Mr. FG gave me two half-sheet pans for Christmas, and I just adore them.

They come recommended by Cook’s Illustrated, of course.  The main thing I wanted them for was granola baking.  My only rimmed baking sheets were nonstick, and I pretty much have come to hate nonstick pans.  They have this annoying tendency to burn everything (although I do lurve my Goldtouch loaf pans).

So, I was baking granola on my regular cookie sheets, which worked great except that no sides on the pans meant I had to be uber-careful when I was stirring the granola.  That made granola-making much more of a production than it ought to have been.

Now, I can stir with abandon, and oatmeal does not go flying all over the place.

It’s the small things, people.

If you’re in need of a new pan, I definitely recommend the Wearever Sheet Pan Half Size.  You might have trouble finding it in a local store (my local stores tend to only have air-bake and nonstick pans), but Amazon carries them for $25.99 apiece.

That’s not cheap, I know, but these are heavy-duty pans like my Vollrath Cookie Sheets and I don’t anticipate having to replace them for….well, forever (unlike my old nonstick ones, which wear out and warp after only a few years).

And if the fact that they’re made out of aluminum bothers you (I’m not personally concerned about that), you can always cover them with parchment paper.

Oh, did you need a granola recipe?  I make coconut granola most often, but I also like my crunchy granola recipe.  They’re both SO much cheaper than commercial granola.

If you have a favorite granola recipe, leave a link in the comments…I’m always interested in new granola recommendations.

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Two P.S.’s:

-365 posts will be up later…we had an odd day yesterday, which meant neither Joshua nor I had time to get one up!

-I forgot to say when the MoneySavingMom book giveaway was going to be done.  I’ll pick a winner tomorrow morning.  Email subscribers, you have to click over to the actual post to leave a comment to enter…I can’t keep track of entries that are emailed to me.

Every Wednesday (ok, most Wednesdays!) I share a baking recipe. And lots of pictures of said baking recipe. I don’t call this Wednesday Baking because I bake solely on Wednesdays…no, my oven gets a workout much more frequently than once a week! Wednesday just happens to be the day I share baking recipes with you. All the past baking posts are archived in the Wednesday Baking category, which can also be found in a tab underneath my blog header.

I don’t really have a recipe for you today. But I am going to talk about baking.

On Monday, I didn’t get around to thinking about dinner until a little later than I should have, so I decided to make some no-knead batter rolls.

They turned out lovely and fluffy, but as I was taking them out of the pan, thoughts of salt began to flood my mind, and I suddenly realized that I had added none to the dough.

Augh!

This has happened to me before, almost always when I’m using a Better Homes and Gardens recipe, because, at least in their older cookbooks, some not-so-bright person decided to only list the salt in the directions, and not in the ingredient list.

Whhyyyyyy, Better Homes and Gardens? Whyyyy?

And not only was I annoyed with BH&G, but I was very annoyed with myself because I’ve made this same stupid mistake a number of times before.

No more, though!  The power of the green ink circle will keep me from committing this error again.

Fortunately, I’d used salted butter in place of the shortening, and when you split the rolls open and spread the insides with salted butter, the lack of salt wasn’t manifestly obvious (I said nothing and none of my fellow diners seemed to notice).

So, then yesterday after I taught piano for most of the day, I decided that I’d make some whole wheat rolls to go with dinner (oddly enough, that’s the recipe right next to the Batter Roll recipe in the above photo!).  I vacillated a bit, not sure I had time to get this done and still get dinner ready on time, but then just decided to go for it.

I ground the wheat, mixed up the dough (I even added salt!), and kneaded it.

To speed things along, I put the dough into a warm oven to let it rise.

After 45 minutes, I checked on it, and was surprised to see that it looked…not much different.

And that’s when I realized my yeast container hadn’t been used yet.

Whoops.

So, I dissolved some yeast in some warm water, added some flour, kneaded that mixture into the dough, and carried on.

By then, of course, it was too late to have rolls with dinner.

So we had biscuits instead.

