Life is hard. I am always looking for ways to make it easier. I wish I could press the easy button for all areas of my life. Especially Laundry! With Fast Easy Bread I can press that button for a fast, easy and quick meal. I can make a pizza using Fast Easy Bread Pizza Bundle and make a pizza quick and easy. I make pizza almost every friday night. Last Friday I made 2 pepperoni stuffed crust pizzas in 45 mintues. I defiantly won the great mom award. I saved a good $20 dollars because ordering 2 stuffed crust large pizzas would have cost me $30 bucks with a tip. I hate spending money on something I can make myself a whole lot cheaper. Try and buy a pizza bundle and save money. Hit that easy button once a week and then go do some laundry.

Stacy, Desiree & Madeline friends of Fast Easy Bread & fellow fighters of childhood hunger

Tara, Madeline, Cheryl (from Minnie's Pantry and featured in Hunger Hits Home) and Me

Sandra Lee Food Network Star

These days I am trying to focus on what is important. I love my children but I feel they are spoiled. Just the other day I tried to explain to them that not all children have it as good as they do! They have 2 parents that love and adore them, a mom that is able to stay home and take care of all there needs and wants. I mean, really who wouldn’t love a mom that can whip up Monkey Bread, Stuff Crust Pizza and Cinnamon Rolls at the snap of a finger? They think food is always Fast and Easy and at there finger tips. To tell the truth it is, why would they believe that children who sit next to them in school go hungry because food doesn’t appear at the snap of a finger in every home.

When I tell them to not be wasteful and that there are children who haven’t eaten today and they should feel blessed to have such an abundance of good food to eat, I get confused looks.

This is all going to change because my children will be watching a Food Network produced documentary called HUNGER HITS HOME. This Saturday on the Food Network at 7 pm central time. They will learn about a boy who doesn’t get Stuff Crust Pizza every Friday night or Monkey Bread for a late night snack. He gets Top Ramen if he is lucky. They will learn of a teenager who has gone 3 days without Food, my kids think they are hungry if they go 3 hours.

I got the chance to attend the red carpet premier of Hunger Hits Home in Dallas and met Sandra Lee, the Food Network Star. She is doing an amazing job helping raise awareness that children are going hungry right here in the USA. I asked her what I can tell Fast Easy Bread fans to enlist there help to make a change in the fight against hunger. She explained that we should consider all of the children around us as our children and we would never let our kids go hungry.

So with that, I am teaming up with a local group called Food for the Soul. We are going to stuff the backpacks of hungry kids in our community and feed them during the summer. I can now feed “All my Children” Fast Easy Bread and you can help. Join me in making Fast Easy Bread for those hungry kids in your area. You can make twice as much bread and feed all the children around too! Send me an email if you want to help. lindsey@fasteasybread.com

In the Hunger Games, an important moment in the star-crossed lovers relationship is when Peeta gives a starving, needful Katniss a loaf of bread. Assisting in feeding the hungry and the homeless is very important. Every Sunday my family makes peanut butter and jelly sandwiches to give to homeless shelters. So, in the Hunger Games spirit, my mom and I made a delicious large peanut butter and jelly loaf of bread to give to the needy. We twisted it into a braid, in honor of the gorgeous braids Katniss has in the movie. Go Fast Easy Bread and the Hunger Games!

Caryn Pierce
Family and Consumer Science teacher

Last night I got to invite several fans of Fast Easy Bread and The Hunger Games to an advanced screening of the Hunger Games movie. Lets just say they were a little excited. There was even an actor at the screening, he launched the fire balls in the movie! The theater was full of excitement and happy readers who couldn’t wait for their chance to see the movie. We had a great time and we think this movie is going to be huge. We asked our guests at the movie to come up with a blog post to relate Fast Easy Bread with The Hunger Games movie and we will be posting their guest blog posts over the next couple of days.

What does the Hunger Games have to do with Fast Easy Bread?….

EVERYTHING!

The whole time I was reading the Hunger Games series, I just wanted to make Fast Easy Bread for everyone. The characters are always hungry and what they really want is some BREAD!

I got the opportunity to interview Josh Hutcherson, who play’s Peeta the Bread Baker in the Hunger Games movie. I was so excited and I had some good questions for him, all about BREAD!

Since Josh’s character Peeta is a bread baker, I asked him if he knows how to bake homemade bread in real life. Josh said that he does know how to make homemade bread and the first scene he shot for the movie was my favorite part in the book and it was about bread. It is the scene where Peeta sees Katniss out in the pouring rain starving to death. He burns some bread on purpose so he can give it to Katniss. After getting slapped by his mom for burning the bread he goes out in the rain and throws her the loaf. She is hungry and burnt bread is way better than no bread!

Josh was so nice and said getting this part in The Hunger Games was hard to wrap his mind around. “Its such a big part,” he said. But when he was holding the loaf of bread, wearing an apron with the rain machines about to turn on, he said to himself, “I am Peeta, I am in The Hunger Games, WOW this is for real.” Its all about the bread! Fast Easy Bread!

There you have it, up close and personal with Josh Hutcherson or as I like to call him Peeta the Bread Baker!

The Hunger Games comes out this Friday March 23rd. Make yourself some Fast Easy Bread and eat up while you wait, no need to go “Hungry” and its no “Game” it’s FAST EASY BREAD!

I love myself a good pizza. I love stuff crust pizza. But I will always save room for a cinnamon roll. There is nothing like a yummy, warm, gooey cinnamon roll. When you shape it into a heart and share with your loved ones you can’t go wrong.

