Welcome, welcome everybody!

Woo three day weekend!

Good to be back to relative normality after an entirely strange weekend last week. I’ll just leave it at that.

Before we get going today I thought it might be enlightening if I shared a little insight into how the whole “Sunday Gravy” thing comes to fruition.

The process itself is multi-tiered. It starts a few weeks ahead by doing research and generally batting ideas around. You’ve heard me say many times that I love requests and suggestions and frequently that is where the inspiration comes from. After 8 years of menus, believe me, suggestions are more than welcome.

What I do next is start perusing menus all over the interwebs for inspiration. If the recipe is new to me I’ll study anywhere between 3 to as many as 7 or so recipe sites. I have a fair idea of what profile I’m looking for and will frequently take a little of this from one site and a little of that from another to achieve the result I’m looking for.

Finally when I’ve come up with my recipe I’ll give the link full accreditation to the website that I borrowed from the most. See todays recipe below for an example.

To not give full accreditation would be just plain dumb and stupid. 

Something else that you’ve all probably noticed and I’m certainly proud of is the use of original photography for Sunday Gravy.

It’s pretty key for me to avoid possible copyright issues and I can avoid them entirely by using all of my own shit.

Something some of you may not know is that there are entire legal firms that do nothing but seek out use of their clients copyrighted photographs and then attempt to shakedown and even borderline extort the sites that use them.

It’s true! Here’s a pretend scenario: Say there’s a legal firm in, oh hell I don’t know, let’s say Germany. They may have some theoretical clients like photographers or models, let’s say, who pay the legal firm to protect their original work.

The way I envision it is they have this entire room of little baby shark paralegal want-to-be motherfuckers browsing all over the internet just waiting to find anybody using their clients images.

These Teutonic twits are just sitting there with their schnitzel licking index fingers just a-hovering over their mouse and just waiting to pull the goddamn trigger. If they find one of their “protected” images then the shit starts to really fly.

[Remember when we made schnitzel on Sunday Gravy? That shit was awesome.]

Anyway, that’s why I use all original photography. Hear that? “Das sind meine Fotos Motherfuckers!”

One final thing. I want you all to do a little experiment for me. Scroll down to todays recipe link and click on it. No, the second one for the potato soup.

I’ll wait.

.

..

…

Did you see the outright fucking assault of ads? It’s straight out fucking insane! Hands down the worst part about searching for recipes.

Know what I do? I have an ad blocking browser on my phone (“Brave” is the app if you’re interested) and I only search recipes using that because the ads on the food sites are a fucking war crime.

Did you ever see an ad here on DFO?

No. You did not!

That’s because we do all of this awesomeness for FREE. We have NEVER BEEN PAID FOR ANY OF OUR WORK EVER!

We do it because we love you and that’s the truth.

Anyway.

Needed to get that off of my chest.

 

To the kitchen we go!

 

We talked previously about eldest granddaughter specifically asking for a bread making lesson from “The Bread Master himself.”

/buffs knuckles against chest

She really did say that and it was one of the coolest things I’ve ever heard.

Today is the story of that day.

Knowing full well we couldn’t just bake a lovely loaf of bread and feed the 6 of us, a formal menu of the meal was formulated. I’ve been meaning to feature baked potato soup on Sunday Gravy for some time now and what better time to do it than on a day when you’re baking fresh bread?

I mean “C’mon all fucking ready.” Those two are made for each other.

After some additional thought would bread and soup be enough for this group? You remember that turkey that I cooked sous vide a few weeks back?

Shit yes! We cook a turkey breast AND we’ve got soup and fresh bread? Fucking hell man that’s perfect!

[actual though process for this menu]

SO. Family gathered and we literally broke bread. And soup!

Can you break soup?

Then some of the turkey breast sous vide – because that shit’s delicious.

We do have a new recipe for that lovely soup right there.

Baked Potato Soup!

recipe inspired by Iwashyoudry.com

2 large potatoes, scrubbed then baked for one hour in a 350 degree oven.

Some bacon slices

4 tbsp butter

2 garlic cloves, minced

1/4 cup yellow onion

1/3 cup all-purpose flour

3 cups of milk, we used a combination of low fat milk, whole milk and half and half since we had some of each leftover.

2 cups chicken stock – store bought works here.

1 tsp salt, plus more to taste

1/2 tsp garlic salt

1/2 tsp black pepper

Sharp cheddar cheese

Sour cream

fresh chives for garnish

Before we begin DJ Taj gets all of the credit for the soup today. I was giving the granddaughter the bread lesson while he was making the soup. I simply sat back and shouted out directions as we went.