And we will just eat the rolls at breakfast and lunch.

I think I need to make some buns for the tonight’s shrimp burgers, so I’m hoping to break my string of baking disasters.

I can do this, right? 

Today’s 365 post: Well, this is new.

Every Monday, I answer a few of the questions that my readers send me. If you have a question you’d like me to answer in a future Q&A post, just leave me a comment here or email me (thefrugalgirl [at] gmail [dot] com) and put Q&A in the subject line. I look forward to hearing from you!

The first question isn’t exactly a specific quote from a reader, as I’ve received several emails wondering about making money from blogging.  Rather than choose one email to print, I thought I’d just put out a general answer with my thoughts on the topic.
Generally speaking, I usually tell people that if they need money right away, blogging is not the ticket (at least not for most people).

If you don’t already have an online presence, blogging is a slow road to extra income.  It takes a lot of time and consistent effort to build up a following that’s large enough to produce more than a few dollars in ad revenue.  So, if your money situation is desperate and you needed money yesterday, it’d be much wiser to go pick up a part-time job, sell some belongings, do some babysitting, or something along those lines.  The return on your time investment will be much faster than it would be with blogging.

I personally blogged for almost a whole year before I ever broke even with the money I’d spent on my hosting costs for the year ($100).  Currently, my blog pays for its hosting/server costs with nary a problem and I have a respectable amount of money left over each month (it goes into my van fund).

But, if I calculated all the hours I spent on my blog before it ever started making any money, my hourly wage for blogging would probably be pretty poor.  To me, that’s ok, though…I mainly blog to help other people, and so working for free for the first year or so didn’t bother me.  I have a passion for what I do here, and that was enough to keep me going.

The other thing I usually tell people is that if you blog solely to make money, you probably won’t be terribly successful.  Blogging is a lot of hard work, and if you’re in it just for the money, you’ll have a hard time hanging in there.  Also, blogging generally requires passion and enthusiasm, and if you’re just in it for the money, your passion and enthusiasm will probably be lacking.

Instead of just trying to make money, pick a topic that you’re passionate about, a topic you could write about for free, and run with it!  If you love what you write about, you won’t mind waiting through those traffic-building, no-income months, and you’ll much more likely to produce a blog that is interesting and exciting.

I found your website and love your baking posts,but am new to making things from scratch. I want to try making some bread from scratch but have to say I am pretty intimidated by it. I do not own a stand up mixer or a bread machine (I know you don’t use a bread machine)–is a stand up mixer like those expensive Kitchen Aid mixers a must? Also, what’s the difference in using a bread machine vs. the oven?

-Sarah

Yes, you can definitely make bread from scratch without a Kitchen Aid.  A Kitchen Aid just makes the process easier.

I’ve made bread many times without the mixer, though…it just requires a slight adjustment to the recipe and a little more hand-kneading.

Most of my recipes instruct you to mix the yeast and flour, heat the liquids to 120 degrees F, and then add the liquids to the yeast/flour mixture.  If you’re making your bread by hand, just dissolve the yeast in a bit of warm liquid first, and heat the liquids to only 110 degrees F.

Also, since the mixer won’t be doing the beginning stages of kneading for you, you may need to knead the bread dough a little longer before the gluten is properly developed.

A bread machine does the mixing, shaping, and baking of a loaf for you, making an oven unnecessary.  I don’t personally like bread machine bread as much as I like the kind I make myself, mostly because I think bread machines tend to produce a crust that is too thick and dark. This problem can be solved by using the machine on the dough setting and then taking the dough out, shaping it, and baking it in your oven.

Why do health experts say eating white bread is “bad” for you? Is it because of the type of flour used? Does making homemade bread make white bread healthier since it has no preservatives?

-Virginia

(I should note that there are a number of people who believe that eating any sort of wheat or any sort of carbs is a poor nutritional choice, but that’s a large and complicated debate that I’m not going to get into here. Obviously I fall into the camp of people who can and want to include wheat in their diet!)