Ingredients:

Dough:

2 and 1/2 cups unbleached bread flour

2 Tbsp sugar (can use honey, brown sugar or any sweetener 1:1)

1/2 tsp salt

1 Tbsp SAF-instant premium yeast – Found in Homemade the Pizza Bundle

1 tsp Liquid Soy Lecithin – Found in the Homemade Pizza Bundle

1 cup hot/warm water

Pizza Ingredients:

6-7 individual mozzerella string cheeses

2 cups Mozzerella cheese

1/2 3.5 oz package of pepperoni

1 8 oz can of tomato sause

1 tsp Shirley J, Pizza & Past Seasoning Mix – Found in the Homemade Pizza Bundle.

1 tsp Garlic Salt

2 Tbsp Extra Virgin Olive Oil
Instructions:

Mix Dry ingredients. (yeast is a dry ingredient)
Make 1 dimple in dry ingredients with tsp. Squeeze the lecithin into the bottom of the dimple about the size of a quarter.
Add water slowly, add 3/4 cups and then the remaining 1/4 cup. Mix for 1 minute and check consistency. The dough should be sticky and pull itself off bowl.
Mix/knead in mixer on medium setting for 5 minutes or knead for 5 minutes by hand.
Spray counter and hands with cooking spray and knead for a few seconds to form smooth ball.
Roll dough into a 15-in. diameter circle. Place on a pizza stone or a cookie sheet.
Cut string cheese in half length wise and line the outside of the circle so the dough can still be folded over the cheese stick.
Fold the dough over the outside ring of cheese and make sure the dough is pressed or pinched on the inside so the dough doesn’t unfold.
To make a heart shape, push the top down into itself and then pinch the bottom to a point.
In a seperate bowl – mix the tomato sause and the Fast Easy Bread – Pizza & Pasta Seasoning Mix
Pour the mixed pizza sauce in the middle of the pizza dough and rotate the pan to spread the dough evenly.
Spread pepperoni on the sauce as desired.
Cover peperoni and sauce with mozzerella cheese.
Pour olive oil and garlic salt into a small bowl and mix together to form a semi-paste.
Spread the semi-paste on the crust using a silicon brush.
Bake at 415 for 25 minutes.
Remove to cooling rack for 5 minutes, slice, and enjoy!

Cinnamon Rolls

Ingredients:

5 cups unbleached bread flour
¼ cup sugar (can use honey, brown sugar or any sweetener 1:1)
1 tsp salt
2 Tbsp SAF-instant premium yeast – Found in the Homemade Bread Bundle
2 tsp Liquid Soy Lecithin – Found in the Homemade Bread Bundle
(Do not measure, just easy squeezy quarter size squirts)
2 cups hot/warm water
*** add 1 3/4 cups and then add 1/4 slowly if necessary ***

Filling

4 Tbsp. Melted Butter

2 Tbsp. Cinnamon

1 cup Brown Sugar

Frosting

Buttercream Frosting

1/2 cup butter (softened)

3 cups powdered sugar

1 tsp. vanilla extract

3 Tbsp. milk/cream
Instructions:

1. Mix Dry ingredients. (yeast is a dry ingredient)

2. Make 2 dimples in dry ingredients with tsp. Squeeze the Soy Lecithin into the bottom of the dimples about the size of a quarter. Add water slowly, start by adding 1 3/4 cups and then the remaining 1/4 cup. Mix for 1 minute and check consistency. The dough mixture should be sticky and pull itself off bowl.

3. Mix/knead in mixer on medium setting for 5 minutes or knead for 5 minutes by hand.

4. Spray counter and hands with cooking spray and knead for a few seconds to form smooth ball.

5. Do not cut dough in half if you want to make a Super large batch. (A super batch will fill a large lipped cookie sheet and half a batch will fill a 9×13 cake pan)

6. Spray counter and roll out dough to 12×24 inch rectangle, dough should be about 1/4 inch thick.

7. Coat rolled out rectangle of dough with melted butter and shake cinnamon to cover, then spread brown sugar all over, be sure to get cinnamon mixed in and all the way to the edge.

8. Roll up rectangle and then cut rolls 1 inch thick with cinnamon dental floss, you can use a sharp knife but dental floss is so much easier.
Now unroll each cut cinnamon roll and re-roll from both ends and pinch the bottom to make a point.

9. Spray cookie sheet and place rolls close together.

10. Cover with a dry dish towel and let rise for 15 min.

11. Bake at 350 for 15 min

12. Remove from oven and while rolls are cooling, mix frosting.

13. Mix softened butter and vanilla and slowly add powdered sugar and a little cream until all the sugar and cream is mixed.

14. Frost and Enjoy!

Fast Easy Bread Classes are fun! This past weekend I got to teach a group of awesome ladies how to make Fast Easy Bread! Not only did they learn how to make, Stuffed Crust Pizza, Taco Braid, Monkey Bread and Cinnamon Rolls they got new Kitchen-Aide mixers! If you can’t tell by the photo all these girls are related. Their brother/son bought them all mixers for Christmas and scheduled a class to have me come teach them how to use them and make LOTS of Fast Easy Bread. We had a blast. We made and baked 12 Fast Easy Bread Items, so yummy and so easy!

Contact me lindsey@fasteasybread.com to schedule your class today!

Being on live TV was scary, exciting and FAST. But since I like Fast I felt right at home. Not really! I baked for 5 hours straight to get all the items you see ready. I did come up with a new recipe, Cherry Cheesecake Braid. A festive looking dish! Enjoy watching. It was fun and I hope to do it again. It is not to late to order for Christmas. Fast Easy Bread Kits, Aprons and Rolling Pins make great gifts. Merry Christmas.