeast.

Salt.

Water.

Tools:

Bowl

Mug

Prep and bake time total: 2 hours 45 minutes.

Yep, that’s it. You’ll notice that there’s no quantities listed up there, and that’s because you’ll be using the mug to measure everything. This helps to make sure your quantities are consistent, and means that so long as you have a mug and your ingredients, you can make bread. Heck you don’t even need a bowl, it just makes clean up easier.

Again I had Elusive Tumblr Dad help me take the photos so be warned this is going to be fairly image heavy under the cut 😀

Step One: Gather your stuff.

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Keep reading

Biscuits in England: hard, chewy, flat.

Biscuits in America: soft, fluffy, tall.

Breadsticks in England: crispy, snappy.

Breadsticks in America: miniature French breads with different flavors.

Muffins in England: floury, flat, good for sandwiches.

Muffins in America: damper, taller, bad for sandwiches but often full of stuff.

Apparently, baked goods in England: crispy, flat.

Apparently, baked goods in America: soft, tall.

Did American bakers just go “yeah nothing is soft enough”, or are these the variations that developed when people tried to make versions that you eat on their own?