Life in the Lower Mainland (BC, Canada)

I have an 8 quart InstantPot with the Air Fryer lid. The manual recommends the "Bake" setting for breads at 365 F for 30 minutes, but I thought why try Air Frying it? Here's how the experiment went: Dough I used the simple bread dough I always use. You can probably get away with using whatever bread dough you normally make, but here's the recipe I use in case you're stuck for one: 5 cups flour 2 cups water + 1 tablespoon quick rise yeast + 1 tablespoon sugar I let this sit for a bit to let the yeast wake up and start bubbling, or at least not still look like dry grains 1-1/2 teaspoons salt 1/4 cup cooking oil After mixing it into a dough, I let it sit and rise for about an hour or so till it has approximately doubled in volume. Once this has happened, I scrape it out and gently knead it into a manageable shape, then cut it into eight to sixteen buns, depending on how large you want them to be. Normally I put them in the freezer and only pop them in the InstantPot ...

Even though I'm currently living on a rather severe budget, I still wanted something (cheap) to go with my homemade bread buns. After some thought, I settled on Nutella. Not only did it satisfy my requirements, it was also chocolate! Total winner! Of course being on a budget, I didn't just waltz down to Walmart and pick up Nutella, since name brands tends to be on the pricier side. I ended up with the Walmart brand Great Value Chocolate Hazelnut Spread  -- almost 40% cheaper than Nutella  and I wasn't going to be fussy about any difference in taste (honestly just having that much chocolate made me pretty happy). Now a third of the way through the jar, I got to thinking... What might satisfy my chocolate-on-bread craving and be even cheaper? The first thing I discovered was Walmart.ca didn't have nearly enough precise subcategories. You can't even find baking chocolate (slide 2) in its own category, for example. For the slide presented I actually ended up searching...

Fooling around with deep fried bread again. The result comes out lightly crunchy on the outside, puffy and airy on the inside, and much lighter than a donut. Best eaten fresh and fast. You're probably good to go with any basic bread dough but the recipe/process I used is very simple: 2 cups water 1 tablespoon yeast 1 tablespoon sugar Once the yeast has foamed a bit, mix it into: 5 cups all purpose flour 2 teaspoons salt -- this is a cautious amount and your dough will come out on the blander side 1/4 cup oil Mix it, knead it, let it rise. Once it's risen once and maybe doubled in volume at least, you're ready to prep it for frying. You can keep portions of it in the fridge/freezer for later as well. For my first batch, I tried just cutting a portion of the dough then, without kneading at all, just cut small chunks and put it into the oil for frying. This produced good puffy results, but not as many units (slides 1-2). The the second batch, I used about the same amount of d...