So 2 posts in one because I didn't have time to blog about my latest attempt at something different.
A few posts back I posted about making pizza from scratch. I was going to make that recipe again and since I had read some helpful tips on another site I thought I would apply them to the recipe.
One of the things the other site suggested was making sure you knead the pizza dough 6min to give it lots of gluten. I had also noticed by their pictures they posted that they used their stand mixer with the dough hook to do all the hard work. Genius! I hadn't thought of that! That was the only down side to making homemade pizza was the work that went into kneading the dough! The only thing I noticed was that due to not having the oil in my hands combine with the dough I had to add more flour to get the dough to not be sticky. Eventually I gave up adding more and more flour and just set the dough in a bowl and let it rise. That is of course after kneading it for 6min.
It rose to nearly double the size it had the first time I made it. The other site also suggested using a pizza stone but said if you don't have one you can get the same effect by turning a cookie sheet upside down and cooking the dough on that. We have a large round pizza pan that has sides like a cookie sheet so I just used that. I rolled the dough out on the inside of the pan (place it on wax paper to help transfer the dough to the back of the pan) then I took the formed pizza crust out of the pan and flipped the pan over and put the pizza on the bottom. Then you crank the oven to 500 and put the pizza in the cool oven. I noticed the crust was VERY thick but it was VERY good too. This time the crust actually tasted lighter and you could see little air bubbles in it. Since it was very thick my next thought is next time I'm going to try taking some of all that dough (as it makes a LOT) and making bread sticks to go with the pizza.... I might even attempt to makes stuffed bread sticks! So I guess be looking for a blog about that in the future. :)
So this week my new recipe to try (and I have a few this week) was a "Chicken Fried Chicken" recipe from allrecipes.com
It sounded good and the reviews on it were good. Although I have to admit as I was making it I started to wonder about using the 30 saltine crackers. Those reservations were valid and lets just say I will be looking for another recipe. Now don't get me wrong, it was decent but it wasn't good and I felt like if I was going through all that work that it should taste better. My husband actually scraped the breading off the chicken cause he didn't care for it. Well I know I got that recipe off of allrecipes.com but I think thats one I found while using my tablet computer and I didn't actually SAVE it to my recipe box online and just transferred the recipe to my tablet. That being said I don't have the recipe but you won't want to use it anyway. Just avoid one if it says to use 30 saltine crackers.
The recipe was pretty simple in itself. It called for the crackers, seasoning salt, flour, oil, pepper and of course egg. Of course you used the egg to dip the chicken in before coating it in the cracker/flour mixture and then cooked it in a skillet in the oil. I had read on some of the reviews that people had trouble getting the breading to stay on the chicken and they had actually solved that problem by first sprinkling flour on the wet chicken before dipping it in the egg. So I did that, then I coated and cooked. I noticed right off the bat that still the breading was coming off in chunks on some of the pieces. Also I noticed that in order to make sure the chicken was well cooked you had to pretty much burn the breading. Needless to say this recipe wasn't that great. Have I mentioned that? I was very disappointed. My thought on the chicken was it just tasted like fried saltine crackers that were burnt. Yuck. So on to try a different and hopefully better tasting Chicken fried Chicken. :)
Again, no pictures of this dinner as I felt like it was to ugly and to burnt to mess with taking a picture and posting it. Also I will note here that I kept a close eye on the chicken the whole time, turning it a lot to try and keep it from burning and it still did. So it wasn't just a case of my getting distracted and forgetting I was cooking.... Which I'll admit happens often! Haha
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