Hearty-Enough Beef Stew & Bread

I actually made this stuff like a month ago, took the pictures and all and then completely forgot to blog about it. I came across the pictures while I was uploading a video I was recording and was like "oh yeah!" hah. I make no pretenses here, this meal was by no means easy for me to make. I'm a weakling, I guess. As I made this I got a blister on my finger and I was starving so I was almost entirely devoid of energy (like maybe 5% of a 100 scale of energy rating) by the time I was finished with all of it. Which incidentally, is the reason this is the "hearty-enough" beef stew. Because it's actually supposed to have like a couple of more things added to it but by the time I was done cooking it I had completely forgotten about the final steps and wanted only to dig in. It was well hearty enough as it was, anyway. :P Ok so here are the recipes that I used. Both of them come from The Pillsbury Cookbook and I couldn't tell you what year it is because I don't see that information on here anyway. But, I think this may be the ISBN number for it: 0-385-23867-3>2295. Yes it has a ">" in there and I have no idea what that is for, either. lol

Ok so first the recipe for the stew:

Hearty Beef Stew

1 1/2 to 2lb. boneless beef stew meat, cut into 1 1/2-inch cubes

1/4 cup all purpose flour

2 teaspoons salt

1/4 teaspoon pepper

3 tablespoons oil

2 cups water

8-oz. can (1 cup) tomato sauce

2 beef-flavor bouillon cubes or 2 teaspoons beef-flavor instant bouillon

2 stalks celery, cut into 1-inch pieces

2 medium onions, quartered

1 bay leaf

6 carrots, cut into 1-inch pieces

4 medium potatoes, cut into pieces

2 tablespoons flour

1/4 cup water

1 cup frozen peas or cut green beans

Chopped fresh parsley, if desired

Coat beef cubes with mixture of 1/4c flour, salt and pepper. In 5-quart Dutch oven, brown meat in oil. Stir in 2 cups water, tomato sauce, bouillon cubes, celery, onions and bay leaf. Bring to a boil. Reduce heat; cover and simmer 1 1/2 hours or until meat is tender.

Remove bay leaf. Add carrots and potatoes. Cover; simmer an additional 30-40 minutes or until vegetables are tender. In a small jar with lid, add 2 tablespoons flour to 1/4c water; shake well. Stir into stew mixture. Stir in peas. Cook over medium heat until mixture boils and thickens, stirring frequently. Garnish each serving with parsley.

The italicized stuff is meant to highlight all the things I forgot to do which left the stew being less than hearty. lol But it still came out delicious so no one was complaining. :) Okay now for the bread:

French Bread Braids

4 3/4 to 5 3/4 cups all purpose flour

1 tablespoon salt

1 tablespoon sugar

2 pkg. active dry yeast

2 cups water

2 tablespoons shortening

1 tablespoon water

1 egg white

Grease large cookie sheet. In large bowl, combine 3 cups flour, salt, sugar and yeast. In small saucepan, heat 2 cups water and shortening until very warm (120 to 130°F). Add warm liquid to flour mixture. Blend at low speed until moistened; beat 3 minutes at medium speed. Stir in 1 1/2 to 2 1/4 cups flour to form a stiff dough.

On floured surface, knead in 1/4 to 1/2 cup flour until dough is smooth and elastic, about 8 minutes. Place dough in greased bowl; cover loosely with plastic wrap and cloth towel. Let rise in warm place (80 to 85°F) until light and doubled in size, about 1 hour.

Punch down dough several times to remove all air bubbles. Divide in half; divide each half into 3 parts. Roll each part into a 14-inch rope. Braid 3 ropes together; seal ends. Place on prepared cookie sheet. Repeat with other half of dough. In small bowl, combine 1 tablespoon water and egg white; beat slightly. Carefully brush over loaves. Cover loosely with greased plastic wrap; let rise in warm place until light and doubled in size, about 20 to 30 minutes.

Heat oven to 375°F. Brush loaves again with egg white mixture. Bake at 375°F for 25 to 30 minutes or until golden brown. Remove from cookie sheet immediately. Cool on wire racks.