White bread is not particularly nutritious because white flour is made from wheat that has had the bran and germ removed. Those are the most nutritious parts of the grain, so removing them produces flour that is basically just an empty carb. It’s equivalent to eating white rice, really.

I’d say that homemade white bread is preferable to store-bought white bread because there are no odd ingredients and preservatives in it (I did an ingredient/price comparison between homemade and storebought white bread) . Also, the white bread I make at home often contains milk and eggs, and store-bought white bread rarely does.

Still, though, I am well aware that even homemade white bread isn’t a fabulous choice for nutritious eating. So, much to my children’s chagrin, our daily sandwich/toast bread is whole wheat, and I often make whole wheat rolls for us to eat with our dinner. We also regularly have whole wheat pancakes.

We do still eat our fair share of white flour, though….I don’t like to make pizza crust with whole wheat flour, and when I make a special breakfast treat like danishes or coffeecakes, I definitely prefer to use white flour.

If we were perfectly healthy, I suppose we would exist on a diet of whole grains, plant foods, all-natural meats, and raw dairy with no sugar or refined foods whatsoever, but I’m more of a moderation kind of gal.  And so at least for now, I try to strike something of a manageable balance between healthy and processed foods.

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Readers, do feel free to weigh in on any of these questions!

Today’s 365 post: How my camera travels to the sledding hill

Yesterday’s 365 post was Would this make you nervous? and it didn’t get published until last night because I thought I had scheduled it to publish itself, but apparently I hadn’t.  Whoops.

Every Monday, I answer a few of the questions that my readers send me. If you have a question you’d like me to answer in a future Q&A post, just leave me a comment here or email me (thefrugalgirl [at] gmail [dot] com) and put Q&A in the subject line. I look forward to hearing from you!

First, several of you asked if I could put a link to Joshua’s 365 blog beneath my header, and I’m pleased to say that I did get around to that. I actually put a link under the header here and also under my 365 header. Hopefully that’ll make it easy for you to find his blog. And of course, subscribing by email is a good way to go if you want to make sure you don’t miss a post (it’s free and we promise you won’t be spammed!  Just enter your email address in the box on the right side of his blog.).

I was wondering if you could talk more about how you got into baking so much of your family’s bread supply. Is it something you eased into, or did you just jump right in? Is it a tradition in your family to make homemade bread? When did you start bread-making? Which recipes are your favorite?

-Megan from Crooked Seams

I started baking bread early in my teen years.  My mom made homemade bread on and off when I was younger, and since I enjoyed eating it so much, I wanted to learn to make it myself so that I could have it more often!

Once I’d learned the basic of making yeast bread, I baked up a storm for my family.  I made everyday sandwich bread, a sweet bread for breakfast once a week, and plenty of breadstuffs to go with our dinner meals.

When I got married, I didn’t do quite as much baking because the only two people available to eat my baked goods were Mr. FG and me.  But two years after we were married, Joshua was born, and then the other 3 babies followed within a few years, and we now have a little crew of hungry mouths.  So, I bake a lot more now than I did back when our family was smaller.

It’s hard for me to pick a favorite yeast recipe because I like pretty much every yeast bread I’ve ever tried (except for a rosemary loaf I made as a teen.  The rosemary was like pine needles in the bread!).  I really love a fresh-from-the-oven slice of whole wheat bread, though, and I have to say that the cherry danishes I recently made are probably one of my favorite sweet breads ever.

I have two bread baking questions. The first is about the rolling of the dough out, and then rolling it into a loaf shape — if a slice can sort of be unrolled along the original lines, should it be more tightly rolled up?

The second is, I have frequently read that you can tell that a loaf is done if when you tap the bottom it sounds hollow.  If it doesn’t — will it be OK to pop it back in the oven or will interrupting the proces be detrimental to the baking?

-Karen, aka Mom of 3 Monkeys

The loaf in your first question actually sounds like it might have too much flour.  My bread dough is usually soft enough to kind of stick together as I roll it up.  A dough that doesn’t stick to itself when rolled up is probably a little too dry, so I’d recommend trying to use less flour next time.

