Speakers, measuring spoons and homemade bread

Awhile back my daughter spotted an item in one of those scholastics order form the kids bring home from school.  Now I'm a sucker for books.  That's one thing I tend to spend a good bit of money on.  I would have bought her a book from the order form, but that is not what she wanted.  She wanted a $12.00 set of cardboard speakers to plug her ipod into.  Yes, I said cardboard speakers.  As you can imagine the answer was no.  To which she replied that she would be glad to use her own money.  Now I'm a believer in allowing your children to make mistakes with their money.  In allowing them to learn life's lessons the hard way, but I seriously just could not give in to this.  $12.00 cardboard speakers?!  As she cried (believe it or not) I asked her if she remembered the beautiful stainless steal measuring cups we had seen at the cooking store earlier in the day?  She did.  I explained how much I wanted them.  How much I felt like I needed them.  How I wanted to feel like a real baker.  How those would complete me as a cook.  But alas, they were $30.00 and I had measuring cups and it just didn't make sense to spend money on something like that.

Well, she still doesn't have cardboard speakers, but look what I got for Christmas!

I'm so happy I decided to make bread!!

I tried a new recipe for bread this time.

1 Tbsp yeast
1 Tbsp of sugar
1 1/2 cups of arm water ( about 105 degrees)

Combine the yeast and sugar in a bowl and add the hot water. ( I used a candy thermometer to make sure it was the right temp.  It really makes a big difference to make sure that's right.)
Set aside and it starts to look like this.

Bubbly yeast is very promising!

Combine in the bowl of your mixer:
2 1/2 cups GF flour (I used Pamela's of course)
2 tsp xantham gum
1 tsp. salt (I used kosher)

In another bowl (What's with three bowl recipes lately!!)

Whisk together
3 eggs
1 1/2 Tbsp. oil
1 tsp. cider vinegar
1/4 cup sour cream (That's a guess-it wasn't in the recipe but I added it in-a big "dollop")

Add both liquid mixtures to the dry mix and blend with mixer for about 4 minutes.

Line a loaf pan with parchment paper.

You can also just spray your pan, but when I use my new stainless steel measuring cups and parchment paper I feel like a real grown up!

Pour the batter into the pan and put in a warm pace to rise for about an hour.  This is when I new the bread had promise.

Here it is when I put in the nice warm spot.  Clearly the laundry room due the huge pile of to be ironed clothes behind it!

Here it is an hour later.

Yeah for bread that rises!  Makes me so happy!  My own little science experiment in the laundry room.  In my experience GF bread doesn't always cooperate when it come to rising so I was ecstatic about this!

Bake at 375 for 60 minutes.  It will start to brown too much on top.  Just cover with tin foil and let it keep baking cause I didn't do that and I panicked and took it our about 10 minutes early and it did this.

Kind of sunk in the middle.  Sad face!!  It was super yummy though!  Just a little too soft in the middle.  It was really good though.  Nice and soft.  Not grainy at all.

My kids are weird and although there was homemade bread ready when they got home from school they wanted fruit snacks so I decided to cut it into slices for french toast the next morning.  Because it was a little too soft I cut it and let it sit overnight.

I mixed about 1/2 cup of milk and 2 eggs and 1 tsp. vanilla in a pie plate. I soaked each piece and put it on the griddle.

Put it on plate and serve it up!

Excuse the paper plate.  It was Tuesday morning.  You know how that is.  Will ate it up.  Jenny didn't complain which says a lot.  

It was really good.  It was the new measuring cups I'm sure of it!

P.S.  Jenny never did get those cardboard speakers.  She did however get some real speakers for ipod so all is well in her world.  For now.