Renee SG: Making It Big

I get so tired of cooking the same things the same way... the typical sub... the typical hamburger.... the typical cinnamon roll! So, when I could cook completely by myself in LA, how did I make up for lost creative time? I "made it big" in Hollywood.

You can make your hamburger however you want, but here's how I did mine (and that picture is after my roommates had been eating off of it for a day) The hamburger begins with a round loaf of Hawaiian bread divided horizontally into 3 pieces(my favorite ^.^). Place the bottom slice. Add a half-pound patty, a row of cheese, a row of lettuce, the middle Hawaiian bread slice, a row of tomatoes, another row of lettuce, another half-pound burger, and then the top. If you are an absolute meat lover, 3/4 lb or 1 lb patties will make you quite happy. :)

Though I originally got the sweet bread simply because it was in the right shape and I was sick of baking after I made breadsticks, cake, and the two 3-foot subs you'll see later in this article, the sweet bread made the burger taste even better. It can feed 5 college girls for 2 days. :)

Kraft services is when a person cooks for the staff of a production. I was hired to do this after cooking for a bunch of people. I was never known for making typical stuff, so I figured, why start now? I figured that this was a night shoot, so they'd prefer something light, so I made these two giant subs (the bread was handmade (I didn't have a breadmaker) the cookies were too for that matter... but whatever...)

I do not recommend this method unless you have some beef with those long French bread loaves you can get from any local food store. I didn't realize those existed before I labored for hours on this... Still, makes a neat picture and it did allow me to braid the bread so it came out with a beautiful shape. ^.^

First, I found pretty much any ol recipe online for submarine bread that I could make 100% by hand. I made enough for 4 loaves the length of 4 cookie sheets. Right before putting them in the oven, I braided the dough just as you would braid hair. (Careful to make the bread thin! It rises with a vengeance!)

When the bread was done, I cut each loaf in half horizontally and cut off about an inch or two at one end of each. Then, I turned the cut-off ends to face each other making 2 subs, each 3 feet long. After that, I did the typical build-a-sandwich thing. Lettuce, tomatoes, mayo, meat... etc. One was ham and the other was turkey. Half of each had cheese. Lettuce and tomatoes were in all of it and mayo and mustard (I think...) were available for people.

And the cinnamon roll version 2. I made version 1 smaller. It was 1/4 of the total dough in a batch of normal cinnamon rolls (not picky about the recipe. I just wanted to have enough ingredients for it...) But, I was disappointed with the size, so I created the Cinnamon Roll 2.0! One cinnamon roll created with the dough to make 25 cinnamon rolls! I made two of them. One I gave to my producer who looked sad. I hoped it would cheer him up :) The other one lasted for only 2 days in our apartment. Cooking these takes forever. Normal cinnamon rolls are done in like less than half an hour in the oven. These took 1 hour+.

It was sorta stressful since I didn't want to burn it and I didn't want the insides to be undone, so leaving a way for the heat to get down in the rolls is crucial. There are no worries about losing the gooeyness of a cinnamon roll with this method, and with cooking it long enough on the same heat or a little lower than regular cinnamon rolls (depending on your oven) it will be properly cooked all through. The key is to keep an eye on it.

Note: These are so heavy!!!! I should have weighed them...

Everything else I made in L.A. was boring or will be mentioned in my "Making the Perfect Obento" posts (About 1 will come out a week)