You can indeed tap the bottom of a loaf to tell if it’s done, though that’s not an entirely scientific method.  If you’re gentle, and if the loaf is nearly done, you should be able to take the loaf out and tap the bottom without causing harm to the loaf.

Cook’s Illustrated always recommends using an instant-read thermometer to test for doneness (is that even a word??). They say that “rustic breads should be baked to an internal temperature of 200 to 210 degrees, while richer breads are done at 190 to 195 degrees.”

I’ve been baking bread for so long, I can almost always tell if a loaf is done just by looking at it, but until you’re that comfortable, you could use the thermometer method.

If you do use a thermometer, stick it into the side of the loaf, not the end. That way the hole will only go through one slice of the bread instead of multiple slices.

Been thinking about budgets with the new year just around the corner and am wondering if you have any advice on the envelope system. Seems like from your posts that you use ING accounts like savings envelopes. I totally get how you divide big payments by 12 and save the amount each month. Which works in theory but not if your car insurance bill is due in January! No one ever seems to address how to get that system rolling when you don’t have a spare $5000 in cash to use as seed money until your accounts get built up.

We’re not in dire straits. I can pay my car insurance bill in January, but then I may not have enough to fund all my envelopes fully that month. I was planning to pull everything out of our savings except the last $1000 to fund my IRA. The remaining $1000 would be left for emergencies, but the car insurance would be half of that, leaving us with a pretty small emergency fund. And car insurance doesn’t seem like an emergency!

Would love to hear any thoughts or help you have to offer!

-Jenny

Hmm. To me this sounds more like a cash flow issue than a savings envelope issue. If you don’t have enough money to put away each month for your car insurance bill, you may need to adjust your budget (put less in your IRA, put a little more into your car insurance category).

If your bill is due every January, then you should start saving for that bill right after you pay it. $416 should go into a Car Insurance ING savings account every month, and if you do that, you’ll be able to pay the bill in January. This is how our Christmas and vacation accounts work…we start saving again for Christmas in January and we start saving for vacation as soon as we come home from the beach.

If you still feel like you need to jumpstart your ING accounts, you could consider taking on some side work on a temporary basis or you could sell some of your belongings to raise some cash.

(if you’re new around here, I must tell you that I think ING savings accounts are the bomb-diggety-bomb, and I highly recommend opening one! or ten.)

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Have a lovely Monday!  I’m off to the gym after breakfast (since Monday is Mr. FG’s day off, I get to go in the morning, which is lovely.  Well, as lovely as a sweat-inducing activity can be!).

disclosure

Today’s 365 post: Bubble Lights

Every Wednesday (ok, most Wednesdays!) I share a baking recipe. And lots of pictures of said baking recipe. I don’t call this Wednesday Baking because I bake solely on Wednesdays…no, my oven gets a workout much more frequently than once a week! Wednesday just happens to be the day I share baking recipes with you. All the past baking posts are archived in the Wednesday Baking category, which can also be found in a tab underneath my blog header.

Since most of you are probably kind of baked out by now (I know I am!), I thought that I’d talk about some yeast bread troubleshooting instead of sharing a new recipe.

First, if you’re having trouble getting your yeast bread to rise, my very first recommendation is to use less flour. 99% of the time, yeast bread trouble is caused by too much flour, not by bad yeast.

Yeast is pretty powerful, but it has its limits, and it struggles to lift a really stiff dough. A softer dough has much more “give” and the yeast will be able to lift it more easily.

If your dough isn’t at all sticky, you’ve probably added too much flour.  If you can make your dough into a ball, put it on the counter, and have the dough stay in a round ball shape, you’ve probably added too much flour (when I mound mine into a ball, it flattens out some as it sits on the counter).  Your dough should feel soft and squishy, not firm.

The flour measurements in yeast bread recipes are almost always approximate, so don’t get stuck on those.  The amount of flour your need can vary, depending on the humidity level in your air and in your ingredients.  I actually never measure my yeast bread flour…I just add flour until the dough looks right.