Okay first I am going to give props to Acturon for helping me peel the vegetables and for helping me with a number of other things while making this recipe. He's an awesome husband. ^_^ Second, don't do what I did up there. Put your carrots with your potatoes and your onions with your celery because that's the order they go into the stew. Don't be like me and fail at reading ahead. lol Actually I did read the whole recipe several times, but I didn't retain that detail, I was mostly trying to work out how the downtime of the stew with the downtime of the bread. By downtime I mean things like "simmer for 1 1/2 hours" and 'let rise until double in size, about one hour" .. see? I can sorta multi-task. :P

Okay so yeah obviously make your life easier and chop everything up ahead of time (and plate them together appropriately ~_~) so that when the time comes for the item you can just drop it in. Yes I know some of you have the ability to chop things super fast and not take one hour to chop stuff (yeah I think I really did), but for the rest of us, it's a good idea to chop and sort ahead. I was lucky enough to have beef from my mother-in-law that was already pre-cut at the store. I don't normally buy beef so if it's normal for stew beef to come already cut then .. oh well laugh it up. :P

Okay so as per instructions - flour mixture and beef. I always mix all my flour stuff together first before adding the next type of ingredient. For example when baking cake/cookies, I mix my flour and sugar together before adding milk/eggs whatever. In this case, before adding beef. Yeah I know that's probably exactly what it says in the instructions and I'm likely stating the obvious here, but you never know. Maybe someone doesn't know that. :P Also, I mix it all with my hand/fingers. I doubt that makes a difference, but it would at least let you feel how distributed your grainy salt/sugar is in the mixture. Ok so then you mix it all together. Professional probably toss the bowl to do this and manage to not have everything end up on the floor. For entirely unprofessional me, however, I just used my hands. :) Yes, I got clumps of gooey flour stuff when I was done, but hey that's what soap and water's for, am I right? :P

This is the meat all browned and stuff. I guess it doesn't look particularly appealing in this picture, but it sure was appealing in my mouth when it was all done and over with. :P (The whole stew I mean, not this stage). BTW I did brown this meat for a considerable length of time, making sure it got like, well, brown. I don't just mean flour-turn-brown, I mean like where it does that like "searing" looking kind of browning. El Oh El at me and my technical terms. Anyway I didn't go out of my way to get everything 'seared' or whatever, just some bits. The picture's blurry if you enlarge it so it's not a very good help for clarification purposes. You'll just have to take my weirdly descriptive word for it. :)

Okay, so here we are with the water and bay leaf and bouillon cubes and what not. I tried my best to mix up that bouillon good before moving onto the next stage. I know most people probably wouldn't bother because it will all melt down and mix up eventually anyway. But I personally do not trust my mixing skills ever so I tend to mix things in tinier early phases (like the flour deal) rather than relying on my ability to mix it all properly when it's done. I just feel that I lack the strength and coordination to do it properly later, so I compensate by doing it earlier and between each phase. It's a good compromise, I think. :)

Okay so here we have added the celery and onions. Again, please don't be like me - having to sort though the plate so that no carrots or potatoes accidentally drop into the pot - or having to pick out onion/celery from under a potato/carrot. Put your bloody onions and celery on the same plate and make your life easier so you can just drop the whole dang plate into the pot at this stage without all that stupid hassle that I went through. lol Okay so this is like Phase One of the Stew and the overall cooking. Time to move onto the bread part!

I have bad news overall regarding the bread photos. I forgot to take pictures for most of the middle part of this bread making process, which incidentally is the hardest part of the process. Boo me for forgetting :( But I'll still commentate for ones I did take pictures of. Here I have the flour mixture with the yeast (and sugar/salt whatever else the recipe calls for up there). Again I mixed it with hand and tried to make sure the yeast bits were evenly distributed. I tried to get the detail in the picture, but unless you have a careful eye and know what you're looking for, you probably won't see the yeast bits in there.

Okay so here is my measured shortening. I smush the shortening into the measuring spoon and then level it off with the flat edge of a butter knife to make sure I have an accurate measurement. I don't think they sell shortening in pre-measured sticks, do they? Maybe they do, but I always get it in the can anyway.

Okay here is what the shortening looks like when it's melted. Now unfortunately this is the last picture I took of the bread making process until after all the rising was completed. I'm not sure whether I was just exhausted or if I was actually relying on Acturon for remembering to take pictures because I know in this process there would be a lot of pictures missing if he hadn't popped into the kitchen and asked if I was/did taking/take a picture. I'm also willing to guess that this process was messy and I just couldn't have been bothered to take pictures after cleaning myself up.

