Onion Buns

I love onion buns and have, in the past, taken sandwiches on them for lunch for weeks at a time.

The other day I was browsing a bread making site I found called The Fresh Loaf and found a recipe for Norm's Onion Rolls and decided I must make them.

I followed the recipe pretty much as directed (I did rehydrate 1/2 cup of onions instead of 1/4 cup because I'm an onion lover). I didn't have bread flour so I used all-purpose, and I used all sugar because I didn't have malt syrup.

They turned out beautifully, but after they cooled they turned into little rocks..... I am not a pastry chef so I'm not sure what I did wrong, I'm assuming it was cheap, all-purpose flour. The same thing has happened to my pepperoni rolls using this flour. In the end I threw them away; such a waste of time...

Next time I will use bread flour and make sure I follow the directions to a T.






With more practice and patience these will improve.

Pepperoni

My name is Chris, I am a pepperette junkie. A pepperette is a small snack sized pepperoni which is either dry cured or cured and then smoked and dried. I recently got into sausage making and tried my hand at a simple pepperoni recipe I found at Tammy's Recipes.

This was for a full sized pepperoni that was oven baked, but, I will easily be able to adapt it to fill a small collagen casing and then smoke it naturally. I had never used liquid smoke and was worried how potent it would be as it seemed to overwhelm the raw meat. In the end the finished pepperoni was wonderful and comparable to commercially available sliced pepperoni here in Canada. The best part is that 2 pounds of pepperoni cost a little over $4 to make..... Cha ching!

I made a couple of minor changes to Tammy's recipe in that I used 75% lean ground beef and 25% lean ground pork and cooked it at 170°F until the meat temperature reached 152°F internal (about 7 hours).

I must send a huge thank you to Tammy, this pepperoni is excellent.

An Update.....

Well, I've been laying low for a couple of months, definitely eating better and mixing in some guilty pleasures from time to time. In the end it's all about moderation......

As of March 14th 2010 I'm down 28 pounds and I'm feeling much better. The ankles and knees are feeling great, the back is getting back to normal, and the pants are sliding off (who needs buttons and zippers anyway).....

I promise some more posts in the near future. For now, just a quick update.