So, if your recipe calls for 6 cups of flour, don’t just blindly dump the six cups in.  Start with 3 cups, mix the dough up well, and then gradually add flour until the dough reaches the proper consistency.  Always, always start with less than the total amount of flour.  You can always add more flour, but you can’t take it out!

(please note that I only recommend using this loosey-goosey flour “measurement” style with yeast bread.  With most any other kind of baking, you should measure your flour precisely!)

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Secondly, a reader sent me these pictures to ask if I could help her figure out what’s going wrong here.

My thought is that these loaves look over-risen.  When I let my dough rise too much, the tops look lovely and round while they bake, but then settle into this unhappy looking shape as they cool.  If I saw the inside of these loaves, I’d guess the texture would be very open and airy because the yeast was allowed to grow for too long.

It also looks like these loaves might be a little too big for the pans they were baked in.  A properly risen loaf in a properly sized pan should not be overflowing the edges, before or after it’s baked.

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Thirdly, let me tell you about my favorite bread pans.

The reader that sent in the pictures uses glass plans, but I have to tell you guys, glass pans are really not my favorite thing for baking yeast breads.  I’ve had such trouble getting my loaves to come out of those pans neatly, and I’ve had difficulty getting even browning and cooking with those pans.

My very favorite loaf pans are Williams-Sonoma’s GoldTouch pans. They’re pricey, but so worth it.  They cook breads evenly, and the nonstick coating is incredibly durable.  I’ve owned a lot of nonstick bread pans in my lifetime, and the finish has always worn off.  I’ve used my GoldTouch pans over and over and over, and the finish is in perfect shape.  Not only that, the finish is incredibly non-stick…I don’t use any grease or baking spray when I use them for yeast bread (I do grease them for quick breads) and my breads pop out with nary a problem.

If you’re wanting to do any serious amount of yeast bread baking, do yourself a favor and save up for these pans, or ask for them as birthday and Christmas presents (that’s how I’ve gotten most of mine).  I’m certain you’ll be happy with them!

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If you’ve got yeast baking troubles or questions, feel free to email me  (the frugal girl at gmail dot com) or leave me a comment here, and I’ll try to troubleshoot your problem in a future post.  If you email me, including a picture of your bread or dough would be really helpful.

Today’s 365 post: Squeaky

My kitchen has been kind of busy this week, and I thought it would be fun to share a few photos.

Those of you who follow my Facebook page know that I tried Cook’s Illustrated’s recipe for Cranberry Bread and managed to only add half of the required baking powder (I’m just that brilliant!).  Amazingly enough, the bread was still fine. I feel like I need to make another batch using the proper measurements, though, so I can decide if I really do like this recipe or not.

I helped Lisey make a loaf of cranberry bread, using the family recipe. We put the right amount of baking powder in this loaf.

I tried a new recipe for a Pumpkin Cheesecake Pie, which has a cookie crust instead of a much-disliked-by-me pastry crust.

I also made a cheesecake to bring to a pie social (I know cheesecake isn’t a pie, but I brought it anyways since I don’t really love pies!).

And, I eventually decided on Basic Rolls for Thanksgiving instead of Honey-Glazed Rolls.

Also, I’m a day late in letting you know, but I participated in one of BlogHer’s She Vs. Her posts, where two bloggers write about their opposing viewpoints.  This particular one was about Black Friday, and I’m sure you know which side I represent. 

See you Monday!

Today’s 365 post: Christmas Peeps (a photo from 2007!)

Every Monday, I answer a few of the questions that my readers send me. If you have a question you’d like me to answer in a future Q&A post, just leave me a comment here or email me (thefrugalgirl [at] gmail [dot] com) and put Q&A in the subject line. I look forward to hearing from you!

