Knitting, Baking, fixing- Life on the hook

Thursday, March 7, 2013

Knitting, Baking, fixing- Life on the hook

Life on a mooring ball

We decided for weather reasons to stay another week in Boot Key Harbor. Our particular mooring ball is at the very outer edge of the field. We have beautiful scenery, can watch the birds in the mangroves across the way and sometimes get treated to porpoise sightings. There are a few draw backs to this spot, the main one being the wakes of fishing boats leaving and entering the harbor, but this is tolerable.

Cool Hand is about a mile from land, the only way to do laundry, shower etc. is to take our dingy ashore. The marina provides a large floating dingy dock so it is relatively easy to disembark, load or unload supplies. Boarding the dingy can be a daunting task. The boat is moving, the dingy is moving and I am climbing down a ladder from one to the other. This may curse my luck but so far neither Tom nor I have fallen in.

To pass the time, Tom has been working on our electrical system, specifically the batteries. They have not been charging correctly and he finally figured out a way to configure them to correct this. The new fridge is running great and I finally settled on a setting that keeps the voltage down and the fridge cold.

I have been knitting, painting and reading. I found a pattern for a market bag, got some cotton Lily’s and Cream yarn and set to work. It took about 5 days but one is finished with some minor “Laura” alterations to the pattern.

We did a good grocery run while we had the car; however our small supply of bread has vanished. I wanted to try my hand at baking some hamburger style rolls we could use for sandwiches. It is cold (58 degrees) this morning; it would be great to have the smell of baking bread wafting through the boat.

First challenge was a recipe where I had all the ingredients. Second challenge; I needed to find a place warm enough to let the bread rise correctly. I opted for a recipe where I would form the buns and they would need to rise only once.

Tom went to a yoga class on shore so I had the galley to myself and started to “make a flour mess” but in less than 30 minutes my buns were under wraps and rising. Our stove/oven is an older model; the oven does not heat evenly, resulting in the bottoms of everything getting brown before the tops. Three quarters of the way through baking, I flipped the rolls to give the tops a little brown color. Out of the oven I let them cool making ham and cheese sandwiches, the proof that my experiment was a success.

HIP HIP HOORAY!!! The rolls sliced up nicely and the sandwiches were great, not earth shattering great, but we have sandwich bread for awhile

Here is the recipe with my “boat notes”

Sandwich Buns

1 cup milk

½ cup water

¼ cup butter – 2 tablespoons butter, melted set aside to baste tops of buns

4-1/2 cups all-purpose flour

2 tablespoons sugar

1-1/2 teaspoons salt

1 egg (room temperature, whisk in small bowl)

In sauce pan heat milk, water and ¼ butter to 120 degrees, (very warm on your wrist but not burning you)

In large bowl Mix 1-3/4 cup of flour with yeast sugar and salt, stir in milk mixture until thoroughly incorporated.

Slowly stir in egg.

Add remaining flour - ½ a cup at a time until dough pulls together

Turn out on lightly floured surface, add flour if to sticky, knead about 8 minutes until smooth and elastic.

Divide into 12 pieces and shape into round buns

Place on jelly roll pan, cover with saran wrap and place in warm spot to raise double in size ( 1 to 2 hours)

( My oven browns on the bottom first- I would put in two jelly roll pans so that I can flip them over for last five minutes of baking, getting the tops brown also)

Preheat oven to 350

Brush tops of buns with melted butter and cook until you can tap them (light brown on top)

Cool and make a sandwich