What do you make from scratch?

[Anonymous]

Hell yeah to the homemade baked beans! That's the whole reason I have molasses in my kitchen. When I make them myself, I'll eat them til I'm a little ill. But I don't even touch the commercial ones at a potluck. Like you said, just a different food.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP, thanks for posting--I started doing yogurt a few months ago and have been meaning to see if anyone has pointers for getting a smoother texture? Mine is good, will never go back to the grocery store stuff, but is a bit lumpy.

Also do granola sometimes. Where do people source nuts, since they can be $$$ and I am cheap? I typically do Trader Joe's but should perhaps try Costco.

Definitely no homesteader here, though. Zero desire to ever make pasta from scratch, and plenty of other processed stuff in this house.

Heating milk to 180°F is a crucial step for the best homemade yogurt. It permanently denatures the whey proteins (allowing them to create a thicker, custard-like gel) and kills off any natural bacteria in the milk that could compete with your yogurt culture

Thanks (chemistry is not my thing!). I heat to 180, then lower to 115 and sous vide in the instant pot for 8 hours. No straining needed. It’s definitely not terrible, but daughter keeps telling me the texture is not quite smooth enough. 😂

Anyway, should start a new thread rather than hijack OP’s.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Bread
Jam
Lox
Ice cream
Ricotta
Mozerella

I'm one that makes yogurt, and lemme tell you, the amount of milk I have wasted on failed cheesemaking attempts would float a small boat. And the time I have wasted would, I dunno, build a new boat. Hats off to you

Hats off to you for trying because I also make yogurt, but hell no on cheese.

I started with the kids here and grew from that cheesemaking.com

[Anonymous]

I have a bad reaction to malted barley flour, which is in most baked goods and store bought bread. So if I am feeling like bread (DH doesn't eat bread often), I'll make some. Today I'm making a white loaf, but I've made English muffins, dinner rolls, naan, flatbreads. They are pretty easy and much more agreeable to my stomach. I freeze what I don't get to.

[Anonymous]

Yogurt
All baked goods and breads
Sauces and salad dressings
Pizza
We've dabbled with cheese and butter but I don't really enjoy it so don't do it.
DH will grind meat instead of buying it that way and he also makes sausage

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I have been baking a lot the last few years after pretty much a lifetime of not enjoying baked goods/sweets. After making a chocolate cake for my DH's birthday, and finding it about 100x better than a grocery store cake or even a bakery cake, I realized that maybe I do like baked goods, I just haven't really had good ones. So most weeks I experiment with a cake or pie or cookies or muffins or something, usually a recipe from Sally's. I see people all over the internet posting that there is no sense in making homemade brownies because the Ghiradelli mix is so good. This is a huge lie, and I have no idea how it got started, lol.

Other things:

Baked beans. These are amazing from scratch, not even the same food as the canned ones.

Salad dressing. Olive oil, vinegar, dijon and some salt is better than the gloopy sugar-laden stuff from the store.

I am a big from scratch baker and bake regularly but I will go to my grave saying those Ghirardelli brownies are a solid choice for any occasion. I love to just smear them with solid PB or make cream cheese frosting for them also. Or top them with crushed candy cane in winter. And of course vanilla ice cream and Hershey’s syrup.
I generally think the highly regraded brownie recipes (like the katherine Hepburn one) are good but taste more like a low-flour chocolate tort, so just a different item.

[Anonymous]

I love making homemade bread, but it's not an everyday thing. More like once every few months. The rest of our bread is store-bought.

I do make my own yogurt. Instant Pot ftw.

Pie crust. So much better than purchased crust.

I cook dried beans about half the time, use canned the other half.

I make tomato sauce in the summer when we're overflowing with tomatoes, and can it in a pressure canner. Also make bolognese and either can or freeze it.

[Anonymous]

Tortillas, naan, pita bread, anything related to baking. It’s so much better!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The Michelle’s granola is so good I don’t want homemade.
And the Icelandic yogurt I get from the farm — or even better the stuff at the farmers market is so good that I don’t see it worth making at home. Maybe if I had more time and less cash like my 20-something relatives I would.
My retired siblings are always making stuff from scratch …. Because they have endless time. If I make scratch pasta that basically means the yard work will not get done or the house won’t get cleaned or whatever.

I'm not a granola person, but this granola is so damn good!

[Anonymous]

Wow. I don’t make anything from scratch except the mashed potatoes, and that’s less than once a year.

[Anonymous]

Salad dressing

[Anonymous]

Regularly: salad dressings - including bleu cheese and Caesar, guacamole, pancakes, wafffles, stir fry sauces, marinades, cookies

Occasionally: salsa, hummus, pesto, overnight oats, pizza dough, bread, applesauce, pie crust

Almost never: cakes and brownies

[Anonymous]

Instant pot + fairlife milk= easy yogurt. Dump container of milk (I use 2%). Whisk in a heaping tablespoon of plain yogurt from another batch or chobani. Hit yougurt button, wait 8 hours. You can strain it a little but it doesn’t have to be for a ton of time. No thermometer needed

[Anonymous]

Salad dressing
Pizza dough
Guacamole
Coffee cake
Sugar cookies
Gazpacho
Asian Cole slaw
Iced tea
Popcorn
Potato chips
Potato latkes
Lemonade
Dinner rolls

[Anonymous]

I went through a brief period making yogurt in the instapot and I don’t see what the fuss was. It's not very thick, and no cheaper than buying it. I prefer the thick Icelandic skyr. Am I missing something?