I just wanted to see what you do about car seats for your kids. You mentioned that Zoe can’t unbuckle her car seat, so I’m assuming that means she’s still in a harnessed seat, which is great!
I know that a lot of people use the same car seat for all their kids or buy one second hand to be more frugal, but that’s not safe. Most car seats expire after 6 years or so and will no longer be effective in a crash. And if you buy second hand you never know if the seat has been in an accident or misused.

So, I was wondering what you did/do about obtaining car seats without blowing your budget (they can be very expensive!).

-Rebecca

Yep, Zoe AND Sonia are both still in 5-point harness seats. Joshua and Lisey were both in booster seats by this age, but neither of my two younger girls have gotten heavy enough or tall enough to be promoted.

It’s kind of a bummer because I thought I’d be done with car seats by this point, but given my girls’ small sizes, I really do feel like they’re safer in their car seats than in booster seats.

Safety should be your first concern when you’re shopping for a car seat, and saving money should be a somewhat distant second.

In case not everyone is aware, car seats do expire at a certain point because the straps can no longer be trusted.

In case you’re skeptical, here’s a video showing how poorly an expired car seat works in a crash. (email subscribers, you’ll have to click on over to my actual blog to see this…my apologies!)

Because of this, buying a used car seat is a somewhat risky proposition unless you can know for sure that the seat is not expired and has not previously been in a crash.

If you decide to buy used, check for an expiration date. Car seats should have a sticker with an expiration date on them somewhere, and if there’s no sticker, I wouldn’t recommend using the seat. Also, I would only recommend buying a used car seat from someone who can honestly assure you that the seat has not been in an accident (like someone you know personally, not a random stranger on Craig’s List).

If you decide to buy new, don’t feel like you need to buy a designer car seat with cup holders and extraneous fancy features…something more basic will work just fine because all car seats have to meet safety regulations.

Also, if you’re planning to have multiple children use the seat before it expires, I definitely recommend purchasing a seat with neutral colors (Incidentally, what is up with all the gender-specific baby gear out there? Will you really want to use your pastel pink stroller if your next baby is a boy??).

Once you’ve chosen the seat you want, check around on the internet to see which retailer has the best price. Target was the most inexpensive (around $100) when we checked, so that’s where we bought Sonia’s and Zoe’s seats.

I have a question for you about bread baking…well the kneading in particular. When you show pictures of turning out the dough before you start kneading, it always looks so thin. Whenever mine is at that stage and I turn it out (on a WELL floured board) it is still so sticky that I can’t do anything with it besides scrape it off the board into the trash (which breaks my heart & wallet). Any tips on what I’m missing here?

-Kate

I use a dough scraper just like this one(that’s an affiliate link to my online Amazon store) to help me with the early stages of kneading. You can see a photo of that in my post about how to knead bread dough , but if you’re a super beginner at bread baking, you might want to make your dough a little bit thicker before turning it out to knead.

Also, if you’ve got a stand mixer, I highly recommend using it to give the dough a good initial mixing…this helps the dough to be a little more organized by the time you turn it out onto the counter.

If your dough is too sticky, working some more flour into it should fix the problem and that way you won’t have to waste the batch of dough.

The new camera body I bought does actually take video, so one of these days I want to do a vlog about how to knead bread…I just need to do it when Mr. FG is around to be the camera man (my camera is too heavy for our cheapie tripod and I do NOT want to risk it falling onto the wood floor!).

I have a couple of yeast sweet roll recipes that I’d love to try for a holiday morning but I know I will not have the time that morning to prepare them from the beginning of the recipe. Do you know/think that I can make them ahead of time and let them rise overnight like the overnight cinnamon twists/rolls or do I need to make some sort of slight change in the recipe to be able to do that.

-Jen S.

As far as I know, almost any recipe will work that way…I’ve tried it with a number of recipes that weren’t specifically designed for an overnight rise, and the results have been good.

Of course, if you want to make sure that this will work, you could always suffer through an experimental batch one Saturday morning before Christmas. You know, for the happy-holiday-eating cause.

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Readers, the floor (er, the comments section) is yours!

Today’s 365 post: Coming on Wednesday

It wasn’t super hot yesterday, so I took advantage of the semi-coolness and did some baking.