Either way, I totally forgot so here's a quick verbal description. I had no way of measuring the temperature of anything so I just tried to reason it out in my head. The bread wasn't perfect, but it came out alright/good enough for us. Honestly I don't know what a perfect french braid bread would come out like anyway, but I'm assuming it would be fluffier than what mine was. Anywho my measure of 120°F was "I saw steam coming from the top of the pot" lol and my estimate of 80°F was "stick it on the counter next to the pot of stew that's being cooked in this air conditioned apartment" lol! Love it? haha So anyway I did what the instructions said and like took a note of the time so I'd be sure to be back in an hour for the bread - and then went on to play WoW or something probably until my stew timer went off. lol

Okay so when the stew timer came off this is what my onions and celery looked like (after 1.5hrs of ... stewing.. lol! I crack myself up). Looking yummy already right? Now they said to remove the bay leaf, but I'll be honest - I couldn't find it. hahaha And Acturon didn't care so I just left it in and then added the carrots and potatoes. Hey, it can only add to the flavor right? >.> HAHA :P
Putting in the carrots and potatoes was a lot easier with the onions and celery out of the way. *sigh* lol Stirring this was a bit of a hassle but not a big deal. Just take your time and more like "rotate" the pot of stuff rather than "stir." I learned that trick from my friend Amanda. ^_^ Well I guess normal people call it "turn" instead of rotate, but whatever, I'm weird.

Okay so again more phases of the bread stages missing. At this point I've already let the dough rise and did this neat little trick that Acturon looked up online that involves punching your two fingers into the dough. When the indentation stays, you know you let it rise long enough. That was fun, but not as fun as punching the dough entirely "to get the air bubbles out." Not gonna lie, I had a lot of fun turning my bread into a mini punching bag. lmao I wasn't THAT brutal with it, but I had fun without a doubt. :) Perhaps this may have something to do with my bread not being fluffy. lmao Hey life's all about making mistakes and having fun .. or something.. right? lol Oh yeah btw, the above picture is one half of the dough used to make the loaf below.

Ta da! One French Bread Bread dough complete.. and then I realized I should have demonstrated how it was done. lol

But before my demonstration, I decided to photograph the greased bowl.. lol I think this was me realizing I didn't take hardly any pictures of the bread process and I was trying to make up for it. Because at this point the bread had finished rising in said grease bowl and were already punched (haha) and divided. Ignore the stuff scattered on the table, please. ~_~*

Okay so NOW I decided to show something of the process, but again I was taking the pictures myself and I didn't want to get my camera dirty so there aren't like pictures of it mid-braid. But you take one half of your dough and turn into 3 and roll them into ropes. I didn't use anything to measure my rope length as you will observe in a later picture. lol And to be honest I had difficulty rolling these ropes. It kept like .. not wanting to roll and like slide instead or something. Really annoying. Which reminds me of something else I had difficulty. Y'know that phase you read about blending it? At first when I was blending I was like "oh my god, there is not a dough forming here - I messed up." Then suddenly not only was there dough, but it kept crawling up blender and sh*t. It was crazy and nuts like it had a life of its own. And sh*t, it's yeast which is a living organism or something so I guess I shouldn't be surprised. Creepy though, still creepy. *nod* lol
Let me just say, I truly suck at "sealing" my ends. I mean it wasn't terrible, but let's just say a professional baker would not want me to be his/her representative french braid bread person. lol Mostly my braid stayed together as you will later see, but the end bit came undone some - not unlike my own hair if I don't end it with a ponytail holder. So yeah.. maybe they should make bread tail holders. *nod* lol no, I'm not serious. haha

Ta da! See what I mean about me not measuring my ropes? SIGNIFICANT size difference, eh? lmao And pst, shh don't tell anyone but at one point I got tired of trying to "roll" out my ropes and just pulled the two ends until it was longer. LMAO NOT professional. Did I mention this was my first time making bread? LOL Not my first time working with yeast, though. I've made Cinnamon Buns and Dinner Rolls before, which came out great actually. But this .... was good, but definitely not great. lol Perhaps I can blame the different counter.. yeah that sounds like a good scapegoat. lmao :D Oh yeah these are the already egg white washed loaves, I think. I'm not sure if that pan is considered a cookie sheet officially or not, but whatever, it worked. I think it might be what they refer to as a "shallow baking pan." I don't really know if I'm correct on that or not.

And here we have the finished product! Pretty, right? :) And it tastes like a homemade yeast bread. lol AND it wasn't a piece of rock the next day either! *pats self on the back* lol

And here's my finished stew. Remember, you're actually supposed to do some like flour mixture to thicken the stew and add your peas and green beans. But the bread was done, I was hungry, and the potato added enough thickness to the stew for me. And as you can see, it was plenty hearty enough as it was. lol

Hope you enjoyed reading this and that I inspired you to someday make your own stew and bread. I'll bet yours comes out even better than mine. ^_^ It sure tasted delicious! =D