July 17 2013 Recipe Wednesday

July 17 Recipe Wednesday

 

Where do recipes come from?  Who makes them up? Why do we collect them? 

We'll  have some fun trying to answer these questions.

Today we will start with our first Dog Treat Recipe. 

This recipe was given to me by a friend in California as a gift for our dogs at Christmas.

Very simple to make but not nothing very interesting about it. 

Basic Dog Treat

Ingredients

3 Cups all-purpose flour

1/2 Cup nonfat dry milk

1/2 Tsp. baking powder

1/2 Tsp salt

13 Cup Low-sodium beef or chicken bouillon powder

2 Large eggs

1 Cup warm water

Directions

1- Preheat oven to 350 degrees

2- Mix all dry ingredients in a large bowl.  Slowly add the warm water and eggs and mix well.  

The dough  will be stiff

3- Use hands to knead the dough until it is smooth and easy to handle, and then form into a ball.

4- Place the ball on a floured breadboard.  Roll the dough out to 1/4 to 3/8 inches thick.

5- Use a 3 inch dog bone cookie cutter or cut the dough into 3 x 2 rectangles

6- Place the bones on greased cookie sheets.

7- Bake for 15 to 20 minutes or until golden brown.

8- Take the cookie sheet out of the oven, and using a spatula, flip the bones over.  Return to the oven for 5 minutes or until the bones are golden brown on both sides.

9- Remove from the oven, let cool thoroughly, and store in an airtight container

It was all good and well for the dogs but they got bored after a few weeks and would sniff them and walk away. So it was time to start looking for other recipes.

Whenever we were out and about I would look for a Dog Treat Cookbooks.
We knew of 3 Dog Bakery and visited them a few times on our outings. Our dogs loved the the fancy treats we would bring home. The 3 Dog Bakery book were the first doggy cookbook I purchased from our local shelter.
Loved the recipes, but they seemed too exotic for our girls: fruit cocktail, coconut and honey (to me at the time, they were weird ingredients).  Some of the ingredients were hard to find or expensive.  (I started to make dog treats due to the store-bought treats' cost, and what was in them that I could not pronounce.) So my search for more books continued.  After adding two more books to my collection, I had some idea of  what the basic recipes were and how to manipulate them.  (More flour if you add more liquid, like honey or molasses.)

So we added peanut butter to the above recipe and deleted the bouillon, added wheat flour and chicken stock as the liquid. Soon our dogs were snacking on things like
 Italian Twist: treats made with tomato soup, cheese and parsley.

Cocoa Kittys, made with carob powder and dried mint.

Peanut Butter treats, of course.
Sorry, no photo. There are never any left to take a photo of.)

So that is how we started creating our own dog treats.
One simple recipe from a company that sold dog bone shaped cookie cutters as a Christmas gift.
I will always cherish this recipe not only because it was given by a wonderful friend but
for what  it began. Our wonderful journey known as MaiRo & Co - Dog Treat Bakery.

Till next week.
Woof!