I made three loaves of whole wheat bread (one for communion, two for us),

a double batch of buns, ( I’ve been using the dough from Honey-Glazed Pan Rolls for this lately…I just leave off the glaze.)

a batch of Snickerdoodles,

thin crust pizza,

and a new recipe for soft ginger cookies.  The dough is still in the fridge, unbaked, so the jury is out on whether or not the recipe is good. 

I made some mess, but not as much as one might expect, because I had to keep washing and re-using my bowls and pans. So, it’s not like I ended up with a huge pile of dishes when I was all done.

Have a lovely Sunday, and I’ll see you back here tomorrow. 

Today’s 365 post: Help me!

This past Friday I was supposed to go take some senior pictures, but the weather was overcast and too dark for that.  So, I ended up have a surprise day at home, and since the weather was really cool, I decided to get some batch baking done.

I made:

3 dozen Sweet Potato Chocolate Chip Muffins (I had a couple of sweet potatoes that had gotten wrinkly)…

1 batch of Banana Chocolate Chip Muffins (to use up some bananas from the freezer)…

3 dozen whole wheat rolls…

and a batch of granola.

Plus, I made 4 quarts of yogurt (I know this picture only has three, but there were four, I promise! ).

Most of what I made will serve as no-cereal breakfasts for us, and the whole wheat rolls will be used for sandwiches and as a dinner accompaniment.

I had to wash tons of dishes, and I did get a little tired of measuring and stirring, but the payoff is that I don’t think I should have to turn on my oven very much at all over the course of the next week.  And that’s good because the forecast is looking distinctly summery!

Every Monday, I answer a few of the questions that my readers send me. If you have a question you’d like me to answer in a future Q&A post, just leave me a comment here or email me (thefrugalgirl [at] gmail [dot] com) and put Q&A in the subject line. I look forward to hearing from you!

I’m curious as to why one of the top sides of regular loaves of bread tend to crack and rise higher (during baking) than the other side (like in your cinnamon oatmeal bread photos)?

-Elizabeth

You know, I’ve never thought about that before!  It seems to me that this mostly happens in loaves that have a filling (like the cinnamon swirl bread) or in breads that have hearty grains in them (like oatmeal bread).  I’ve also had it happen when I’ve rolled two different doughs together (like whole wheat and white dough, to make a swirl bread). In the case of the different doughs, I think it must be because they rise at different rates.  In the case of the oatmeal bread, I’d imagine that the lower gluten level would cause the bread to crack (more gluten means a stretchier dough, so lower gluten would contribute to cracking).  I don’t really know why cinnamon bread tends to split, though!  Readers, any ideas?  I’d say it was from the oatmeal in my oatmeal cinnamon bread recipe, but my regular cinnamon bread sometimes splits too.

I do think the split side rises higher because it’s freed from the rest of the loaf.  But I don’t think it splits the loaf because it’s rising higher (if that makes sense!). 

I’ve been enjoying your blog and considering getting into the world of blogging myself but not sure where to start. Most of my favorite blogs appear on Blogher but I’ve realized they aren’t where one starts……do you have any advice on where to start a blog?

–Amy

Yes, I do!    I always, always recommend that you start out with a WordPress blog.  I know a lot of people use Blogger and love it, but if you want to be at all serious about blogging, I’d definitely tell you to go with WordPress.  Most of the big, popular blogs I read are powered by WordPress, and I keep seeing blogger after blogger moving from the Blogger software to the WordPress software.  So, save yourself the trouble and start out on WordPress!

Why do I love WordPress?

I have to say, the main reason I adore WordPress is that they make blogs look sleek and professional, much moreso than Blogger blogs. Some people customize their Blogger blogs and make them look great, but most WordPress blogs look awesome right out of the box (which is good for a coding idiot like myself).

(Of course, Blogger and WordPress aren’t the only two options out there…Typepad blogs look pretty snazzy, in my opinion, but I don’t think that Typepad is as widely-used as WordPress is, which means that it doesn’t have as many themes, plug-ins, and tutorials as WordPress does.)