Well, I did set up the sous vide for the turkey so that was goddamn laborious.

First you fully rinse the potatoes and give them a quality bath.

Poke a few holes with the tines of a form and bake the potatoes in a 350 degree oven for about an hour.

While the potatoes are baking you can make with the bacon.

Cut up some of the pieces of bacon and cook until crispy. We will be using the bacon fat as part of the soup base AND we’ll be using the crispy bacon bits as a garnish!

Bacon! A multi-tasker!

Dice up the onion.

When the bacon is nice and crispy remove to a paper towel lined vessel and allow to drain.

Like so.

Couple of cloves of garlic.

Sauté the bacon and onion together.

Now we’ve got our potatoes baked.

Peel the spuds if you so desire. Dealers choice. I like skin-on but TAJ is a peeled potato guy and it was his call.

Add the butter to the onions and bacon.

The bacon and onion when cooked together brings insane aromas to the kitchen, then you add in some butter?

Shit!

Next add in the flour to start building the roux. Go ahead and toss in the minced garlic while you’re at it.

Let the roux tighten up some then add in the milk, cream and seasonings.

Time to pour in the chicken stock. Give a few stirs then toss in the cubed potatoes.

Bring to a simmer until the soup is nice and thickened to the perfect consistency.

Damn, shit’s looking just right.

Now? Garnish this motherfucker like a baked potato. I used sour cream, cheese, bacon bits and chives.

Serve with that delicious bread that eldest granddaughter created.

Since we have a bit of spare time and I haven’t shared the recipe in a bit. We’ll give it a direct cut and paste from a previous attempt – REMEMBER! Eldest granddaughter did the entire thing. Every bit of the work was hers.

“French Bread!

Recipe once again inspired by Tasteofhome.com

Before getting started you need to know that there are 3 separate rises for the dough. One hour, 30 minutes and 30 minutes. Schedule your shit accordingly.

3 to 3 1/4 cups of flour

1 package of Instant Yeast

1 cup of warm water at a temperature of 110-115 degrees. This is important dammit.

2 tablespoons of sugar

2 tablespoons of canola oil

1 1/2 teaspoons of salt

Parchment paper

1 egg white

1 teaspoon of cold water

Add the yeast to the working bowl of your mixer then pour in the water. Let bloom for a couple of minutes. Now add in the oil, salt, sugar and the first 2 cups of flour. Put your paddle attachment on the mixer and give it a spin.

Next, replace the paddle attachment with the hook attachment on the mixer. Now add in enough flour to form a stiff dough. Start with 1 cup of flour and adjust as needed until you have a stiff dough that pulls away from the mixing bowl. Set a kitchen timer and let this bastard go for 10 minutes.

Form into a ball, place in an oiled bowl, rolling the dough over to coat with oil. Cover with a kitchen towel and let it do rise number one for an hour.

Punch that dough down and get into the second rise, about thirty minutes. After that rise take a baking sheet that’s been sprinkled with cornmeal and shape your bread loaf. Turns out this part is critical for final results. You want this only about 2 1/2″ wide and about 14-18 inches long. It’s KEY.

Let rise again for another half hour, then score with a bread knife and baste with the egg wash. That’s the egg white mixed with the teaspoon of cold water.

Then give it a bake in a preheated 375 degree for about 25 minutes.

Bingo motherfuckers!

Let rest for a few minutes.

There you go.

When opening the oven eldest granddaughter said something like “Whoa, that looks amazing.”

She was right. Nailed it on the first try.

You have some of that fresh bread still warm from the oven and some freshly made baked potato soup?

You are living right.

We got lucky on the day we made this and the temperature was just a bit below 70 outside. So warm enough but not too hot with the oven on.

In fact the first proof of the bread was assisted by the potatoes baking.

It’s almost like we’ve done this shit before.

A terrific time was had by all and it was a nice fairly normal get together. How I’ve missed those.

For the record? Eldest granddaughter can bake some bread. Not lying. This girl has serious culinary badass in her future repertoire if she has a mind to. Her attention to detail is impeccable.

Just think, You’ve got today and still another day off tomorrow! It’s kick back thirty up in this motherfucker!

Enjoy the rest of your holiday weekend.

I was absolutely dead serious when I said that YOU are the reason why Sunday Gravy exists!

Much love and appreciation.

Be safe out there and try and retain all of your fingers.

Until next time.

PEACE!