I also like WordPress’ dashboard better than Blogger’s, and I like the way comments function better on WordPress (you don’t have to open a new window to leave a comment).  In addition, WordPress has a really useful built-in stats counter and spam catcher (Oh, Akismet! How I love you!).  The spam catcher means that those annoying Captcha codes Blogger offers in the comments are completely unnecessary, and without those codes, your readers are more likely to leave comments on your posts.

Where to start

You can host your blog on WordPress.com, which is what I did at first….my blog address used to be www.thefrugalgirl.wordpress.com.  When your blog is hosted on WordPress’ servers, though, you have limited options as far as customization and putting ads and various media on your blog.  After a few months at wordpress.com, I bought my own domain and hosting services, so now WordPress is installed and hosted on my own server (and now my blog address has no “wordpress” in it.)

The other sort of big change I made was buying the Thesis theme. Unlike a lot of other WordPress themes, Thesis requires a purchase, but it is SO worth it, in my opinion.

Why is Thesis so fabulous?  Well, if you know html and css, you can modify free WordPress themes to your heart’s content.  I, however, am almost completely clueless about code, and that’s why Thesis is so stinking awesome for me.  I can change a bazillion things about my layout and design all with the touch of a button, and that makes me a happy girl.  I uses Thesis for this blog, for my 365 blog, and for my review blog.

You mentioned BlogHer, and I would be remiss if I didn’t acknowledge that they are one awesome blog network.  If you have a blog and you’re wanting to earn some money with it, do sign up to get onto BlogHer’s advertising waiting list.  My Blogher ads have definitely been the best source of revenue for my blog so far.

So in a nutshell, my recommendations are to 1) blog on WordPress, 2) use the Thesis theme, and 3) sign up with BlogHer.

I’ve also written a few (ok, two!) other posts about blogging, so you might want to check those out as well.

So I’m curious. I read your post from last year about fixing your van’s door handle, but what does your family do about routine vehicle maintenance?

-Ben

Well, that depends on how routine the maintenance is.  When it comes to stuff like oil changes, air filter changes, and the like, my husband is totally capable of doing the work himself.  When we need to do more involved stuff (especially stuff that’s way easier to do in a real garage with a lift), we have our trusted mechanic do the work.

We never, ever go to the dealer to have work done, though, as they charge an arm and a leg and the work they do is not as good as the work our mechanic does (plus, I kind of prefer to give my money to someone who owns a small, local business).

And though we try to fix problems ourselves when they arise, sometimes we pay our mechanic to take care of those.  For instance, we fixed our door handle, and my husband and my dad put in a new air/fuel sensor when ours went bad, but we recently paid our mechanic to fix our blower.  Fixing that involved removing the entire front dashboard, so to us it was more than worth the $100 to have our mechanic do the work (it turns out a small animal had made a nest inside our blower!).

Do you ever try to prepare other ethnic meals for your family?  For example, pad thai, Vietnamese Pho soup, or Chinese and Indian foods?  If not, do you expose your kids to these different kinds of foods, and do they enjoy them?

Virginia

I do make some Asian foods, like stir-fries (though not as often as I should, probably!), and our kids love takeout Chinese food (won-ton soup especially), but we don’t eat much in the way of Indian and Thai food.  In fact, I don’t think that I’ve ever had Pad Thai!

Sometimes, I’m discouraged from trying ethnic recipes because of the long lists of unusual, hard-to-find ingredients. However, I’ve seen a few recipes from Cook’s that offer simple substitutions, so I hope to try a few of those (I know at least one of those was a Thai soup).

Our kids eat exactly what my husband and I eat (I make one meal and they can choose to eat it or choose to not eat it, but I don’t make separate meals), so their diet is just like ours (I wasn’t sure if you were wondering about that or not!).  I am always trying new recipes and new types of foods, so as our diet expands, so does our children’s.

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Readers, as always, do feel free to share your input in the comments. 

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